Order My steps O' Lord (Original song post)

I continue to upload the songs that the Lord gives to me. This time I have musical accompaniment from http://www.recordingstudio.bz/. However, I need a microphone for clearer vocals. Plus my baby's voice was in the background.

Lyrics:

Order my steps O Lord,
and let me walk,
In the way that pleased you
Order my steps O Lord,
and lemme walk
In the way that's best to you


Keep me from temptation
Less I walk astray
Keep me in salvation,
let me walk in the blessed way

As I walk thru the earth i see
Things that appeal to me
Put in me enmity
Against my carnality

Here is the link to the vocal and instrumental. https://soundcloud.com/mark-shane-scale/order-my-steps

Idea for a Bible theme virtual world game

I have been continuing my online storytelling course and have moved to the module about storytelling in computer games. On a previous occasion on this very blog, I've blogged about the need to create a quality Bible-narrative game. Well, I've given some more thought to the merits of a well designed Bible themed game and have some ideas that I want to share.

First, before I walk you through my Bible-narrative themed game, I want to make it clear that a well-designed Bible game can prompt players to dig deeper into the Bible. I've spoken to gamers who have told me that when they've gotten really into a game, they become interested in researching the backstory behind the game. From my conversations with avid or serious gamers, I believe that a well narrated Bible video game can prompt users to want to know more about the Bible and the world(s) of the Bible.

That said, I now invite you to imagine with me a new Bible game: a Biblically based virtual world, lets say based in heaven (or the new earth).

So the setting of the game is in heaven or the new world that God has created where there is no evil. Where Satan has been forever banished. In this setting, the player can do certain actions that they cannot do in our real world such as fly, walk through solid objects and even walk on water. In addition, you can walk around and converse with other characters, some computer generated while others are online players like yourself. The computer generated characters will tell you their testimony of how they came to be saved and also ask about yours. (Obviously, some characters will be angels and will not have such testimonies)

In this world, you amass points by attempting to accomplish three goals:

1. Find and converse with historical Bible that are hidden throughout the world
2. Collect Bible mentioned artifacts or items such as (the 12 stones in the ephod of the high priest of Israel) scattered throughout the world
3. Answer Bible quiz questions correctly to unlock a new level in the game/world

End of imagination. Back to reality. So that is it for now, until I have something more compelling to say. But I am willing to consult and collaborate with anyone interested in creating such a Bible game universe. So just putting this out there.

God bless you.

"Kosher" Jewelry: The Biblical guidelines for adornment

Introduction:
There are generally two polarised views in Christianity regarding jewelry wearing. In one camp, persons argue that jewelry should not be worn any at all. Another camp says that it is what is in the inside that counts and that God does not care about the outside. But what does the Bible say about the matter. This year, God's direction to me is to go neither to the left, nor the right (don't get involved in extremes). As such, I decide to go with an open mind into the subject and study what the Bible actually says about this topic of jewelry wearing, rather than relying on the partisan arguments.

I must begin by indicating that based on my non-biblical or extra-biblical research on jewelry has mentioned that jewelry wearing seems to have originated from the practice of wearing amulets, or magic charms. For example in the book of Enoch, it is said that fallen angels taught women to adorn themselves with jewelry and even made the first jewelry (Enoch 8:1). Further sources such as the Jewish Encyclopedia suggest that 'all ornaments worn on the person seem to have been originally amulets' (Amulet, 2011). Another source, Cox (2011) cites a source without sufficient bibliographic detail that suggests that "it is possible that bracelets, anklets and rings may have at one time been amulets and to have participated in the general tendency for amulets to degenerate into ornaments (Regalia, ERE, Vol. 10, p. 637)". Jewish sources also indicate that the only jewelry that is Torah-approved is jewelry that carries the Word of God on hand or on the forehead as a reminder of our obligations to God and his covenant and promises. Catholic sources also indicate that the early church also adopted this idea. According to Hassett (1907) "following the example of Moses, who sought to turn the minds of the Jews from the superstitious emblems to which they were accustomed in Egypt, by substituting for them symbols of an elevating character, the Church, while forbidding amulets, permitted the use of emblems which would remind the bearers of some doctrine of Christianity".

These sources aside, we examine the Bible itself.

What the Bible says?
The Bible first of all does seem to permit the wearing of certain jewelry. It also states wear acceptable Biblical jewelry can be worn. According to the book of Proverbs, Biblical approved jewellery is worn around the head and neck (Proverbs 1:8-9; 3:1-3). Further, Deut. 6:4-9 suggests that hand or emblem on the forehead can be worn (specifically verse 8). In all of these scriptures, Biblically approved jewelry consists of written teachings or commandments that reminds us to be loyal and faithful to God. In general Biblically approved jewelry are things worn on our bodies to remind us and others of God's instructions. Any other jewellery wearing seems to be a form of idolatry. In Genesis 35:1-4, we see a unique story where jewelry was associated with idols and that part of the preparation to meet God required changing outward apparel including jewelry. Further, God discusses in the 10 commandments that we should not creates any grave images in the form of any thing (Exodus 20:4).  

Even in the approved jewelry wearing, there seems to be no allowance for earrings. Piercing of the flesh forbidden, except if one wishes to become a man's slave for life (Leviticus 19:28; Deut. 14:1-2; Exodus 21:6). In general the principle is that we are to wear on our clothing  things that honor God, including embroidery (Numbers 15:37-41). In principle, everything worn by a person is point to God and not self. Our bodies are not our own, and we are to use them to bring honour to God (1 Cor. 6:19-20). This is especially important as Christ, the head of the body has already been pierced and tattooed for our sins, we now as his body just need not to have any such marks upon us of our own doing, but bear in our bodies his image and likeness (1 Cor. 15:49).

Conclusion

Based on scripture, our adornment ought to be done in a way that solely glorifies God. We ought not to dress to be fashionable, but rather, we must dress to remind ourselves and others to be faithful to God. While we are God's earrings and jewels accentuating God and make him attractive to other people and nations, this does not mean we must dress as how the secular world defines "attractive". Based on the scriptural evidence, I tend to take the perspective that if we wear any jewelry or adornment, it should be text of scripture or Bible verses or words that reminds us of God. Further, if we wear any thing (whether bits of wood, bone, stone, or other natural objects), as the people of faith (or scripture) we should wear engravened or written scripture on these objects that refer us and others to God. However, to summarise, the guiding principle when putting on any clothing or object is: will this cause me and others to be faithful to God and his teachings.


References:

Amulet. In (2011). JewishEncyclopedia.com. Kopelman Foundation. Retrieved from http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/1445-amulet

Cox, W. (2011). The origin of the wearing of earrings and jewellery in ancient times. Christian Churches of God. Paper No. 197. (Edition 2.0 19970405-20010215-20110511). Retrieved from http://www.ccg.org/english/s/p197.html

Hassett, M. (1907). Amulet. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved from http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01443a.htm

Pastors as modern day storytellers

I recently came across a Facebook post that said "The planet does not need more successful people. The planet desperately needs more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers and lovers of all kinds."

The saying seems like good secular wisdom to me and got me thinking about the negative rap that pastors and preachers of the 21st century are getting (for instance, the conversation around "Preachers of LA" and the mega pastors and televangelists that are said to be living as billionaires or rockstars). Even in my homeland of Jamaica, I have often heard negative remarks that the church is a 'money-making business' and that pastors are in it for the money.

So strong are these negative sentiments towards churches and pastors that there are people of these days that are of the opinion that we do not need churches or pastors. Pastors are viewed as dishonest men that tell fictional stories in exchange for people's money. While there are many pastors that have done wrong and abused the trust of the public, there is still a place in our contemporary society for storytellers that heal the souls of people with their stories.

It is evident that in every society and culture in ancient times, that humanity has had shamans, priests, bush doctors, oral historians and other storytellers who have told stories, preserved social history and healed people. This class of people have been with human beings since human society began, preserving the stories of human survival in a world of difficulty, crisis and danger. It is my view, that this human need has not changed even in an era of "scientific progress". Despite scientific and technological advances with the rise of professionals in medicine and psychology (our present day 'healers') that only treat us when our symptoms suggest that we are broken, human beings still need storytellers and healers that nurture our souls and spirit with wholesome stories. We need social history stories that tell us of human beings in the past who used their values and beliefs to get through terrible or difficult situations and circumstances.

I personally get the sense that at least once per week, human beings need to hear stories and narratives that help us make meaning about our present, while connecting it to our past as well as to a hopeful future. We need to hear what our ancestors went through and how they toughed out difficult times to build the foundations of what we have today. We need to hear what kept them going and how they overcame the obstacles to leave behind the legacy that we now enjoy.  We also need to know what future must we prepare for. What is the dream? What legacy are we to build on and leave for the next generation? Why are we even doing what we do and for whom?

These are the questions that I believe all people need answers. For without these answers, our current existence in meaningless and the future an uncertain and fearful one. We know not for certainty what lies ahead of us, but if we have storytellers and stories we can have hope, strength and courage to face the uncertainties of the future.

In this regard, I appreciate pastors. Pastors today (at least in the Western Christian world) are the last remnants of such storytellers. These storytellers have evolved and changed with human society and economy. Unfortunately, some have been corrupted by greed and exchange stories and healing for wealth and luxury rather than provide these for free. Yet, pastors, who are versed in historical texts and able to connect the present to both history and a prophetic future (especially the future as seen by the ancients and even the ancient storytellers and healers of the past) should be held in high esteem. To such pastors, give them their wages and let them help heal humanity and prepare us with the stories we need to get through our present challenges and prepare for future obstacles.

Bracing myself for 2014

While many will be ringing the new year with partying and celebration, I myself am not particularly looking forward to 2014. From my point of view, 2014 summons old routines as well as new and unforeseen challenges and situations. Not only will my holidays and vacation end, and the routine and rhythm of work begin, but new unseen challenges, experiences and tests await me.

At least with 2013, I can look back at what I passed through, reflect on lessons learned, mistakes made and give thanks for the worst that did not happen. However, for 2014, I know not what will happen nor whether my life will go according to plans or deviate from them. And considering the global problems in 2013, I approach 2014 with trepidation and an expectation that things might get worse.

For 2014, I wonder what difficult decisions will I have to make? What challenges will arise? How will my character be tested in 2014? These are the questions that loom in my mind as 2014 approaches.

With these question, I begin to appreciate the secular traditions of wishing people a happy or prosperous new year. (I prefer the term prosperous 2014, as both 'happy' and 'new' are temporary and come with expiry dates). Yet 2014 is a secular year, and not really one that is embedded in God's biblical calendar. The real new year is in April (Spring), when the Passover season begins. Hence for me, while the secular new year has begun, the spiritual new year hasn't. So I await God's spiritual renewal to face the unknown that is ahead.

God bless you and a prosperous 2014 to you!

My emerging views on abortion Part 1

I recently received some news that the Seventh-day Adventist church hospitals have been performing operations (The Third Angels Message, 2012). Whether or not the news is true, it has made me reflect deeply on my own experiences and emerging views on the subject matter. In this post, I share some of my reflections and emergent perspectives, especially seeing that we have just exited the season where many Western Christians reflect on the nativity and story of the birth of Jesus.

My ideas about abortion have been emerging from my interaction with a number of persons including young females that have been molested or raped, as well as a non-profit organization that is pro-life (and one feminist to a lesser extent). However, most deeply, my own views on abortion come from my personal experience as a parent of three girls and also as a father that experienced the early miscarriage of my second child.

Further, when I reflect on the story of the birth of Jesus in light of all those experiences, I can empathise with what Mary and Joseph went through. A child out of wedlock in a strict religious society? In my generation, we have been subjected to the propaganda of family planning videos that told us and our parents that two children are better than too many ("A history of government family planning", 2008). We have also been fed by various agencies the idea that poverty is caused by the number of children that we have. We have also been told that we must not have children until we have the resources to care for them. These successful propaganda has so affected our world today that there are developed countries that are bribing families to have children or even more children (Smith, 2011).

But back to me and my own lived experience. It is only now that I realise how the early miscarriage of my second child has affected my views on abortion. At the time when my wife missed her period in that season, our first born was barely a year and a half. I was worried and so was my wife. We had just gone through the experience of pregnancy and everything was still fresh in our minds. It was scary and frightening.

But then the child died naturally within the womb after less than three months. At the time, I felt relieved. Yes... it was bad, but I felt relieved. However, now as the father of three girls, I wonder if my second child was actually the son that we so badly wanted and prayed for. Today, that experience has lead me to embrace the viewpoint that life begins at conception and not at birth.

If I am to define when does a person become a person today, I would argue that a person becomes a person when a document is created about that person's existence. Such a document thereby provides evidence that such a person existed or exists. For governmental purposes, this is usually done through a birth certificate. However, for the parent who wants to keep that child or being, documents are created from the day that woman discovers that she is pregnant. (For example, a photography of the positive result on the pregnancy test).

Medically, records are created to document that a potential human being is about to enter the world. Yet doctors, rather than treat the blob of cells and matter within the woman's uterus or womb as an individual or person with a name and life ahead of him/her, use language and semantics to de-emphasize the person as an "it".

However, in the past, language and semantics were used to rationalise the ill-treatment of Negroes as slaves. Negroes were denied personhood and considered as chattel and property similar to cattle. Similarly today, economists and business managers do the same, denying  workers personhood and individuality, by labelling us as 'human capital', 'labour', 'human resources' or as 'a factor of production'. Hence dehumanization allows us to have 'labour substitution', which reduces the employment opportunities for people in favour of technology.

Hence, I am not a fan of these word and language games. I believe that we should call the foetus what "it" is, a helpless and dependent bundle of potentiality and promise. When I check the dictionary, it says that a fetus is either an unborn mammal or especially an unborn human "more than eight weeks after conception" ("fetus", 2005). For me, it is very technical that the dictionary writers had to say that the fetus is only a human after eight weeks from conception. This disclaimer suggests that we need the dimension of time in order to define when a fetus becomes human. (Time by itself is another artificial construct and language or symbolic manipulation of our reality).

My argument is simply this, that a person becomes human after conception, when documents are being created about him or her. No date and time is required to elapse after conception before we consider the fetus human. Once a fetus is conceived in a woman, we known that the fetus is not going to be anything except human if giving the chance to live (unless the DNA has been tampered with, which is another story).


However, that brings us the other problem of whether or not we must legislate against abortion, which is something that I am still meditating on, as I do consider the argument that one cannot use his or her own moral conviction of God's laws and Biblical principles and impose it on unbelievers. This goes against the principle of free will. Which is why I still find myself keeping silent on these issues.


Reference:

A history of government family planning efforts in Jamaica [blog post] (2008, October 28). Retrieved from http://stanford.edu/group/womenscourage/cgi-bin/blogs/familyplanning/2008/10/24/a-history-of-government-family-planning-efforts-in-jamaica/

Fetus. (2005). Pocket Oxford English dictionary. 10th ed. Oxford: Oxford University P.

Smith, R. (2011, November 3). When governments pay people to have babies. NPR Planet Money Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/11/03/141943008/when-governments-pay-people-to-have-babies

The Third Angels Message (2012). An open letter to Ted Wilson on abortion in our hospitals the Trademark and recent imprisonment of Seventh-day Adventists. Retrieved from http://www.thethirdangelsmessage.com/open_letter_ted_wilson

'Pentecostal' experiences in Seventh-day Adventism?

While I generally embrace a largely Christian identity, I label myself as Judeo-Christian, in recognition that the roots of Christianity is Jewish. Further, as a Protestant, I find that if I am to be consistent with an identity that challenges the worldwide influence and domination of Roman Christianity, then I must start to uncover what the Christian faith looked like before the domination of Roman Christians.

This journey has lead me to become more tolerant of Christian diversity as I realise that all of us have got it wrong, and no one group has the full 'truth' or authentic 'Christian' traditions. I appreciate from my reading of Jenkins (2010) that Roman and Western Christians' violent domination and subjugation of Eastern Christians also contributed to the rise of Islam. In this regard, I recognise that Islam's rise was partially a reaction against Western Christians violently imposing their own theology on Eastern Christians with different theologies and practices.


In the task of trying to understand more about my spiritual roots I have been reading a number of books, especially those about groups that I am personally acquainted with. I am currently reading a book written about Seventh-day Adventists by some sociologists, which to me is an objective look at the denomination's development. For me, this reading is important because of my path and spiritual journey with God, which found me becoming a member of the church back in my early university days. I feel obligated as a result to thoroughly understand objectively how Seventh-day Adventism developed separate and apart from what the denomination's gate keepers wants the congregants to know. I also want to get the information from a source that is not biased like the ex-Seventh-day Adventists that spew venom in their analysis and research or even other denominational researchers with an agenda.

That said, I find Bull and Lockhart's (2007) an excellent scholarly resource from which to view the Seventh-Day Adventist (SDA) denomination objectively, without the indoctrination. Bull and Lockhart's (2007) book is indeed a good read objectively covering how outsiders viewed the church (including the popular media) as well examine the insiders' experiences, literature and views.

In this post in particular, I want to highlight in particular the 'Pentecostal' experiences in the SDA denomination as presented by Bull and Lockhart's (2007) research.



Those today who visit a Seventh-day Adventist Church will know it as a quiet church. There is no shouting, people falling on the floor or expressing themselves emotionally in worship. Well, I have news for you. In Adventist early history, the church people were more noisy than they are today. In Chapter four in particular of Bull and Lockhart, it is mentioned that the Adventists were once confused with the Shakers and spiritualists. In addition, both Ellen and James White report experiences of praying and falling to the floor or feeling the Holy Spirit come over them. Adventist believers engaged in house prayer sometimes found themselves 'slain in the spirit' according to several accounts documented by Bull and Lockhart (2007). According to Bull and Lockhart (2007), James White in a letter to his wife relates

how, when visiting some believers, "I fell upon my face, and cried and groaned under the power of God. Brethren Sanborn and Ingraham felt about the same. We all lay on the floor under the power of God." (p.77)

 This was not just a one off situation either. Bull and Lockhart (2007) also reports Ellen White describing another situation:

While the larger family of Brother P. were engaged in prayer at their own house, the Spirit of God swept through the room and prostrated the kneeling suppliants. My father came in soon after and found them all both parents and children, helpless under the power of the Lord

I also find a similar typical occurrence in White's (2000) documentation of her experience in Early Writings (p. 12):

That said, it is interesting given this history that in my experience, Jamaican Adventism draws almost hostile lines of distinctions and demarcations from Pentecostals and that Jamaican Pentecostals do the same with Adventists. For me, the evidence points out that we are all coming from the same tree. In fact, Adventism is likely to have 'quenched' the spirit, which is why Pentecostals seem more advanced in the manifestations of Bible miracles and signs.


References:

Bull, M., & Lockhart, K. (2007). Seeking a sanctuary: Seventh-day Adventism and the American dream. 2nd ed. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Jenkins, P. (2010). Jesus wars: How four patriarchs, three queens, and two emperors decided what Christians would believe for the next 1,500 years. NY: HarperCollins.

White, E. G. H. (2000). Early writings. Washington, D.C: Review and Herald Pub Assoc.