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  • 25 Random Things About Matt

25 Random Things About Matt

Hey! Welcome to Logos Made Flesh.

My name is Matthew Scott Miller. But you can call me Matt.

I started this blog in 2006 with the aim of exploring the relationship between faith and culture. Many of the ideas and issues I address have grown out of my love of movies (a.k.a storytelling) and the Bible, particularly the Gospel of John.  My two passions have come closest together in this short video I put together called The Longing of Man.

What is “Logos Made Flesh”?

The name of my blog is taken from John 1:14. I think it accurately captures all that I want to do here.

John says, “And the Word (Greek: logos) became flesh… (1:14)”  By this He means the infinite, invisible, intangible God became a person you and I could touch and see.  “No one has ever seen God,” he says.  A fact we know all too well.  But he goes on to say that Jesus, “the only begotten God… has explained Him” or “made Him known” (1:18).  Jesus physical presence revealed what we could not grasp with our senses.  In Jesus we SEE God!

Such sight isn’t simply a neat experience.  It’s transformative.  Like the opened eyes of a blind man, IT CHANGES EVERYTHING.  It shapes us into the image that we see!

Hear what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3:18

But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.

By SEEING God we are refashioned into the perfect image of God – the image that was broken and marred in the fall.

The Word made flesh is the goal of all biblical interpretation.   Throughout the ages, priests, pastors and preaches have attempted to explain the Word of God, to flesh it out and apply it to our daily lives.  In the process of hearing and seeing the Word en-fleshed, we like Jesus become the living symbols of God’s presence in this world.  Jesus has given us the Spirit so that in us the world might see God.

Where to Begin?

Here are some of Logos Made Flesh’s most popular posts.

Some of my posts have also been featured in others blogs.

Four Reasons I write

To Teach. 

In the movie Chariots of Fire, Eric Liddell says, “God made me fast and when I run I feel His pleasure.”   Now replace the word “fast” with “teacher and “run” with “teach” you’ll know how I feel about teaching.  There’s NOTHING I feel more delight in doing than communicating God’s word to people.

But teaching requires students and that’s where I have a problem.  I don’t make a living teaching and I only occasionally get the opportunity to speak.  Writing becomes my means to release the overwhelming compulsion building in me.

To Learn.

Teaching and learning for me go hand in hand. The great Roman philosopher Seneca noted that “while we teach, we learn.”   When I teach through writing I get to wrestle with a subject and in the process I become more intimately aquinted with it.

To Clarify.

Writing allows for editing.  Some ideas seem great inside my head but they lack clarity when expressed.  I think Winnie-the-Pooh said it best,

When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.

Writing offers me the chance to see those confused thoughts and fix them before anyone has the chance to misunderstand.

 To Remember.

“The palest ink is stronger than the best memory” says a Chinese proverb.  Spoken words are easily forgotten but the written word endures.  I’ve said and thought many good things over the years but the ones I’m most likely to remember are the ones I’ve logged here in this blog.

Four Things I Aim to Do With Every Post

Surprise

We cease to be aware of things familiar to us.  Routine, or what Samuel Coleridge called the “The film of familiarity,” constantly closes our eyes to things around us.  Continued exposure to the same truths break down our senses to them.  While we may know something in a cognitive sense we cease to be fully aware of it.  Kind of like a routine drive to work.  But surprise frees our senses from the power of routine and causes to once again look with fresh eyes at what we previously took for granted.  Jesus understood this.  Note for instance how he masterfully twists his audiences cliched stereotypes in the story of the Good Samaritan.  Surprise is a true delight and I delight in offering true surprise.

Incite

Surprise is also essential to jokes.  We laugh when we discover a twist from our expectation.  “I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather.. Not screaming and yelling like the passengers in his car.”  Ba dum chhhh.  I love to laugh but the surprise I’m aiming for has a much higher purpose than laughter.  It’s designed, like Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan, to incite you to further reflection.  Is it true?  And if it is true what does it mean for me and what I believe?

Inform

I’m a busy person so I like blogs that have factual content and get right to the point.  I love listening to stories but I don’t particularly enjoy reading them and so I typically don’t offer personal stories without a point.  This story is of course a rare exception.  I aim to offer overlooked information you can use in you’re study of God’s word and in you’re conversations with others.

Inspire

Bottom line: I want you to be inspired and motivated to study the Bible more deeply and pursue God more passionately.  If I’ve turned you off to either one of these things I am truly sorry.  For some my spice is too hot but for others its too mild.  I want you to know that my deepest desire is to see you more fully equipped and delighting in the God who both created and saved us.

How You Can Be a Part

If you’ve at all enjoyed this blog I invite you to join and share.  Here’s five ways you can do that.

  1. Comment!
  2. Like Logos Made Flesh Page on Facebook
  3. Subscribe to this blog via RSS Feeder
  4. Subscribe to the blog by email
  5. Following me on Twitter
  6. Share the posts you like on twitter, Facebook, wordpress, Pinterest, Google+ or email via the buttons at the bottom of each post.

If your still wondering about me, here are 25 utterly random things you could probably do without

  1. I’ve had my wedding day and I’ve seen each of my four children born, but the happiest day of my life is still being baptized in the Holy Spirit June 31, 1991 at the age of 13.
  2. I know God has blessed me with my wife. After five girlfriends in the course of my eighth grade year, I dedicated two years without a relationship to the Lord. At the end of that time, I started dating Tami Shipman, my first and only girlfriend after that time.
  3. I won a male beauty pageant, “Mr. Camas”, my freshman year of high school.
  4. I love to swim.
  5. I twist my hair if it gets long enough and or I’m stressed about anything. In fourth grade I got my finger stuck and pulled out a big clump.
  6. I like to think I can write but as of yet I haven’t written anything substantial. I have three major writing projects that I want to write, two screenplays and a book; Ancient of Days: a script about Christ’s harrowing of hell, John Brown’s Body: a script dealing with the question if abortion is murder are we justified in killing the murder and The Spiritual Gospel: a book uncovering the gospel of John’s hidden significance.
  7. I once had a naked woman smear her menstrual blood on me in a fight at the Clark County Jail. Remember I’m a Corrections Deputy – not an inmate.
  8. I have a degree in Social Science with a minor in Biblical Studies from Biola University in La Mirada California.
  9. I have two major regrets in my life. One was never attending Jerusalem University when I had my place and plane ticket ready to go. The second was resigning as youth pastor from Peoples Church. Although I believe I choose the better path in both instances I still would like to go back and try the other.
  10. While I don’t often get depressed, I still tend towards pessimism and doubt.
  11. I wish I enjoyed things like sports and cars instead of things like ancient history and classical literature. I think I’d have an easier time starting conversations with men.
  12. I always have a book in my face but I rarely finish one.
  13. I love to travel. If I didn’t have to make a living, I’d climb in RV with my family and drive across the United States.
  14. I’ve been to three countries outside the United States: Canada, Mexico and Israel.
  15. My favorite novel is Byzantium by Stephen Lawhead. It tells the story of young Irish monk in the 8th century who is selected to travel to Byzantium in order to present the Roman emperor with the book of Kells. On the Journey, however, everything goes wrong. He is captured by Vikings; his friends are betrayed by Christians and enslaved by Muslims. Although he makes it to Byzantium and helps to rescue his friends, he looses his faith and ultimately returns to Ireland a changed man. There in his home monastery, however, his faith in Christ is restored and he becomes a missionary to the Northman.
  16. I smoked grass once. I’ll never do it again. Lawn clippings rolled up in newspaper don’t seem to have the same mellowing effects on me that they do on other people.
  17. I don’t function well on anything less than eight hours of sleep.
  18. My first car was a Ford Ranger pickup truck. It had a nice new paint job but the engine leaked oil. After spending all my money to fix the head gasket three times, I learned a valuable life lesson. It’s better to have a car that runs than one that looks nice.
  19. I’ve worked behind the scenes at Disneyland.
  20. I was voted “most likely to change the world” my senior year of High School.
  21. Ice-cream is so good I think it wards off cancer. That’s why I make sure to have a bowl of it every night before I go to bed. Note: I never said it helps you lose weight.
  22. Although I wanted to, I was never able to cut the umbilical cord of any of my four children.
  23. I think the coolest present I ever received was the original Nintendo Entertainment System given to me by my parents on my ninth birthday. I was the first person I knew to get one.
  24. I’ve learned the most in my life by doing.
  25. I once drank the collective spit of a van load of people. It goes without saying I sometimes have a problem with dares.

You can contact me at logosmadeflesh@gmail.com. You can also friend me on my Facebook page