Chris Hubbs's Comments

Reclaiming the Mission : Rob Bellâs Frenzy: Why We Need Other Ways to Do Theology and Some Other Off-The-Cuff Observations

Tue, 1 Mar 2011 14:44:27 +0000

No big surprise: the world of popular theology is just as prone to being celebrity-driven as any other realm in our culture. Given that this is probably inevitable, I just pray that we have more "celebrity" leaders who are willing to proceed slowly, thoughtfully, and prayerfully rather than being reactionary.

chrishubbs.com : Homeschooling as "normal"

Fri, 17 Dec 2010 16:58:42 +0000

Geof, I'm all for not homeschooling theoretical kids. It's hard enough homeschooling the actual kids! I'm certain that this is a decision we will revisit many times over the next 18 years. At the moment, Iowa has some good dual-enrollment plans available that could hit a sweet spot for our family. Guess we'll have to see.

chrishubbs.com : Homeschooling as "normal"

Fri, 17 Dec 2010 16:56:12 +0000

Misty, thanks so much for sharing. I'll be the first to admit that I don't have a good perspective from which to comment on the social skills question. My four siblings and I turned out fairly "normal" (IMHO, at least!), but I know plenty of homeschoolers that didn't. Whether our success was as a result of or in spite of our homeschooling, I don't know. I definitely appreciate your hesitancy to be associated with the religiously zealous homeschooling types in your area. (I'm familiar with the type, myself.) I definitely share that hesitancy. I wish I were able to put a community of more "normal" homeschoolers around you there - not to provide pressure to make a similar choice, but only to help provide some assurance that there is such a thing as a non-wacko homeschooling family. :-)

The Lost Entwife : Five Christmas Book Gift Ideas - Picture Books

Thu, 2 Dec 2010 12:49:17 +0000

I've not read Pigeon, but the Elephant and Piggie books are a huge hit with my girls. Laura has taken to reading them and doing voices - lowering her voice for Gerald, then raising it abnormally high and making it really girlie for all of Piggie's lines. I love it!

chrishubbs.com : 15 Records

Tue, 28 Sep 2010 14:04:24 +0000

Yeah, I'm a weird mix of stuff. But it was fun to go through my library and remember these. Time to queue them up and start listening again.

chrishubbs.com : Links for 2010-05-14

Tue, 18 May 2010 00:57:42 +0000

Yeah, Dad, you've got it exactly. Integration is challenging, but is the way forward that truly prepares us for the Kingdom to come. I appreciate this in a much more full-bodied way (forgive the pun) as I come to more fully appreciate the concept of the New Heavens and New Earth as Creation redeemed rather than as some ethereal spiritual plane that I long assumed heaven to be. Time to go back and read Surprised by Hope again. :-)

chrishubbs.com : So, I just invented a new word.

Sun, 9 May 2010 00:25:11 +0000

Well, that, too. :-P

chrishubbs.com : Well, we joined.

Tue, 4 May 2010 01:53:52 +0000

Heh. The EFCA has a fairly short statement of faith compared to the CBA church we came from. This can be, of course, both a strength and a weakness - a strength in that it keeps us from majoring on the minors, but a potential weakness if some particular pastor wants to drive things his particular direction. Having 5 pastors on staff right now, we've got a decent C/A balance, I think. The two newest guys are pretty unabashedly Calvinists, but the senior guy is a Dallas grad - not exactly known as a hotbed of Calvinism. :-) You won't find an Open Theist among them, though, Geof. Sorry. :-)

chrishubbs.com : Staying Organized: What Tools should I Use?

Tue, 13 Apr 2010 21:09:51 +0000

Let me try to expand a bit on my thought, Spencer. Basically, there is a set of data that is relevant to me in my day-to-day work. (Being in project certification now, I deal with a multitude of different projects for small amounts of time. So, lots of small details to keep track of, lots of context switching, and important to keep records.) Sometimes that data is associated with a meeting - at least for the time leading up to that meeting. A meeting may then cause creation of additional notes (data for me to store/reference later), to-dos (needing to be tracked). Sometimes the data comes in with a due date - making it a to-do. I need to track those and make sure I get them done on time. Sometimes that data comes in without a meeting or to-do - it's just information. Regardless of how it comes in or what context is attached to the data, I'd still like to be able to catalog it, tag it by project/product, and store it for later. In as few buckets as possible. And easily accessible both at my workstation and on-the-go.

chrishubbs.com : Links for 2010-03-17

Sat, 27 Mar 2010 18:07:43 +0000

Did you read the whole piece? He isn't saying that Theology is bad, or that theology creates fear. What he says is that IF our theology books and statements claim to be objective truth, or, more directly, if our theologians claim or act as if our theology books and statements are, in and of themselves, objective truth, then they have the power to silence Scripture and those who read it. The challenge is, as he says, to recognize that all statements of theology are, at best, approximations, and "always subject to change and development and correction". Because, let's face it, if they're not subject to change and development and correction, then we've exalted them to the place that only the Scripture deserves.

chrishubbs.com : links for 2010-02-09

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 00:04:41 +0000

Hey bub, so I'm kinda slow in replying to this. But I have a couple thoughts. As to what happens when you hear in class that "science tells us it all comes from nowhere and that God doesn't exist", well, that's just an incorrect statement on the part of the science teacher. Science may "tell us" that things appear to be very old and have evolved. Fine. But science can't tell us that it all comes from "nowhere", and of course science has no way to prove that there is no God. As for your Facts 1 and 2, I am completely in agreement on #1. I'm not in such agreement about #2. There are respected scientists out there who are Christians and would affirm your statement #1 while at the same time pursuing scientific studies that they would say point to an old, evolving universe. Like I said in my original post, I'm not sure where I fall on this one yet. I'm just coming to acknowledge the fact that there are serious, committed believers out there who have put in good, serious study, and have come to the conclusion that believing in a billions-of-years-old evolving universe isn't at odds with the Bible's teaching about God as creator, designer, and sustainer. Which makes me stop to think. Still thinking. :-)

chrishubbs.com : Sometimes knowing too much is a bad thing

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 16:04:51 +0000

I hear ya. See also: movies that include an actor pretending to play an instrument but not even coming close to having their hands in the right places. That's actually one of the reasons I love That Thing You Do so much - even though the actors didn't record the music, they're playing the right chords on their guitars and drumming accurately throughout the show. Makes the movie really work for me.

chrishubbs.com : Partaking "in an unworthy manner"

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 16:45:02 +0000

Thanks, John. That seems so obvious, and yet it's something that the evangelical churches that I've been in seem to have missed. Frankly, there's a bunch of fuzziness surrounding the Lord's Supper in our (lack of) tradition. It verges toward being just something we do from tradition rather than something we do because we really understand what's going on. Or maybe I've just been clueless for thirty years. (It's possible.)

chrishubbs.com : links for 2010-01-13

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 15:21:28 +0000

I think you're pretty much on here, bro, though I'm still working through what I think about the idea of partaking 'in an unworthy manner'. In the context of the chapter, it seems to me more like Paul's "unworthy manner" is talking about those folks who show up early and pig out before everyone has arrived, not those who are potentially unrepentant sinners. As you've noted, we're pretty much all potentially unrepentant sinners at various points in our lives. There's a blog post floating around in my brain that needs to be written on this topic... let's see if I can make it coalesce into something respectably coherent. :-)

chrishubbs.com : links for 2010-01-13

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 15:15:18 +0000

Yeah, that's a typo, I would infer from the rest of his piece that he meant "repentant". Did you read the comment thread after the post? I said pretty much the same thing in the first comment. I like your way of putting it - the first being done in anticipation. You know, feel free to jump in on the comment threads of those blogs, too. :-)

chrishubbs.com : It's the SNOWPOCALYPSE!

Tue, 8 Dec 2009 16:51:20 +0000

Yes, Texas is rather deficient in that regard. (We'll see how Iowa turns out. At this point we have only an inch of snow and dire threats of more.)

chrishubbs.com : Orangeburg

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:47:49 +0000

Yeah, that's our place. It usually doesn't have the backhoe out in front, though. :-P

chrishubbs.com : What Would Jesus Want Us To Think about Healthcare Reform? a Quick Response

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 03:09:17 +0000

You took up the cause nicely over on JT's blog, Ryan. I was surprised by how quickly the debate turned to the political merits of healthcare reform and ran quickly away from the question "what would Jesus do?". OK, so maybe I'm not too surprised. The latter is a lot harder question than the former. :-)

chrishubbs.com : links for 2009-10-06

Wed, 7 Oct 2009 19:20:00 +0000

First off, just for fun, note that neither Mars Hill Church's doctrinal statement nor The Gospel Coalition's Confessional Statement include an assertion of the age of creation. Second, I agree with Driscoll - the Bible is all about Jesus. But I think you're not drawing a fair conclusion with your quote from Luke. Yes, everything written about Jesus in the Law of Moses (Leviticus through Deuteronomy), the Prophets (not gonna name them all) and the Psalms (self-evident) must be fulfilled. But first, the creation account isn't about Jesus. It's about the creation. And secondly, where Jesus does come into that account, namely, in the promise to Eve that her seed will crush the serpent, Jesus did fulfill that. So if you're really going to assert that to understand Jesus and the Gospel you of necessity must believe in a literal Genesis 1, please just understand that in doing so you're writing off a lot of very devout, dedicated Christians throughout history who disagreed with you. Final note: do yourself a favor and when you have some time go read through some more of iMonk's archives. I tend to only link the controversial ones, but if you take the time to get to know him through his writing you will understand that this guy is a serious, thoughtful believer who has devoted his life to teaching the Gospel to young people. He's not someone who should be dismissed lightly. Well, that's plenty for now. Look forward to continuing the conversation!

chrishubbs.com : links for 2009-10-06

Wed, 7 Oct 2009 19:10:28 +0000

I don't think any of us are gonna disagree that yeah, we have to believe that "the Bible means what it says", but we also have to agree that interpretation is needed. We have to use context, genre, etc to understand. That's just inherent in any language-based communication. For instance, I know that your whole 'die on the hill with the trench and bazooka' statement is a metaphor, and that you're not literally looking for a shovel right now. :-) So I think we have to agree that we have to think about what the Bible is trying to tell us, and not just think that we can read every passage literally. I hope that makes sense. To your two questions, which are good questions: 1) I don't think we can get from the Genesis text that the universe came into being over millions of years. But I also don't think that the purpose of Genesis 1 is to be a science textbook - I think the purpose is to tell us that God is the awesome, omnipotent creator of everything. Genesis 1 is setting the basis for the Gospel story that takes the whole Bible to tell. I would assert that whether the creation of Genesis 1 took place over 144 hours some 8000 years ago, or whether the creation took place over some much longer period of time, it doesn't affect the truth of what Genesis 1 is trying to tell us, which is that God created everything out of nothing. 2) So what does the old earth explanation buy us? Well, it helps potentially make sense of all of the science that's been done that really really points to an old universe. Even if you want to write off things like radio carbon dating, etc, it really is reasonable to look at things like the expansion of the universe and conclude that the universe is really old. So if you're going to assert that Genesis 1 has to be read literally, then you have to start coming up with reasons why good science (including a lot of science done by Christians) disagrees, and then you start getting into things that seem kinda silly to me now, like God creating the universe with "apparent age" just to fool us all. I would also point out that in the history of science and Christianity, we've been through this before. Copernicus figured out that the planets rotate around the sun, rather than everything rotating around the earth (as had been previously believed). His scientific discovery (done completely with mathematics and physics, and not with repeatable experiments) was rejected by the Church and those who carried on his work were persecuted by the church for a bunch of years. We just accept it now as the way things are, and we have decided to interpret things like Joshua 10 differently in retrospect. Might we be in the same sort of spot now? Worth thinking about.

Chris Hubbs's Comments

Reclaiming the Mission : Rob Bellâs Frenzy: Why We Need Other Ways to Do Theology and Some Other Off-The-Cuff Observations

chrishubbs.com : Homeschooling as "normal"

chrishubbs.com : Homeschooling as "normal"

The Lost Entwife : Five Christmas Book Gift Ideas - Picture Books

chrishubbs.com : 15 Records

chrishubbs.com : Links for 2010-05-14

chrishubbs.com : So, I just invented a new word.

chrishubbs.com : Well, we joined.

chrishubbs.com : Staying Organized: What Tools should I Use?

chrishubbs.com : Links for 2010-03-17

chrishubbs.com : links for 2010-02-09

chrishubbs.com : Sometimes knowing too much is a bad thing

chrishubbs.com : Partaking "in an unworthy manner"

chrishubbs.com : links for 2010-01-13

chrishubbs.com : links for 2010-01-13

chrishubbs.com : It's the SNOWPOCALYPSE!

chrishubbs.com : Orangeburg

chrishubbs.com : What Would Jesus Want Us To Think about Healthcare Reform? a Quick Response

chrishubbs.com : links for 2009-10-06

chrishubbs.com : links for 2009-10-06

Reclaiming the Mission : Rob Bellâs Frenzy: Why We Need Other Ways to Do Theology and Some Other Off-The-Cuff Observations