This quarter on campus, we have been studying biblical manhood and womanhood. I’ve been challenged by the unique and different ways that God has created men and women. These last few weeks, we’ve talked about dating, relationships, and marriage. Dating can be a lot of things but there are probably some things we should avoid trying to accomplish through it (e.g., evangelism). Eugene Tseng sent me a strip from a comic called, “Max vs. Max” to illustrate (click to zoom):
I knew a guy named Ed Yip, whom I met in UCSD. Since I graduated before Ed came to school, I didn’t really spend much time with him but the few occasions I met the guy, he was a crackup. Closer friends of his seem to affirm that sentiment. Today, I stumbled upon his comic blog. The banner reads, “Third grade level art meets infinity level humor.” Hahaha. He takes Christian and church-related themes and composes funny comic strips from them that he’s named “One SidED.” Here’s one I liked, entitled, “Crazy, BeautiFOOL.” It’s a nice commentary on Christian dating. Enjoy!
For more, see here.
A laugh out loud moment while reading through Kevin DeYoung’s new book on decision-making and the will of God, entitled, Just Do Something. While speaking about the importance of personal accountability in the decisions we make as Christians, DeYoung brings up a common example of where the “will of God” is used as a scapegoat in deflecting personal responsibility:
I’ll never forget my poor beleaguered roommate talking with me after he took a risk and told a nice young lady that he liked her. They went on a long walk. He was pretty sure she would reciprocate his declaration of affection. But it turned out she wasn’t interested. She was a sweet girl, a good Christian. She didn’t mean to have bad theology. But instead of just saying, ‘I’m not interested’ or ‘I don’t like you’ or ‘Quit stalking me’ or something, she went all spiritual on him. ‘I’ve been praying a lot about you,’ she demurred, ‘and the Holy Spirit told me no.’ ‘No?’ my confused roommate asked. ‘No…never,’ she replied.
Poor guy–he got rejected, not only by this sweet girl, but by the Holy Spirit. The third person of the Trinity took a break from pointing people to Jesus to tell this girl not to date my roommate. I didn’t know that was in the Spirit’s job description. But I bet at any Christian school there are scores of men and women blaming God for their breakups.
So true. I knew a brother some time ago who had been interested in getting to know a girl better in a dating context. Finally working up enough courage to reveal his true feelings, the young lady told him that he’d have to wait while she, “prayed about it.”
I told him to tell her, “I already did and God said, ‘Yes.’”
Eventually, we’ll just learn to be more up front and direct when making our decisions. Of course, that isn’t to say that prayer and godly counsel aren’t vital parts of making decisions. In fact, quite the opposite. But I have a feeling that we’re just making it more complicated than it needs to be.
I appreciated DeYoung’s treatment of the topic of God’s will and decision-making. The full title of the book is, Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God’s Will or How to Make a Decision Without Dreams, Visions, Fleeces, Impressions, Open Doors, Random Bible Verses, Casting Lots, Liver Shivers, Writing in the Sky, Etc. As you can probably note from the extended title, the book attempts to circumvent the ambiguity involved in knowing God’s will for our lives with helpful suggestions on how to go about discovering it (it’s more straightforward than you probably think). For those who have read John MacArthur’s pamphlet, “Found: God’s Will,” it’s similar in content with the added wit and humor that is typical of DeYoung, making not only informative, but a pleasant read as well. I thoroughly recommend it.
