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The tattoo industry has recently come under scrutiny by the FDA concerning their unregulated use of ink. In the report mentioned above it is clear that no one really knows what is inside these inks.

While some parlors like the well known Zulu Tattoo in Los Angles take great care in selecting safe inks for there tattoos, many other parlors actually add unsafe substances to their ink. As a result, the FDA reports: “We’ve seen such things as infections, swelling, cracking, peeling and blistering at (the) tattoo site”.

I don’t have a tattoo but I know several friends that have gone through the process. To my knowledge, none of them have researched the type of ink that was being injected into their skin prior to undergoing the process. After reading this report, it seems like this is something you need to research. The type of ink is much more important than the color of the ink or the design of the tattoo.

Do you have a tattoo? Did you research the type of ink that was being used prior to getting your tattoo? Have you or anyone you know had any bad reactions because of the ink used in your tattoo?

“And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?”

And isn’t that exactly what we do? As a matter of fact, isn’t that exactly the opposite of what Jesus did and calls us to? I mean, Philippians 2:5-11, the Carmen Cristi, or “Hymn to Christ,” (believed to have been an actual hymn of the New Testament church), basically illustrates the fact that when Christ became a humble servant, He was then exalted as Lord.

“Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, 6who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. 8 Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

Philippians 2:5-11

It begins with “Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus.” So as we have His attitude, we get His result: when we humble ourselves as a servant, Christ is exalted as Lord. The point? Pursuing the lead role doesn’t accomplish our purpose for living (the glory of God).

On the contrary:

“…it is not this way with you, but the one who is the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like the servant (Luke 22:26).”

This law in the kingdom of God fights the way we strong-willed, proud, capitalist, free market, “self-made,” independent Americans are bred to understand the world! Not that these American traits are inherently wrong, they just have a tendency to train our minds in some carnal thinking patterns that make the Word of God seem counter-intuitive at times. Why does the cage look like freedom and freedom the cage? Why do we refuse to lose control to the only One really in control? I’ll give you a hint to help you answer all of these questions, 1 Corinthians 2:14-16.

“But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised. 15But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one. 16For WHO HAS KNOWN THE MIND OF THE LORD, THAT HE WILL INSTRUCT HIM? But we have the mind of Christ.”

There it is again! And what was the mind of Christ?

“He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”

Radical obedience.

“But He gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, “GOD IS OPPOSED TO THE PROUD, BUT GIVES GRACE TO THE HUMBLE.” 7Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. 8Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9Be miserable and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom. 10Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you. ” James 4:6-10

Radical, humble obedience is freedom. We are indeed in a spiritual war. It is up to us whether we spend it productively fighting for the souls of men and the glory of God or imprisoned in our own ideas and refusal to simply submit to God.

“Everyone who is called by My name, whom I have created for My glory, whom I formed and made.” Isaiah 43:7

“for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.” Philippians 2:13

Radical, humble obedience for the glory of God remains our created purpose and the purpose for which we are redeemed and sanctified (made holy, purified, shaped to Christ’s image, to have His mind), and therefore we are most free and find the most pleasure in that which we were created, saved, and sanctified to pursue.

We could go off on 1000 different scriptural rabbit-trails here, but let’s just leave it at this. There IS an exchange being made. Stop exchanging the glory of God for idols (Self-sufficiency perhaps? Ambition? Wisdom of men?). Romans 1 shows dire consequences for this exchange. Psalm 115 says we become as ignorant and as powerless as the idols we worship. We need to drop our agendas and surrender to His. We can be His great warriors if we choose to submit to the chain of command or we can be our own boss and do whatever we want inside the stronghold we have built ourselves into, wondering why nothing fulfills and nothing of substance is accomplished.

We need to forget our own judgments and discernment. It is only as we have the mind of Christ that the Spirit of God can reveal to us the things of God, which, by the way, probably don’t look a lot like any blueprints we would draw up…. But that’s how we find meaning. That’s how we gain our souls (Matt 16:26). Meaning in anything else is, well… meaningless.

When Adam and Eve find out they are naked after their sin, they are embarrassed, and they try and cover up their own sin by their own power, the suit of fig leaves.  God then “finds out” they sinned, he punishes them, Adam names his wife Eve (which is huge by the way, the first display of faith in the Bible), then God clothes them with skin from an animal.  This is huge for two reasons, first it shows that something had to die to cover them.  This was the first example of a sacrifice for sin.  The second reason it is important is that the words used to describe God covering them are the same as those used to describe the clothing of priests who work in the sanctuary for God.  Once again, vocabulary shows the linking of Adam to the priests, showing how Eden is the ideal sanctuary.

Another thing that shows Eden as a sanctuary is the mention of the stones and the gold that were found in the garden in Genesis 2:12.  The “good gold” is the same words describing the most precious things in the sanctuary like the ark.  Also, the onyx stone is the same type of stone that was on the breastplate (Ex. 25).

These are a few more examples of Eden being seen as the ideal sanctuary.  Much of the two last posts come from the study of Gordon Wenham from the article Sanctuary Symbolism in the Garden of Eden Story.  Please search out his work for more study on these subjects.

I, along with many others, would rather translate these two words “worship and obey,” because Eden is seen and portrayed as the ideal sanctuary.  There are many, many other reasons for this, some which will be discussed in future posts.

While this image certainly makes me wish the hubble telescope did not have to be taken out of commission, as a believer in the creator God of the Chrstian Bible, it makes me wish more for the eternal life I will one day spend in the presence of him who created such awesome beauty!

The brilliance of the colors and the gasses captured as a star forms in the remotest section of our universe immediately reminds me of Psalm 19:1. Here, David proclaims ”The heavens are telling of the glory of God; and their expanse is declaring the work of His hands.” These “Pillars of Creation” as they have been labeled represent only a glimpse of the excellent image of the glory of our almighty God. They cause me to take pause in my day and to meditate on the superior glory of him who created such an amazing sight.

These pillars of creation create a longing in me, much like Paul expreses, for “the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and savior, Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:11-15). One day we who trust in him as the creator and sustainer of the universe – as the only means of salvation from our bondage to sin – will sing eternal praises in the presence him and his Son.

“For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities– all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.” – Colossians 1:16-17

I believe it is clear in Scripture that the ideal relationship of marriage is between a man and a woman, and that any kind of same sex action is sinful. I know people who have struggled with same sex attraction, which I believe is not sinful if they are striving not to act upon that desire. We cannot help our desires, we can only pray that God would change our heart to have the same desires of His heart. I have never been presented with a good Biblical argument for allowing same sex marriages/relationships, and believe that it can be seen both from the creation order as well as the New Testament, that a proper relationship is between a man and woman.

We as believers must remember to keep the most important thing primary, which is the gospel. How should a Christian love a person, believer or not, who is in a same sex relationship? It is a little different depending on if the person is a believer, or if they are not a believer.

If it is an unbeliever, we should show them the love of Christ. It should not surprise us that someone who does not have the Spirit of Christ indwelling them will be in sin! Thats what unbelievers do, sin! Show them love, and preach the gospel to them and pray for them to turn their lives over to the Lordship of Christ.

If the person is a believer, our approach is similar. We should first show them love. We as Christians must first love them, just as Christ loved us in our sinful state. After we have shown them love, in whatever manner they need to be loved, we then may proceed to lovingly point them to the Scriptures that show what a God-honoring relationship is. If we present them the Scriptures, and they disagree with us, it is not us they are disagreeing with, but God.

Its important to remember that no sin is worse than any other sin. Homosexual actions is bad, but so is lying, lust, stealing, over-indulging, wasting time, wasting money, etc. We in the American church have over emphasized homosexuality as a big sin, when in fact we are also in sin by not showing love to one another by being hateful to those who are attracted to the same gender.

Overall, remember that “they will know we are Christians by our love.”

This morning I ran across a t-shirt on cafepress.com that was somebody’s attempt to declare their theology with PHP. It went like this:

There are a couple things wrong with this attempt at being clever:

1. As far as the PHP goes, there are multiple errors
   1. Words that start with a dollar sign in PHP are called variables. They represent something. They have to be set somewhere before they can be used. $jesus is not defined anywhere so it can’t be compared to ‘Lord’. That’s an error.
   2. PHP functions happen between opening and closing squiggly brackets { … }. This code has an error in that the opening bracket is a closing bracket.
   3. PHP functions receive information (variables), process it, and return it to where it came from (most of the time). This function doesn’t receive or return any data.
2. Theologically (and more importantly) there are a couple errors as well
   1. Romans 10:9 (for your reference): “If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved;”
   2. First, the conditional statement does not align with Scripture. The author says ‘if Jesus is Lord, you will be saved.’ If you believe Scripture, you know that Jesus is Lord regardless of whether one believes it or not. That means that the above conditional “if Jesus is equal to Lord” will always return true… which means $you would always equal to ‘being saved’.
   3. Second, The conditional statement is incomplete… even if it worked correctly. Paul’s conditions are outlined below:
      1. You must confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord (which he is even if you don’t confess).
      2. You must believe in your heart that Jesus is risen from the dead.
      3. Only if those two things are true does Paul contend that you “will be saved”.

So, why take the time to outline this?

Countless believers make statements like this every day of their life without knowing it. We try to insert the gospel into a context that will make it accessible to non-believers. In doing so, we water it down or we misrepresent the message of Jesus because a) we don’t understand the basis of the message correctly ourselves (the theological errors mentioned above) or b) we commit gramatical and logical mistakes in our rush to ‘market’ the gospel (the PHP errors mentioned above). Such mistakes are detrimental to the person of Jesus. Christians all too often paint a horrible picture of the gospel and this is all the exposure that unbelievers get to the gospel.

Case in point

This shirt was brought to my attention on Twitter by another PHP developer that I respect for his coding and professional work. To my knowledge he has never professed to believe Jesus is Lord and, to the counter,  made the following statements concerning this shirt:

• It’s deeply satisfying that this PHP+Jesus shirt would cause a fatal error and nothing happens even IF $jesus==”Lord”
• $you = ‘saved’? What does that mean? If $jesus != “Lord”, what is $you? Christian theology at its best folks.

You know what. I agreed with him on everything other than ‘This is Christian theology at is best”. I believe this is at its worst, but nonetheless, I acknowledged to him that this is popular christian theology. This is what we wear (literally and figuratively) and this is how unbelievers respond.

I’m grateful for this individuals insight into ‘christian culture’ and I think he hit the nail on the head.

So what can you do to better your theology. Its actually pretty simple: read the scriptures and think before you speak (or write in PHP) your beliefs. In fact, it’s so easy that this individual nailed the gospel head on by providing his own code here: http://pastie.org/928094 Note: his ‘zombie_jesus’ is equal to what you would call the ‘resurrected Jesus’.