Okay, here’s installment number two. For all of you budding writers and the like, I present thee with a very normal everyday word that need be defined.

Who ever gets closest to the answer in my dictionary, wins. I’m playing too.

The word is: evocative.

So the other day in class a student bought me a bottle of water (very kind). Over the course of the three hours of lecture I drank the entire thing, a full liter. With ten or so minutes left in the class I spun the bottle around by the cap, admiring the marketing marvel that it was (refrigerators for eskimos, that kind of thing). I couldn’t help but wonder how susceptible I, as a consumer, was to the allure of the intoxicating blue-green tint of the bottle and the stylish font of the product name: Dasani. Coke-Cola had given their version of water a more stylish  title to help me purchase it with a greater ease of conscience. Perhaps water exotic enough to be called Dasani has been bottled by monks and hauled out of the mountains by yak caravans, to deliver its mystic healing properties right to my lips.  That stuff that comes out of my tap is just water.

It was actually just after reading the title that my gaze alighted on the small clarifying text below. As an amateur cultural anthropologist, I’ve taken a special joy at looking at the bottled water industry, and before today, my favorite relic has been Propel. Propel Fitness Water has a clarifying statement in small text on each bottle the explains, presumably by fiat of the FDA, that Propel isn’t actually water: its an enhanced water beverage.

What that clever little phrase tells me is that Propel so doctored up that it fails to qualify as water. By that definition, soda-pop and orange juice are enhanced water beverages.  Gatorade (who makes Propel) is engaging in the practice of vague speech that veils truth just enough to seduce a commercial-saturated consumer while ameliorating the demanding FDA (that fundamentalist-by-any-other-name Big Brother agency that is so literalist!) that the marketing industry is famous for.

The funny thing is that any idiot can tell that Propel is not water by a single sip.  Not only is the flavor sweeter and stronger than all of the flavored-water variants on the market, chock full of vitamins and natural dyes, but it also has an aftertaste. The consistency of Propel is actually more viscous than water;  just rolling it around the half empty bottle (a less-than-aqua colored neon blue) reminds me of the liquid-jelly quality of mercury.  And the ingredient list includes– well we’ll just be content to say that water shouldn’t have an ingredient list.

Dasani is a much more effective seduction.  And that’s the perfect word, derived from the latin verb meaning “to lead down and away from truth.”  After the ruse of Propel, I accept more graciously the sea-foam-blue of the bottle and sense that somehow its the color that I’ve always wanted water to be.  And the label with its matching cap are less flamboyant, more dignified, than Propel.  I feel more refined just holding it.  But for all of its luster, and its superior aura to Propel or even Aquafina, Coke-Cola must seethe that its product is water with a strange qualifying statement:   enhanced with minerals for flavor.

A statement like that is to marketing what smelling salts are to consciousness.  I’m at once indignant that Coke thought I could be duped, and annoyed with myself that I enjoyed every last drop.  When I scanned the ingredient list of contents I found that of the three minerals added for flavor, two of them were SALT.  (Perhaps Coke-Cola was banking on the average consumer not recognizing Potassium Sulfide as ordinary table salt).

Now, of all of the varieties of water in the world, bottled and otherwise, there is only one that I can think of that is actually poisonous to humans, a type of water that often seduces thirsty souls with the promise of refreshment, only to turn their systems rancid and kill them with dehydration. Yep, SALT WATER.  Our oceans are filled miles deep with water that is undrinkable.  And seemingly Dasani has managed to market it to thirsty consumers who gladly welcome its refreshment to soda.

Let us hear the end of the matter: from here on out I’m a Pepsi Man.

Recently a student taking the Christology Class that I help teach asked a good question. She was looking for where in the Old Testament the sufferings of the Messiah– a key emphasis of the New Testament authors– were clearly portrayed. I wrote a response that she thought was helpful and I thought it might make a good post. Here you go:

Becky—

Great question. I remember when I first read Paul’s statement before Agripas, the Roman Emperor, when he insisted that he had preached nothing besides what was in the scriptures: That the messiah must suffer, and that he would be the first to rise from the dead. I sat back in my chair and said out loud, “where does it say that?” Happily, my journey to an answer was not long. (acts 26)

First, you are off to a good start with Isaiah 53. For sure, that is one of the focal points for the doctrine of a suffering Messiah. The other biggie would be Psalm 22 (why have you forsaken me…i can count all my bones…the bulls of bashan surround me). Right off the bat we see verses that point to Jesus’ physical suffering.

But for more than that, I think you have to branch out a little in your search. The doctrine of the Suffering Messiah is more than just a few verses that talk about Jesus getting beat up. Its an entire understanding of the humiliation/exaltation of the Christ and is bound up in his unique person. When we look at the New Testament writers, they repeatedly reference the necessity of Christ’s suffering to enter into His glory. You’ve referenced Luke 24:26— that’s great, because we see there Jesus himself unfolding the scriptures in this way. Because of passages like this, we’re not looking only in the Old Testament to find the suffering messiah, but we’re also looking in the New for places that they interpret the Old particularly through the lens of humiliation/exaltation.

To emphasize that point we could look at the classic NT explanation of suffering/glory, Philipians 2:5-11. I’ll save the bulk of this passage for class (its one of Stephen’s finest moments), but for now we can say that Paul is quoting verses from the Servant Songs in Isaiah, stringing them together in a way that explains how the Christ could only enter into glory after (even because of) his sufferings.

Next, we can add Psalm 16. The proper messianic interpretation of this verse is that God resurrected Jesus, not David. Of course, for the Christ to be resurrected he had to be dead first. Peter, when he had the opportunity to explain the outpouring of the Holy spirit in Acts 2, sees the whole thing in a single progression beginning with Christ’s suffering and death (acts 2:23-24). Only after Jesus was raised did he ascend into glory and pour out his Spirit.

Psalm 110 is the same thing: the verse speaks of Christ’s glory, but the book of Hebrews effortlessly links it to suffering. The doctrinal emphasis of Hebrews is this mysterious explanation of how the Creator of the universe descended and then was awarded the seat at the Father’s right hand (i.e. Psalm 110, Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool). In his effort to apply this verse correctly to Christ, the writer ropes in Psalm 8. At face value, Psalm 8 isn’t a Suffering-Messiah psalm at all; there’s a funny disparity between the part about man being made lower than the angels and another part about everything being put under man’s feet. For the writer of Hebrews, the gap is explained by Jesus, and if you read between the lines with Messianic lenses, you can see Christ suffering: “But we see Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death…”

Later in Hebrews, the author interprets yet another psalm to mean Messianic suffering: Psalm 40. In Hebrews chapter 10, the writer quotes the psalm and zeros in on the phrase “a body you have prepared for me.” In the mind of this NT author, the fullness of the interpretation of how the Christ fulfilled God’s will (“Behold, I have come to do your will O God…”) is in the understanding that Christ offered his very body as a sacrifice for sin. So then Psalm 40 makes the cut. Outside of the paradigm of a Messiah who must first suffer in order to enter into His promised glory, many of the deepest meanings of these psalms would have been veiled to us. The humiliation/exaltation pattern is what makes for the fullest theology of Christ’s Sufferings and how the Old Testament prophesied of Him in this way.

I hope that helps.
–Bret

Heretics kill people. But you have to think it through for a minute to really see how. Its far from obvious, so don’t feel bad if you doubt me on this end.

Take, for example, Praxeas. Now, I’ve selected Praxeas because by name alone he could be only one of three possible things: A cyborg overlord of a distant alien machine-race bent on industry and destruction; a devious figure of Roman mythology who carelessly subjected entire armies to the throes of a bloody war when he enticed a mortal’s wife with a magic pear; or a noted Christian heretic who believed and taught others to believe in an uninspired version of the Trinity. For clarity, he’s the last one.

(why yes, I am killer at Balderdash.)

So what’s the big deal? So he doesn’t subscribe fully to a concept that doesn’t actually come from a verse. Is God going to send people to hell that don’t subscribe to a word that isn’t even in the Bible? In short, yes and no. No, because God doesn’t send people to hell for failing a vocab test. Yes, because ideas have consequences, especially bad ones.

When people do not have the right ideas about God, they make themselves susceptible to dangerous lines of thought, e.g. imagining they can escape death by a means besides Jesus. No one escapes death, except those who cling to the one man who overcame death. That should seem pretty straight forward, but millions of people settle for discount-diamond clarity on this point.

Tertullian was quite clear on the distinction. When Praxeas persisted with his Tri-Polar version of the Trinity featuring One-God-In-Three-Mood-Swings, Tertullian didn’t hesitate to issue this scathing rebuke: “Praxeus has done the devil a twofold service:…He has put to flight the [Holy Spirit] and he has crucified the Father.” While we’re all kicking ourselves that we didn’t come up with that last line, we can’t escape his point: if you distort the Trinity, you sacrifice two out of three members of the Godhead. And that just ain’t right.

Now, the problem compounds under the pressure of Persecution. It’s when Christians are labeled Enemies of the State that they really see if their finer theological points can pass muster. Why? Because they either have a Jesus who defeated death, or they have a three-faced demigod who cheated death. And if the second, they begin to wonder if he really intends for them to hold out, or if there’s room for them to link arms with all the peaceful religions of the earth– like Islam– and emphasize religious sentiment. After all, religion ought not to be on the list of things to die for, right? They completely lose sight of the fact that the man who defeated death was able to do that because he was God. Oh yeah, that.

And I don’t have to point out (but I will anyway) that cheating death is a temporary solution. The hammer falls sooner or later. So the Praxean proselyte escapes execution by edict, only to pass more gently at a ripe old age in a hospital bed afforded him by the universal healthcare of the Socialist’s Union of Jihad. What has he really gained? He dies like everyone else–well, of course, not like those foolish zealots he knew in his youth who sacrificed life, liberty, and happiness because they wouldn’t bend on their “dogmatism” (the poor souls). All that to say, especially in persecution, a right idea of God is the line between death and eternal life.

When you put it that way, you see a guy like Praxeas for what he really is: a villain, and one no less nefarious as a cyborg tyrant that crushes the lives of millions beneath the machinery of his own caprice. And what are guys like Praxeas doing anyway besides exercising their right to be speculative? But unfortunately vain speculation has always proved to be an enticing pear.

In my efforts to get better grip on language, I sometimes try to make myself properly define a word. I check myself with a dictionary. Yes, I really do this. Its fun.

Today’s word: transcendent.

I thought for a second and came up with this definition: that which defies natural boundaries or limits.

Turns out, I was pretty close. Webster says that transcendent means, a) exceeding the usual limits, SURPASSING, b) extending beyond the limits of ordinary experience.

Anytime I get overlap like the word “limit” I consider it a pass. If I were making a dictionary, I’d probably go with the idea of defying limits versus exceeding limits. Maybe.

Cara posted a while ago a great quotation from Francis Bacon. I can’t stop thinking about it, and every day I see more the truth of his words. Lovers of reading and writing will love these words about reading and writing…as is typical.

Okay, so I took a break from blogging.

Let’s see how long it takes the world to find I’m back.  In the meantime, I’ve got some things I want to write about.