Update

I'm not going to write a whole post about the new Coldplay album, or how excited I am to see them when they come to Atlanta in November. That would be just a little too effusive. No, there's a lot going on, both inside my head and in the outer world. And that's what I'd like to write about instead.

I saw the documentary Expelled last night, and like a lot of people who've seen the film, was shocked at what I saw. Basically the documentary (without giving too much away) is about Ben Stein's quest to find out if there is freedom of inquiry within the scientific community specifically related to the debate over the origin of life. It's a well done film, and I just left shaking my head at some of the comments I heard from some of our leading scientists today. And here's why:

Pride. If you get the chance to watch the film (and please do), you'll notice a grotesque amount of smugness on display from several of the top scientists being interviewed. It's dripping from every word they say, from the smirks and the stares into the camera. It's kind of disturbing to realize how much faith and trust we put into scientists today. They are legitimately smart people, very smart. In fact, they are incredibly knowledgeable people, but there's a catch. Remember the old saying "knowledge puffs up"? I think that is an apt description of what has happened to the scientific community. Go watch it if you have time.

I read The Weight of Glory this weekend, and I'm still chewing on all the material. It's not a long book, in fact its rather short, broken up into short, topical chapters. But the depth in each page is astounding. There is meat on the bones of this book.

Orientation's are almost over, and it seems like summer's going by pretty fast. Oh no.

Peeling back the bark

I made a goal, before summer began, to work through the wisdom books of the Bible: Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon. Other than Psalms and a little bit of Proverbs, these books are large swaths of biblical territory that I have not spent much time traveling through. I'm in the process of going through Job right now, and it's really coming alive in a way that I never noticed before.

Job is the story of brokenness It's the story of pain and suffering. It's the story of a man angry at God and taking his case directly to Him. It's the story of a man confused and utterly perplexed with God. And it's the story of Job's friends, too. The friends who are not really friends at all. It's just such an interesting story, full of such tremendous depth. For one thing, concrete answers seem to be few and far between in this book. You start to realize that pain and suffering do not fit into the "problem-solution" model of thinking.

But you know what, it's the story of a man being brought closer to God, being cut to the core, but being made whole in the end. The story is really gaining traction in my head and my heart, because of its raw nature. Here we are, fragile human beings, so scared to be put on the operating table under the knife of God, but knowing all the while that we have so much to be fixed. The painful process of being made whole is so hard for me to understand, but in the end I have far greater depth in a relationship with Christ that is built around blind faith and sheer trust.

If life were easy there would be no need for faith. If life was simply one success after another, why would you need to trust in anything? But its the fact that life is NOT easy and that life is NOT one success after another that reveals our great need before our gracious God.