....and Mike is now with him.
See you on the flip-side buddy.
Showing posts with label Christianity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christianity. Show all posts
Monday, April 13, 2009
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
This happens alot to me....
Maybe all the time actually.
I can't figure out why some things become such a huge deal before legitmacy is proved.
Maybe I am missing something. And I know my bias comes out in these types of things, but nothing has appeared with these types of news stories to make me regret showing bias. Actually, there's been nothing, ever, at all to make me re-think my bias in these situations. That, as the media purports will happen, has my faith been shaken and rocked to its core. Everytime these things prove to be fakes, frauds, or were completely misinterpretted.
James Ossuary (Or "Loss Tomb of Jesus)? - Fake
Gospel of Judas? - Grossly embrassing for National Geographic
Tomb of Jesus? - That was the same thing as the James Ossuary, and yet, it made it's way back to the forefront under a different name and had the backing of "famous" people like James Tabor and James Cameron. Books, TV shows, etc., etc., etc. Big oops on that one
So why keep going?
So, why is Dan Brown-esque hysteria allowed to happen?
So, what am I missing with the newest discovery that, get this, goes from having no evidence at all to almost no evidence at all that Messianic resurection was an option.
There are elements in the Jesus story -- and in other stories in the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament) -- that have analogues in other traditions. If this new discovery proves to be exactly what some think it is, so what? How does that falsify the resurrection of Jesus? It certainly makes it easier to believe that the Jesus cultists, so to speak, made it all up. But couldn't you say the same thing about the messianic prophecies in the Hebrew Bible -- that Jesus's followers, knowing about the prophecies as part of the Jewish tradition, adapted the story of their Lord's life and death and resurrection to fit those prophecies? I mean, if you're determined to disbelieve, there are plenty of reasons to disbelieve. And if,like me, you're determined to believe, material evidence doesn't much matter, does it? Especially when that material evidence continues to fall short time and time again.
My reaction to this latest news is, "Ho hum." But maybe I fail to grasp its true significance. What say you?
I can't figure out why some things become such a huge deal before legitmacy is proved.
Maybe I am missing something. And I know my bias comes out in these types of things, but nothing has appeared with these types of news stories to make me regret showing bias. Actually, there's been nothing, ever, at all to make me re-think my bias in these situations. That, as the media purports will happen, has my faith been shaken and rocked to its core. Everytime these things prove to be fakes, frauds, or were completely misinterpretted.
James Ossuary (Or "Loss Tomb of Jesus)? - Fake
Gospel of Judas? - Grossly embrassing for National Geographic
Tomb of Jesus? - That was the same thing as the James Ossuary, and yet, it made it's way back to the forefront under a different name and had the backing of "famous" people like James Tabor and James Cameron. Books, TV shows, etc., etc., etc. Big oops on that one
So why keep going?
So, why is Dan Brown-esque hysteria allowed to happen?
So, what am I missing with the newest discovery that, get this, goes from having no evidence at all to almost no evidence at all that Messianic resurection was an option.
There are elements in the Jesus story -- and in other stories in the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament) -- that have analogues in other traditions. If this new discovery proves to be exactly what some think it is, so what? How does that falsify the resurrection of Jesus? It certainly makes it easier to believe that the Jesus cultists, so to speak, made it all up. But couldn't you say the same thing about the messianic prophecies in the Hebrew Bible -- that Jesus's followers, knowing about the prophecies as part of the Jewish tradition, adapted the story of their Lord's life and death and resurrection to fit those prophecies? I mean, if you're determined to disbelieve, there are plenty of reasons to disbelieve. And if,like me, you're determined to believe, material evidence doesn't much matter, does it? Especially when that material evidence continues to fall short time and time again.
My reaction to this latest news is, "Ho hum." But maybe I fail to grasp its true significance. What say you?
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Darwinmania!!!!!
I found this New York Times column zooming around some other blogs and found it to be an interesting look at Charles Darwin and the likely festivities that will surround two important anniversaries soon to be celebrated. And what better group of people to discuss this than all 2 of you:
The author goes on to explain just why Darwin, who wasn't the first to think of natural selection either, deserves the parties that will be held in his honor; and I'd tend to agree, for the most part.
As a Creationist, you'd think I'd have problems with Darwin's theories. Kinda, sort of. Call it riding the fence if you will. But here is the best way I can explain it:
I believe that God made the world and everything in it (I wasn't around during this time, so I really can't speak to the timeline or how long it took God to do all of this); I believe that He directly created the souls not only of the first two fully human creatures on Earth, but that He continues this act of direct creation of the souls of every human being in existence. In other words, the human body may have been formed by evolution (but not from monkeys or even "neanderthal" as in the stereotypical thought that enters everyone's mind when I said neanderthal), but the immortal soul of every human being is not something which developed naturally, or exists as a naturally occurring characteristic of the material existence of humans.
The real conflict between religion and science often comes about when science claims that the ability to demonstrate certain empirical truths automatically disproves the existence of the non-material. This is no less true for the various debates that have arisen about ideas based on Darwin's observations than it has been for other similar conflicts. Those followers of Darwin who say that evolution and natural selection prove that there is no God, as man no longer requires a Creator, or that there is no immortal soul, as such a thing could hardly have evolved and can't be empirically observed anyway, are stepping outside the bounds of science and into metaphysics, where by definition they have no business; the tools of empiricism are useless in the realm of the transcendent realities.
But the strict empiricist doesn't believe that there are transcendent realities. All is physical, all is observable, all is the result of brain chemistry or hormones or the twirl and dance of deoxyribonucleic acid. Love isn't a many-splendored thing, but the predictable and combined result of proximity, the observable qualities of the other that strike the observer's eye as desirable, and the activity of certain physical and chemical processes; beauty may not be in the eye of the beholder, but what does it matter so long as the proper hormonal response is achieved?
And hate is in the gut--literally--and crime located somewhere in the glandular systems, and free will is an illusion that we've evolved to believe in because otherwise the sheer randomness and preprogrammed nature of our choices would drive us to despair--or, at least, to whatever physical/chemical combination "despair" really is.
So for the empiricist, any talk of God being involved in the creation of the world, even if religious believers are quite willing to entertain the notion that it pleased God to set evolution in motion (provided we retain our beliefs about the soul, which the strictest empiricists don't believe in anyway) still isn't acceptable. For certain people whose beliefs in non-creation and the non-Creator are inextricably tied to their beliefs about science and about all of reality, this is not a compromise they can live with--it seems as though they must convert believers to their non-belief, so ardently do they insist that evolution proves that God is not.
It does no such thing, of course. And I can't help but wonder just what sort of biochemical impulses the strict empiricist-evolutionist blames for his unhappiness with the whole notion.
The party is about to begin.
In a week or so, the trumpets will sound, heralding the start of 18 months of non-stop festivities in honor of Charles Darwin. July 1, 2008, is the 150th anniversary of the first announcement of his discovery of natural selection, the main driving force of evolution. Since 2009 is the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth (Feb. 12), as well as being the 150th anniversary of the publication of his masterpiece, "On the Origin of Species" (Nov. 24), the extravaganza is set to continue until the end of next year. Get ready for Darwin hats, t-shirts, action figures, naturally selected fireworks and evolving chocolates. Oh, and lots of books and speeches.
But hold on. Does he deserve all this? He wasn't, after all, the first person to suggest that evolution happens. For example, his grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, speculated about it towards the end of the 18th century; at the beginning of the 19th, the great French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck made a strong case for it. Lamarck, however, failed to be generally persuasive because he didn't have a plausible mechanism -- he could see that evolution takes place, but he didn't know how. That had to wait until the discovery of natural selection.
The author goes on to explain just why Darwin, who wasn't the first to think of natural selection either, deserves the parties that will be held in his honor; and I'd tend to agree, for the most part.
As a Creationist, you'd think I'd have problems with Darwin's theories. Kinda, sort of. Call it riding the fence if you will. But here is the best way I can explain it:
I believe that God made the world and everything in it (I wasn't around during this time, so I really can't speak to the timeline or how long it took God to do all of this); I believe that He directly created the souls not only of the first two fully human creatures on Earth, but that He continues this act of direct creation of the souls of every human being in existence. In other words, the human body may have been formed by evolution (but not from monkeys or even "neanderthal" as in the stereotypical thought that enters everyone's mind when I said neanderthal), but the immortal soul of every human being is not something which developed naturally, or exists as a naturally occurring characteristic of the material existence of humans.
The real conflict between religion and science often comes about when science claims that the ability to demonstrate certain empirical truths automatically disproves the existence of the non-material. This is no less true for the various debates that have arisen about ideas based on Darwin's observations than it has been for other similar conflicts. Those followers of Darwin who say that evolution and natural selection prove that there is no God, as man no longer requires a Creator, or that there is no immortal soul, as such a thing could hardly have evolved and can't be empirically observed anyway, are stepping outside the bounds of science and into metaphysics, where by definition they have no business; the tools of empiricism are useless in the realm of the transcendent realities.
But the strict empiricist doesn't believe that there are transcendent realities. All is physical, all is observable, all is the result of brain chemistry or hormones or the twirl and dance of deoxyribonucleic acid. Love isn't a many-splendored thing, but the predictable and combined result of proximity, the observable qualities of the other that strike the observer's eye as desirable, and the activity of certain physical and chemical processes; beauty may not be in the eye of the beholder, but what does it matter so long as the proper hormonal response is achieved?
And hate is in the gut--literally--and crime located somewhere in the glandular systems, and free will is an illusion that we've evolved to believe in because otherwise the sheer randomness and preprogrammed nature of our choices would drive us to despair--or, at least, to whatever physical/chemical combination "despair" really is.
So for the empiricist, any talk of God being involved in the creation of the world, even if religious believers are quite willing to entertain the notion that it pleased God to set evolution in motion (provided we retain our beliefs about the soul, which the strictest empiricists don't believe in anyway) still isn't acceptable. For certain people whose beliefs in non-creation and the non-Creator are inextricably tied to their beliefs about science and about all of reality, this is not a compromise they can live with--it seems as though they must convert believers to their non-belief, so ardently do they insist that evolution proves that God is not.
It does no such thing, of course. And I can't help but wonder just what sort of biochemical impulses the strict empiricist-evolutionist blames for his unhappiness with the whole notion.
Monday, March 31, 2008
So, is God still judging America?
Thanks to the 4 people who voted and the 3 who left comments (I'm sure those 3 also voted) on whether or not you think God is still judging the nations. I know I have more readers than that so maybe I should have included a "I do not know" option so you could have added to the conversation.
Even with the small response here at MP, the conversation has continued offline on this whole God still judging the nations discussion. As a result, this interesting question has raised it's ugly head.
In Romans, we are commanded to obey our government. As such, were our forefathers very, very wrong to engage in the Revolution? Afterall, it was an uprising against the government resulting in war? Which resulted in a complete over turn of said government.
So, was the Revolution wrong in God's eyes?
Is God still judging America for those actions?
Leave some comments, vote in the poll and let's see what we all think about this.
Even with the small response here at MP, the conversation has continued offline on this whole God still judging the nations discussion. As a result, this interesting question has raised it's ugly head.
In Romans, we are commanded to obey our government. As such, were our forefathers very, very wrong to engage in the Revolution? Afterall, it was an uprising against the government resulting in war? Which resulted in a complete over turn of said government.
So, was the Revolution wrong in God's eyes?
Is God still judging America for those actions?
Leave some comments, vote in the poll and let's see what we all think about this.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
God's Judgement on the Nation cont....
Wouldn't you know it........
Following a reference from one of my buddies in response to reading "God's Judgement on the Nation" he lead me to a couple resources he knew of that would perhaps answer some of the questions I proposed in that post.
The issue came up not long ago in an Mars Hill Audio Journal interview with Prof. Steven Keillor, author of a book called "God's Judgment." Unfortunately, if you click on the link you have to pay for the podcast or other form of media you'd like to use to hear it. I didn't get to hear the podcast but was given the highlights and the following link with an excerpt from a critical but largely favorable review of the Keillor book, which appeared in Books & Culture and was written by Prof. Brad Gregory of Notre Dame:
I won't get into the details of Keillor's theory of how we can discern God's purposes in historical events -- the B&C review does this nicely. Bible Girl's column, though, was a good reminder as to how rarely many of us serious Christians ever think about God's judgment with regard to national events -- and how unbiblical that is. In the Mars Hill interview, Keillor explicitly discusses the temptation to read divine purposes into the events after the fact, or perhaps to justify wars and other events. But just because it's common for people to do such a thing doesn't mean that we should dismiss entirely the idea that God uses dramatic events to chastise nations and to teach them something about their behavior.
We all remember Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson's pronouncement right after the 9/11 attacks that the event was God's judgment on America brought about because of the actions of the abortionists and gays. When I heard that, I was enraged and furious. Some time later, though, I had to confront the possibility that they were right, that the events of that day were, in some sense, permitted by God as a judgment upon America. I think that given the symbolic power of the attacks, a far stronger case can be made that if -- if -- the God of the Bible intended those attacks as a judgment, the symbolic meaning of the targets would lead us to conclude that He was trying to teach us a lesson about the corrupting power of wealth and materialism (the Twin Towers), and about American militarism (the Pentagon). That interpretation wouldn't suit the political purposes of the Revs. Falwell and Robertson, but it makes a lot more sense to me. See the difference?
It seems to me no bad thing for American Christians to think more rigorously about how our nation measures up to the Biblical standard, and how God might be speaking to us collectively through historical events to call us back to obedience and fidelity. We so often assume that our national aspirations and intentions are consonant with the Almighty's, and that's a profoundly hubristic assumption. So many US Christians support the idea that spreading liberal democracy is a fulfillment of the Great Commission, a sort of divine "mission civilisatrice " for the world, that we don't even stop to consider how God might see what we do. Even the Chosen People fell away from the divine will, and suffered for it. Why shouldn't we?
In the Mars Hill interview, Keillor said that one reason we modern Americans are uncomfortable thinking about interpreting history in this way is that we are opposed to the idea of collective guilt. We judge individuals, not groups, in our legal system. We expect God's judgment to conform to that model. But insofar as the Bible is a reliable testimony of God's literal historical dealings with humanity, we are imposing our own model on Him, and it's baseless. He does judge nations. Neither the United States nor righteous Americans are immune.
So: laugh at Bible Girl if you want to, but whether or not you agree with her conclusion, she's standing on firm Biblical ground in asking the right questions.
Following a reference from one of my buddies in response to reading "God's Judgement on the Nation" he lead me to a couple resources he knew of that would perhaps answer some of the questions I proposed in that post.
The issue came up not long ago in an Mars Hill Audio Journal interview with Prof. Steven Keillor, author of a book called "God's Judgment." Unfortunately, if you click on the link you have to pay for the podcast or other form of media you'd like to use to hear it. I didn't get to hear the podcast but was given the highlights and the following link with an excerpt from a critical but largely favorable review of the Keillor book, which appeared in Books & Culture and was written by Prof. Brad Gregory of Notre Dame:
Those of us skeptical of Keillor's aim [to show that it's possible to argue seriously that God intervenes in history -- my note.] need not accept his premises in order to see the force of his arguments. His claim that the Bible offers a divinely revealed understanding of history can be tested (albeit never proved) by its analytical power in interpreting major historical events. Keillor seeks "to correlate known causes of the event with known categories of divine holiness and judgment" as disclosed in Scripture, well aware that such interpretations can be perilous and are often abused:
We must beware of presumption in claiming to know the mind of God. But the pendulum has swung to the opposite extreme, where the inability to know for sure morphs into a refusal to ask questions that cannot be known with certainty and then into a dismissal of the category of divine judgment.
In short: if God's purposes are such and such, then certain events are plausibly understood as his judgments in the flow of human history.
I won't get into the details of Keillor's theory of how we can discern God's purposes in historical events -- the B&C review does this nicely. Bible Girl's column, though, was a good reminder as to how rarely many of us serious Christians ever think about God's judgment with regard to national events -- and how unbiblical that is. In the Mars Hill interview, Keillor explicitly discusses the temptation to read divine purposes into the events after the fact, or perhaps to justify wars and other events. But just because it's common for people to do such a thing doesn't mean that we should dismiss entirely the idea that God uses dramatic events to chastise nations and to teach them something about their behavior.
We all remember Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson's pronouncement right after the 9/11 attacks that the event was God's judgment on America brought about because of the actions of the abortionists and gays. When I heard that, I was enraged and furious. Some time later, though, I had to confront the possibility that they were right, that the events of that day were, in some sense, permitted by God as a judgment upon America. I think that given the symbolic power of the attacks, a far stronger case can be made that if -- if -- the God of the Bible intended those attacks as a judgment, the symbolic meaning of the targets would lead us to conclude that He was trying to teach us a lesson about the corrupting power of wealth and materialism (the Twin Towers), and about American militarism (the Pentagon). That interpretation wouldn't suit the political purposes of the Revs. Falwell and Robertson, but it makes a lot more sense to me. See the difference?
It seems to me no bad thing for American Christians to think more rigorously about how our nation measures up to the Biblical standard, and how God might be speaking to us collectively through historical events to call us back to obedience and fidelity. We so often assume that our national aspirations and intentions are consonant with the Almighty's, and that's a profoundly hubristic assumption. So many US Christians support the idea that spreading liberal democracy is a fulfillment of the Great Commission, a sort of divine "mission civilisatrice " for the world, that we don't even stop to consider how God might see what we do. Even the Chosen People fell away from the divine will, and suffered for it. Why shouldn't we?
In the Mars Hill interview, Keillor said that one reason we modern Americans are uncomfortable thinking about interpreting history in this way is that we are opposed to the idea of collective guilt. We judge individuals, not groups, in our legal system. We expect God's judgment to conform to that model. But insofar as the Bible is a reliable testimony of God's literal historical dealings with humanity, we are imposing our own model on Him, and it's baseless. He does judge nations. Neither the United States nor righteous Americans are immune.
So: laugh at Bible Girl if you want to, but whether or not you agree with her conclusion, she's standing on firm Biblical ground in asking the right questions.
Monday, March 10, 2008
God's Judgement on the Nation
This is some interesting stuff I came across and has me really thinking just what it is I believe.
Bible Girl, aka Julie Lyons, is a white Pentecostal who keeps a blog at the Dallas Observer (Dallas' weekly Alt-mag). From what I can gather she worshipes at a black church. And as you will see, she apparently has a history of being fearlessly honest in her writing.
She's got a column about why, even though she remembers a Nigerian pastor prophesying in 2001 that after the Bush years, God would give America a black president, and even though she's a pro-life D will not consider voting Republican until the GOP gets serious about what she regards as racial justice, she will not vote for Barack Obama. The reason? Abortion. Excerpt:
More
So, does God still judge nations?
I mean her explanation is unusual. She based her conclusion in large part on her reading of the Bible, and its clear testimony that God intervenes in history to judge nations that fall away from His will. She is withholding her vote from Obama because of her very real conviction that God's judgment will fall on this nation if it fully embraces the legalized extermination of unborn lives (nearly 50 million of whom have died at the hands of abortionists since Roe v. Wade was legalized in 1973).
For non-believers, it is obviously foolishness to make a political decision based on fear of God's judgment. But do believers really have the option not to consider it? Abraham Lincoln didn't think so. His Second Inaugural Address framed the Civil War as God's judgment on America for the sin of slavery. Excerpt (again):
I don't think Lincoln was speaking figuratively. He really believed the Civil War was an act of divine judgment. Anyone who takes the Bible seriously as a record of God's dealing with His people in history cannot escape the testimony in the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) of God withdrawing his protection from Israel in response to its stiff-necked behavior. God sent the Prophets to call Israel back to holiness. And when that didn't work, He allowed chastisement to humble his Chosen Nation.
If we believe that God dealt with Israel that way, why wouldn't he deal with us, and with any other nation, that way?
Bible Girl, aka Julie Lyons, is a white Pentecostal who keeps a blog at the Dallas Observer (Dallas' weekly Alt-mag). From what I can gather she worshipes at a black church. And as you will see, she apparently has a history of being fearlessly honest in her writing.
She's got a column about why, even though she remembers a Nigerian pastor prophesying in 2001 that after the Bush years, God would give America a black president, and even though she's a pro-life D will not consider voting Republican until the GOP gets serious about what she regards as racial justice, she will not vote for Barack Obama. The reason? Abortion. Excerpt:
It is interesting how Scripture virtually ignores a king’s political or military accomplishments. Jeroboam II, for example, presided over a time of great prosperity and influence for Israel. Yet the Bible dismisses these things in a few brusque sentences. Jeroboam II ultimately failed in keeping God’s commands, and he was judged to be evil. Because he called evil good, he caused the people to do evil as well. End of story; over and out.
Which brings me to abortion again. I’m one of those people who was never passionate about this issue until I had a child of my own -- kind of like the folks who don’t care about famine in faraway places until they see the pictures of starving children. God touched my conscience one day concerning abortion; today I passionately oppose it and call myself a pro-life Democrat.
I see it as an elemental thing: the value of life. You couldn’t identify an issue that cuts to the core more than that.
I won’t say I’m the deepest thinker on this subject. It’s just simple to me. I will put no other god before me, neither will I play God and make decisions reserved solely for him. Every time man has been given the power to decide who deserves to live and who deserves to die, hideous things have resulted.
The Middle Passage. The Holocaust. The Nazis’ extermination of the mentally retarded and gypsies. Genocide in Armenia, Rwanda, Darfur. The executions of innocents in Texas and other states. Abortion.
More
Yet I can’t escape the words of Kings. God will judge a leader by one thing: his faithfulness to God’s Word on matters for which the Christian position is clear.
No, that’s not a fashionable concept these days. It won’t win me many friends in the circles I travel. I do understand that we don’t live in a theocracy; our nation is governed by a constitution. As voters, we deal in a continuum of hope and reality. We don’t get everything we want.
Well, whoever said the world would understand or approve of followers of Jesus Christ?
I believe that Barack Obama will be our next president; the hand of God is upon him. If you read Kings, though, that can cut many ways.
But I will not give him my vote.
So, does God still judge nations?
I mean her explanation is unusual. She based her conclusion in large part on her reading of the Bible, and its clear testimony that God intervenes in history to judge nations that fall away from His will. She is withholding her vote from Obama because of her very real conviction that God's judgment will fall on this nation if it fully embraces the legalized extermination of unborn lives (nearly 50 million of whom have died at the hands of abortionists since Roe v. Wade was legalized in 1973).
For non-believers, it is obviously foolishness to make a political decision based on fear of God's judgment. But do believers really have the option not to consider it? Abraham Lincoln didn't think so. His Second Inaugural Address framed the Civil War as God's judgment on America for the sin of slavery. Excerpt (again):
The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him?
I don't think Lincoln was speaking figuratively. He really believed the Civil War was an act of divine judgment. Anyone who takes the Bible seriously as a record of God's dealing with His people in history cannot escape the testimony in the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) of God withdrawing his protection from Israel in response to its stiff-necked behavior. God sent the Prophets to call Israel back to holiness. And when that didn't work, He allowed chastisement to humble his Chosen Nation.
If we believe that God dealt with Israel that way, why wouldn't he deal with us, and with any other nation, that way?
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Airplaneseatreclineology
It took me awhile to find this comic, but I finally did so.
Corey's post is what got me thinking about it. I read this comic quite awhile ago but it is very appropos to the conversation.
Read Corey's post, view the comic and have a good laugh. But I would encourage everyone to think about the fact that a comic strip is mocking the jist of the problem with humanity.
If you have more to say on the subject, do so at Corey's blog, he started the conversation, let's keep it going over there.
If you like the comic then I encourage you to check out Pearls Before Swine....it is hilarious stuff. Basically the mouse is an arrogant "know-it-all" who feels the need to tell his "pearls" of wisdom to the pig (who is the only one that will listen to the mouse). Hence "Pearls Before Swine"
And yes it is a direct result of Jesus words in the gospel. But I have found nothing that tells me the author is an Evangelical or Born-Again.
There's more to it, but give it a chance. Good stuff. A lot of pop culture and a look at humanity in the whole....as the above comic.
Here's the website (via comics.com)
Here's some Wikipedia info on the comic strip. Maybe a good place to start to figure things out.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
To pass on the faith, live it...with discernment
I was emailed this link by a buddy of mine who, even though it has a Catholic slant, thought I would greatly appreciate it....I did.
It is an interview with Amy Welborn, who appears to be a pretty big deal in the Catholic blogosphere.
ANYWAY, back to the interview, here is a snippet worth repeating...
What's the broader message for people of faith? That passing on the faith to our children is not something we can or should rely entirely on the institutional church (sermons, Sunday school, Christian schools) to do. We have to do it in our homes and in our cultural lives -- and not in the sense of, "Tonight, children, we are going to discuss the doctrine of the Incarnation." The Christian faith has to be woven into the fabric of everyday life, has to be experienced not as an interesting add-on to normal life, but as normal life itself. This is particularly challenging in a culture like ours, where increasingly the only normative belief is that there is no normative belief. But what choice do serious religious believers have?
This is why I'm attracted to the idea of living in some sort of community with other families who share our faith. My kids need to see that it's not just our family that believes and lives by these things -- and they need to see that every day of the week, not just on Sunday.
But there can be problems to that and it was why I am VERY selective on who I include in that community in terms of leadership and influence in my life and that of my family. I'll talk to anyone and let anyone "in" but when it comes to who I am going to listen to and take direction from, who I want to be a role model and someone to follow, sorry but I am judicious and selective.
And ironically, while purusing more of the Catholic website where Amy's interview came from I came across this "essay." It furthered cured the cement work I have laid down for my foundation on life, faith, and community. The author's summation with a number of statistical facts is fascinating and all too revealing, most of them showing that despite the Catholic Church's growing numbers on paper, the content of the Catholic faith in the hearts and minds of its adherents is rapidly changing to something that's Catholic in name only:
The author concludes by saying that anybody who believes there's a simple solution to this very deep and broad problem is either a liar or a lunatic. But he says any attempt to turn it around must begin with telling the truth:
Shaw's critique concerns the US Catholic Church, but it's not hard to read it as a broad indictment of the American way of being Christian. What he's talking about is the evolution of the Christian faith to fit American cultural norms: whether we realize it or not, most contemporary Christians are Moralistic Therapeutic Deists now.
See, this is why I'm not impressed when I read news reports saying that America, unlike godless secular humanist Europe, is still a land of vibrant faith. I suppose it is, in a way, but what is the content of that faith, anyway? What does it mean to tell a pollster that you are a Catholic, or an Evangelical, but in practice do not mean by those terms what they historically mean? What does it mean to report that Christianity is doing well in terms of the numbers of people who call themselves Christians, but to ignore or downplay the qualitative aspect of their belief?
I'm not trying to read anybody out of Christianity, but what I am saying is that as a theological matter, to claim you are a Christian -- a Catholic Christian or a Protestant Christian -- means and has always meant that there are a certain number of irreducable foundational doctrines that one must believe -- doctrines that teach who Jesus is, what He did on the Cross, what Scripture is, what the Church is, what man is, and so forth. See, even a trampoline has a sturdy frame that everything else is attached to. To reject them is to reject the faith itself, in any meaningful sense. Over the course of the past 2,000 years, the churches argued over aspects of those foundational beliefs, which is why the church, sadly, is no longer united. Christians have argued over what it means to be a true Christian, but have not argued over the idea that there was an objective standard by which to define Christianity. What you wouldn't have seen, until the present day, is the widely accepted belief that it doesn't matter what you believe, as long as you believe you're Christian. That Christianity has no objective definition, and is primarily defined by subjective emotion.
Why does this matter? For one thing, some of us have this quaint idea, as did every Christian until practically yesterday, that the point of religion is to save souls, and Jesus taught us how to do that. To be crude, humankind was lost, but God intervened in history to send us a guide. Scripture (and, for most Christians throughout history, the Church) is our map out of the wilderness. If we lose the map, we could lose our souls, and the souls of our descendants, whose salvation depends on our passing the map to them in good condition. So much American Christianity has become a matter of forgetting, or denying, that there is any such thing as a map.
Why does it seem the Catholics are getting "it" more and more often?
It is an interview with Amy Welborn, who appears to be a pretty big deal in the Catholic blogosphere.
ANYWAY, back to the interview, here is a snippet worth repeating...
The problem is that when you look at Catholic history, the faith has never been passed on predominantly in classroom situations. The faith has been passed on in families and in parishes and in communities. You can have really nice catechetical materials in which you have kids learn about a saint each week and you introduce them to various devotions, but if all of that is absent from parish life, and if all of that is absent from the life of Catholics, which it is for the most part…It's something that any teacher of, particularly, the humanities can sympathize with. Think about the poor teacher trying to teach Shakespeare or Chaucer to kids who go home and are on the Internet for four hours and then are playing video games and doing all kinds of other things. It's not just a religious ed problem; it's a cultural problem. [Emphasis mine]What we are trying to transmit in a classroom setting isn't reinforced culturally.
In the Catholic setting, that means it's not reinforced in most parishes. There's no Catholic life that continually reinforces the Catholic faith. Our churches are bare. Kids don't have the opportunity to study murals and pictures of stained glass and they get bored.
Catholic education is getting better in the classrooms but we haven't grappled with the bigger cultural issue of a community's responsibility to transmit the faith outside the classroom setting.
What's the broader message for people of faith? That passing on the faith to our children is not something we can or should rely entirely on the institutional church (sermons, Sunday school, Christian schools) to do. We have to do it in our homes and in our cultural lives -- and not in the sense of, "Tonight, children, we are going to discuss the doctrine of the Incarnation." The Christian faith has to be woven into the fabric of everyday life, has to be experienced not as an interesting add-on to normal life, but as normal life itself. This is particularly challenging in a culture like ours, where increasingly the only normative belief is that there is no normative belief. But what choice do serious religious believers have?
This is why I'm attracted to the idea of living in some sort of community with other families who share our faith. My kids need to see that it's not just our family that believes and lives by these things -- and they need to see that every day of the week, not just on Sunday.
But there can be problems to that and it was why I am VERY selective on who I include in that community in terms of leadership and influence in my life and that of my family. I'll talk to anyone and let anyone "in" but when it comes to who I am going to listen to and take direction from, who I want to be a role model and someone to follow, sorry but I am judicious and selective.
And ironically, while purusing more of the Catholic website where Amy's interview came from I came across this "essay." It furthered cured the cement work I have laid down for my foundation on life, faith, and community. The author's summation with a number of statistical facts is fascinating and all too revealing, most of them showing that despite the Catholic Church's growing numbers on paper, the content of the Catholic faith in the hearts and minds of its adherents is rapidly changing to something that's Catholic in name only:
A survey in 2005 found that 76 percent of the Catholics of the United States thought someone could be a good Catholic without going to church every Sunday. Other elements of Catholic belief and practice also fared poorly. Three out of four said good Catholics needn't observe the teaching on contraception; two-thirds said the same of having their marriages blessed by the Church and accepting the teaching on divorce and remarriage; 58 percent took the same view of giving time or money to the parish and also of following Church teaching on abortion. These numbers have gone up dramatically since Davidson and his colleagues began collecting them in 1987. And, by 2005, nearly one in four held that a good Catholic needn't believe that Jesus rose bodily from the dead.
In 2003, the researchers tested American Catholics' views on the Catholic Church and other religions. Some results: 86 percent agreed with the statement "If you believe in God, it doesn't really matter which religion you belong to"; 74 percent said yes to "The major world religions are equally good ways of finding ultimate truth"; and 52 percent accepted the proposition, "The Catholic religion has no more spiritual truth than other major religions."
Apparently not all of those highly educated and loyal Catholic Americans measure up too well by the standards of Catholic orthodoxy. I am reminded of the 25-year-old chap, a baptized Catholic with six years of religious education who claimed he went to Mass twice a month. Upon leaving a showing of the movie The Da Vinci Code, he told The New York Times: "The Catholic Church has hidden a lot of things—proof about the actual life of Jesus, about who wrote the Bible. All these people—the famous Luke, Mark, and John—how did they know so much about Jesus' life? If there was a Bible, who created it and how many times has it been changed?"
People who talk as the happy-talkers do about the glories of contemporary American Catholicism aren't crazy. They know what’s going on. But they pass it over lightly because that suits the project of replacing a form of Catholicism they consider moribund with an endlessly evolving religion without norms. In their estimate, a Church like that would better suit the exigencies of post-modern times. Call it Anglicanism with a figurehead pope. (In general, I think, bishops who take the same line don't share that objective—they simply think blarney is good for morale.)
The author concludes by saying that anybody who believes there's a simple solution to this very deep and broad problem is either a liar or a lunatic. But he says any attempt to turn it around must begin with telling the truth:
Jesus tells us, "The truth will make you free" (John 8:32), but today illusion—the illusion that we aren't doing so bad—is choking the life out of the Catholic Church in the United States.
Shaw's critique concerns the US Catholic Church, but it's not hard to read it as a broad indictment of the American way of being Christian. What he's talking about is the evolution of the Christian faith to fit American cultural norms: whether we realize it or not, most contemporary Christians are Moralistic Therapeutic Deists now.
See, this is why I'm not impressed when I read news reports saying that America, unlike godless secular humanist Europe, is still a land of vibrant faith. I suppose it is, in a way, but what is the content of that faith, anyway? What does it mean to tell a pollster that you are a Catholic, or an Evangelical, but in practice do not mean by those terms what they historically mean? What does it mean to report that Christianity is doing well in terms of the numbers of people who call themselves Christians, but to ignore or downplay the qualitative aspect of their belief?
I'm not trying to read anybody out of Christianity, but what I am saying is that as a theological matter, to claim you are a Christian -- a Catholic Christian or a Protestant Christian -- means and has always meant that there are a certain number of irreducable foundational doctrines that one must believe -- doctrines that teach who Jesus is, what He did on the Cross, what Scripture is, what the Church is, what man is, and so forth. See, even a trampoline has a sturdy frame that everything else is attached to. To reject them is to reject the faith itself, in any meaningful sense. Over the course of the past 2,000 years, the churches argued over aspects of those foundational beliefs, which is why the church, sadly, is no longer united. Christians have argued over what it means to be a true Christian, but have not argued over the idea that there was an objective standard by which to define Christianity. What you wouldn't have seen, until the present day, is the widely accepted belief that it doesn't matter what you believe, as long as you believe you're Christian. That Christianity has no objective definition, and is primarily defined by subjective emotion.
Why does this matter? For one thing, some of us have this quaint idea, as did every Christian until practically yesterday, that the point of religion is to save souls, and Jesus taught us how to do that. To be crude, humankind was lost, but God intervened in history to send us a guide. Scripture (and, for most Christians throughout history, the Church) is our map out of the wilderness. If we lose the map, we could lose our souls, and the souls of our descendants, whose salvation depends on our passing the map to them in good condition. So much American Christianity has become a matter of forgetting, or denying, that there is any such thing as a map.
Why does it seem the Catholics are getting "it" more and more often?
Monday, February 11, 2008
Gimme some of that New-Old Time Religion
[UPDATE] - I couldn't help it, while looking out my window at the blustery winter Sunday afternoon of single digit temps and below zero wind chills. Watching garbage blow away down the street, tree limbs bend oh so close to breaking and thankful for the ability to burn fossil fuels to stay warm.
Modern man has shucked off most of the restraints of traditional religion. While a majority of people still say they believe in God, or at least in some form of higher being, they have rationalized their belief system so as to owe no real tribute to their ill-defined deity.
No longer are they bound by the sanctions and rules dictated by the old-time religions.
But instead of enjoying their “liberation”, their “freedom” from the inconvenient "thou shalt nots," they're embracing a different sort of puritanism and welcoming equally suffocating restrictions in regard to the new gods of health and the environment.
These new faiths, in practice, are amazingly similar to the old.
They have their own schedule of sins and vices and are just as intolerant and judgmental of those who stray from the path of righteousness. They also will go to extremes to impose their doctrines -- witness New York City's recently-passed law forbidding city hospitals from sending new mothers home with baby formula, to push breast-feeding (it's amazing what news stories catch your fancy when a child is introduced into your life).
Skeptics are demonized as heretics. To question the causes and impact of global warming, for example, is blasphemous, and many in the scientific community are finding the price for expressing doubt is banishment.
The new religions are no more tolerant of non-conformity -- smokers are shunned the way libertines once were. And they are equally instilled with an evangelical zeal to spread the faith. "Fan the flame!!" (or should we say "put out the flame" or........)
Like their predecessors, the obsession of the new religions is controlling the behavior of the flock. The real agenda of the campaign against global warming is to achieve the longstanding goals of environmentalists to force people onto mass-transit, draw them back from far-flung suburbs and minimize their ability to profit from the earth.
Modern man has shucked off most of the restraints of traditional religion. While a majority of people still say they believe in God, or at least in some form of higher being, they have rationalized their belief system so as to owe no real tribute to their ill-defined deity.
No longer are they bound by the sanctions and rules dictated by the old-time religions.
But instead of enjoying their “liberation”, their “freedom” from the inconvenient "thou shalt nots," they're embracing a different sort of puritanism and welcoming equally suffocating restrictions in regard to the new gods of health and the environment.
These new faiths, in practice, are amazingly similar to the old.
They have their own schedule of sins and vices and are just as intolerant and judgmental of those who stray from the path of righteousness. They also will go to extremes to impose their doctrines -- witness New York City's recently-passed law forbidding city hospitals from sending new mothers home with baby formula, to push breast-feeding (it's amazing what news stories catch your fancy when a child is introduced into your life).
Skeptics are demonized as heretics. To question the causes and impact of global warming, for example, is blasphemous, and many in the scientific community are finding the price for expressing doubt is banishment.
The new religions are no more tolerant of non-conformity -- smokers are shunned the way libertines once were. And they are equally instilled with an evangelical zeal to spread the faith. "Fan the flame!!" (or should we say "put out the flame" or........)
Like their predecessors, the obsession of the new religions is controlling the behavior of the flock. The real agenda of the campaign against global warming is to achieve the longstanding goals of environmentalists to force people onto mass-transit, draw them back from far-flung suburbs and minimize their ability to profit from the earth.
The new religions give new interpretations to several of Catholicism's seven deadly sins, including:
- Pride . The vanity of individualism is discouraged as a threat to the collective good. Lifestyle choices must conform to the standards of propriety set by all-knowing spiritual leaders (think Al Gore).
- Gluttony . Consumerism and overconsumption are the great evils. Frugality is a virtue, and piety is attained by the Carteresque measure of living a smaller life, accepting less. Traditional religions reward sacrifice and self-denial with immortality (allbeit heretical in it’s own rite); it's not yet clear how the new faiths will incentivize deprivation.
- Greed. The notion that American ingenuity and productivity entitle this country to a bigger piece of the pie is unholy. We're expected to feel guilty about our prosperity, pressured to give away our wealth.
- Lust. While these new faiths don't meddle so much in your sex life -- nearly any sexual practice is OK, as long as it's "safe" and consensual -- if you hunger for big trucks, big houses, big cigars -- your wages are damnation.
Unfortunately, there is no rabid oppession and acceptance of a separation of church and state to protect non-believers from being pressed into observance as their is with the "Old-Time Religions". Canonical law is written by secular legislatures and enforced by public agents.
An agnostic -- or Mother Earth forbid, an atheist -- living in this new religious environment may find life as uncomfortable as did the “witches” of Salem.
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
This sounds familiar...
Not sure if you'll ever hear me quote Rush Limbaugh ever again in my life but I read this in a news article and it sounded oddly familiar.
How does Limbuagh pontificating and fire breathing anti-McCain rhetoric sound familiar you ask?
Like this:
Already pre-ordered it....
And here, if you do not have a PDF reader.
If the Republican Party expands because we have a candidate who's going out trying to attract liberals by being like them, then the party's going to be around but you won't recognize it.
How does Limbuagh pontificating and fire breathing anti-McCain rhetoric sound familiar you ask?
Like this:
If the Church expands because we have Christians going out trying to
attract non-believers by being like them, then the Church's going to be around
but you won't recognize it.
Already pre-ordered it....
And here, if you do not have a PDF reader.
Friday, December 21, 2007
It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year
UPDATE - For the sake of expediency I have published these thoughts without having fully edited them to make it "flow" better. I'm still embarking on this whole Christmas/Advent thought process and with Christmas just days away, I wanted to make sure to get this fledged out. I apologize if this appears to be a jumbled mess of writing and preachiness, I tried really hard to not make it that. But as I wrote out my thoughts I started to make sense of some of it and make conclusions. I write this more for me and myself than to appear to being "preachy" to you. I hope you enjoy it and I pray that this will continue to make your days merry and bright as we celebrate the birth of the greatest man who ever lived, the Savior of Mankind. Merry Christmas!!!
Been thinking more about this Christmas story and the fact that Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year. Last time focused on the shepherds and their comparisons to us. The normal mundane human going about their day-to-day job and yet God brings down his glory to the shepherds, to us. And their response to it compared to what our response is. One comment left by a reader mentioned their “scrooge mood” response to Christmas and how it has changed somewhat as a result of the post. And I feel that is the best comment someone has ever left me. It bums me out that Evangelicals allow the world and its systems to “bum them out.” To let it seep into their very fabric and being and sap the glory of God from their lives. Don’t get me wrong, I’m guilty of it too. But at the expense of advocating CEO Christianity (Christmas and Easter Only) it is at Christmas and Easter that Christians should be at their peak of revelry and fun.
Both are doctrinal tenets of the faith but both are clouded in mystery and mysticism. Incarnate, Infinite God taking on the form of a helpless new born babe, being entrusted to the care and provision of humanity. The same humanity that if they have proven anything, it’s that we screw things up, actually, we screw everything up. Incarnate, Infinite God dying with the weight of the world on his shoulders, only to show His Incarnate and Infinite Godship by rising from the dead. All to rescue our screwed up humanity.
But Easter doesn’t carry the “scrooge” effect with Christians. There isn’t the commercialism and consumerism attached to Easter as there is with Christmas. Easter has been hijacked, but Christmas gets the negative connotation. I’d like to diffuse that. I had to start with myself and begin to embrace Christmas some years ago and everything around it. As well as put a renewd focus on the Christmas story and see where it applies nowadays.
So I have continued this thought with the story of the wise men.
First things first. I know people like to harp on the fact that in the nativity scenes around the world, there are 3 wise men represented for the 3 gifts brought to Jesus. More than likely, it wasn’t 3 individual wise men on their own. It was a massive caravan of hundreds and they probably met up with Jesus and the family as much as a year or two after his birth. These trivial issues behind us, let’s continue.
Most times the focus of the wise men is the gifts. Gold, frankincense, and myrrh. The King, the Priest, and the Sacrifice. Or the focus is on the mystical journey these wise men embarked on and how that applies to our life. The fact that there was this spiritual force in play put in action by God to turn the cosmos to get these wise men from afar to follow a moving star to the boondocks of Bethlehem. We feel this sometimes in our own lives. That there is a spiritual force at work and all things are linked together someway, somehow. It’s all been contrived and set in motion to arrive to this one moment. And we are left scratching our head sometimes when we realize it. How did that just happen? Sometimes God will move the whole universe for you to experience him.
But there’s another element to this story I’ve been contemplating.
It seems that everyone wants to talk about the story behind Christmas. To give life to all the central characters and share in the secret they were able to discover. All the big bookstores have displays setup to sell books that speak about Christmas. To give you the meaning behind Christmas. To maybe provide more depth and understanding to the cast of characters. Most of these books are conjecture on the part of the author. Sprinkling in real life with some historical perspective with some just good old fashioned writing. All to entertain you and warm your hearts. Well, I want to explore this secret. A secret that not a lot of people think literally about, but if you think literally about it, it will change your life so dramatically you’ll never be the same. And it’s all based around the story of the wise men. We can still see the bumper stickers that say “Wise men still seek Jesus.” Well, we still have to seek him and it’s interesting where we can find him. To give you a hint, I’d almost call this, “Why I stick with the Church 3” because if you can grasp this you’ll look at people and church differently.
The wise men blazed this path and discovered something about the way God works. They were lead somewhat mystically to “The King of the Jews” but stopped along the way to still ask “Where is the King of the Jews.” A lot of people are asking that even now a days, Where is Jesus? While we can’t discover it in the same way the wise men did we can still discover it and act on it.
Ever seen pictures of Jerusalem? Israel? Bethlehem maybe? How do those compare to Hawaii or Ireland, or Bermuda? Israel is chalky white and cold hard concrete. Not a pretty place. Not very “green.” Why in the world would God show up there? I’ve been to Cancun and Cancun looks a lot better then Israel. Israel looks like the backside of the world. Why not show up in Rome, the capital of the known world?
Jesus comes to this place with no pomp and circumstance. Sure there's the big party in heaven, but what of the earth? His mom was a teenager, who wasn’t married to his earthly dad. Despite the picture, she is probably walking, not on a donkey like the Hallmark card’s show. They were dirty, knocking on everyone’s door looking for a place to stay. Started at the Hampton Inn, then went to the Motel 6, then the Econo Lodge, then the hourly motel and then the truck stop, and then the rest area, and finally someone says, "hey I have an old Chevy in my garage and behind there is a cot if you wanna stay there."
Where’s the pomp? Where’s the circumstance? Instead, it’s the smell of animals and stubble and hay and fleas and birth. All those smells and earth and dust of travel mixed together.
And isn’t that just like God? So humble to hide one of the greatest events of all time.
This is the birth of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords and it’s hidden in a shed. We’ve come up with all kinds of King James words to make it grand. He was born in a manger. He was born in a stable. Stable makes it sound permanent. But if we say he was born in a shed, in a barn, next to dung, they laid him in a dog dish that was big enough for all the animals to eat out of is crazy…just crazy.
He was so hidden and tucked away in earthiness, that some of the wisest men in all the world had to stop and ask for directions. These guys were waiting for this. They had put their money where their mouth was. They know it is happening and they go out searching for him, “traveling afar” and he’s so hidden that they have to ask the leader of the Jews where the King of the Jews is and he doesn’t even know. He so doesn’t know that he says to an entourage of hundreds of brilliant people, be sure to look hard for him. He’s hidden. Trying to find a needle in a hay-stack.
But they do find him, lead by divine providence. They see him, leave their precious gifts, depart, and our mystically lead again to not return to Herod. So that is their story.
What is ours?
Where is Jesus?
Is he hidden in the stuff of the earth?
Yes he is.
And you know what stuff he is hidden in?
You and Me!!!
Now, I don’ think we go to each other and fall down and worship each other. But I can be a blessing to Jesus by being a blessing to any one of you. Just as I can persecute Jesus by persecuting anyone of you. Jesus even implicates Paul this way at his conversion.
Here is why I go to church?
I get to see Jesus. He dresses up like Jeff and like Matt and like Corey. And he is visible in the eyes of every person there. He hid himself in you and me. I see him in Jeff, I see him in Matt, I see him in Corey. And he likes looking at himself. And that is why he put himself in both Corey and me. So now when the 2 of us look at each other, Jesus, goes “man I’m good looking.” And he’s not ego-maniacal because he is God and he’d be idolatrous if he didn’t think that.
This is the Christian ethic for loving one another. It’s why Mother Theresa could take care of dying people and orphans in Calcutta. I think she was looking for Jesus in each and everyone of them. Ministering to them like they were Jesus.
Christmas and the magi path is a wonderful story and I think if we’re wise we are still going to seek him. And one of the ways we discover him is in the lives of each other. The way I treat any of you is the way I am treating Jesus. This is the reason for us to go to church. Maybe I get there first so Jesus can walk on a snow free path to church. Then maybe Corey gets their early and he’s playing some drums getting ready because he’s going to play to Jesus who’s out in the congregation getting ready to worship Jesus. I’m not trying to take this to a tripped-out new age level and saying were all divine. But the logical conclusion of Jesus being in you and me is that we get to love Jesus by loving each other, and if we seek him through this mystical journey and find Jesus in one another, the world wouldn’t know what to do with us.
We should be ministering to each other. Bring gifts to Jesus by bringing gifts to each other. Being a blessing to each other to be a blessing to Jesus in each of us. Respond to the Savior inside of us, not to what comes out of our mouths. And allow yourself to be real and transparent enough for them to see Jesus in you and to allow others to be a blessing to you. Let people minister to you and be a blessing to you. Our own pride or fear can get in the way and we run away from help. But let it be done for you.
I hear all the time from people, “Why does everyone give me a present for Christmas, it’s Jesus birthday anyway?”
Well you know why I give presents?
Because it’s Jesus birthday and you’re his body and so I’m going to give you the ugly tie with the lit up palm tree, because I want to. I love you and I love Jesus inside of you.
M E R R Y C H R I S T M A S
Been thinking more about this Christmas story and the fact that Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year. Last time focused on the shepherds and their comparisons to us. The normal mundane human going about their day-to-day job and yet God brings down his glory to the shepherds, to us. And their response to it compared to what our response is. One comment left by a reader mentioned their “scrooge mood” response to Christmas and how it has changed somewhat as a result of the post. And I feel that is the best comment someone has ever left me. It bums me out that Evangelicals allow the world and its systems to “bum them out.” To let it seep into their very fabric and being and sap the glory of God from their lives. Don’t get me wrong, I’m guilty of it too. But at the expense of advocating CEO Christianity (Christmas and Easter Only) it is at Christmas and Easter that Christians should be at their peak of revelry and fun.
Both are doctrinal tenets of the faith but both are clouded in mystery and mysticism. Incarnate, Infinite God taking on the form of a helpless new born babe, being entrusted to the care and provision of humanity. The same humanity that if they have proven anything, it’s that we screw things up, actually, we screw everything up. Incarnate, Infinite God dying with the weight of the world on his shoulders, only to show His Incarnate and Infinite Godship by rising from the dead. All to rescue our screwed up humanity.
But Easter doesn’t carry the “scrooge” effect with Christians. There isn’t the commercialism and consumerism attached to Easter as there is with Christmas. Easter has been hijacked, but Christmas gets the negative connotation. I’d like to diffuse that. I had to start with myself and begin to embrace Christmas some years ago and everything around it. As well as put a renewd focus on the Christmas story and see where it applies nowadays.
So I have continued this thought with the story of the wise men.
First things first. I know people like to harp on the fact that in the nativity scenes around the world, there are 3 wise men represented for the 3 gifts brought to Jesus. More than likely, it wasn’t 3 individual wise men on their own. It was a massive caravan of hundreds and they probably met up with Jesus and the family as much as a year or two after his birth. These trivial issues behind us, let’s continue.
Most times the focus of the wise men is the gifts. Gold, frankincense, and myrrh. The King, the Priest, and the Sacrifice. Or the focus is on the mystical journey these wise men embarked on and how that applies to our life. The fact that there was this spiritual force in play put in action by God to turn the cosmos to get these wise men from afar to follow a moving star to the boondocks of Bethlehem. We feel this sometimes in our own lives. That there is a spiritual force at work and all things are linked together someway, somehow. It’s all been contrived and set in motion to arrive to this one moment. And we are left scratching our head sometimes when we realize it. How did that just happen? Sometimes God will move the whole universe for you to experience him.
But there’s another element to this story I’ve been contemplating.
It seems that everyone wants to talk about the story behind Christmas. To give life to all the central characters and share in the secret they were able to discover. All the big bookstores have displays setup to sell books that speak about Christmas. To give you the meaning behind Christmas. To maybe provide more depth and understanding to the cast of characters. Most of these books are conjecture on the part of the author. Sprinkling in real life with some historical perspective with some just good old fashioned writing. All to entertain you and warm your hearts. Well, I want to explore this secret. A secret that not a lot of people think literally about, but if you think literally about it, it will change your life so dramatically you’ll never be the same. And it’s all based around the story of the wise men. We can still see the bumper stickers that say “Wise men still seek Jesus.” Well, we still have to seek him and it’s interesting where we can find him. To give you a hint, I’d almost call this, “Why I stick with the Church 3” because if you can grasp this you’ll look at people and church differently.
The wise men blazed this path and discovered something about the way God works. They were lead somewhat mystically to “The King of the Jews” but stopped along the way to still ask “Where is the King of the Jews.” A lot of people are asking that even now a days, Where is Jesus? While we can’t discover it in the same way the wise men did we can still discover it and act on it.
Ever seen pictures of Jerusalem? Israel? Bethlehem maybe? How do those compare to Hawaii or Ireland, or Bermuda? Israel is chalky white and cold hard concrete. Not a pretty place. Not very “green.” Why in the world would God show up there? I’ve been to Cancun and Cancun looks a lot better then Israel. Israel looks like the backside of the world. Why not show up in Rome, the capital of the known world?
Jesus comes to this place with no pomp and circumstance. Sure there's the big party in heaven, but what of the earth? His mom was a teenager, who wasn’t married to his earthly dad. Despite the picture, she is probably walking, not on a donkey like the Hallmark card’s show. They were dirty, knocking on everyone’s door looking for a place to stay. Started at the Hampton Inn, then went to the Motel 6, then the Econo Lodge, then the hourly motel and then the truck stop, and then the rest area, and finally someone says, "hey I have an old Chevy in my garage and behind there is a cot if you wanna stay there."
Where’s the pomp? Where’s the circumstance? Instead, it’s the smell of animals and stubble and hay and fleas and birth. All those smells and earth and dust of travel mixed together.
And isn’t that just like God? So humble to hide one of the greatest events of all time.
This is the birth of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords and it’s hidden in a shed. We’ve come up with all kinds of King James words to make it grand. He was born in a manger. He was born in a stable. Stable makes it sound permanent. But if we say he was born in a shed, in a barn, next to dung, they laid him in a dog dish that was big enough for all the animals to eat out of is crazy…just crazy.
He was so hidden and tucked away in earthiness, that some of the wisest men in all the world had to stop and ask for directions. These guys were waiting for this. They had put their money where their mouth was. They know it is happening and they go out searching for him, “traveling afar” and he’s so hidden that they have to ask the leader of the Jews where the King of the Jews is and he doesn’t even know. He so doesn’t know that he says to an entourage of hundreds of brilliant people, be sure to look hard for him. He’s hidden. Trying to find a needle in a hay-stack.
But they do find him, lead by divine providence. They see him, leave their precious gifts, depart, and our mystically lead again to not return to Herod. So that is their story.
What is ours?
Where is Jesus?
Is he hidden in the stuff of the earth?
Yes he is.
And you know what stuff he is hidden in?
You and Me!!!
Now, I don’ think we go to each other and fall down and worship each other. But I can be a blessing to Jesus by being a blessing to any one of you. Just as I can persecute Jesus by persecuting anyone of you. Jesus even implicates Paul this way at his conversion.
Here is why I go to church?
I get to see Jesus. He dresses up like Jeff and like Matt and like Corey. And he is visible in the eyes of every person there. He hid himself in you and me. I see him in Jeff, I see him in Matt, I see him in Corey. And he likes looking at himself. And that is why he put himself in both Corey and me. So now when the 2 of us look at each other, Jesus, goes “man I’m good looking.” And he’s not ego-maniacal because he is God and he’d be idolatrous if he didn’t think that.
This is the Christian ethic for loving one another. It’s why Mother Theresa could take care of dying people and orphans in Calcutta. I think she was looking for Jesus in each and everyone of them. Ministering to them like they were Jesus.
Christmas and the magi path is a wonderful story and I think if we’re wise we are still going to seek him. And one of the ways we discover him is in the lives of each other. The way I treat any of you is the way I am treating Jesus. This is the reason for us to go to church. Maybe I get there first so Jesus can walk on a snow free path to church. Then maybe Corey gets their early and he’s playing some drums getting ready because he’s going to play to Jesus who’s out in the congregation getting ready to worship Jesus. I’m not trying to take this to a tripped-out new age level and saying were all divine. But the logical conclusion of Jesus being in you and me is that we get to love Jesus by loving each other, and if we seek him through this mystical journey and find Jesus in one another, the world wouldn’t know what to do with us.
We should be ministering to each other. Bring gifts to Jesus by bringing gifts to each other. Being a blessing to each other to be a blessing to Jesus in each of us. Respond to the Savior inside of us, not to what comes out of our mouths. And allow yourself to be real and transparent enough for them to see Jesus in you and to allow others to be a blessing to you. Let people minister to you and be a blessing to you. Our own pride or fear can get in the way and we run away from help. But let it be done for you.
I hear all the time from people, “Why does everyone give me a present for Christmas, it’s Jesus birthday anyway?”
Well you know why I give presents?
Because it’s Jesus birthday and you’re his body and so I’m going to give you the ugly tie with the lit up palm tree, because I want to. I love you and I love Jesus inside of you.
M E R R Y C H R I S T M A S
Friday, December 14, 2007
It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year
"In the air, there's a feeling of Christmas"Kind of makes you wonder what all the hub-bub is about.
Yesterday I made my annual pilgrimage out to the local malls and shops to do some Christmas shopping. And try not to laugh, but I actually like shopping at Christmas time. At no other time of the year can Michele even come close to getting me excited to want to go shopping. But, come Christmas time, I go with her when I need to and I always make one trip on my own.
As I said, last night I ended up not getting home until nearly 10 after shopping 2 malls, a couple other strip mall locations, and a Meijer. And I enjoyed it...all of it. As I wrote the same thing this time last year, I love everything about Christmas. And I thing it has something to do with the fact that Christmas never changes. Same decorations, same songs, same story, etc. But I got to thinking yesterday about all of this.....
What's the big deal?
Trees all over the world, wreaths on doors, whole neighborhoods full off lights.
What’s the deal? It’s just a birthday right?
Christmas is more than just a day that Santa supposedly comes and it’s more than the day we max out our credit cards. It’s a day set aside each year to celebrate the birth of our King and Messiah Jesus Christ. We celebrate him because he is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He is the greatest man that has ever been and still is the greatest man that has ever been. In fact he is so powerful that he was born of a virgin and lived a perfect and sinless life, teaching of his Kingdom, using stories to explain that Kingdom and how it works. And then he did the ultimate thing. He was beaten and flogged for us. Nailed to a cross, gasping for breath and of a broken heart, breathed his last breath and died for our sins. And of course, 3 days later, rose from the dead declaring himself both Savior and God for all of eternity. Because of that he is available to us today. The Bible says whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
That’s why there are wreaths hanging around. That’s why we have Christmas trees. That’s why we have carols. That’s what the hub-bub is about.
And when you compare our hub-bub nowadays to this miracle, how does it measure up? How does all the pomp and circumstance and energy exerted nowadays compare to the same of the original day? Specifically, to the Sheppards response on the actual day?
Of all the people in the Christmas story, the sheppards are probably the most like us. Normal blue-collar people who we know very little about. We don’t know their names or where they are from or even exactly what it was they were doing in the field (watching over their flocks…what does that mean). Kind of like us.
But God interrupts all that normal and mundane. A heavenly host, the glory of the Lord all around in the middle of the night. The deep, dark midnight sky fully bright and fully alive with the same glory that Moses had to hide his face from.
BOOM!!!!
There it is.
What did they do with it?
They were told all this truth, but did not sit around in the field and just talk about and converse about these deep spiritual truths that the angels told them. And that happens a lot at Christmas. The theology is extremely important in the Christmas season. 100% God and 100% man and both are necessary for salvation. But we can talk about Christmas in such deep ways that we don’t really experience it too much. We get too wrapped in the teaching about.
Just the same we can make it too much of a pageant. Dress up in costumes and turn on all kinds of twinkling lights. But the Sheppard’s didn’t really pull out some wreaths and garland in celebration. One Sheppard didn’t reach down, pull of his sock and tell everyone his crazy idea of hanging that sock from a fireplace and having some fat old elf stuff it full of toys. That’s not what they did.
What they did, is get up from where they were and went to the party of Jesus birth. Quite the invitation!!
They got up and went and saw it with their own eyes. And the Bible says when they saw it, they went out telling EVERYBODY what they saw. We have carols that we sing to tell everyone about the fact that the sheppards went and told everyone what they saw at the party. Wouldn’t it be cool if we could have gone to the party? Wouldn't it be cool if we told EVERYBODY about the invitation we've all been given?
Monday, December 10, 2007
Conservative Christian - A Prologue
UPDATE: This is a prologue to the series of posts I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I have been composing on Christianity and the Conservative movement. I have really been thinking about this whole "Conservative Christian" moniker people like to throw around. And the more I wrote this prologue and wrote the next 3 posts in the series, the more I am finding it harder and harder to see the connection. Why is the prologue and why do the next 3 posts seem so different? Maybe you the reader will see something, but as I wrote the prologue and the subsequent follow-ups, I took a turn somewhere. None the less, know that I am going to publish the whole series (on Mondays) just as I have written them.
There are many conservatives who would like to return to the era of frequent public executions, even hangings. In fact, conservatives are generally united in strong support for the death penalty, a fact the liberal media enjoys equating with the election of George W. Bush as President, since as Governor of Texas, Bush presided over record numbers of executions. It is anecdotally said that Bush faced opposition to the death penalty from his mother, wife and daughters, but never flinched, even in the case of Karla Faye Tucker, an obviously rehabilitated evangelical Christian.
I support the death penalty. People like Ted Bundy and Timothy McVeigh deserved nothing less. As a Christian, I believe it is taught in scripture and I have no doubt that Jesus would have supported it. If I served on a jury, I would express my support for the death penalty without embarrassment.
Having said all that, I am uneasy with the current conservative posture on the death penalty. Not with the position, but with the posture; with our approach to the application of the issue. But it isn’t just the death penalty, it’s a lot of things that our “posture” is a problem within the “Conservative Christian” movement. The death penalty premise is an easier subject to express posture versus position. I know we are talking about human life, but the death penalty isn’t a “sticky” subject. At least I think it isn’t in relative terms to Immigration, Iraq war, Abortion, Homosexual Rights, Healthcare, etc.
Let me be clear about one thing. I do not believe we should question the death penalty as a way of making conservatism or Christianity "kinder" or "compassionate." If someone thinks that conservatism is cruel, they don't understand liberalism, which is tyranny masquerading as compassion. The Biblical admonitions that support capital punishment are presented as a way of properly valuing and respecting the fact that human beings are made in the image of God. It's not presented as a way to torture the guilty, but to remind the rest of us that people aren't like anything else in creation. I don't expect liberals to appreciate that, since they reject the Judeo-Christian worldview and its emphasis on the sacredness of human life. Note how liberals can't see why we oppose abortion yet support capital punishment.
No, my reconsideration is based on two factors: my enthusiastic belief in limited government, and my commitment to the idea of genuine, objective truth. Sad to say, I believe conservative enthusiasm for particular issues is obscuring the importance of these two principles. And we must be a principled movement, or our positions mean nothing.
Let's start with my second objection (what I believe to be the lesser of my thought out arguments, meaning you’ll probably find a lot of holes in this point, oh well): the importance of genuine, objective truth. Conservatives may not entirely agree on the nature of truth or the means for discovering it, but generally, they have refused the postmodern spirit and insisted that judgments, policies and personal choices be evaluated on their coherence to an objective standard of truth. Whether Christians or not, conservatives have said "You shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free."
What does this have to do with the death penalty? Plenty. In making a judgment about guilt and punishment, conservatives need to take into consideration all the truth in a given situation. Frankly, this seems to be quite the opposite of what many conservatives want to do. For example, the truth of mental status applies in the case of Andrea Yates, the Houston mother who drowned her kids. Yes, it did result in dueling expert psychologists explaining her mental state, but we aren't acting on principle if we ignore that aspect of the case, even with the clear outrage of the death of five children. We should say that no punishment is appropriate until we know if this mother was rational, insane or some mixture of the two.
Every couple weeks or months, the news magazines like 20/20 or the big news channels CNN and Fox News run a special report where a convicted murderer was released because DNA evidence proved they could not have committed the crimes for which they were convicted. Conservatives say little about this, and I'd go so far as to say I suspect some are not happy at the development. The fact is, this is the triumph of truth, and conservatives should rejoice. It is liberals and postmodernists who want us to believe that truth is political and imaginary, shaped only by the agenda of the powerful (government and religious entities). As conservatives, we believe truth is a force that brings down tyrants and rights wrongs. We don't believe it is a commodity to be ignored or manipulated.
As the debate continues, it seems there is a fear, not entirely irrational, that we should be swift and quick in the use of capital punishment to insure that the culture of excuses, with all its various prophets of irresponsibility, doesn't turn the entire justice system into the O.J. Simpson trial. I sympathize and largely support that notion, but we will not achieve that end by reducing the "truth factors" considered in a particular case. The Houston mom was eventually ruled to be insane by a reasonable definition, as such she must be dealt with differently than McVeigh, and conservatives should be quick to say it. We should strongly support the distinction between children and adults, and be against the kind of sentencing that sees them as the same, because it is the truth that they are not the same. We should welcome the evidence of science in any form that gets us closer to what really happened. Truth is always our friend and ally.
When we love the truth, we are all more free. And freedom is a core conservative principle. Quick justice and swift punishment are not the legacies of our system of government, but the legacies of lynchings and tyranny. Conservatives may not like judicial activism, the ACLU, the trial lawyers lobby and the like, but let's not forget that the truthful use of the justice system is a precious benefit of our continuing American revolution. On any given day, it may be the only protection any one of us has, and perhaps our only hope of publishing the truth.
So, we go to my other consideration (the one I hold to dearly and is the crux of a lot of my belief), the principle of limited government. And here, I am bitterly disappointed with many of my conservative counterparts. We will applaud the limitation of government on taxes and regulations. We applaud the limitation of government in taking over the private sector. We applaud the limitation of government in forcing the liberal agenda on our families. But can't we see that limited government is important when it comes to the issues of our agenda as well?
Conservatives are attempting to preserve the ideas of the American revolution, particularly the idea that unlimited central government inevitably leads to abuse. It’s actually something I was taught relentlessly while sitting under the tutelage of school administrators. Any study of history will quickly reveal that one of the primary abuses of government in history has been the application of capital punishment. Christian scripture clearly says that government has the power to bear the sword, but that same scripture shows the execution of Jesus by the state as an evil act. The founding fathers of this nation were good candidates for swift execution by the British government. All dictatorial empires have used capital punishment to eliminate opposition and intimidate the public. To listen to some conservatives talk, you'd think that captial punishment, like Christmas, can only do us good. Read Foxe's Book of Martyrs. All those burning Protestants were fried up.........legally.
When we allow the government to execute McVeigh, we should be reluctantly yielding such power. When we see the incarceration of thousands of Americans for crimes like personal drug use or tax evasion, we should be uneasy. It is quite possible that capital punishment is abused by state governments and it is quite appropriate that conservatives be the loudest voices urging caution in the use of the ultimate punishment. Not because it is wrong, but because government is sinful and awkward, usually acting in the interests of the powerful, and not to be trusted completely in any situation. Even when implementing our agenda.
As I see it, conservatives are somewhat seduced by their desire for justice and order. While these values are important, even crucial, they cannot be purchased at the price of making government more powerful. Freedom, not order, is our primary value. Justice must include the possibility that government can be unjust, and frequently finds ways to punish those who are innocent of anything other than deviation from the norm.
So I would prefer that our attitude towards capital punishment be seasoned with a bit less enthusiasm, since we are, after all, giving to government the right to kill us all for whatever reasons it deems acceptable. That makes patriots nervous. So where are the patriots?
I don't expect many conservatives to join me in these reconsiderations, but I think they are important. Conservatives are showing a dangerous tendency to be willing to give up their freedoms to purchase more order in society. If we are reduced to such a choice, all of us will have difficulty choosing, but consider one option. If we empower tyrants with more power and less truth, how will freedom loving people rise up to oppose such a government and restore true justice?
Next I tackle myself.
There are many conservatives who would like to return to the era of frequent public executions, even hangings. In fact, conservatives are generally united in strong support for the death penalty, a fact the liberal media enjoys equating with the election of George W. Bush as President, since as Governor of Texas, Bush presided over record numbers of executions. It is anecdotally said that Bush faced opposition to the death penalty from his mother, wife and daughters, but never flinched, even in the case of Karla Faye Tucker, an obviously rehabilitated evangelical Christian.
I support the death penalty. People like Ted Bundy and Timothy McVeigh deserved nothing less. As a Christian, I believe it is taught in scripture and I have no doubt that Jesus would have supported it. If I served on a jury, I would express my support for the death penalty without embarrassment.
Having said all that, I am uneasy with the current conservative posture on the death penalty. Not with the position, but with the posture; with our approach to the application of the issue. But it isn’t just the death penalty, it’s a lot of things that our “posture” is a problem within the “Conservative Christian” movement. The death penalty premise is an easier subject to express posture versus position. I know we are talking about human life, but the death penalty isn’t a “sticky” subject. At least I think it isn’t in relative terms to Immigration, Iraq war, Abortion, Homosexual Rights, Healthcare, etc.
Let me be clear about one thing. I do not believe we should question the death penalty as a way of making conservatism or Christianity "kinder" or "compassionate." If someone thinks that conservatism is cruel, they don't understand liberalism, which is tyranny masquerading as compassion. The Biblical admonitions that support capital punishment are presented as a way of properly valuing and respecting the fact that human beings are made in the image of God. It's not presented as a way to torture the guilty, but to remind the rest of us that people aren't like anything else in creation. I don't expect liberals to appreciate that, since they reject the Judeo-Christian worldview and its emphasis on the sacredness of human life. Note how liberals can't see why we oppose abortion yet support capital punishment.
No, my reconsideration is based on two factors: my enthusiastic belief in limited government, and my commitment to the idea of genuine, objective truth. Sad to say, I believe conservative enthusiasm for particular issues is obscuring the importance of these two principles. And we must be a principled movement, or our positions mean nothing.
Let's start with my second objection (what I believe to be the lesser of my thought out arguments, meaning you’ll probably find a lot of holes in this point, oh well): the importance of genuine, objective truth. Conservatives may not entirely agree on the nature of truth or the means for discovering it, but generally, they have refused the postmodern spirit and insisted that judgments, policies and personal choices be evaluated on their coherence to an objective standard of truth. Whether Christians or not, conservatives have said "You shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free."
What does this have to do with the death penalty? Plenty. In making a judgment about guilt and punishment, conservatives need to take into consideration all the truth in a given situation. Frankly, this seems to be quite the opposite of what many conservatives want to do. For example, the truth of mental status applies in the case of Andrea Yates, the Houston mother who drowned her kids. Yes, it did result in dueling expert psychologists explaining her mental state, but we aren't acting on principle if we ignore that aspect of the case, even with the clear outrage of the death of five children. We should say that no punishment is appropriate until we know if this mother was rational, insane or some mixture of the two.
Every couple weeks or months, the news magazines like 20/20 or the big news channels CNN and Fox News run a special report where a convicted murderer was released because DNA evidence proved they could not have committed the crimes for which they were convicted. Conservatives say little about this, and I'd go so far as to say I suspect some are not happy at the development. The fact is, this is the triumph of truth, and conservatives should rejoice. It is liberals and postmodernists who want us to believe that truth is political and imaginary, shaped only by the agenda of the powerful (government and religious entities). As conservatives, we believe truth is a force that brings down tyrants and rights wrongs. We don't believe it is a commodity to be ignored or manipulated.
As the debate continues, it seems there is a fear, not entirely irrational, that we should be swift and quick in the use of capital punishment to insure that the culture of excuses, with all its various prophets of irresponsibility, doesn't turn the entire justice system into the O.J. Simpson trial. I sympathize and largely support that notion, but we will not achieve that end by reducing the "truth factors" considered in a particular case. The Houston mom was eventually ruled to be insane by a reasonable definition, as such she must be dealt with differently than McVeigh, and conservatives should be quick to say it. We should strongly support the distinction between children and adults, and be against the kind of sentencing that sees them as the same, because it is the truth that they are not the same. We should welcome the evidence of science in any form that gets us closer to what really happened. Truth is always our friend and ally.
When we love the truth, we are all more free. And freedom is a core conservative principle. Quick justice and swift punishment are not the legacies of our system of government, but the legacies of lynchings and tyranny. Conservatives may not like judicial activism, the ACLU, the trial lawyers lobby and the like, but let's not forget that the truthful use of the justice system is a precious benefit of our continuing American revolution. On any given day, it may be the only protection any one of us has, and perhaps our only hope of publishing the truth.
So, we go to my other consideration (the one I hold to dearly and is the crux of a lot of my belief), the principle of limited government. And here, I am bitterly disappointed with many of my conservative counterparts. We will applaud the limitation of government on taxes and regulations. We applaud the limitation of government in taking over the private sector. We applaud the limitation of government in forcing the liberal agenda on our families. But can't we see that limited government is important when it comes to the issues of our agenda as well?
Conservatives are attempting to preserve the ideas of the American revolution, particularly the idea that unlimited central government inevitably leads to abuse. It’s actually something I was taught relentlessly while sitting under the tutelage of school administrators. Any study of history will quickly reveal that one of the primary abuses of government in history has been the application of capital punishment. Christian scripture clearly says that government has the power to bear the sword, but that same scripture shows the execution of Jesus by the state as an evil act. The founding fathers of this nation were good candidates for swift execution by the British government. All dictatorial empires have used capital punishment to eliminate opposition and intimidate the public. To listen to some conservatives talk, you'd think that captial punishment, like Christmas, can only do us good. Read Foxe's Book of Martyrs. All those burning Protestants were fried up.........legally.
When we allow the government to execute McVeigh, we should be reluctantly yielding such power. When we see the incarceration of thousands of Americans for crimes like personal drug use or tax evasion, we should be uneasy. It is quite possible that capital punishment is abused by state governments and it is quite appropriate that conservatives be the loudest voices urging caution in the use of the ultimate punishment. Not because it is wrong, but because government is sinful and awkward, usually acting in the interests of the powerful, and not to be trusted completely in any situation. Even when implementing our agenda.
As I see it, conservatives are somewhat seduced by their desire for justice and order. While these values are important, even crucial, they cannot be purchased at the price of making government more powerful. Freedom, not order, is our primary value. Justice must include the possibility that government can be unjust, and frequently finds ways to punish those who are innocent of anything other than deviation from the norm.
So I would prefer that our attitude towards capital punishment be seasoned with a bit less enthusiasm, since we are, after all, giving to government the right to kill us all for whatever reasons it deems acceptable. That makes patriots nervous. So where are the patriots?
I don't expect many conservatives to join me in these reconsiderations, but I think they are important. Conservatives are showing a dangerous tendency to be willing to give up their freedoms to purchase more order in society. If we are reduced to such a choice, all of us will have difficulty choosing, but consider one option. If we empower tyrants with more power and less truth, how will freedom loving people rise up to oppose such a government and restore true justice?
Next I tackle myself.
Friday, December 07, 2007
Everything is Spiritual
"Everything we do we do as an integrated being. 100% physical, 100% spiritual. These first Christians latched onto this right away.
'Whatever you do whether in word or deed do it in the name of Jesus Christ.'
What were they saying?
Every act is a spirtual act. It is, whether or not you are aware of the implications of what you are doing."
This is still one of the best speeches, lectures, sermons whatever you want to call it, I have ever heard.
Cannot wait to get my copy in the mail and pop it in the DVD player.
Well worth the $20 plus S&H.
Here's a morsel.
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
F R E E D O M ! ! ! ! ! ! !
I'm Brian A. Maloney and I approve this message.There sits Simon,
so foolishly wise
proudly he's tending his nets
Then Jesus calls,
and the boats drift away
all that he owns he forgets
More than the nets
he abandoned that day,
he found that his pride was soon drifting away
It's hard to imagine the freedom we find
from the things we leave behind
Matthew was mindful
of taking the tax,
pressing the people to pay
Hearing the call,
he responded in faith
followed the Light and the Way
Leaving the people
so puzzled he found,
the greed in his heart
was no longer around and
it's hard to imagine
the freedom we find
from the things
we leave behind
Every heart needs to be set free,
from posessions
that hold it so tight
'Cause freedom's not found in the things that we own,
It's the power
to do what is right
Jesus, our only posession,
giving becomes our delight
We can't imagine the freedom we find
from the things we leave behind
We show a love for the world in our lives
by worshipping goods we posess
Jesus has laid all our treasures aside
"love God above all the rest"'
Cause when we say 'no'
to the things of the world
we open our hearts
to the love of the Lord and
its hard to imagine
the freedom we find
from the things we leave behind
Oh, and it's hard to imagine
the freedom we find
from the things
we leave behind
- Michael Card "The Things We Leave Behind"
Paid for by the committee to spread the power and grace that is Jesus!!!!
Thursday, October 18, 2007
In the basement.....
I'm Brian A. Maloney and I approve this message.
I'll be in the basement the next 24-36, maybe 48 hours (maybe over the whole weekend) pounding out another manifesto because I have a blog and feel it is important.I'll be around sporadically offering comments (as always), but stay tuned for the post tomorrow (or maybe Saturday or even Monday) on Fearmongering.
I know, I know, your all on the edge of your seat waiting for it.
Trust me, it won't be much, I have a tendency to disappoint the more I talk something up, just ask Michele, I'm surprised we even have a kid.
Come on I had to say it!!!!!
So, the hammering, sawing, cussing, loud obnoxious noises you hear will be me in the basement trying to create something with my hands....
And keep commenting on all the blogs, just because I may not be there as much doesn't mean you can't continue bashing me and calling me uncompassionate and heartless and an idiot for being pro-Bible, pro-Church, pro-Bush, pro-Life, pro-Men, pro-My Wife, pro-beer, pro Conservative, pro-Libertarian, pro-Country Music pro-Do the Opposite and believing someone else's dogma over your dogma.
So.....
In the meantime, enjoy one of these oldie but goodies from back in the day (which was written almost a year to the day...and not sure I've changed any. Good? Bad?)
Paid for by the committee to tell you I'll be out of the blogosphere for a couple days but around enough to make some basic comments when I feel like and then proceed to piss you off, and rile you up, but by being out of the blogosphere for awhile I can avoid having to answer all your comments until such time that I can come up with real cool quips, comebacks, and logical thought to combat what you said.
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Drawing the Line
Where do Christians draw the line?
Should we even draw the line?
Everyone knows by now about the Kathy Griffin comment, so no need to re-hash it here.
But why are most Christians doing more than just turning the other cheek? They're giving her a free pass. Her comment is detestable and disgusting in every way imagineable. It should be ok, that I or anyone else, find it offensive and state it so. Regardless of whether or not you are a devout follower of Jesus Christ.
I'm not advocating "condemning her" (by the way, if anyone wants to define what "condemning her means", I'm open to it). I'm not advocating a Clint Eastwood reaction to everything that rubs Christianity the wrong way. Not only is that response unbiblical, but to some very drastic results, it has been tried in the past by the whole of Christianity.
But as a Christian, it is perfectly ok and reasonable, and should be expected that you draw the line...somewhere. And a comment like this, should be one of those instances.
The missional, emergeing, let's talk about it, never argue about it type always point to the love, peace, and compassion taught and lived out by Jesus and then continued by the apostles in the beginning of the early church. They point to the fact that Jesus nor the apostles got mixed up in the politics of it all. They lived for an audience of one. I'm down with all of that, and in the last couple of years I have changed a lot in that area myself. Sure, I still talk and write about politics, but I have realized to mix that with religion isn't the way it should be. But it goes more than just abortion and gay rights, but universal healthcare and the death penalty too. But that's for a different day and time. I've grown up, not afraid to say it.
But this comment goes to the heart of the matter of the whole human race. Deliberate, willful rebellion against God and his word.
Jesus drew the line at this in his own life. Remember the incident at the temple? He literally beat out all the people, kicked over the tables, and started yelling. *Gasp* Jesus got pissed and got physical with those who were using the temple to make a financial gain (hey, I wonder if Jesus cares about the church at all...I know, different day and time). He does all this by quoting scripture. *Gasp* using the scriptures to promote a physical (violent) reaction to someone disobeying God's word.
"That's not the Jesus way"
Well maybe it is.
Look, I'm not saying I am going to go get a lead pipe and beat her over the head with it. I'm not saying it would be nice to see Rob Bell, Max Lucado, Mark Driscoll, John Piper, Brian McLaren, et al. actually take a stance on something and voice an opinion. I'm not advocating boycotting her show, or the network, or the sponsors, or the co-stars, or the picture company, or the director, or any other direct or indirect connection to Kathy, or yes, to even alter my investment choices. I'm not saying a vigilante group of Christians should get together and go up-turn the tables and break the cameras on the set of Kathy's TV show.
I'm not saying any of that. But, for me to be offended and renounce her comment as not funny and not acceptable anywhere, ever should not get me the label of close-minded, uncompassionate, and/or I am condeming her.
But I will cop to being close-minded if you tell me the comment didn't offend you, and my response to you is I'm grieved for you.
Jesus accepted everyone and anyone, but he drew the line when it came to slandering his Father's name.
Should we even draw the line?
Everyone knows by now about the Kathy Griffin comment, so no need to re-hash it here.
But why are most Christians doing more than just turning the other cheek? They're giving her a free pass. Her comment is detestable and disgusting in every way imagineable. It should be ok, that I or anyone else, find it offensive and state it so. Regardless of whether or not you are a devout follower of Jesus Christ.
I'm not advocating "condemning her" (by the way, if anyone wants to define what "condemning her means", I'm open to it). I'm not advocating a Clint Eastwood reaction to everything that rubs Christianity the wrong way. Not only is that response unbiblical, but to some very drastic results, it has been tried in the past by the whole of Christianity.
But as a Christian, it is perfectly ok and reasonable, and should be expected that you draw the line...somewhere. And a comment like this, should be one of those instances.
The missional, emergeing, let's talk about it, never argue about it type always point to the love, peace, and compassion taught and lived out by Jesus and then continued by the apostles in the beginning of the early church. They point to the fact that Jesus nor the apostles got mixed up in the politics of it all. They lived for an audience of one. I'm down with all of that, and in the last couple of years I have changed a lot in that area myself. Sure, I still talk and write about politics, but I have realized to mix that with religion isn't the way it should be. But it goes more than just abortion and gay rights, but universal healthcare and the death penalty too. But that's for a different day and time. I've grown up, not afraid to say it.
But this comment goes to the heart of the matter of the whole human race. Deliberate, willful rebellion against God and his word.
Jesus drew the line at this in his own life. Remember the incident at the temple? He literally beat out all the people, kicked over the tables, and started yelling. *Gasp* Jesus got pissed and got physical with those who were using the temple to make a financial gain (hey, I wonder if Jesus cares about the church at all...I know, different day and time). He does all this by quoting scripture. *Gasp* using the scriptures to promote a physical (violent) reaction to someone disobeying God's word.
"That's not the Jesus way"
Well maybe it is.
Look, I'm not saying I am going to go get a lead pipe and beat her over the head with it. I'm not saying it would be nice to see Rob Bell, Max Lucado, Mark Driscoll, John Piper, Brian McLaren, et al. actually take a stance on something and voice an opinion. I'm not advocating boycotting her show, or the network, or the sponsors, or the co-stars, or the picture company, or the director, or any other direct or indirect connection to Kathy, or yes, to even alter my investment choices. I'm not saying a vigilante group of Christians should get together and go up-turn the tables and break the cameras on the set of Kathy's TV show.
I'm not saying any of that. But, for me to be offended and renounce her comment as not funny and not acceptable anywhere, ever should not get me the label of close-minded, uncompassionate, and/or I am condeming her.
But I will cop to being close-minded if you tell me the comment didn't offend you, and my response to you is I'm grieved for you.
Jesus accepted everyone and anyone, but he drew the line when it came to slandering his Father's name.
Here for Kathy's inaccuracy from the Catholic perspective and here for more Catholic repsonse and why they maybe have it right sometimes.
Friday, July 13, 2007
The Doctor will see you now
Luke, the beloved physician, was poised for the ultimate examination. Luke had done his research thoroughly, he had talked to other specialists, grasped the vital signs denoting health; he was prepped for his task. Years of medical experience had trained his eyes and intuitions to know the situation even before the results were in. The patient, the Lord Jesus, was thoroughly sifted in Luke's arduous investigation. No stone had gone unturned in the life of Christ, no pocket left unchecked. The doctor gazed deeply into the pupils, the ears and most importantly, listened to His heart. After a period of analysis, a crunching of the numbers and checking the charts, the Doctor stepped back and internalized the results. He rubbed his chin and checked the information on his clip-board one more time. Looking up, he pronounced his diagnosis, "You're normal." he said.
May we all be normal
May we all be normal
Sunday, April 08, 2007
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