Happy (Good) Friday,
Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Paul, Romans 5:7f
On this Good Friday, it’s worth asking yourself if what you’re living for offers you the same level of commitment that Jesus does. Careers promise security. Material possessions present themselves as paths to comfort and peace. But have any of these things died for you? God-substitutes – i.e., idols – over-promise and under-deliver until they take everything and deliver nothing. Not so with Jesus. On this day, his commitment to you is a matter of record.
Don’t Believe It: In recent years, some have claimed that the Penal Substitutionary Theory of the Atonement is “Cosmic Child Abuse.” Nonsense. While the other atonement theories – e.g., Christus Victor, Moral Influence, Ransom, Mystical, etc. – help us understand all that Christ’s death accomplishes, the idea that Christ bore the wrath of God against our sin (i.e., the Penal Substitutionary view) is central. Is it scandalous? Absolutely. Is it “Cosmic Child Abuse?” Not at all. Jesus was very clear that he willingly lay down his life for us.
A Great Good Friday Hymn: If you’re looking for a great Good Friday hymn, let me suggest All Sufficient Merit by Shane and Shane.
–––––––––––––––
Do you enjoy The Friday Update? Forward this one to someone else who’d enjoy it too!
–––––––––––––––
Apologies: Congrats to the three percent of you who got last week’s April Fool’s joke, and apologies to the 97 percent of you – including my mother-in-law – who missed the humor. If you set your clocks ahead – or believed that Sheri and I were going to spend Holy Week throwing oranges at each other in Italy – I’m sorry. To make it up to you, I’m including this important announcement from UVA.
More Moore?: Last month, Gordon Moore, one of the founders of Intel – and the one after whom Moore’s Law was named – passed away. (For the uninitiated, his law was named after his 1965 suggestion that during the next few decades, computers would double in power and drop in price every 18-24 months.) Some hold that per Moore’s definition, Moore’s Law is no more. That may be technically true, but we’d be wrong to think the tech revolution is slowing down. As reference: Apple has released more than 30 ever-more-sophisticated iPhones in the last fifteen years, and it’s likely that the laptop you now use has more memory than the combined total of all computers in the late 1960s.
Ugh: A few weeks back, I had a chance to chat with Charlie Duke – an Apollo astronaut and one of the four remaining men to walk on the moon. (You can watch my 2021 interview with Duke here). What is the 87-year-old Duke up to? “I spend more time than you’d think trying to persuade people that the moon landings were not faked and that the earth is not flat.”
A New News Rule: Late last year I set out five News Rules: 1) Start your day with the Bible NOT the news; 2) When it comes to the news, less is more; 3) Be skeptical of what you hear, especially if it confirms your biases; 4) Pay for your news; and 5) Think local. I am returning to the five to double down on number three. Things often seem worse than they are because both the radical left and the radical right emphasize the comments of the other side’s lunatic fringe. We do well to realize that while the actions and statements of the most extreme players are real, they do not represent the majority.
WOTW: As tempted as I am to list the words I think we should be seeing more of – e.g., Cold War – I select WOTW nominees from those I run across in print or are sent in by you. This week’s honorable mention accolades go to: Rak Chazak (a Jewish war cry), death-assigned gender (a term used in articles about Nashville shooter, Audrey Hale), sisu (a Finnish word meaning “a grim determination in the face of hardships,”) and reality-crisis. WOTW honors goes to double imputation. Yes, there is a lot of crazymaking going on out there, but your day should be most profoundly shaped by this truth: Not only are our sins imputed to Christ, but his righteousness is also imputed to us.
–––––––––––––––
Did someone forward you The Friday Update? Sign yourself up here.
–––––––––––––––
Quote Worth Requoting: “If Christ is risen, nothing else matters. And if Christ is not risen – nothing else matters.” Jaroslav Pelikan, Yale historian of intellectual history.
Resources: Last week I interviewed Jordan “Gorf” Gorfinkel of DC Comics fame. For ten years, Gorf oversaw DC Comics – including the Batman franchise. He recently released The Koren Tanakh Graphic Novel: Esther. Initial sales have been so promising that Koren signed him to a contract to turn all 24 books of the Hebrew Bible into graphic novels. You can listen here.
24 = 39 = 66?: BTW, if you’re wondering how Gorf can turn “all 24 books of the Bible” into graphic novels, when there are 66 books in the Bible: 1) He is referring to the Jewish Scriptures – i.e., the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, the First Testament, etc.; and 2) He mentions 24 not 39 (the number of books in our Old Testament) because the Hebrew Bible does not divide the books of Samuel, Kings or Chronicles into two (as Christians do), and they combine all 12 of the minor prophets into one book.
Without Comment: 1) One of the reasons Israel’s population is rising faster than that of other developed countries is because antisemitism is forcing them to flee other countries; 2) The word Lord is the most frequently repeated noun – and the 14th most frequently repeated word – in the Bible. It shows up more than: they, be, is, not, him, them, it, with, and was; 3) UFC and WWE are combining to form a publicly traded company (stock ticker TKO) that has been valued at $21B; 4) The $30M spent on the race for the WI supreme court election suggests that juristsare becoming legislators (which is not a good thing); 5) Gallup reports that loneliness levels in the U.S. are dropping from pandemic highs; 6) Chick-fil-A – which makes almost double in revenue per location what a McDonald’s location makes – has an acceptance rate for operators lower than Stanford; 7) Given the high price of eggs, some people are choosing to hide colored Easter potatoes this year; 8) This much discussed interview between NYT journalist Kevin Roose and Microsoft’s Bing Chatbot is one of the more unsettling things I’ve read in a long time.
Closing Prayer: Good God, may we confess your name to the end. May we emerge unsullied and glorious from the traps and dark powers of this world. As you have bound us together in love and peace, and as, together, we have persevered through times of hardship, may we also rejoice together in your heavenly kingdom. Amen. (Cyprian of Carthage 200-258)