Christian Faculty and Staff Fellowship meets November 14

Come to the Christian Faculty Network lunch meeting on Wednesday, November 14 at 11:45 AM (done by 12:45 PM). We meet at the Baptist Campus Ministries building (University Boulevard and 4th Avenue). 

So 11/14 is National Pickle Day. I relish the thought at this sweet dill we have for you! You can get lunch at the Baptist Campus Ministries building for $1 thanks to the generosity of local churches. Don't forget to thank the church workers for what they do for the students. Will they have pickles on the menu? If they don't, it will be a jarring experience! 

No meeting next week, 11/21. Then we'll hear from Jennifer Waddell, Athletes in Action, thanks to Phil Bishop.

Our last meeting of the term will be on 12/5. 

We'll start wrapping up Keller's book, The Prodigal God and recap what he had to say about being the older brother. Here are some articles that echo what Keller had to say:

• https://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/the-story-of-two-older-brothers/
• Disobedience seemed to be rewarded and obedience seemed to go unrewarded.
• He did not see that he was indeed just that selfish, arrogant, and ungrateful. He did not see himself as a fellow sinner to his brother.
• Notice he did not call him “my brother” when he spoke to their father. He called him “this son of yours” (v. 30).
• The graceless service of the self-righteous person is more hard duty than it is a joyful service in thanksgiving.
• I was the self-righteous older brother. I know personally how self-righteousness ravages the soul. What changed me? I finally saw that Jesus on the cross was my elder brother, dying not for the righteous but for sinners.

That elder brother watched his father mourn over the son who had gone astray. But he did not go after him for his father. He was not there when his brother’s funds were depleted. He was not there when his younger sibling hit bottom. He was not there at the swine trough, saying, “Come on, brother, let’s go home.”

What did Jesus say over and over again? “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10).

• http://www.nwcatholic.org/voices/commentary/prodigal-son-older-brother.html
• It’s part of the universal struggle to age without bitterness and anger.
• We spend the first half of our lives wrestling with the Sixth Commandment and spend the last half of our lives wrestling with the Fifth Commandment: Thou shalt not kill!
• Aging without bitterness and anger is in fact our final struggle, psychologically and spiritually.
• …the central character of this story is not the prodigal son but the father, and the central message of the text is his over-generous mercy.
• Now there’s an older brother of this sort in all of us.
• We see it, for instance, in the fierce resistance many wonderfully faithful, churchgoing Christians express apposite certain people receiving Communion at the Eucharist.
• But we need to ask ourselves that with sympathy.
• We aren’t bad persons; it’s just that a certain bitter moralizing is an occupational hazard for us.
• Still we need to ask ourselves these hard questions, for our own sake, lest, blind to ourselves, we become the older brother of the prodigal son.
• We can be faithful, upright morally, duty-bound, churchgoing Christians, preaching the Gospel to others and, at the same time, carry inside of ourselves an anger, a bitterness and an unconscious envy of the amoral which has us standing outside the house of celebration, blocked from entry because we are angry at how wide and indiscriminate is our own God’s embrace.
• But that weakness and bipolarity have already been taken into account.
• The story of the prodigal son ends, not with the father’s joy at the return of his sinful son, but with the father at the door of the house, gently pleading with his older son to give up his bitterness and enter the dance.
• We don’t know how that story ends, but, given God’s jealous love and infinite patience, there’s little reason to doubt that eventually the older brother entered the house and sat down at table with his prodigal brother.
• https://vimeo.com/221318239 (there are other videos giving the other points of view)

 What opportunities have come our way to be a better older brother? How do we show mercy and also say "Go and sin no more"?

• John 8:10-11. Then Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are your accusers? Has no one condemned you?” 11“No one, Lord,” she answered. “Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Now go and sin no more.”

 Next semester's book: Love Your God with All Your Mind: The Role of Reason in the Life of the Soul by J.P. Moreland (NavPress, 2011). The title is linked to Amazon. Make sure to get the 2012 version. It's an updated version of the book from 1997. Moreland makes the case for the intellectual appeal and rigor of Christianity. It has a cultural, worldview, and apologetics outlook and is relevant to us who want to be salt and light in the groves of academe. The book can be a basis for other readings we would do. 

Today in the history of our faith:

• 1941 Intervarsity Christian Fellowship was incorporated in Chicago.
• 1990 Malcolm Muggeridge died. Known for his criticism of the media and unique approach to apologetics, he became a Christian at age 60 and then joined the Catholic church at age 79. His coverage of Mother Teresa made her a world figure.