the blog of Jerry Bolton
Posts tagged Tim Challies
…the king of pop and the king of glory
0Current Tunage: Maylene And The Sons Of Disaster – Waiting On My Deathbed
Maylene’s new record, “III”, is stellar southern hardcore. Nobody does it better.
Yesterday, Michael Jackson died. I’ll be truthful – most of my exposure to him was through Weird Al (“eat it”) and Disney stuff when I was a kid. Never much cared for pop music, nor its “king”. Although I can certainly respect his impact on music, my sadness at his passing is not one of regret and admiration, but of pity. He was a man destroyed by the sins of his father, the trap of his money, and the war of self-loathing and self-idolatry that so clearly marked his life. Although I hope he met Jesus in a real way before his death, there’s nothing to suggest that happened.
Needless to say, his death has gotten me thinking, and I had some thoughts I was going to share… but in his usual fashion, Tim Challies said my thoughts for me in his own way. You can read them here.
…bake me a pie
0Current Tunage: Casting Crowns – East to West
Probably the only really “CCM” artist that I truly enjoy, unequivocally.
Finished Francis Collins’ The Language of God. Really enjoyed the first half (very interesting stuff), and elements of the latter half. Didn’t agree with his conclusion (theistic evolution). Collins is definitely a scientist and not a theologian – Theistic Evolution just isn’t an option if you move beyond simply the first two chapters of Genesis and into the doctrines that are built out of it (ie. gender, marriage, death/sin, etc). As soon as we postulate a traditional evolutionary model, those doctrines (which I would contest are vital) collapse. Theistic Evolution (or “BioLogos” as he prefers to coin it) simply takes liberties that the biblical authors and figures (ie. Jesus and Paul for starters) don’t take.
(Challies has a good review of the book and the key problems with it here.)
My thoughts: The wildcard in the question of origins is twofold: Human fallibility and God’s ability to transcend the natural limits of the world he’s made.
Let me explain, though it may come off a little farfetched because, well, it is a little farfetched. Here goes: I don’t think Time is a constant. Some of this line of thinking I owe to studying Jacques Derrida earlier in the spring, but the point is this: I think time hasn’t always been progressing at a constant rate. In fact, if we measure time by earth’s revolutions around the sun, time actually IS progressively passing slower since earth’s revolutions around the sun are gradually taking longer (I believe we lose about 4 seconds a year at present). So, extrapolating this idea backwards, and injecting a little “God is God”… here’s my hypothesis: “Billions of years” (or at least the effects thereof) in six literal 24-hour days. How? Well, although time may be getting slower, it seems to me that human perception of it may still be a constant. This solves a few problems: the literal six-day young-earth God-made-it-all Bible-intact interpretation of Genesis gets by alright, and it explains the evolutionary phenomena we see (the stipulation being that the process happened much “faster” than previously thought – and yet at the same speed if that makes sense).
Admittedly, this is pretty makeshift, but it’s a start, and poses some really unique thought problems:
What if time isn’t, or hasn’t always been constant?
Big thoughts today. Enjoy.