It All Started in the Garden

“The Bible” in Ten Hours

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As an educator, sometimes curriculum writer, Bible teacher, and Presbyterian pastor, I am always on the lookout for new ways to bring the Story alive. “Bringing the Word to Life” is more than a blog title, it is my calling and life purpose. So when I heard that Survivor producer Mark Burnett and “angel” Roma Downey were releasing a five-episode television miniseries The Bible, gratitude and skepticism vied for the upper hand. Do I dare hope that we might get a truly authentic version of the Bible’s story on the History Channel? Let me declare my skepticism openly at the […]

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UFOs and Close Encounters

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Quilters refer to UFOs, unfinished objects, to describe the projects tucked away in mid-course. The QT (Quilt Therapy) group I belong to ’fessed up to UFOs on Tuesday, making commitments to complete said projects within the year. For me, the list includes the famous “Ahwahnee Quilt,” inspired by Yosemite’s oldest and most famous hotel. This quilt has been stashed for at least five years, but 2013 is the year to get it done. In the same way, I have some UFOs in the writing realm, outlined but unfinished, that await my attention and effort. Here is the list of working

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An Expanded View of Stewardship

Leave a Comment / Essential Tenets of the Reformed Faith, Fellowship of Presbyterians, It All Started in the Garden, PCUSA, Theological Reflection / By /

Stewardship seems to be a particularly Presbyterian emphasis. Your personal experience of this word may be annual, during your congregation’s fall “stewardship campaign” designed to invite your financial pledge for the coming year. You may be familiar with the idea that Christians are called to steward “time, talent, and treasure,” which in common usage refers to the giving or sharing of all three with the church. But the concept of stewardship is far richer and more encompassing than these interpretations. There are at least two catalysts for a broader view of stewardship: The first scenario goes back to the Garden

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Election: No Contest between God’s Sovereignty and Human Free Will

Leave a Comment / Essential Tenets of the Reformed Faith, It All Started in the Garden, PCUSA, Theological Reflection / By /

We come now in our discussion to a doctrinal area particularly associated with the Presbyterian tribe within the Reformed tradition, even though Martin Luther in The Bondage of the Will covered this territory thoroughly himself. But here it is: the topic of election and its cousin predestination, what Kirk Bottomly called “the skeleton in the Reformed closet.”[1]  The doctrine as debated in historical theology is a wide-ranging topic, often focusing on the tension between God’s sovereignty and human free will. The Fellowship Theology Project focuses on the sad consequence of the fall: human beings actually lost their freedom of will

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Is Our Teaching Method Watering Down Our Doctrine?

3 Comments / Essential Tenets of the Reformed Faith, Fellowship of Presbyterians, It All Started in the Garden, Marriage Curriculum, PCUSA, Personal, Teaching / By /

October has turned out to be an intense month of preparations, and my blog has gotten short shrift as a result. Aside from preaching every Sunday this month (an unusual schedule in my current context), I am giving a series of theological lectures on the topic “It All Started in the Garden: Theological Themes Arising Out of Genesis 1-3” and presenting three talks at the California Wee Kirk Conference next week (a plenary address, a sermon, and a seminar—all on different topics). Behind-the-scenes, I have been working with a colleague on a study guide for ECO’s “Essential Tenets” (ET) paper,

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Good Days and Bad Days

7 Comments / Food, It All Started in the Garden, Leadership and Spirituality, Personal, Theological Reflection / By /

This morning a Facebook friend posted his status: “Today is a good day.” Having just come off a bad day myself, the simplicity of his statement caught my attention and begged for reflection. Sunday for me was the sort of day Judith Viorst described in her class children’s book Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. Well, I had one. Two events cast their deep shadows on this week’s Sabbath. The first occurred during worship and the second at home late in the day. On this particular week, my participation in worship was musical. The choir director

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Bone of My Bone, Flesh of My Flesh!

1 Comment / It All Started in the Garden, Marriage Curriculum, PCUSA, Teaching, Theological Reflection / By /

Slowly but surely we are doing the biblical work to seed our marriage curriculum for use in PCUSA circles. In my last post we observed that the accounts of creation in Genesis 1 and 2 emphasized different elements but had at least three features in common: they each announce a likeness that empowers human beings for meaningful existence, they each identify human sexual distinctions to be foundational, and they each differentiate humans from the rest of the creaturely world. In Genesis 1 we observed that there is no differentiation between male and female with regard to their being in the

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God Imparted Gifts to Humanity for Good Reason

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26Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” 27            So God created humankind in his image,                       in the image of God he created them;                         male and female he created them. 28God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it;

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Log Dog Cannot Be God

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On our early morning hikes through the Walnut Creek Open Space, we often encounter a delightful English lady with one or two dogs in tow. She is a volunteer at the local dog rescue shelter, and she just loves her pets. One lab mix we call “Log Dog” will carry a sizable tree branch all the way up the hill, sometimes dropping it at our feet in pride. Great fun. Anyway, for the first time in the years we have been acquainted, Dog Lady this week had along a Gentleman Friend who led Log Dog on the leash. My instantaneous

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It All Started in the Garden

1 Comment / It All Started in the Garden, Marriage Curriculum, PCUSA, Teaching / By /

Okay, let’s start. My next few posts will explore the themes in Genesis 1 through 3, particularly those that frame the marriage question. The discussion will intertwine with theological anthropology (the nature of the relationship between humanity and God). But first, at the request of one of my readers, for the sake of context I will list some other themes that have their genesis in the Creation and Fall accounts. The following concepts will be taught in my church class on the following schedule between now and Christmas, and the remaining topics will be covered after the first of the

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