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Perspective Digest Volume 8 Number 3 Article 17 7-1-2003 A Perspective Feature: In Focus Multiple Adventist Theological Society Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/pd Recommended Citation Multiple (2003) "A Perspective Feature: In Focus," Perspective Digest: Vol. 8 : No. 3 , Article 17. Available at: https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/pd/vol8/iss3/17 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Adventist Theological Society at Digital Commons @ Andrews University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Perspective Digest by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ Andrews University. For more information, please contact repository@andrews.edu. A P E R S P E C T I V E  D I G E S T  F E A T U R ESo Where Is God When We Suffer?Jesus is there, sitting beside us in the lowest places of our lives. Are we broken? He was broken, like bread, for us. Are we despised? He was despised and rejected of men. Do we cry out that we can t take it any-more? He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Do people betray us? He was sold out himself. Are our tenderest relationships bro-ken? He too lived and was rejected. Do people turn from us? They hid their faces from him as from a leper.Does he descend into all our hells?Yes, he does__ He not only rose fromthe dead, he changed the meaning of death and therefore of all the little deaths. . . . Every tear we shed be-comes his tear. He may not wipe them away yet, but he will.”—Lee Strobel, The Case for Faith (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan Publishing House, 2000, pp. 51,52).Perspective• It is not impossible that to some infinitely superior being the whole universe may be as one plain, the dis-tance between planet and planet being only as the pores of a grain of sand, and the spaces between system and system no greater than the inter-vals between one grain and the grain adjacent.—Samuel Taylor Coleridge.Show-Off• In one second, the star Cygnus A produces more energy than the Sun does in 40,000 years.—The late Carl Sagan: David Duncan Professor of Astronomy and Space Sciences at Cornell University, where he served also as director of the Laboratory for Planetary Studies at the Center for Radiophysics and Space Research in Contact.The Problem With WordsIf God speaks, he must use words to do so. Words express thoughts, commands, descriptions, and the like. The problem is that words and sentences. . . must be interpreted if they are to be understood. It is far more than a matter of translation, for while translation gets at what God says, we are still left with the571Multiple: A Perspective Feature: In FocusPublished by Digital Commons @ Andrews University, 2003question of what God means.”—R. C. Sproul, Christianity Today (Oct. 22, 2001), p. 40.Get in ShapeWe think about Scripture because we wish to become “Scripture-shaped”—and, therefore, “Christ shaped” In response to Scriptures compelling power, we wish to become living commentaries on Scripture. We wish to exhibit the reality of the risen Christ in our own lives.—John R Burgess, Why Scripture Matters.Best Foot Forward“Do not make prominent the objectionable features of our faith, which strike most decidedly against the practices and customs of the people, until the Lord shall give the people a fair chance to know that we are believers in Christ, that we do believe in the divinity of Christ, and in His preexistence.”— Testimonies to Ministers, p. 253.What Is legalism?Writer Max Lucado describes legalism as “slow torture, suffocation of the spirit, amputation of one’s dreams. Legalism is just enough reli-gion to keep you, but not enough to nourish you. . . . Legalism is the search for innocence—not forgive-ness. It’s a systematic process of defending self, explaining self, exalt-ing self, and justifying self. Legalistsare obsessed with self—not God.”Sweaty GiftNicolo Paganini, the great 19th century violinist, was once compli-mented on his “gift.” He retorted, “Humph! Thirty years, eight hours a day, and they call it a gift.”Sure Foundation“Excuses are valueless. All cir-cumstances, all appetites and pas-sions, are to be servants to the God-fearing man, not rulers over him. The Christian is not to be enslaved by any hereditary or cultivated habits or tendency.”1 “Those who through an intelligent understand-ing of the Scriptures view the cross aright, those who truly believe in Jesus, have a sure foundation for their faith. They have that faith which works by love and purifies the soul from all its hereditary and cultivated imperfections.” 2EpigramsThis church is prayer-condi-tioned.Plan ahead— it wasn’t raining when Noah built the ark.Most people want to serve God, but only in an advisory capacity.Suffering from truth decay?1 Ellen G. White, Mind, Character, and Personality, Vol. l ,p . 146.2 Ibid.2Perspective Digest, Vol. 8 [2003], No. 3, Art. 17https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/pd/vol8/iss3/17Brush up on your Bible.Never give the devil a ride; he always wants to drive.Nothing ruins the truth like stretching it.He who angers you controls you.Worry is the darkroom in which negatives can develop.Give Satan an inch and he’ll be your ruler.Be fishers of men—you catch them and he’ll clean them.God loves you just as you are, but he loves you too much to leave you that way.A teenager’s car is often the fastest thing on the road. It can go from zero to traffic court in 6.7 seconds.Get a Handle on ItWilt Chamberlain is known as one of the greatest basketball players in the history of the sport. He was also known for ranking his own opinions above those of his coaches. When he was traded to the Los Ange-les Lakers, one of the reporters asked Wilt, “Do you think coach Butch van Breda Kolff can handle you? It’s been said you’re hard to handle.”Wilt replied, “You handle farm animals. You work with people. I can work with anyone.”Longtime coach of the UCLA Bruins John Wooden heard the exchange. He had sent a book man-uscript Practical Modern Basketball to the publisher only two daysbefore. One segment was called “Handling Your Players.” Wooden called the publisher and had the heading changed to “Working With Your Players.”Which reminds me of a professor or two who should have written a chapter titled “Working With Your Students.”—R.R.H.An Intelligent ConclusionBrilliant scientists act with integrity, managing to skirt the minefield of hype and hokum that can taint objectivity. Still, scholars cherishing competing worldviews may reach different conclusions looking at identical facts. Swedish embryologist Soren Lovtrup went so far as to suggest in 1987, “that one day the Darwinian myth will be ranked the greatest deceit in the his-tory of science.”Hype and hokum aside, a grow-ing chorus of scientists reject the obsolete primitivisms of Charles Darwin and embrace a worldview recognizing intelligent design fash-ioned by a Master Designer.—Ian T. Taylor, In the Minds of Men (Min-neapolis: TFE Publishing, 1996).Mother Teresa Needs HelpIf you want to be canonized (a Catholic Church rite that declares a deceased person to be a saint and due the honor of that status), you have to be credited with two miracles per-3Multiple: A Perspective Feature: In FocusPublished by Digital Commons @ Andrews University, 2003formed after your demise. Mother Teresa, who did, indeed, live a saintly life, has been credited with her first. On September 5, 1998, 366 days after her death, Monica Besra, of India, was writhing in pain from an abdominal tumor at a Catholic home run by the Missionaries of Charity. The nuns had just the right answer: They placed a Mother Teresa medallion on her stomach while praying for her. Reported Amanda Bower in Time magazine, quoting Ms. Besra: “The pain subsided, and the tumor van-ished.”“This miracle,” says Episcopal Bishop Salvatore Lobo, “meets the requirements. It is organic, perma-nent, immediate, and intercessionary in nature.” Lobo is forwarding 35,000 pages of Teresas good deeds to the Vatican. Come up with another mira-cle, and sainthood awaits.—Based on a report by Subir Bhaumik and Dev Nayak from Calcutta.Irrefutable LogicR. J. Reynolds Co., the maker of Camels and Winston cigarettes didn’t like having to pay a $20 million fine for running ads aimed at teenagers, a violation of the 1998 national to-bacco settlement. The company, said California Superior Court Judge Ronald Prager, had improperly run ads in such magazines as Vibe, Spin, and Rolling Stone.In arguing against the June 2002 fine, Reynolds pointed out that thesame magazines called “too youth-ful” for cigarette ads, advertize wine, beer, and liquor, violent and graphic movies, and other tobacco compa-nies’ ads.—Based on a column by Washington Post staff writers Marc Kaufman and Jeff Adler.Sherbeck’s SecretHal Sherbeck, a successful coach on high school and college levels, was asked, “What is the secret of your success?” Sherbeck didn’t hesi-tate to share his credo: “Press on. Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Ge-nius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determina-tion alone are important.”—Quoted by Walla Walla College senior pastor Karl Haffner in the North Pacific Union Gleaner (May 2002).Great Taste!Hagar the Horrible is a crude car-toon character with a long-suffering wife, Helga. In a recent strip she is telling her husband like it is. “Your outfits never match, your hats are all too shabby and that bearskin is out.”Hagar is hurt. “Hey, say some-thing nice about me!”Helga ponders a moment, throws her arms around him, and says: “You have a great taste in women!” □61 4Perspective Digest, Vol. 8 [2003], No. 3, Art. 17https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/pd/vol8/iss3/17

A Perspective Feature: In Focus

Perspective Digest Volume 8 Number 1 Article 4 1-1-2003 A Perspective Feature: In Focus Multiple Adventist Theological Society Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/pd Recommended Citation Multiple (2003) "A Perspective Feature: In Focus," Perspective Digest: Vol. 8 : No. 1 , Article 4. Available at: https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/pd/vol8/iss1/4 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Adventist Theological Society at Digital Commons @ Andrews University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Perspective Digest by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ Andrews University. For more information, please contact repository@andrews.edu. A P E R S P E C T I V E  F E A T U R EWarning: The following may be haz-ardous to your point of view!LORD OF THE ABSURD?Is Jesus best known as “the God of order, emerging as the ruler of the harmonious, dynamic evolutionary epigenesis? Does He come as the expected one to the scientist, the philosopher, the wise man? Or does He come as an Intruder, the Unin-vited Guest upsetting every expecta-tion?” To these—his own—questions, Raymond J. Nogar, responds:“Each time I return to the ques-tion of how Christ presents Himself to the decisive spirit as an inescap-able datum, the wedge is driven more deeply between the world of cosmic law and the unforeseen intrusions of God. So crushing was the absurdity of Christ’s coming into the world to those who first witnessed that visit, that, from the vantage point of the Cross upon which He met disaster, no man could tolerate His oppressive presence. They all went away. From that time until now, men slowly strag-gle back to Calvary, and He must repeat the same unbelievable story. Man has found a way to listen to this terrible tale, but he never gets used to it. How any man can find in Christ the Lord of cosmic order is totally beyond me. He has always presented himself to me as the Lord of the Absurd.”—Raymond J. Nogar in The Lord of the Absurd. (See Christianity Today, April 26, 1999, p. 34.)Perspective“It is not impossible that to some infinitely superior being the whole universe may be as one plain, the dis-tance between planet and planet being only as the pores of a grain of sand, and the spaces between system and system no greater than the inter-vals between one grain and the grain adjacent.”—Samuel Taylor Coleridge.Forget ItFlorence Nightingale was once harshly criticized. Later, a friend heard her say something positive about the one who had criticized541Multiple: A Perspective Feature: In FocusPublished by Digital Commons @ Andrews University, 2003her. “Miss Nightingale, surely you remember what she said about you, don’t you?” Miss Nightingale replied: “No, I distinctly remember forgetting that!”An anonymous woman wrote of nursing Confederate soldiers. One day at the close of the Civil War, word came that President Abraham Lincoln was coming to visit their field hospital. The wounded Con-federates weren’t happy about it. He had, after all, been their enemy.When Lincoln entered the hospi-tal and saw the wounded men, he began to weep. Going from cot to cot, he stroked the hair of the men and shook their hands. They had expected a tyrant, but they saw instead a kind, caring man. They had fought the very principles of na-tional unity that President Lincoln stood for, and here he was with lov-ing forgiveness!—From a sermon by Adventist lay preacher Felix A. Lorenz, Jr.As I Was Saying___*The kids have it all wrong! Life doesn’t begin at 16. Or 21. Or 50, for that matter. It begins at 80!Being 80 is a lot better than being 70. At 70, people are angry with you for everything. At 80, you have an acceptable excuse, no matter what you do. And everyone wants to carry your baggage and help you up steps. (Truth is, they treat you with respect for just having survived so long. Infact, they’re surprised you’re still alive and can still walk.) If you forget your name, or anyone else’s, or an appointment or telephone number, or if you promise to be three places at once, and can’t remember how many grandchildren you have, someone’s right there to help! And you don’t even need to explain that you’re 80!When you’re 70, people expect you to retire in Florida and com-plain about your aches and pains; and to ask everyone to stop mum-bling because you can’t understand what they’re saying. At 80, even if you act foolishly, people credit you with being in your second child-hood. And you remember how much fun the first was!Yes, 80 is the best time of life. People forgive you for anything! As I was saying, the kids have it all wrong.. . .• (It is assumed, in the Perspec-tive Digest office, that this unsigned missive was not written by a teen-ager. . . . )How to Defeat an EnemyHenry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote: “If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we would find in each person’s life sorrow and suf-fering enough to disarm all hostility.”In “Grace of Giving,” Stephen Olford tells of a Baptist pastor, Peter Miller, who lived in Ephrata, Penn-sylvania, during the American Revo-lution. Michael Wittman also lived552Perspective Digest, Vol. 8 [2003], No. 1, Art. 4https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/pd/vol8/iss1/4in Ephrata. He did all he could to oppose and humiliate the Baptist pastor.One day Michael Wittman was arrested for treason and sentenced to die. Pastor Muller, who enjoyed the friendship of George Washington, traveled 70 miles on foot to Philadel-phia to plead for the life of the traitor.“No, Peter,” General Washington said. “I cannot grant you the life of your friend.”“My friend!?”exclaimed the old preacher. “He's the bitterest enemy I have.”“What?” cried Washington. “You've walked 70 miles to save the life of an enemy? That puts the mat-ter in a different light. I will grant the pardon.” And he did. Peter Miller took Michael Wittman back home to Ephrata—once an enemy, now a friend.Withholding ForgivenessPeace in the Middle East? Rabbi Jeremy Milgrom, head of Clergy for Peace in Israel, thinks he has the answer. “The Holocaust has left Jews so scarred we believe powerlessness is a sin. We believe the whole world is hostile to us—this is sick behavior. Our politics are irrational because of the Holocaust... As long as we with-hold forgiveness of the Germans, we're corrupted. Its very hard to trust after the Holocaust. . . [but] if we can have this redemptive dia-logue with the Germans, then wecan break down resistance to having it with the Palestinians. Forgiveness is a release from the past.”Fit RetributionThieves used Jacqueline Boan- son's stolen debit card to place bets on two horse races in England. When the horses won, the book-makers paid the winnings— (U.S. $444) directly into her account.“I'm the happiest victim of theft ever,” the Cheltenham woman testi-fied in court after the thieves were apprehended.Islamic StudiesNewbold College (England) now offers a Bachelor of Arts degree with a major in Islamic Studies. Accord-ing to director of studies Velda Cox, the program offers “the only accred-ited degree and certificate program in the Adventist educational system that gives students the opportunity to study Islam in depth from an Adventist perspective.” The aim of the course is to train students to minister among Muslim people.United Nations Honors AdventistLongtime Adventist religious freedom campaigner Dr. Gianfranco Rossi has received an award for “out-standing achievements” for forward-ing international rights. The award was presented by United Nations representative Professor Abelfattah Amor. In his acceptance speech,563Multiple: A Perspective Feature: In FocusPublished by Digital Commons @ Andrews University, 2003Rossi stressed the moral and ethical principles that guided him in his activities for religious freedom.Suppose You’re the Devil. . . .You’re the enemy of God and you want to kill him, but you can’t. How-ever, he has this ridiculous weakness of creating and loving human beings, whom you can get at. Aha! Now, you’ve got hostages! So you simply come down into the world, corrupt humankind, and drag some of them to hell. When God sends prophets to enlighten them, you kill the prophets.Then, God does the most foolish thing of all—he sends his own Son and he plays by the rules of the world. You say to yourself, “I can’t believe he’s that stupid! Love has addled his brain! All I have to do is inspire some of my agents—Herod, Pilate, Caiaphas, the Roman sol-diers—and get him crucified.” And that’s what you do.So there he hangs on the cross— forsaken by man and seemingly by God, bleeding to death and crying “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” What do you feel now as the devil? You feel triumph and vindication! But, of course, you couldn’t be more wrong. This is his supreme triumph and your supreme defeat. He stuck his heel into your mouth and you bit it and that blood destroyed you.—Paul Kreeft, Boston College philosopy professor; quotedin Lee Strobel, The Case for Faith (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan Publishing House, 2000), p. 32.So Where Is God When We Suffer?Jesus is there, sitting beside us in the lowest places of our lives. Are we broken? He was broken, like bread, for us. Are we despised? He was despised and rejected of men. Do we cry out that we can’t take it any more? He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Do people betray us? He was sold out himself. Are our tenderest relationships bro-ken? He too lived and was rejected. Do people turn from us? They hid their faces from him as from a leper.Does he descend into all our hells? Yes, he does. . . .  He not only rose from the dead, he changed the mean-ing of death and therefore of all the little deaths. . . . Every tear we shed becomes his tear. He may not wipe them away yet, but he will.—Lee Strobel, The Case for Faith (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Pub-lishing House, 2000), pp. 51, 52.Crime TaxIn a Washington, D. C., area Wal- Mart, shoppers saw a security guard stop a shopper who had no receipts for a number of items in the bottom of her cart. She was waving her arms and saying, “It just happens! It just happens!”Because it happens, all shoppers pay more for merchandise. According574Perspective Digest, Vol. 8 [2003], No. 1, Art. 4https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/pd/vol8/iss1/4to Consumer Reports “shrink,” as retailers call it, amounted to 1.8 per-cent of sales in 2000. A criminologist calls this percentage “a retail crime tax added into the merchandise we buy.” Says the consumer magazine: “That’s $33.2 billion in merchandise that simply vanished, a figure that eclipses motor-vehicle theft ($7.7 billion in 2000), burglary ($3 bil-lion), and robbery ($477 million).“Only about a third of those losses—$10 billion—are from shop-lifting. More merchandise is stolen each year by dishonest employees: In 2000, that total was $15 billion. Crooked vendors skimmed another $2 billion. Paperwork errors such as incorrect markups and markdowns cost about $6 billion.”— Consumer Reports, October 2002.Yearnings“Would a robot feel a yearning to be human?” Prolific author Isaac Asimov asked this question in his book Robot City.“You might answer that question with a counter-question,” said Asi-mov. “Does a Chevrolet feel a yearn-ing to be a Cadillac?“The counter-question makes the unstated comment that a machine has no yearnings.“But the very point is that a robot is not quite a machine, at least in potentiality. A robot is a machine that is made as much like a human being as it is possible to make it, andsomewhere there may be a boundary line that may be crossed.“We can apply this to life. An earthworm doesn’t yearn to be a snake; a hippopotamus doesn’t yearn to be an elephant. We have no reason to think such creatures are self-conscious and dream of some-thing more than they are. Chim-panzees and gorillas seem to be self- aware, but we have no reason to think they yearn to be human.“A human being, however, dreams of an afterlife and yearns to become one of the angels.”There is, of course, a reason: Sin-ful humans, and that means all, are not only at least subliminally aware of their fallen condition, but have the capacity, as Asimov observed “to be dissatisfied with itself.”As many have observed as life nears its end: “There must be some-thing more.” Our very yearning tes-tifies that our dissatisfaction is divinely induced. Not, however, that we yearn to be angels. Rather, we shall for the first time be wholly human. And it is the wholly human that God has invited to sit with him on his throne (see Revelation 3:21).—R.R.H.Sanctification?If you can start your day without caffeine,If you can always be cheerful, ignoring aches and pains,If you can resist complaining and585Multiple: A Perspective Feature: In FocusPublished by Digital Commons @ Andrews University, 2003boring people with your troubles,If you can eat the same food every day and be grateful for it,If you can understand when your loved ones are too busy to give you time,If you can forgive your friends for their lack of consideration,If you can take criticism and blame without resentment,If you can ignore a friends lim-ited education, and never correct him,If you can face the world without lies and deceit,If you can conquer tensions with-out medical help,If you can sleep without the aid of drugs,Then, my friend, youre almost as good as—my dog!— Cleburne Lion's Club, Vol.3, No. 5; Editor Lyndon De Witt.What Bad Theology Will Do for YouA Seattle man, scheduled to fly to Miami for a vacation, was bumped from his flight. In spite of his appeals to airline officials, his arrival was delayed a day. When he arrived, not in the best of moods, he found that a heat wave had descended on the resort city. His wife, who was on a business trip to Minneapolis, would arrive the next day. He decided to send her an E-mail, chronicling hisproblems. Unfortunately, he mis-spelled the E-mail address, and it went to the widow of an elderly Bap-tist pastor, whose husband had died the day before. She read it, let out an anguished scream, and fell to the floor dead.Her family rushed into the room and saw the following message on the computer screen: “Departed yes-terday, as you know. Just got checked in. Some confusion at the gate. Appeal was denied. Received confir-mation of your arrival tomorrow.” It was signed, “Your loving husband.” There was a RS. “Things are not as we thought. You're going to be surprised how hot it is.”Spell Checker PoemEye halve a spelling chequer. It came with my pea sea.It plainly marques for my revue. Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.Eye strike a key and type a word, and weight four it to sayWeather eye am wrong oar write, It shows me strait a weigh.As soon as a mist ache is maid, It nose bee fore two longAnd eye can put the error rite, It's rare lea ever wrong.Eye have run this poem threw it, I am shore your pleased to no.It's letter perfect awl the weigh, My chequer tolled me sew.— Sauce un-noun596Perspective Digest, Vol. 8 [2003], No. 1, Art. 4https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/pd/vol8/iss1/4

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A Perspective Feature: In Focus

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