Optical Illusion Girlfriend

I'm sorry, this is just REALLY funny to me.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

When Ad Agencies have too much time on their hands

Cadbury Eyebrows from Nils-Petter Lovgren on Vimeo.

Haggard Update

Those of you who follow this site know that I have blogged about Haggard before. I find the whole situation so interesting. Recently, Haggard was featured in an HBO special. I have seen several interviews with him in the past couple of weeks, including the one below. My take is that he actually seems to be getting perspective and maybe healing. I'm curious to know what you, my loyal readers think.

Just amazing

So this is one of the most amazing, creative videos I have ever seen. I can't imagine how long this took to put together... but the I think experiencing the creativity behind it is well worth the 4 minutes you will spend watching it.

Thanks Tobias for sharing this.

We really want to know you.

Dear Blog readers who are a part of the Central community.

We really need your help.

If you haven't already done so, would you take some time and take the survey that is linked on our homepage called "Spiritual Life Survey"? Please only take this if you are a part of Central (or have left within the past year). It is really, really important to us. It will take about 20-25 minutes but we believe this will help us in where this congregation is headed in the coming years.

To my RSS readers... the first link didn't work for some reason. I tried to link it directly...

Again, please only take this is you are a part of Central.

Thanks

Weight

Recently I have made the decision to really work on my heath. I have tried and failed many times to lose weight... but I'm coming to a stage of my life where I feel if I don't make changes now, I never will. In addition... now it is more than a weigh thing to me. This is about my relationship to God, my family, my church and myself.

So, I have made some pretty bold moves in terms of accountability. I have a nutritionist. A doctor. A work-out plan.

And I have over 400 accountability partners.

My Central family knows that I made the decision to put my weight up on the screen each week as an ongoing accountability. It seems radical... but the changes I need to make are radical. I've also asked people to sponsor me per pound lost. (Several are doing this at $10-$20 a pound over several years! -- helps with matience!). The money is going to an intern program to develop young pastors that I'm pretty passionate about.

BTW, I would love to have you join me if you want to sponsor me!

I've been overweight pretty much all my life.

Actually, my weight has defined who I am, and how I see myself.

So I start by telling you that I'm not a guy who has a few pounds to lose. I'm a person who defines himself as "fat" and all that accompanies that three-letter word. The pain of not fitting in. Of using humor to deflect the piercing words of others. Of never feeling comfortable in my own body.

And some of you don't understand this. You have either always been thin, or you have gained a few pounds and you need to go on a diet.

But that is not me.

I'm coming to terms with the fact that I see food as a "god."

I go to it to celebrate. To mourn. To get encouragement. To comfort.

I need to change the way I see food...

I need to change the way I see myself.

So if I blog about this... show my mercy. It is what God is doing on my life. And I need you, my community... to help and encourage me.

____________________

"God, show me what I was when you first dreamed of me. When your eyes saw my unformed body. When I was hidden in the secret place. I suspect I was not who I am today. And that is the person I long to be. I don't want to be more than that... for your vision for my life is sufficient. In fact, it is more than I could ever dream. Allow "redemption" to redeem all of me. God, show me who I was when you first dreamed of me."

Interesting perspective

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Spend, spend, spend.

I'm pretty sure that I don't agree with Fred Thompson on all the issues. I'm not sure I would have voted for him. But much of this is pretty brilliant.

Christmas Eve Heat Miser

According to my iPhone weather forecast, it's supposed to be 53 degrees on Christmas Eve.

Poo.

Go away Mr. Heat Miser!

Play, the sequel (4 years later)

Almost 4 years ago I wrote this post.

Go ahead, read it. I will wait.

[Waits]

You done? Good.

The other night my wife and I took our daughter sledding for the first time. It was really a spur of the moment thing. I was going to make a snowman with her in the front yard. Wrong kind of snow. So I pulled her around on a sled in our yard (which is basically flat). There is a small dip in the yard, and when she went down the dip (I thought she wouldn't like it -- she frightens easily) she giggled at the top of her lungs and yelled, "Wheee!"

The quest was on.

Now, I live in a town called, "The Plains."

No, really.

This is NOT a good name for a town when you want to go sledding. But we went over to a local church in the next neighborhood over that has a small hill behind it. Driving by, the hill hardly seems big enough to sled on. But walking up the hill with a four-year-old, the hill seemed mammoth. I had visions of her getting on the sled, going down the hill, crying and screaming -- never wanting to get on a sled ever again.

She had a ball. She loved it.

Her mom and her went first. And originally I was just going to let the two of them keep going. Two years ago I had surgery on my knee and I have been a little hesitant of anything physical ever since. I had visions of slipping or breaking the sled or whatever. Watching them sled was enough at the time. It was cold and I figured one or two trips down the hill and we would go home. But I decided, I wanted to go down with her.

I sat down on the sled and put her between my legs, shoved off and down the hill we went.

Wheeeee!

Okay, so I can't tell you how much fun I had. No really. I haven't been on a sled for over 25 years. All though my childhood, sledding was a huge part of my life. Every winter we would drag out our sleds and a bunch of us neighborhood kids would race down hills together.

And in that simple moment with my daughter, going down the hill on a sled, I was young again.

There were no financial pressures, no terrorist bombings, no Sudan, no friend with Leukemia, no leading an organization trying to make budget, no aches and pains. I was on this hill behind my house in Toronto, Ohio, racing down the street. School was canceled the next day and I didn't have a care in the world.

After multiple trips down the hill, the snow started to turn to rain, and my wife said, "We better go home." I could have gone a thousand times more. I didn't want that night to ever end.

"Just one more time, please!"

And now, like a child, I sit in anticipation of my next snow day when I can skip school and play once again.

I miss you

I miss you all and I miss blogging. If you don't know, I've been having trouble with my left hand (some variant of carpel tunnel) so I have not been typing as much. But as it heal, I'm getting ready to blog again. Assuming people still have me on their RSS feeds or stop in every now and then.

Genesis 2008

If the book of Genesis was a Facebook page.

"If you are a visitor with this week, this is NOT normal"

I leave for the weekend. Jim's in charge... everything is fine, right?

I text him Sunday afternoon and ask him how the worship times went... how did Saturday go?

Here is the email I get on my iphone:

_________________________


last night was ok. only about 35 people though. the service seems to be shrinking. not sure why.

this morning was . . . uhmm . . . interesting. first service was fine.

second service we had a "minor disruption." i had to call the police.

seriously. probably a nice weekend to be gone and miss out on the "fun!"

talk to you soon,

j

______________________

Hummm... do I call him and find out what is going on? What do you think I did?

It's not a Central worship service until someone calls the police.

Payment

I'm sorry, I have no idea if this is for real.... but I just find it hilarious. For the whole story, go here

Goodbye Fall

I always miss it when you go.













More on Flickr

Anti Christ

Hey, this is from Ken Schenck. I said this during my Revelation series, but this guy says it MUCH better than me! (And he was my Greek professor in seminary, so he also says it with more authority as well.)

I have NO IDEA why I'm posting this, I just thought it was interesting.

____________________________________________

The Anti-Christ

There's so much talk of Obama being the Antichrist, that I thought I might throw a couple posts that direction.

Some background:

First, this whole idea of an Antichrist comes directly from a set of pre-modern interpretations of several different passages ingeniously woven together in a pre-modern way. By pre-modern, I mean an unreflective reading that is unaware of the difference between how the text is being read and what the text originally meant.

The whole Darby-Hal Lindsey-Tim LaHaye end times scenario weaves together Scriptures from Daniel, Ezekiel, Mark 13/Matthew 24, 2 Thessalonians 2, 1 John, and Revelation ingeniously without

1. ... recognizing that these are different books addressing different situations that use words differently from each other and refer to different times...

2. ... or that these books to a large extent were not addressing today but their own times and situations. We want to leave open the door that some of their material might be addressing today. But our default expectation is that they were actually relevant to the people for whom they were actually written.

I want to reiterate my hermeneutic. To varying degrees, the NT generally does not read the OT in context. Paul can take the story of Sarah and Hagar and say that Sarah allegorically represents the Jerusalem above and Hagar the earthly Jerusalem--when this story is located some 800 years before Jerusalem even existed as an Israelite city. Matthew can see Jesus growing up in Nazareth as a prophetic triangulation of Scriptures like "Samson will be called a Nazirite" and "A branch [nazir] will come from the stump of Jesse."

In short, a Christian hermeneutic should probably allow for strange Spiritual "reader-response" variations like LaHaye. Maybe L & Friends are right and prophetically inspired. At the same time, what I want to point out in this post and a couple more is that 1) their interpretation is vastly unaware of what these texts originally meant and 2) their interpretation is not the long standing interpretation of Christendom. For my three-fold understanding of Christian hermeneutics, see this post.

The title "Antichrist"
This morning I want to start by pointing out that there is nowhere in the Bible where a figure is called the Antichrist. The word comes from 1 John (2:18, 22; 4:3). In 1 John, the term does not refer to a solitary figure who is coming at the end of time:

2:18: "Children, it is the last hour, and even as you have heard that antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come."

2:22: "Who is the liar if not the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son."

4:3: "And every spirit that does not confess that Jesus [is the Christ] is not from God. And this is the spirit of the antichrist, that you have heard is coming and is already now in the world."

The first rule of contextual (original meaning) interpretation is not to see more meaning in a verse than its original context requires. This distinguishes it from "theological interpretation" where one brings a Christian (reader-response) context to bear on the words beyond the original contexts. In this case, neither approach yields the Darbian interpretation.

So we should immediately recognize that 1 John has no teaching about a single figure in the end times who will set himself up in a rebuilt temple in Jerusalem as God during a seven year tribulation. It is legitimate to ask whether the "you have heard" element of this passage maps to 2 Thessalonians 2's "man of lawlessness" or Revelation 13 and 17's "beast." But from the standpoint of contextual interpretation, we cannot just assume they are all the same figure.

So what do we notice about these passages in 1 John?

1. The likely antichrists of 1 John have to do with its situation, which we can sketch from comments scattered throughout this homily of sorts. The church in question has undergone a split in the late first century AD. A group of early Gnostics, probably Docetists (who believed Jesus only seemed to be human) have left the church. The references to antichrists more than likely refer directly to them, to people who have been dead for 1900 years.

2. The first reference, "antichrist is coming" does not have the word "the" in front, despite the as usual horribly inadequate NIV. "You have heard that antichrist is coming." The reference is not to one individual but to a type of individual, as the next sentence indicates, "Many antichrists have come."

3. Who is such an antichrist: "the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ." It would thus seem that there are a lot of antichrists in the world today. 1 John knows nothing, though, about a single Antichrist.

So ironically, the only place where the actual word "Antichrist" is used in the Bible has nothing to do with any solitary end times figure.

I might add in closing today as well that the "last hour" John is talking about was 1900 years ago. Of course a last hour can last 2000 years. In which case there have been many antichrists these last few minutes.

wow

Does this scare anyone else?

Not just in the US

I'm glad to know that other worlds are in this battle too.

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

Remember: "Paul for President!"

Last minute incentive!

Lydia just told me that she would be my running mate!

She will now type her name:

Lydia

Remember, vote early, vote often!

Final Reminder

No matter who you vote for today... um...just go vote for me. Remember: Paul Risler for President!

Even if you have a lapse of judgement and vote for someone other than me... just go vote. I have installed a device on my blog that will not let you read it unless you vote. It will also call you "stupid!" when you go to my homepage. Just make sure your volume is turned up.

And for those who already voted, I thank you for your support.