The following were notes given along with the message Woe to Him! - Habakkuk 2:6-17 given at the Inversion Fellowship on March 29th 2007. 

A Comparison of Karma and Divine Judgment

There are several views of the world which populate the human landscape each of them wrestling with the various questions we face in our existence. One of the most perplexing issues is that of our own mortality. In fact, death has been said to be the great equalizer, the fate of the rich and powerful and the poor and destitute alike. One of the great mysteries is what happens when we die. Various beliefs have been held throughout time regarding life after death, but none greater than the big two. The eastern philosophy of karma/reincarnation and the widely believed philosophy of divine judgment. People in our culture today are fixated with the idea of Karma. You see it in the obsession of a regular guy named Earl on television, in the writings of Oprah Winfrey show superstar Gary Zukov, and it even appears in a line of Ben and Jerry’s low carb ice-cream.¹ In our culture Karma has become kool and divine judgment is well, too judgmental for many. In this little essay, I want to compare the two and actually show that judgment is much more humane and coherent, though the consequences perhaps more severe.

Karma 101

Karma is one of the main tenants interwoven in the diversity of philosophical views from the east. Eastern philosophy is a literal smorgasbord of ideas, practices, and religious concepts, but there are a few ideas which are universal in the various systems. The Law of Karma, the endless cycle of reincarnation, and the oneness of all things are common threads throughout the various genres of eastern thought. The law of Karma will sound familiar in part to people in the west. At its most basic level it is a teaching that says that all our actions, whether good or bad, have consequences. These consequences form a chain creating your reality into the future. What you do, the choices you make literally “create” your future. The idea of Karma goes beyond a mere understanding that “whatever a man sows, he also reaps” for Karma extends between subsequent lives and existences. Each person builds up positive or negative Karma over the course of this life which then determines their subsequent lives after being reincarnated. A person moves “up” through a succession of being in the lives they live with the hope of escaping the endless cycle of birth and rebirth, which is known by the term samsara. If you have bad Karma you may come back as a dung beetle, good karma may have you return as an upper class Brahman Hindu. So judgment is seen in the movement “upward” and “downward” in this chain of existence. Many western people fail to see that reincarnation is not a good thing to the eastern mind, but a cycle from which the soul desires to escape, to be absolved into the oneness of the universe finally eliminating the illusion of individual existence. I find the karmic view offers true insights on several fronts. First, it acknowledges that we do indeed reap what we sow and our actions do have consequences. Second, it realizes that our actions and choices are moral in nature. Though the eastern view sees good and evil as two sides of the same coin, part of one reality, it is in the view of Karma that eastern philosophy is a bit more honest. Good is good and bad is bad and you better work towards the good or your Karma gauges will be spinning in the wrong direction. Though many put forth the view of Karma as a pathway towards moral living without any view of judgment, Karma has some serious bad Karma of its own.

Problems with Karma

There are several major philosophical and theological problems with Karma but I will only elaborate here on a very short list. First, Karma is a sort of score card for your life, where your good and bad tally up against each other. The problem I see in this is that there is literally “no one” there to keep score. Who is watching your life? Usually the answer is that the universe has a built in law that regulates these things, but there is no discussion on how this could be the case. If your good and bad “add up” it seems that somewhere this reality must be “known” by someone. This makes sense in a world in which God himself is taking our lives into account. Second, the law of Karma knows absolutely no grace. It is an unforgiving brutal taskmaster by which your life is determined by your previous lives. If you have a bad run now, it could be the result of previous incarnations where you were a real jerk. The problem is you know nothing of your former lives and are sort of screwed by them. There is no grace extended to sinners by Karma, sin becomes a millstone around your neck forever and ever through perhaps infinite reincarnations. Finally, there is an unexpected, but inevitable unjust result of Karmic thinking. You would think that this view only holds one responsible for our actions, but in fact it has unbelievably unjust societal consequences. Think about it. Who are the good guys in this life? The ones who had good Karma in previous lives. Who are these people? The upper classes, the “successful” people, the wealthy and the rulers are in their stations in life because they were good in past lives. So it is no coincidence that the Hindu system of caste, where the poor and low caste “deserve” their station in life and should not aspire better, arose from a Karmic philosophical tradition. They are working out bad Karma; these are the views that made the high caste Brahman in India, oppose the work of Mother Teresa with Indian low caste untouchables. She was interfering with them paying for their karma by serving them and helping them. The god of Karma, is the god of caste, which is a system of long term systemic oppression of those who were bad in previous lives nobody knows anything about.

Judgment 101

The biblical view of life after death is a bit different. Like the view of Karma, our actions, both good and evil have consequences, but in our view God is the observer and judge of our lives. He treats us as responsible moral agents in relationship to Him, creation, and other people. We are responsible to God and others for our actions and their consequences. All persons, rich or poor, “successful” or not, powerful or not are all completely equal and responsible for their lives. We live this life before God and when we die our lives will be judged by God and his appointed one, his own Son Jesus Christ. He does not show favoritism in that he will take our sins into account and does not turn a blind eye towards the wrong done on the earth. Wonderfully, the God who is our judge chose to take our place and receive the judgment we deserve for our sins. It is in the gospel that God extends to us the hand of mercy and grace, the very one who will judge our wrongful deeds, against whom we have committed sin, is the one who pays our debt and freely forgives. This is the view of the Bible. God treats us as responsible human beings but willingly provides payment for our sins, atonement is the biblical word, so that we can be reconciled with God and be judged as righteous because of the work of Christ. The book of Hebrews teaches us that it is appointed for a man to live and die and then face judgment. We either face God in our sin or with an advocate and substitute for our sin. Jesus is the one who delivers us from just wrath and judgment of God and all glory and honor goes to him.

The path of Karma makes you the one who receives glory for your good and blames everything bad on the sinner. In the gospel we see that God works by the law of the Spirit of life to set us free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. You might even say he sets us free from the tyranny of the taskmaster of Karma. ²

Would God Sing a Mocking Song?

In this chapter a strange thing occurs. The prophet Habakkuk is given a vision from God. This prophecy is ultimately from God through the prophet. In this vision the nations of the world which had fallen to the Chaldeans rise up in concert to mock the Chaldeans proclaiming the judgment of God upon them in a series of poetic Woes. This is a bit strange because the literary genre of the passage is in the form on an ancient near eastern taunting song. Sort of a poetic, grown up nanny, nanny, boo-boo kind of deal. So at first glance it appears that God is actually mocking the Chaldeans through this song from the nations. This has made some a bit uncomfortable.. Is this a cool thing for God to do? Mock people? After all, he is a loving God, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love (See Exodus 34:6 Numbers 14:18, Nehemiah 9:17, Psalm 86:15, Psalm 103:8, Psalm 145:8, Joel 2:13, Jonah 4:2). In studying this passage I even found a diverse opinion on the matter in the commentary. Yet it is clear from both the literary genre and the rest of Scripture that though God is merciful and loving, he also will in no way clear the wicked. The prophet Nahum reminds us of this as he opens his prophecy: The Lord is slow to anger and great in power, and the Lord will by no means clear the guilty. (Nahum 1:3a). O. Palmer Robertson has some good words for us on what God is doing here:

It might appear beneath the dignity of God to embarrass the proud before the watching world. But a part of his reality as the God of history includes his public vindication of the righteous and his public shaming of the wicked. His glory before all his creation is magnified by the establishment of honor for the humble and disgrace for the arrogant. In this case, the shame of Babylon shall be as extensive as its conquests. All of them, all those nations conquered by Babylon, shall join the mockery. Even the tiniest of nations shall rehearse these sayings without fear of reprisal.³

Lest we become arrogant and proud reading this, we must not forget the devastating reality that we ourselves have no moral high ground to mock anyone. We ourselves are not better than the Chaldeans; if not for the grace of God in Christ, we ourselves would not arrive at any sure fate. David Prior gives a great reminder here:

The heart of God is broken both by the suffering of the violated and by the sinfulness of the violator. The woes are torn from that broken heart in holy indignation. It is our job, not to take the moral high ground, but to express the holy heart of God…That is the tone and thrust of these five woes in Habakkuk.⁴

Before we go pronouncing our own woes and singing our own mocking songs, we should be humbled by the gospel and compelled to share Jesus with those around us. For us and our friends our prayer is to humble ourselves before the foot of the cross and allow God to be the only one who publically humiliates the wicked in his time.

A Tough Question of Responsibility Before God

An objection can be made at this point in the book of Habakkuk. God has raised up the Chaldeans to do his will in the earth. Namely, to bring disaster and judgment upon the wayward people of Judah. God then holds the Chaldeans responsible for their sinful actions, which he used to accomplish his purpose. Do you feel the tension? How can God blame them when he sovereignly used them for his purposes? At this point we must remember a few things. First, the Chaldeans, though raised up on the world scene by God, were human beings and not puppets. Second, in conquering the nations around them, including Judah, they were doing exactly what they wanted to do. They did what their hearts desired most—namely to exalt themselves and brutally conquer others. So we must see that there are two levels of willing and acting at play, that of God and that of human beings. God allowed them to continue in their desires to conquer and destroy. His hand did not hold them back, but his hand in no way forced them to do something other than what they wanted to do. So the Chaldeans are guilty, even though their guilty actions were used, in a larger framework, to fulfill the purposes of God.

For both the will of God and will/desires of people to be connected, theologians have puzzled for years on how this works. The Scriptures are very clear on two points here. God is sovereign over all things, using both good and evil for his good purposes. Second, human beings are responsible for their actions before a completely just and holy God. If God is in Sovereign control over people and nations, then he wills all things for his purposes. If God holds us accountable our actions are very much “ours” and will be judged accordingly. This has led many theologians and thinkers to suggest the kind of “free will” that humans posses to be “freedom of desire” or “freedom of inclination.”⁵

Simply put, our hearts always do just what we desire most , and our decisions are not random and without causes. In this view, a human being, without the work of God in her life, would persist in sin and rebellion (See Romans 3). It is only when God’s grace changes us in the gospel that we now desire God and his ways and are set free to live for him. Understanding that we have the freedom to do our deepest desires demonstrates that God is right in judging the Chaldeans’ sins and it also shows us how God is still Sovereign. He in no way is caught off guard by the “free will decisions” of people who some say are spinning his world hopelessly out of control. The Bible presents a God who is big enough to use the evil of people in his purposes, but in no way relieves us of our responsibility for our sins. Yet there is the offer of full pardon in the work of Christ. Take it! Then thank God every day for him.

Notes:

• See Karb Karma at http://www.benjerry.com/our_company/press_center/press/bfyfactsheet.html
• For more on Eastern philosophy you can read the sections by LT Jeyachandran in Norman Geisler and Ravi Zacharias, Who Made God? And Answers to Over 100 Tough Questions on Faith (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003). Additionally, though I heartily disagree with his views of election and predestination, Paul Copan’s Chapter Why Not Believe in Reincarnation from That’s Just Your Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2001) is an excellent treatment of the problems in Eastern philosophy.
• O. Palmer Robertson, The Books of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans, 1990), 185. Emphasis Added.
• David Prior, The Message of Joel, Micah & Habakkuk: Listening to the Voice of God (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 1999), 244.
• For more on this kind of freedom see Bruce Ware’s God’s Greater Glory—The Exalted God of Scripture and the Christian Faith (Wheaton: Crossway, 2005) for the best treatment of God’s providence and evil as well as a treatment of the shortcomings of Libertarian/Contra Causal understanding of free will. For those who are bold you can take up Jonathan Edwards Freedom of the Will—very difficult reading, but worth it for those who wade in.

Ed Stetzer has a helpful article over at the Resurgence entitled Beginning a Conversation about Christ.  It is cross centered but relationally oriented and appears to hit a good balance between the two.  A good place to live.

A another profound byte from Tim Keller from Redeemer in New York City.

And here is the source of true kindness. The salvation of Jesus humbles us profoundly– we are so lost that he had to die for us. But it exalts and assures us mightily — we are so valued that he was glad to die for us. Because we are sinners totally accepted by grace, we have both the humility and the boldness necessary to serve others for their sake, not ours.

-- Tim Keller, from “The Grace of Kindness”

(HT - Sandy Young) 

Apparently there is some faith left on the Island of Britain.  This story over at the Register recounts a British women's overly optomistic following of a GPS system in here Mercedes.  Where did that silky "turn right here" voice land here?  Not on Terra Firma.  She ended up doing her best James Bond Submarine car impersonation and floated down the river a bit.  

Trust in GPS and lean not on your own understanding...

Al Mohler weighs in on the Secret.  Pretty helpful.  If you have not already read Donald Whitney's book review, check that out as well.

Newsweek has an article on the Secret - an old blasphemy that is made ever new in every age.  You can be your own God - that is the secret.  The sad thing is that several people have shared with me that Christian people are buying this stuff.

I am spending this week out in the great city of Seattle.  The home of major operations of Boeing, Microsoft, Starbucks, and my very favorite little friend which feeds my habits - Amazon.com. I am out here connecting with some old friends, making some new, and attending a couple of conferences.

The first conference was a boot camp training (love that they call it boot camp) for church planters put on by the Acts 29 Network.  It was good to hear from guys who are doing it around the country and receive some training about things we are praying about for the future.  The second conference is one that the Resurgence is putting on entitled - The Hands of God and the Hands of Men - Many Modes of Divine Providence.  That is one sweet title for a conference.  The speaker is Bruce Ware, one of my profs and theological mentors at Southern Seminary.  The audio and video from the conference will be posted free at the Resurgence sometime next week.  There were three messages: 1) Providence in Process and Open Theism 2) Providence in Classical Arminianism 3) Providence in the Reformed Tradition.  Very helpful stuff...

All this jazz is being hosted by Mars Hill Church in Seattle - which is a cool place to hang.  It has been fun being out in Seattle, a different place than Nashville, TN.  You think?

Some of the interesting things I have seen:

• The Erotic Bakery - I passed this on my way in to the church here.  God only knows what sorts of things are inside - I am staying away.
  
• The High Maintenance Bitch - From the looks of the shop, I am guessing this is a store/boutique for women who have stylish tastes.
• A huge Statue of Lenin (yes, the Russian communist dude, not John Lenin) right in the middle of a section of town.  To read the story of this wonderful tribute, see the following for history and pictures.
  

Some Seattle Trivia 

• USA Today - It seems some Seattle dudes are taking their wives last names - how sweet of them. Here is a great quote where a guy is explaining why he took his wives last name: "because I'm a big ole granola liberal and I wanted to tweak the tradition while showing my wife I love her."  I'll say it again...how sweet of the boys to do that.
  
• Seattle people love books and have a big freakin library
• As any town on the water, Seattle has some good seafood joints.  I did partake a couple of nights ago...very nice.
  

The city is really cool, right on the Puget sound, a great waterfront and good food.  Also, they Seattle Seahawks and their cool new stadium live right in the downtown area.  It is no wonder the city is a growing place where many young adults are moving in.  Lots of culture, lots of fun stuff, lots of beauty of God's creation, and lots of Starbucks coffee.

More than anything there is a huge, immense, need for the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  Pray for our good friends at Mars Hill Seattle and other brothers and sisters in this great city. 

I am thinking much about the great unreached urban centers of America with the words of God to job on my mind:

11 And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?”

Yes, there are many people in this city who need the gospel of Jesus and the grace of following him in our earthly sojourn to his heavenly kingdom.

 

The folks at OpenBible have used Google earth to locate every location mentioned in every book of Scripture.

Fun map clicking lies ahead...

Check out this ad from the NAB.  Touche! A sad state of affairs is underneath the paycheck of Howard Stern when comparing to Marta Stewart.  Apparently MasteCard shut them down from running the ads.  Engagdet makes a good point:

Not only is the NAB getting its own panties all up in a bunch over the looming threat of a satellite radio "monopoly", it has also managed to wedgie-fy MasterCard's britches, too. A new anti-Sirius / XM merger copycat ad of MC's signature "Priceless" campaign has been making the rounds -- the irony apparently lost on on the NAB that hiring a would-be-lobbyist for the other side and knocking off someone else's ad campaign smells very much of bad business. It's no surprise that MasterCard cried copyright infringement, which prompted the NAB to stop running the ad altogether. Michelle Lehman, the NAB's EVP of Marketing and Communications and Regulatory Affairs, confirms the cessation but also points out that the ad's already gotten a bunch of attention anyway. NAB losing its cool and cred in front of the industry? Now that's priceless.

I still think the ad is funny.

The blog has again slowed as of late and if it were not for my good friend Tim Dees and some facts of the days it would have been a bit boring around here.  I have just finished up a pretty crazy but very rewarding week.  Grace was abounding and we have watched God work.

Thursday Night's African Connection Night - We had a benefit concert at Inversion to launch our Mocha Club - an initiative from African Leadership Ministries.  A mocha club is a cool idea for friends to get together, pool their resources, to make a big dent in ministry in Africa.  The concept is that for the price of 2 mochas (7 bucks) we can do a lot of good together.  We are partnered with a mission in Sudan.  So, all you POCblog readers - go here now, and sign up for the "Inversion" club to kick in a measly 7 bucks a month.  Who can't do that?  I know you can, so if you are still reading...go here now and do it. 

Friday/Saturday - Inversion Men's Overnight - On Friday the some young men from Inversion headed out to hang some together and look at manhood through the tripartite offices of Jesus as Prophet, Priest in King.  A little fun theology for today.  In the Old Testament there are three offices which were anointed with oil into the service of God.  The prophet, the priest and the king.  These offices are types which were fulfilled in the life and ministry of Jesus, "the Christ = the anointed one" as our great prophet, priest and king.  John Calvin describes it well:

Moreover, it is to be observed, that the name Christ refers to those three offices: for we know that under the law, prophets as well as priests and kings were anointed with holy oil. Whence, also, the celebrated name of Messiah was given to the promised Mediator.

Jean Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion

Jesus then flows his ministry into the church through his offices.  Through the preached Word of God flows his prophetic ministry.  Through the sacraments of baptism and communion he mediates the new covenant and his priestly ministry, and through the rightly established authority of elders he exercises his rule as King.  As men I encouraged them to see these roles of Jesus, and his ministry, extended to their homes.  Men should take seriously the study of God's Word, his call to mission and repentance, to keep families together on mission - a prophet's life is marked by prayer and the Word.  The worship of God is to be facilitating in the home by Fathers who follow Jesus in priestly role, empowering and leading family worship.  JI Packer recounts the following in the Puritan view of the family:

It was the husband’s responsibility to take them to church on the Lord’s Day, and oversee the sanctifying of that entire day in the home, to catechize the children, and teach them the faith; to examine the whole family after each sermon, to see how much had been retained and understood, and to fill any gaps in understanding that might remain; to lead the family in worship daily, ideally twice a day; and to set an example of sober godliness at all times and in all matters.  To this end he must be willing to take time out to learn the faith that he is charged to teach.

JI Packer, The Quest of Godliness, The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life (Wheaton: Crossway, 1990) 370.

A forward thinking vision for these mostly single men to prepare their lives for the days ahead.  We gave many practical examples of leading a family in  the home in the worship of God and raising of children.  Finally, we spoke of the leadership role in relation to all things practical.  Finances, vision, developing/shepherding our wives and kids...it was just a great weekend.  We had a 4.5 hour teach in on all these things. 

Sunday Morning - Faith...I preached three services at Fellowship Bible Church expositing Hebrews 11:1-6.  It was a fun morning and God challenged me greatly to continue to live by faith.  For without faith it is impossible to please God.  A quick little thought for the road:

By faith in Christ we are accepted and forgiven by God, by works of faith in Christ we please the heart of God

Wow - Calvin and Packer are so much smarter than me. 

The message is viewable here and the audio can be downloaded here.

This week - I just finished cranking out an application to the Acts 29 church planting network.  We turned the whole thing around in 2.5 days.  Many  quick-turnaround thanks to my references (Doug, Jeff, Jeff, and Maridus) and to the A29 staff for helping me get er done.  We head to Seattle tomorrow for church planter's training and then a theology conference hosted by the Resurgence.  The conference is hosting Bruce Ware for a look at the modes of Divine Providnece.  It was a privilege to connect a friend, Gary Shavey who directs The Resurgence, with Dr. Ware and seeing the conference taking place.  Should be a fun week with some R&R as well.

Many thanks to my beloved wife Kasey for being so steadfast and encouraging in these days.  I can't wait to get away with you this summer...no kids, no e-mail, nothing but you and me.   

Out for today. 

A great quote from St. Patrick:

There is no other God, nor ever was, nor will be, than God the Father unbegotten, without beginning, from whom is all beginning, the Lord of the universe, as we have been taught; and his son Jesus Christ, whom we declare to have always been with the Father, spiritually and ineffably begotten by the Father before the beginning of the world, before all beginning; and by him are made all things visible and invisible. He was made man, and, having defeated death, was received into heaven by the Father; “and he hath given him all power over all names in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue shall, confess to him that Jesus Christ is Lord and God,” in whom we believe, and whose advent we expect soon to be, “judge of the living and of the dead,”who will render to every man according to his deeds; and “he has poured forth upon you abundantly the Holy Spirit,” “the gift” and “pledge”of immortality, who makes those who believe and obey “sons of God…and joint heirs with Christ”; and him do we confess and adore, one God in the Trinity of the Holy Name.  

HT - Historia Ecclesiastica

Apparently the Yahoo owned web site Flickr.com had some problems last month when its servers got overloaded and cached images from some accounts were wrongly appearing in other accounts.  You can read about the problem here. The results apparently included some illicit images showing up on some peoples screens who were trying to look at their own legitimate pictures.

One user rightly saw how ridiculous this scenario could be and commented on it here.  Just imagine if a Flickr server gets too much traffic and all of a sudden porn is sent out to grandmas flickr account or a kids screen in school. 

Pretty bad stuff, Yahoo...

I have not seen the new buzz movie 300 but it brings up some fascinating issues.  My good friend Tim Dees wrestles with the movie in today's fact of the day:

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THE 300
by Tim Dees 

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran and a FotD regular, has found a new target for his harangues.  These days it's the movie the 300, which opened to a box office windfall last Friday.

The 300 depicts the battle of Thermopylae, which was a battle between 300 Spartans and tens of thousands of Persians.  The Spartans slowed down the Persians enough to give the rest of the Greeks time to muster their forces.  Basically, it's the Alamo, but in Ancient Greece. One trick to all this is that the story of Thermopylae has been transmuted from history to legend and back so many times that the line between the two has been blurred.  So we're dealing with legend as much as history.

What Ahmadinejad is concerned about is the depiction of the Persians in the film.  Not surprisingly, they are seen as bloodthirsty, immoral, wicked lechers.  And considering that most Iranians are Farsi-speaking Persians, they take exception to this ham-handed characterization.  I think on this point Ahmadinejad is dead-on.

The tough thing about the battle at Thermopylae is that the Spartans were the winners, but the Spartans weren't the good guys (not to say that the Persians were).  They were violent people who engaged in institutionalized infanticide and pederasty.  Two out of every three Spartans were slaves, which makes their portrayal as freedom fighters all the more absurd.  Indeed, it's quite difficult to cheer for the Spartans.  The Persians were not without fault themselves, but it's hard to imagine a more bleak, oppressive society than ancient Sparta.

But there's one big issue I have with the movie: why does director Zack Snyder portray many of the Persians as black?  I can think of no reason why they would be black; modern Persians aren't black, and early Persian art doesn't depict Persians as black.  It also seems unlikely that the Persians would have hired/conscripted black fighters to be in their army. I suspect that this choice was made out of latent racism and xenophobia.  We have the Spartans, who look more or less like white Americans (albeit white Americans in the Charlton Heston biblical movie sense), and then we have the Spartans, who look like the opposite.  It's not a clash of civilizations, but of races.

Victor Davis Hanson, a military historian and classicist, wrote the following in a foreword to the graphic novel of the 300: 

"Ultimately the film takes a moral stance, Herodotean in nature: there is a difference, an unapologetic difference between free citizens who fight for eleutheria and imperial subjects who give obeisance. We are not left with the usual postmodern quandary 'who are the good guys' in a battle in which the lust for violence plagues both sides. In the end, the defending Spartans are better, not perfect, just better than the invading Persians, and that proves good enough in the end. And to suggest that unambiguously these days has perhaps become a revolutionary thing in itself."

But what makes the Spartans better? 

Here is a recap of the recent debate between Alistair McGrath and Daniel Dennett on the future of atheism. The debate was this year's Greer-Heard Counterpoint Series at the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.

Also, the debate audio can be purchased here on CD or by mp3 download.  The download of all the files is $15.00 and comes in at about 117 MBs

KASPAROV AND DEEP BLUE
by Tim Dees 

It was roughly ten years ago that the final Kasparov-Deep Blue match took place.  If you don't remember, that match was the second of two matches that pitted the world's greatest chess player against an IBM supercomputer, nicknamed Deep Blue.  In the first match, the computer put up a strong challenge, but eventually crumpled. 

The second match, however, went quite differently.  The IBM programmers made demands that Kasparov found tough to accept, such as the ability to tweak Deep Blue's software between games.  Kasparov eventually relented.  During the match, Kasparov noticed that the computer was making moves of exceptional creativity and originality.  He had never seen a computer make such moves before.  He accused the programmers of cheating, either by using a human to make some moves, or by reprogramming Deep Blue in mid-game.  To prove they were cheating, Kasparov asked to see the log files.  The programmers refused.

To this day, Kasparov maintains that the Deep Blue programming team swindled him.  But the more interesting thing is that both Kasparov's earlier win and later loss against Deep Blue demonstrates something profound about the human mind. 

When a programmer teaches a computer to play chess, he essentially has it analyze every possible board state.  So it takes every possible move and analyzes it based on the fallout from that move.  This takes enormous processing power.  That's why Deep Blue had to be a supercomputer, and that's why computers have gotten better at chess as they've gotten faster.  But the human mind works nothing like that.  The brain has nowhere near the processing power to compute trillions of possible board states.  So it must be playing by some other system, and a system that is far smarter than anything we've come up with on a computer.

There are other games, however, for which we understand how the brain works.  Backgammon, for instance.  In backgammon, a computer that uses the same processes that Deep Blue used (looking at each possible board state given trillions of possible moves) will lose to a below-average player consistently.  In the 1970s, however, computer scientists started using neural networks to play backgammon.  Neural networks are systems that work very much like neurons in the brain.  After using the neural network programming, the machine was still terrible at backgammon.  But then the programmers tried something different: they allowed the computer to play a few hundred games to train the neural network to play the game.  After that, the computer could handle even the best opponent. 

Neural networks can run on slow computers (like the brain), so computers have gotten no better at backgammon since the '70s.  But neural networks have been unsuccessful at playing chess.  So we're still left wondering what's going on in Kasparov's brain.

 

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Comments Requested - I would love your thoughts on the relationship of brains to computers, and the differences between minds, consciousness and computational machines.  Also, if anyone has knowledge of pattern recognition vs. sequential processing, that would be cool as well.

 

Tim Dees, a good friend of mine, puts together a daily e-mail he calls Fact of the Day.  It is a random, but thoughtful foray into all manner of topics of interest. He sends these out to a growing list of friends and co-conspirators who like to engage the mind and have some fun as well. 

I have decided, with Tim's permission, that from time to time we will run a "Fact of the Day" here at the POCBlog.  The only criteria will be when the FotD is of particular interest to...well...me.

There will be a "Fact of the Day" coming soon. Many thanks Tim! As you will soon see, these are pretty engaging little nuggets of factology.

An interesting quote in a discussion on the New Republic

"Today, according to an amazing recent survey, only 51 percent of the French population identify themselves as Catholic, and only half of those Catholics believe in God. The implications for French society have been significant."

You think? Why someone would be Catholic yet not believe in God? I know incense and cathedrals are cool, but if you don't believe in God why on earth would someone claim to be Catholic? Strange.

(HT - Tim Dees) 

Just for fun - go and take the Stupid Test.  Fun little test, the only drawback is I did not get to see which ones I missed. Plus, there is one question that is quite debatable today, but I won't tell which one.

Here are my results which I said in the test I would display whether I came out stupid or smart:

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Overall, you scored as follows:

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Ego intact...but reminded that there are many, many people who are much more smarter than me.  "More smarter" - proof right there. 

 

Pulpit Magazine has a plethora of scholars all saying the same thing about James Cameron's and Simcha Jacobovici's "The Jesus Tomb"

A very thorough compilation of consensus is found here. They are all saying the same thing...this is silliness. 

A couple of my favorites:

Dr. Garret G. Fagan, Professor of Classics at Penn State University:

They’re not scientists, but they need to dress themselves in the clothes of science to pass muster… Television is not in the business of education, even with the so-called educational channels like Discovery. “Ultimately, they’re in the business of making money. …  By the time the rebuttals come out, the mass media would have moved on to the next sensation and people will have this vague notion that they have found the tomb of Jesus. (Online Source)

Dr. James White, Christian apologist, Director of Alpha and Omega Ministries:

One of the main “tests” I had in mind for this book [The Jesus Family Tomb] when I picked it up was this: Will the book honestly discuss the limitations of mitochondrial DNA? Will they admit that such analysis can only speak to maternal relations, not to paternal relations? Will they tell us what Dr. Carney Matheson has confirmed that such a test cannot rule out that Yeshua ben Yosef was the father of Mariamne? Or will they spin the results? The answer was: spin, spin, spin. (Online Source)

I admit that there are challenges in the world today to Christian truth that the church's apologists work very hard to understand and answer.  This however is not such a challenge.  This is a simple exercise that is simple to refute and understand. 

Money, Money, Money, Spin, Spin, Spin - thats all there is to see here folks.

This past Thursday night we had a discussion at the Inversion Fellowship about the nature of gender in our culture and how God's Word instructs us as to what it means to be male and female.

The paper I wrote to accompany our discussion is available here. In the paper I examined the state of gender in western culture, discussed the affects of feminism, good and bad.  Finally we looked at the ontology of gender in Scripture and how our lives are lived out in home and church. 

Also, I concluded the paper with some encouragements I gave to the young men and women of Inversion.  I have included them here as well.

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As we bring this rather lengthy journey to a close I wanted to offer a bit of a charge to both the gentlemen and ladies of Inversion. I know these titles are a bit Old School, but we just roll that way. I offer these thoughts to you as both a father of daughters and a son, as a pastor and a fellow pilgrim in the way of Jesus. I have gone to lengths to wrestle with these issues because I passionately love the glory of our God and I passionately love you his people.

May God encourage you as you walk with him, growing, learning, failing, hurting, achieving, striving, and moving forward in grace to be more like Jesus our great covenant King. And yes, do read the exhortations to the opposite sex. Yeah, I knew you would anyway.

For the Gentlemen 

I stand with you guys in longing for God to do more in me than I see in myself today. Our progress is slow; we are at times selfish and lazy and there are so many responsibilities before us. I want to encourage you to turn your hearts to Jesus as your model and means to godly manhood. See his cross when you think of what you are called to do for others. I want you to reject fear and stand for honor and virtue in the world. I want you to look out for your sisters in a world populated by wimps and barbarians. I want you to be men that people feel secure with, feel honored by, and feel respected and cared for in your presence. I want you to reject male superiority and take the form of a servant like Jesus. I want you to call each other forward towards holiness, learning, and the many kingdom battlefronts in this world. I want you to be gentlemen, but not in a nostalgic sense, but a Christ-centered one. One that sees needs and meets them, one that sees the hurting and comforts them, one that has broad shoulders because there are burdens to bear for the sake of the gospel. I want you to quit being AWOL from the church and give of your time and leisure to serve in Kingdom purposes. I want you to thank God for the faithful service of your sisters in Christ, but they should not be bearing the load disproportionately without you. If someday God grants you to marry, I want you to take to your knees in dependence. I want you to love your wives deeply, wildly, and gently. I want you to handle her with care and compassion, but I want you to lead. Anticipate her spiritual needs, guide your family through the troubled waters outside of Eden, and do not passively sit by while she wrestles alone with life’s major decisions. And if children should come, oh man, embrace your role as Father. Your little men will need you to show them how to love and respect a woman. They will need you to focus their restlessness, passion, and strength. They will need a leader, a warrior, a mentor and a friend. And if the crowning grace of little girls comes to your home, breathe deeply your sense of dignity and wildly love your princesses. Protect their hearts, teach them about God, and honor their mother in full view all the days of their lives. I will close with an exhortation from Dr. Meg Meeker, a girl who had a strong man in her life that she called Dad:

Most of you out there are good men as well, but you are good men who have been derided by a culture that does not care for you, that, in terms of the family, has ridiculed your authority, denied your importance, and tried to fill you with confusion about your role. But I can tell you that fathers change lives, as my father changed mine. You are natural leaders, and your family looks to you for qualities that only fathers have. You were made a man for a reason, and your daughter is looking to you for guidance that she cannot get from her mother.

For the Ladies

I have two young daughters so I have many many dreams for young women today. If I could give a tiny bit counsel to them and to you it would be this. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, and all your strength. Put his honor above all things and do not be ashamed of the Word of God. Take every advantage of your educational and career opportunities. Serve the community with skill, leadership, and the grace that God places in your soul. Do your best, but don’t sell out to the myths of careerism and don’t give yourself or your bodies to men who do not honor you, make you better, and love you in the way of Jesus. Continue to show patience in God’s plan for your life, be it in singleness or marriage. While you are single serve, connect, and do not be so busy you cannot spend time with families. If you do marry, love and respect your husband. Believe in him, he will be so much a better man because of your standing with him. Submit to his leadership because of what can be seen in your marriage to glorify the Lord Jesus. And if by God’s grace you are given children, pray long and hard about the person(s) you most want loving and shaping their tiny souls. No man or worker can ever be a mother, God has granted this gift only to you. Do not be embarrassed by your unique feminine urges to love, connect, nurture and bond deeply. Do not fear being strong for those around you – it is part of your calling. Do not trivialize or treat Proverbs 31 as a cliché, it is a beautiful picture of holistic femininity given to you by your God. Remember, you always have and will continue to shape the men of this world. Your belief in, encouragement, and esteem of the guys will go a long way making them all God wants them to be. Your belittling of them wounds deeper than you could know. You are unique, you are a woman, and you are a wonderful cameo of the image of God. In the Lord, woman is not independent of man or man of woman; for as woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman. And all things are from God. Yes, all things were created by him and for him. Including you – you are one of the most striking, beautiful, creations of the Almighty God. Reject this image based, sex crazed culture and see yourselves as daughters of the most high, prized possessions of Jesus, your great refuge and King. Let your adornment be the person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious. Yes, very precious...

The following are a few quotes from a speech given on "American Motherhood" by Teddy Roosevelt in 1905.  We just do not think like this in western culture any longer. 

...This man, whose profession and calling should have made him a moral teacher, actually set before others the ideal, not of training children to do their duty, not of sending them forth with stout hearts and ready minds to win triumphs for themselves and their country, not of allowing them the opportunity, and giving them the privilege of making their own place in the world, but, forsooth, of keeping the number of children so limited that they might “taste a few good things!” The way to give a child a fair chance in life is not to bring it up in luxury, but to see that it has the kind of training that will give it strength of character. Even apart from the vital question of national life, and regarding only the individual interest of the children themselves, happiness in the true sense is a hundredfold more apt to come to any given member of a healthy family of healthy-minded children, well brought up, well educated, but taught that they must shift for themselves, must win their own way, and by their own exertions make their own positions of usefulness, than it is apt to come to those whose parents themselves have acted on and have trained their children to act on, the selfish and sordid theory that the whole end of life is to “taste a few good things.”

...To sum up, then, the whole matter is simple enough. If either a race or an individual prefers the pleasure of more effortless ease, of self-indulgence, to the infinitely deeper, the infinitely higher pleasures that come to those who know the toil and the weariness, but also the joy, of hard duty well done, why, that race or that individual must inevitably in the end pay the penalty of leading a life both vapid and ignoble. No man and no woman really worthy of the name can care for the life spent solely or chiefly in the avoidance of risk and trouble and labor. Save in exceptional cases the prizes worth having in life must be paid for, and the life worth living must be a life of work for a worthy end, and ordinarily of work more for others than for one’s self.

On American Motherhood by Theodore Roosevelt - Available here. 

Go read the whole deal - pretty wild stuff

(HT - Josh Stevenson)

Installment 3 of the Men of the Old School - the question they put before the brethren relates to dating and church.

John Piper in preaching a sermon on 1 Peter 3:1-7 had this to say about submission in marriage. 

1. Submission does not mean agreeing with everything your husband says. You can see that in verse one: she is a Christian and he is not. He has one set of ideas about ultimate reality. She has another. Peter calls her to be submissive while assuming she will not submit to his view of the most important thing in the world—God. So submission can't mean submitting to agree with all her husband thinks.

2. Submission does not mean leaving your brain or your will at the wedding altar. It is not the inability or the unwillingness to think for yourself. Here is a woman who heard the gospel of Jesus Christ. She thought about it. She assessed the truth claims of Jesus. She apprehended in her heart the beauty and worth Christ and his work, and she chose him. Her husband heard it also. Other wise Peter probably wouldn't say he "disobeyed the word." He has heard the word and he has thought about it. And he has not chosen Christ. She thought for herself and she acted. And Peter does not tell her to retreat from that commitment.

3. Submission does not mean avoiding every effort to change a husband. The whole point of this text is to tell a wife how to "win" her husband. Verse one says, "Be submissive to your own husbands so that even if any of them are disobedient to the word, they may be won." If you didn't care about the Biblical context you might say, "Submission has to mean, taking a husband the way he is and not trying to change him." But if you care about the context, you conclude that submission, paradoxically, is a strategy for changing him.

The goal of this text is to help wives bring about the most profound change in their husbands that can be imagined—the transformation from being a spiritually dead unbeliever to a spiritually alive believer. Submission does not say, "I renounce all efforts to change my husband." What it does say we'll see in a moment.

4. Submission does not mean putting the will of the husband before the will of Christ. The text clearly teaches that the wife is a follower of Jesus before and above being a follower of her husband. He is going on the path of unbelief. She does not follow him in that, because she has been called to be a disciple of Jesus. Submission to Jesus relativizes submission to husbands—and governments and employers and parents. When Sara calls Abraham "lord" in verse 6, it is lord with a little "l". It's like "sir." And the obedience she renders is secondary obedience, under, and because of, and filtered through obedience to the LORD with a capital "L".

5. Submission does not mean that a wife gets her personal, spiritual strength from her husband. A good husband should indeed strengthen and build up and sustain his wife. He should be a source of strength. There are ways in which a wife is the "weaker vessel" as verse 7 says. But what this text shows is that when a husbands spiritual nurturing and leadership is lacking, a Christian wife is not bereft of strength. Submission does not mean she is dependent on him to supply her strength of faith and virtue and character. The text assumes just the opposite. She is summoned to develop depth and strength and character not from her husband but for her husband. Verse five says that her hope is in God, not the husband.

6. Finally submission does not mean that a wife is to act out of fear. Verse 6b says, "You have become [Sarah's] children if you do what is right without being frightened by any fear." In other words submission is free, not coerced by fear. The Christian woman is a free woman. When she submits to her husband—whether he is a believer or unbeliever—she does it in freedom, not out of fear.

Piper next asks: What then is submission? He answers:

It is the disposition to follow a husband's authority and an inclination to yield to his leadership. It is an attitude that says, "I delight for you to take the initiative in our family. I am glad when you take responsibility for things and lead with love. I don't flourish when you are passive and I have to make sure the family works." But the attitude of Christian submission also says, "It grieves me when you venture into sinful acts and want to take me with you. You know I can't do that. I have no desire to resist you. On the contrary, I flourish most when I can respond creatively and joyfully to your lead; but I can't follow you into sin, as much as I love to honor your leadership in our marriage. Christ is my King."

(HT - Justin Taylor )

Apple recently released their TV ad for the new iPhone which is coming this summer from Cingular (or, uh the "new" AT&T).  The ad first aired during the Oscars and is now available online.  The add uses a fun trip through phone use in movie-making history.

Meanwhile, much to the chagrin of Apple fan boys, David Haskin from ComputerWorld says the iPhone may meet the fate of the Apple Newton Messagepad. You can read his comments here.

My current thoughts on iPhone: without Outlook integration (did I mention that Office 2007 is sweet), with a huge price tag, Cingular only, slow GSM data connection, I am down on the iPhone and will probably look elsewhere.  Don't get me wrong, the device is very cool.  I will probably just wait until the touch interface is on a high capacity iPod and then look at the smartphone market for PDA/phone integration. 

 

Donald Whitney has reviewed the popular book and related DVD wonderfully entitled "The Secret" - This best selling novel and internet deliverable movie is sweeping the planet with the help of America's self-realization prophetess of day time television. Apparently the product description for the DVD reads: This is The Secret to everything—the secret to unlimited joy, health, money, relationships, love, youth: everything you have ever wanted.

A few more wonderful ditties that Dr. Whitney highlighted from the book:

You are God in a physical body. You are Spirit in the flesh. You are Eternal Life expressing itself as You. You are a cosmic being. You are all power. You are all wisdom. You are all intelligence. You are perfection. You are magnificence. You are the creator, and you are creating the creation of You on this planet (p. 164)

And one more gem for the road... 

The earth turns on its orbit for You. The oceans ebb and flow for You. The birds sing for You. The sun rises and it sets for You. The stars come out for You. Every beautiful thing you see, every wondrous thing you experience, is all there for You. Take a look around. None of it can exist, without You. No matter who you thought you were, now you know the Truth of Who You Really Are. You are the master of the Universe. You are the heir to the kingdom. You are the perfection of Life. And now you know The Secret (p. 183)

This is apparently what educated people in western culture now believe.  What happens when you do not get everything you want?  Someone needs to tell this secret to all the people in poverty worldwide.  Get the word out today in Dafur!  This is a bit sickening that we digest this sort of thing.   Interesting to see on the web site that all but one of the "teachers" look like good old wealthy self-actualized white dudes. Give me a break. 

This does show me that people desire hope and they are frustrated with life under the sun.  And it appears that they will pay good money to find the secret - it is sad that they are only being sold ancient lies which say "you shall be as gods."