The Holy Spirit lives inside of us. That is so freaking cool. I know we all know this. But I want to encourage all of us to reflect on this awesome Christian truth. None of the other "Abrahamic" religions have anything of this sort when it comes to awesomeness. Pantheists have God in everything, which in my view seems to take God down a couple notches from holy to mundane. Some people would like to say that we are God or we make our own God.
But Christians believe in a God that is so committed to his people that after purifying them with the cross, making them righteous by the resurrection of his Son, he gives them the Holy Spirit. To live inside of them. Convicting them towards Godly, Jesus-like behavior. Protecting them from the attacks of the devil. Why? Because God loves his people. Because he is faithful. Because knowing all of our temptation and struggles, because He endured it on the earth, Jesus sent the Spirit to teach us and guide us and protect us. And that Spirit doesn't just visit us from time to time. It's not here one day gone the next. It's not as though we sin and it goes away. No. The Holy Spirit lives inside of us.
That's awesome.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
tiller and war
scott welch made mention to me the other day about this blog being dead. he’s right, this blog is dead, and here’s my attempt to revive it.
i was recently watching bbc news one morning when they ran the report about the murder of a late-term abortion doctor. if you haven’t heard about this tragedy, you may read it here. for those who are to lazy to read it, here is a one-line synopsis. a late-term abortion doctor was murdered by a pro-life activist, scott roeder, one sunday morning at reformation lutheran church in kansas city as he was ushering people into the sanctuary.
wow, where do i begin? my first reaction: i wasn’t surprised. he’s been a late-term abortion doctor for decades, he’s performed over 60,000 abortions, he’s been shot once before, and there has been anti-abortion protests outside his clinic for years. i’m surprised it didn’t happen earlier.
so i started looking around online to see what kind of responses i could find from frequent bloggers. to be honest, i was mostly looking for people who support the murder of tiller. i couldn’t find too many. most everybody, christians and non-christians alike, condemned the homicide on grounds of immorality and unlawfulness.
so i started reflecting, pondering the ethics of it all. let me state my opinion first: the killing of tiller is a tragedy and i too condemn it. that being said, i only have one question: what are the moral differences between the killing of tiller and the killing in war??? let me explain. roeder killed tiller because he figured that 60,000 lives are worth more than one. when you break down the ethics or war, you find the same principle. if i can save 1,000 lives by killing one, than it’s worth it. obviously war has so much more to it than that, but whenever i discuss the ethics of war with the average joe, i find all kinds of responses ranging from just war supporters to kill ‘em all rednecks. but there is one thing in common: no one ever argues against fighting the nazis in WWII. “what would have happened if we didn’t invade germany???” is the moral question we ask. in principle (though i don’t believe it), our gov’t tells us the same thing: that we fight in wars to save either 1) someone’s life, or 2) ideology (freedom, democracy, etc).
so my question still remains: what are the moral differences between the killing of tiller and the killing in war??? is tiller’s death only condemned because murder is against the law? and war condoned because it’s not against the law? (and by against the law i mean an act that’s punishable or excusable under penalty of the judicial system). if abortion was illegal and tiller got the death sentence for performing abortions under the table, would we be rejoicing? what’s the real issue here? i know that christians don’t get their moral orders from the state (abortion is sanctioned by the state, not by the church) but why is fighting in wars different then the murder of tiller???
so it looks like i have more that just one question, but i wanted to make my point clear. i invite all points of view. please comment.
i was recently watching bbc news one morning when they ran the report about the murder of a late-term abortion doctor. if you haven’t heard about this tragedy, you may read it here. for those who are to lazy to read it, here is a one-line synopsis. a late-term abortion doctor was murdered by a pro-life activist, scott roeder, one sunday morning at reformation lutheran church in kansas city as he was ushering people into the sanctuary.
wow, where do i begin? my first reaction: i wasn’t surprised. he’s been a late-term abortion doctor for decades, he’s performed over 60,000 abortions, he’s been shot once before, and there has been anti-abortion protests outside his clinic for years. i’m surprised it didn’t happen earlier.
so i started looking around online to see what kind of responses i could find from frequent bloggers. to be honest, i was mostly looking for people who support the murder of tiller. i couldn’t find too many. most everybody, christians and non-christians alike, condemned the homicide on grounds of immorality and unlawfulness.
so i started reflecting, pondering the ethics of it all. let me state my opinion first: the killing of tiller is a tragedy and i too condemn it. that being said, i only have one question: what are the moral differences between the killing of tiller and the killing in war??? let me explain. roeder killed tiller because he figured that 60,000 lives are worth more than one. when you break down the ethics or war, you find the same principle. if i can save 1,000 lives by killing one, than it’s worth it. obviously war has so much more to it than that, but whenever i discuss the ethics of war with the average joe, i find all kinds of responses ranging from just war supporters to kill ‘em all rednecks. but there is one thing in common: no one ever argues against fighting the nazis in WWII. “what would have happened if we didn’t invade germany???” is the moral question we ask. in principle (though i don’t believe it), our gov’t tells us the same thing: that we fight in wars to save either 1) someone’s life, or 2) ideology (freedom, democracy, etc).
so my question still remains: what are the moral differences between the killing of tiller and the killing in war??? is tiller’s death only condemned because murder is against the law? and war condoned because it’s not against the law? (and by against the law i mean an act that’s punishable or excusable under penalty of the judicial system). if abortion was illegal and tiller got the death sentence for performing abortions under the table, would we be rejoicing? what’s the real issue here? i know that christians don’t get their moral orders from the state (abortion is sanctioned by the state, not by the church) but why is fighting in wars different then the murder of tiller???
so it looks like i have more that just one question, but i wanted to make my point clear. i invite all points of view. please comment.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
RE: This is where people are at
To piggie-back Bish's post:
I found this in Bali, Indonesia.
Let's repent folks.
I found this in Bali, Indonesia.
Let's repent folks.
Monday, November 10, 2008
This is where people are at
"OMG. Barack won, the world is over."
"OMG. Barack won, there is hope for humanity."
Let's repent folks.
"OMG. Barack won, there is hope for humanity."
Let's repent folks.
Monday, October 20, 2008
The 4 Ways: #5 (part II)
To answer this question, how did Jesus go about initiating the Kingdom of God? we must look back to what God had been doing or trying to do for a long, long time. It all really starts with Abraham. Abraham was called to get up and leave Chaldea, the cultural and religious capital of the known world, to go he knew not where, to find he knew not what. He could not know when or whether or how he could again have a home, a land of his own. And yet as he rose to follow this inscrutable promise he was told that through him, all the nations would be blessed. Abraham promised his God that he would lead a different kind of life: a life different from the cultured and religious peoples, whether urban or nomadic, among whom he was to make his pilgrim way.
“From the rocky heights I see them,
I watch them from the rounded hills.
I see a people the dwells alone,
that has not made itself one with the nations.”
-Numbers 23:9, NEB
Yet in that apartness how present! This is it--the creation of a distinct community with its own deviant set of values and its coherent way of incarnating them. Today it might be called an underground movement, a political party, an infiltration team, or a cell movement. The sociologists would call it an intentional community. Back then they were called “Hebrews,” a title which probably originally meant “the people who crossed over.”
Abraham’s children did not always keep God’s promises, but God remained steadfast in his loyalty to them. His promises of righteousness to be brought to the nations through his servant Israel were from year to year reiterated, reinforced, clarified, even though the likelihood that the Israelites would become the instrument of their fulfillment seemed less and less evident. These were the promises, Christians believe, which Jesus came to keep.
Jesus did again what God had done in calling Abraham (or Moses or Gideon or Samuel): He gathered his people around his word and his will. Jesus created around himself a society like no other society mankind had ever seen:
a. This was a voluntary society: you could not be born into it. You could come into it only by repenting and freely pledging allegiance to its king. It was a society with no second generation members.
b. It was a society which, counter to all precedent, was mixed in its composition. It was mixed racially with both Jews and Gentiles; mixed religiously with fanatical keepers of the law and advocates of liberty from all forms, with both radical monotheists and others just in the process of disentangling their minds from idolatry; mixed economically, with members both rich and poor.
c. When he called this society together, Jesus gave his members a new way to live. He gave them a new way to deal with offenders--by forgiving them. He gave them a new way to deal with violence--by suffering. He gave them a new way to deal with money--by sharing it. He gave them a new way to deal with problems of leadership--by drawing upon the gift of every member, even the most humble. He gave them a new way to deal with a corrupt society--by building a new order, not smashing the old. He gave them a new pattern of relationships between man and woman, between parent and child, between master and slave, in which was made concrete a radical new vision of what it means to be a human person.
All of this new peoplehood, the being-together of one another and the being different in style of life, his disciples freely promised to do, as he renewed the promise that through them the world should be blessed and turned right side up. Now the usual name for this new society which Jesus created is “church.” But when we use the word “church” in our day, we mean by it a gathering for worship, or the group of persons who gather for worship, or who might so gather, and who otherwise have little to do with each other. Sometimes it even means the building they meet in, the organization which provides that there will be an officiant at the meeting. But the word Jesus used in the Aramaic language, like the equivalent word the NT writers used in Greek, does not mean a gathering for worship or administration; it means a public gathering to deal with community business. Our modern terms assembly, parliament, town meetings are the best equivalents. The church is God’s people gathered as a unit, as a people, gathered to do his business in his name, to find what it means here and now to put into practice this different quality of life which is God’s promise to them and to the world and their promise to God and service to the world.
Jesus did not bring to faithful Israel any corrected ritual or new theories about the being of God. He brought them a new peoplehood and a new way of living together. This very existence of such a group is itself a deep social change. His (the Church’s) very presence was such a threat that he had to be crucified. But such a group is not only a novelty on the social scene; if it lived faithfully, it is also the most powerful tool of social change.
“The kingdom of God is at hand: repent and believe the good news!”
In conclusion, the Good News Jesus brings is not, as the Zealots of right or left would say, that violence is only wrong when the bad guys use it or that enmity is only wrong when it is violent. It does not say, with the emigrant to the desert, that you can cop out and do your own thing unmolested. It is not concerned with the inner-worldly emigration of the Pharisees, to refuse cooperation only at the point of personal complicity. It does not promise, with the H&S, that if enough morally concerned people sign up to work for Dow, Du Pont, and General Motors, we can beat the communists yet at feeding the world (think 70’s.). All four of these classical strategies have in common that they dodge the duty of beginning now, first, with the creation of a new, voluntary, covenanting community in which the rejection of the Old is accredited by the reality of the New which has already begun.
The question for our time is not whether the kingdom is coming but what we will do about it. It continues to be possible, and in fact likely, that we may choose the strategies which Jesus rejected. We could find more respectable company in any of these four camps, as did our fathers. Or we could, if we chose, accept in all its novelty and discover in all our creativity the kind of life together as fully human men among men which he came to live and to give, including the kind of death he came to die. We could accept, if we would repent, that novelty in our ways of dealing with one another, with ethnic differences, with social hierarchy, with money, with offenses, with leadership, and with power, for which revolutionary is the only adequate word.
“The Kingdom of God is within your grasp: repent and believe the good news!”
“From the rocky heights I see them,
I watch them from the rounded hills.
I see a people the dwells alone,
that has not made itself one with the nations.”
-Numbers 23:9, NEB
Yet in that apartness how present! This is it--the creation of a distinct community with its own deviant set of values and its coherent way of incarnating them. Today it might be called an underground movement, a political party, an infiltration team, or a cell movement. The sociologists would call it an intentional community. Back then they were called “Hebrews,” a title which probably originally meant “the people who crossed over.”
Abraham’s children did not always keep God’s promises, but God remained steadfast in his loyalty to them. His promises of righteousness to be brought to the nations through his servant Israel were from year to year reiterated, reinforced, clarified, even though the likelihood that the Israelites would become the instrument of their fulfillment seemed less and less evident. These were the promises, Christians believe, which Jesus came to keep.
Jesus did again what God had done in calling Abraham (or Moses or Gideon or Samuel): He gathered his people around his word and his will. Jesus created around himself a society like no other society mankind had ever seen:
a. This was a voluntary society: you could not be born into it. You could come into it only by repenting and freely pledging allegiance to its king. It was a society with no second generation members.
b. It was a society which, counter to all precedent, was mixed in its composition. It was mixed racially with both Jews and Gentiles; mixed religiously with fanatical keepers of the law and advocates of liberty from all forms, with both radical monotheists and others just in the process of disentangling their minds from idolatry; mixed economically, with members both rich and poor.
c. When he called this society together, Jesus gave his members a new way to live. He gave them a new way to deal with offenders--by forgiving them. He gave them a new way to deal with violence--by suffering. He gave them a new way to deal with money--by sharing it. He gave them a new way to deal with problems of leadership--by drawing upon the gift of every member, even the most humble. He gave them a new way to deal with a corrupt society--by building a new order, not smashing the old. He gave them a new pattern of relationships between man and woman, between parent and child, between master and slave, in which was made concrete a radical new vision of what it means to be a human person.
All of this new peoplehood, the being-together of one another and the being different in style of life, his disciples freely promised to do, as he renewed the promise that through them the world should be blessed and turned right side up. Now the usual name for this new society which Jesus created is “church.” But when we use the word “church” in our day, we mean by it a gathering for worship, or the group of persons who gather for worship, or who might so gather, and who otherwise have little to do with each other. Sometimes it even means the building they meet in, the organization which provides that there will be an officiant at the meeting. But the word Jesus used in the Aramaic language, like the equivalent word the NT writers used in Greek, does not mean a gathering for worship or administration; it means a public gathering to deal with community business. Our modern terms assembly, parliament, town meetings are the best equivalents. The church is God’s people gathered as a unit, as a people, gathered to do his business in his name, to find what it means here and now to put into practice this different quality of life which is God’s promise to them and to the world and their promise to God and service to the world.
Jesus did not bring to faithful Israel any corrected ritual or new theories about the being of God. He brought them a new peoplehood and a new way of living together. This very existence of such a group is itself a deep social change. His (the Church’s) very presence was such a threat that he had to be crucified. But such a group is not only a novelty on the social scene; if it lived faithfully, it is also the most powerful tool of social change.
“The kingdom of God is at hand: repent and believe the good news!”
In conclusion, the Good News Jesus brings is not, as the Zealots of right or left would say, that violence is only wrong when the bad guys use it or that enmity is only wrong when it is violent. It does not say, with the emigrant to the desert, that you can cop out and do your own thing unmolested. It is not concerned with the inner-worldly emigration of the Pharisees, to refuse cooperation only at the point of personal complicity. It does not promise, with the H&S, that if enough morally concerned people sign up to work for Dow, Du Pont, and General Motors, we can beat the communists yet at feeding the world (think 70’s.). All four of these classical strategies have in common that they dodge the duty of beginning now, first, with the creation of a new, voluntary, covenanting community in which the rejection of the Old is accredited by the reality of the New which has already begun.
The question for our time is not whether the kingdom is coming but what we will do about it. It continues to be possible, and in fact likely, that we may choose the strategies which Jesus rejected. We could find more respectable company in any of these four camps, as did our fathers. Or we could, if we chose, accept in all its novelty and discover in all our creativity the kind of life together as fully human men among men which he came to live and to give, including the kind of death he came to die. We could accept, if we would repent, that novelty in our ways of dealing with one another, with ethnic differences, with social hierarchy, with money, with offenses, with leadership, and with power, for which revolutionary is the only adequate word.
“The Kingdom of God is within your grasp: repent and believe the good news!”
Saturday, October 18, 2008
The 4 Ways: #5 (part I)
But what then did Jesus do, if he rejects at the same time the established order of the H&S and the holy, violent revolution with which the zealots sought to change that order: both the outward emigration of the desert sects and the inward emigration of the Pharisees? We need not meditate long to see that this question is our own. (Even if you don't agree with everything argued in this series, it is no question that Jesus avoided these 4 ways. Let's take some stabs of how Jesus actually went about initiating his cause. And yes, I have a pretty good summary of how Jesus did it, but I thought it would be fun to figure it out together. Don't be a pooper!)
Sunday, October 12, 2008
The 4 Ways: #4
The fourth way Jesus could have gone about initiating his cause:
4) “Proper religion,” represented in society by the Pharisees. They lived in the middle of urban society, yet they sought, like the desert sects, to keep themselves pure and separate. These people kept themselves pure in the midst of the city by keeping rules of segregation. Certain areas of life were to be avoided; certain elements of culture are not for the Pharisee. Certain coins, certain crops, certain persons, certain occupations, certain days were taboo.
So it is in our day; there are many who feel that it is both possible and desirable to distinguish by a clear line the “spiritual” and/or “moral” issues which religion properly speaks, from “social” and “political” issues, which are not the business of religion.
But their separation is really not that clean. To make such a separation means to take the side of the establishment. To say that the church should not meddle with housing problems is to conclude that the house owner and the real estate agent, even if members of the church, receive no concrete moral guidance from beyond themselves. To say that it is not the business of the church to second-guess the experts on details of political or military strategy, or to have judgments on the moral legitimacy of particular laws, is to give one’s blessing to whatever goes on. Those who object to the church’s having something to say about economies, especially if that be critical of the existing capitalistic order, have no qualms about seeing the church on the other side of the economic question, or about economies having a say in the life of the churches.
So it comes as no surprise to be reminded that in the case of Jesus, the Pharisees as well, although deep moral and theological differences separated them from the H&S, finally did make common cause with them in the crucifixion because Jesus threatened their position of noninvolvement.
4) “Proper religion,” represented in society by the Pharisees. They lived in the middle of urban society, yet they sought, like the desert sects, to keep themselves pure and separate. These people kept themselves pure in the midst of the city by keeping rules of segregation. Certain areas of life were to be avoided; certain elements of culture are not for the Pharisee. Certain coins, certain crops, certain persons, certain occupations, certain days were taboo.
So it is in our day; there are many who feel that it is both possible and desirable to distinguish by a clear line the “spiritual” and/or “moral” issues which religion properly speaks, from “social” and “political” issues, which are not the business of religion.
But their separation is really not that clean. To make such a separation means to take the side of the establishment. To say that the church should not meddle with housing problems is to conclude that the house owner and the real estate agent, even if members of the church, receive no concrete moral guidance from beyond themselves. To say that it is not the business of the church to second-guess the experts on details of political or military strategy, or to have judgments on the moral legitimacy of particular laws, is to give one’s blessing to whatever goes on. Those who object to the church’s having something to say about economies, especially if that be critical of the existing capitalistic order, have no qualms about seeing the church on the other side of the economic question, or about economies having a say in the life of the churches.
So it comes as no surprise to be reminded that in the case of Jesus, the Pharisees as well, although deep moral and theological differences separated them from the H&S, finally did make common cause with them in the crucifixion because Jesus threatened their position of noninvolvement.
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