This is to inform regular readers that my blogging will be at best sporadic over the next couple of weeks, if it happens at all. I won’t call it a hiatus, since I don’t know for sure that I won’t be blogging, but I will not have regular computer access until well into the new year.

So that’s why I’m taking this opportunity to wish you a happy start to 2008. Happy new year!

I don’t put much stock in these quizzes, many of which are repetative, have either-or questions where one might wish to say ‘both/and’, and sometimes asks questions that I might regard as in themselves fundamentally flawed. But since several other blogs I read seem to include these sorts of quiz results, I decided to try it and share this…

Which theologian are you? created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Friedrich Schleiermacher You seek to make inner feeling and awareness of God the centre of your theology, which is the foundation of liberalism. Unfortunately, atheists are quick to accuse you of simply projecting humanity onto ‘God’ and liberalism never really recovers. Friedrich Schleiermacher 73% Paul Tillich 67% Charles Finney 60% Jürgen Moltmann 60% Augustine 40% Jonathan Edwards 33% John Calvin 20% Martin Luther 20% Karl Barth 13% Anselm 0%

I regularly comment on spam for the sake of the gullible who might fall for the various scams and hoaxes that are around. But I suspect that the most common form of spam that makes it into our inboxes rather than our spam filters comes from well-intentioned relatives and friends who say things like “This is a must read” or “I know this probably isn’t true but…” or even “I saw this and thought that you (in this case “you” refers to every single person they know who has an e-mail address) would be interested in this”.

What are we to make of the stories of miracles and marvels that once upon a time circulated by word of mouth, but now tend to circulate by e-mail? Often the individuals in the story are unnamed, but not always, and at times names of famous people are inserted into the story in the course of transmission. Often but not always the story is set in a far away place (at least far from those who circulate it) and is thus not easily verifiable. Research on the phenomenon of rumor and its accuracy or otherwise is important, because the early stories about Jesus and his first followers circulated in the same way before being written down. The ongoing presence of eyewitnesses in the earliest Christian community doesn’t mitigate the relevance of this mode of transmission, any more than it does today, since not only do stories continue to circulate even after eyewitnesses protest their inaccuracy or even that they are complete fabrications, but details such as “this happened to someone I know personally” regularly seem to get added to stories in the process of their retelling.

A story I received recently (which inspired this post) is reproduced verbatim below. Feel free to comment on it as well in the comments section. Of particular interest is the way Snopes (a great site for checking on urban legends) traces the development of the story and highlights the universals of the genre. Truth Or Fiction shows how some versions of the story have patent inconsistencies. What I’m most interested in is how this sort of example sheds light on what historians are facing in trying to make sense of early Christian sources. But the topic is relevant simply in terms of the spread of stories, gullibility and lack of critical thinking in our time as well.

The Holy Spirit

Here’s a message that will bring you chills. Have you ever felt the urge to pray for someone and then just put it on a list and said, “I’ll pray for them later?”
Or has anyone ever called you and said, “I need you to pray for me, I have this need?”

Read the following story that was sent to me and may it change the way that you may think about prayer and also the way you pray. You will be blessed by this!!

A missionary on furlough told the following true story while visiting his home church in Michigan : “While serving at a small field hospital in Africa, every two weeks I traveled by bicycle through the jungle to a nearby city for supplies. This was a journey of two days and required camping overnight at the halfway point. On one of these journeys, I arrived in the city where I planned to collect money from a bank, purchase medicine, and supplies, and then begin my two-day journey back to the field hospital.

Upon arrival in the city, I observed two men fighting, one of whom had been seriously injured. I treated him for his injuries and at the same time talked to him about the Lord. I then traveled two days, camping overnight, and arrived home without incident…

Two weeks later I repeated my journey. Upon arriving in the city, I was approached by the young man I had treated. He told me that he had known I carried money and medicines. He said, ‘Some friends and I followed you into the jungle, knowing you would camp overnight. We planned to kill you and take your money and drugs.

But just as we were about to move into your camp, we saw that you were surrounded by 26 armed guards. At this, I laughed and said that I was certainly all alone in that jungle campsite. The young man pressed the point, however,and said, ‘No, sir, I was not the only person to see the guards, my friends also saw them, and we all counted them. It was because of those guards that we were afraid and left you alone.”

At this point in the sermon, one of the men in the congregation jumped to his feet and interrupted the missionary and asked if he could tell him the exact day this happened. The missionary told the congregation the date, and the man who interrupted told him this story:

“On the night of your incident in Africa , it was morning here and I was preparing to go play golf. I was about to putt when I felt the urge to pray for you. In fact, the urging of the Lord was so strong, I called men in this church to meet with me here in the sanctuary to pray for you. Would all of those men who met with me on that day stand up?”

The men who had met together to pray that day stood up. The missionary wasn’t concerned with who they were, he was too busy counting how many men he saw. There were 26!

This story is an incredible example of how the Spirit of the Lord moves in mysterious ways. If you ever hear such prodding, go along with it.

Nothing is ever hurt by prayer except the gates of hell. I encourage you to forward this to as many people as you know If we all take it to heart, we can turn this world toward God once again. As the above true story clearly illustrates, “with God all things are possible . More importantly, how God hears and answers the prayers of the faithful.

After you read this, please pass it on and give God thanks for the beautiful gift of your faith, for the powerful gift of prayer, and for the many miracles He works in your own daily life and then pass it on. Who says God does not work in mysterious ways.

I asked the Lord to bless you as I prayed for you today. To guide you and protect you as you go along your way. His love is always with you, His promises are true, and when we give Him our cares you know He will see us through. So when the road you’re traveling on seems difficult at best, just remember I’m here praying, and God will do the rest.

Pass this on to those whom you want God to bless.

I just recently began watching Heroes – from the beginning of season 1. I have done this with several series that I didn’t start watching from the beginning but had recommended to me later. (It was good to have something to do during the long hours of computer problem resolution besides staring at the screen watching it reboot for the nth time).

The first question I found myself asking is whether Heroes or The 4400 came first. Of course, I suppose the answer is X-Men came long before either of them, and so there is no reason to think that one of the two recent series directly inspired the other.

Scientificially, the show treats evolution in a way that is unscientific, and one might say it mythologizes evolution. It treats evolution as this thing that leads to progress and will eventually endow us with telekenesis, the ability to fly without wings, clairvoyance and other magical powers.

Evolution is not going to save us. It doesn’t have the capacity to do all these things. Technology, on the other hand, might. It has the power to regenerate our cells and perhaps one day allow us to fly with only minimal mechanical paraphernalia attached to us, as power sources become smaller and new forms of propulsion are developed. This doesn’t mean that we should simply mythologize technology, however, and treat it as salvific in the way the original Star Trek series tended to. Technology has the same ambiguity as the Heroes’ powers: the same nanobot technology that might one day enable Claire-like healing might also cause Nikki/Jessica-like personality takeovers and Sylar-like murders. Technology is powerful for accomplishing these sorts of ends, whereas it is unclear that any changes to the human genome, whether natural or artificially-induced, will ever be able to allow us to bend space and time. Thankfully, this doesn’t stop my from enjoying the show, any more than my being more of a skeptical Scully-type stopped me from enjoying the X Files.

I’m still in season 1, so no spoilers please. I will say that my favorite moments so far are when Hiro Nakamura, perfectly fluent in English and without glasses, arrives from the future; and when Petrelli flies in his pyjamas (as all flying superheroes are expected to).

Apparently searching for “sex hermaphrodites” can lead one to my page on Intelligent Design and Gnosticism. I don’t find either word on that post. Perhaps among the comments? Anyway, apologies to anyone who comes to my blog via a search engine and finds the contents don’t quite live up to what they were expecting. I’m guessing this person found what they were looking for, though, since apparently it was on the seventh page of search results.

If such a search led one anywhere I my blog I would have thought it would be here…