Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul.
1 Peter 2:11
This war staged in my soul, wherever bodily my soul may be, secretes its poisonous offspring into my heart. Where this noxious sludge is sent along the various canals of my bloodstream to every part of my body. As these liquid transgressions reach the barrier of my skin it finds the weak points and thousands of bumps are erected on the surface of my epidermis from the crown of my scalp to the lowliest of my toes; not an inch of my body is not covered by a miniature grave mound signifying any one of a million times in my life I have sinned against God. Each tiny boil on my skin’s surface holds tribute to a death I deserved to die, but that Jesus died instead. As these affronts to God seek escape, the guilt of knowing that each sin was a conscious decision made against God weighs down, pressing like so many tombstones on my shoulders.
And while I can hardly bare the pressure of my own self achieved guilt, I think back with sorrow, to the justification I claimed for allowing Christ to take the stripes I deserve: because He can take it, and I can’t. There is the Messiah, the promised Redeemer, the Son of God, taking a beating any other man who ever lived would have died from, but not my Lord, He did not die until the very moment He was ready to; when He breathed His last upon the cross.
Die though He did, death could not keep Him! To my ever-growing shame it is this marvelous, glorious and wondrous truth that weighs down on me. I know that because He is made new that I also can be, and it is because of this knowledge that I have not long ago sinned so easily. Forgive me Lord, but I am ever a fool. Even if you redeem me more times than there are stars in the sky, I am destined to fail you again. I am not worthy of the pain you have endured.
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Alison
He couldn’t help himself from stealing glances at her as they drove down the dreary street. A street not dreary for lack of sunshine or from absence of things to look at or marvel over, but dreary because of the way she made everything not pertaining to her dim in comparison of all that she was.
She was herself, as she had always been, a chalice of water from the fountain of youth, who’s waters promised renewed life and untold strength if only one could drink of her. Tyrone felt, as he always felt when he was in her presence, a deep tensing of muscles, a quickening of the heart, as if he were preparing to run a race to win her hand, the race announcer counting in slow motion 3, 2, 1. He breathed with forced rhythm, hoping to appear cool, calm and collected, as she appeared to be.
On the roads around them, all of nature appeared to take notice of her passing. Small birds would take to wing in an attempt to take in her image a few moments longer. Traffic lights, who were so cold and red-eyed to Tyrone, would wink green to her as she approached. Women in their finest outfits, of mid-summer blue and playschool red would slouch with lack of self-confidence as her gold-crowned, aqua blue eyes met their sepia colored iris’s. Men in fine made designer clothing would stand erect and flash their bleached-white teeth and UV-tanned skin in hopes to attract her fickle, ever-changing, life-giving gaze.
She was herself, as she had always been, a chalice of water from the fountain of youth, who’s waters promised renewed life and untold strength if only one could drink of her. Tyrone felt, as he always felt when he was in her presence, a deep tensing of muscles, a quickening of the heart, as if he were preparing to run a race to win her hand, the race announcer counting in slow motion 3, 2, 1. He breathed with forced rhythm, hoping to appear cool, calm and collected, as she appeared to be.
On the roads around them, all of nature appeared to take notice of her passing. Small birds would take to wing in an attempt to take in her image a few moments longer. Traffic lights, who were so cold and red-eyed to Tyrone, would wink green to her as she approached. Women in their finest outfits, of mid-summer blue and playschool red would slouch with lack of self-confidence as her gold-crowned, aqua blue eyes met their sepia colored iris’s. Men in fine made designer clothing would stand erect and flash their bleached-white teeth and UV-tanned skin in hopes to attract her fickle, ever-changing, life-giving gaze.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Luck
Luck is a four-letter word that has no place in our society. When I think about luck, I see it as being this unattainable artifact like Midas’ hand that will turn everything I touch to gold. People have dried up fortunes, lost loved ones, and even shriveled their lives in pursuit of luck. Other people use luck as a scapegoat to keep from accepting their own failures, calling it unlucky. Luck has been fantasized as being something wondrous and mystical, but in reality luck equates to laziness. Laziness that is too lazy to search for the reason behind the happening.
Luck does to people what television does to the old brain. When an older person watches T.V. instead of doing something intellectually stimulating his brain will stop making neurons, and neurons are what keeps a mind from being a vegetable. Likewise, luck, keeps a person from searching why; why did I get a flat tire (because I drove over that broken glass), why did I end up with such a great girlfriend (because I wooed her with everything I had, I put in the work), why did I strikeout in baseball (because I didn’t keep my eye on the ball). Instead of growing our understanding and furthering our minds so we can better understand something and then reproduce it, we call it luck and leave it at that, “I’m just lucky, I guess.”
The idea of “luck as a lady” is one way that our society has made luck to be something desirable. Why? Because if a person can get someone to believe and desire luck, then that same person can make money off of the believer. Namely, gambling. According to “savingadvice.com” the chance that a single person will win the lottery is about 120 million to 1! So why are rational, educated people still spending thousands of dollars in hopes to someday win? Because luck is sexy. Luck is attractive, and instead of seeing the lottery as a 1 in 120 million shot, they see it as trying to woo a fickle model, and hey, maybe someday she’ll take pity on you and give you a hand out.
Luck is not a clover. Must I get into superstition and charms? Four leaf clovers belong in lovely fields or in my cereal, not in my pocket when I go in for the big job interview. This idea that luck, , can dwell in certain special charms is both another scheme to make money and another lie to give an object the credit that something, or somebody else deserves. My theology speaks for me in this case: I believe in a God who gives every good gift. This doesn’t mean this same God doesn’t give the bad gifts, but I do believe that “every good gift comes down from the Father of lights.” (James 1:17) But when I give a charm or the concept of luck the credit for my good gifts what am I giving God? Say I gave my nephew a gift for his birthday, and instead of thanking me and believing I gave it to him, he believes and thanks a picture of a cow. When his next birthday comes along, he hopes in the cow and relies on it to give him what he wants. Doesn’t this sound ridiculous? Yet people do this with horoscopes all the time. Luck is just like this.
The idea of providence is much like fate, or destiny. Except that providence implies a being bent on protecting and providing for me. This being, who I know to be God, is not random or fickle like luck is, but He is purposeful and active in His providence. Assuming God where a die, and I were to roll this die, the number that would come up would not be random, but would be destined to come up for a purpose long before the earth was created. The depth and magnitude of providence and pre-destiny, goes much further than the random whimsical nature of luck. When looking at luck from this perspective it seems so frail and childish, as if those who believe in luck are ignorant of the big picture much like the child that believes Santa Claus fills his stocking. Not that I understand God, or His ways, but I believe in His omniscience. Faith in that way is different than luck. If my nephew would have faith that I would give him a good gift for his birthday, he know who it was that gives him the gift, and the thanks and glory, if you will, is placed rightly.
Luck is not only whimsical, ignorant and deceptive, but it is also an idol. It’s true. Luck takes the place of God. A person who believes fully in luck, has nothing to give to God because luck steals what God is due. Luck didn’t give mankind breath or sustain our life every day, yet we call ourselves lucky when we escape death, giving the glory of our life to a dead ideal. May we give credit where credit is due, and choose to not believe in something because our culture tells us to. If we are to believe in something, let it be proven, unlike the concept of a lucky rabbit’s foot, that ironically was extremely unlucky for the rabbit.
Luck does to people what television does to the old brain. When an older person watches T.V. instead of doing something intellectually stimulating his brain will stop making neurons, and neurons are what keeps a mind from being a vegetable. Likewise, luck, keeps a person from searching why; why did I get a flat tire (because I drove over that broken glass), why did I end up with such a great girlfriend (because I wooed her with everything I had, I put in the work), why did I strikeout in baseball (because I didn’t keep my eye on the ball). Instead of growing our understanding and furthering our minds so we can better understand something and then reproduce it, we call it luck and leave it at that, “I’m just lucky, I guess.”
The idea of “luck as a lady” is one way that our society has made luck to be something desirable. Why? Because if a person can get someone to believe and desire luck, then that same person can make money off of the believer. Namely, gambling. According to “savingadvice.com” the chance that a single person will win the lottery is about 120 million to 1! So why are rational, educated people still spending thousands of dollars in hopes to someday win? Because luck is sexy. Luck is attractive, and instead of seeing the lottery as a 1 in 120 million shot, they see it as trying to woo a fickle model, and hey, maybe someday she’ll take pity on you and give you a hand out.
Luck is not a clover. Must I get into superstition and charms? Four leaf clovers belong in lovely fields or in my cereal, not in my pocket when I go in for the big job interview. This idea that luck, , can dwell in certain special charms is both another scheme to make money and another lie to give an object the credit that something, or somebody else deserves. My theology speaks for me in this case: I believe in a God who gives every good gift. This doesn’t mean this same God doesn’t give the bad gifts, but I do believe that “every good gift comes down from the Father of lights.” (James 1:17) But when I give a charm or the concept of luck the credit for my good gifts what am I giving God? Say I gave my nephew a gift for his birthday, and instead of thanking me and believing I gave it to him, he believes and thanks a picture of a cow. When his next birthday comes along, he hopes in the cow and relies on it to give him what he wants. Doesn’t this sound ridiculous? Yet people do this with horoscopes all the time. Luck is just like this.
The idea of providence is much like fate, or destiny. Except that providence implies a being bent on protecting and providing for me. This being, who I know to be God, is not random or fickle like luck is, but He is purposeful and active in His providence. Assuming God where a die, and I were to roll this die, the number that would come up would not be random, but would be destined to come up for a purpose long before the earth was created. The depth and magnitude of providence and pre-destiny, goes much further than the random whimsical nature of luck. When looking at luck from this perspective it seems so frail and childish, as if those who believe in luck are ignorant of the big picture much like the child that believes Santa Claus fills his stocking. Not that I understand God, or His ways, but I believe in His omniscience. Faith in that way is different than luck. If my nephew would have faith that I would give him a good gift for his birthday, he know who it was that gives him the gift, and the thanks and glory, if you will, is placed rightly.
Luck is not only whimsical, ignorant and deceptive, but it is also an idol. It’s true. Luck takes the place of God. A person who believes fully in luck, has nothing to give to God because luck steals what God is due. Luck didn’t give mankind breath or sustain our life every day, yet we call ourselves lucky when we escape death, giving the glory of our life to a dead ideal. May we give credit where credit is due, and choose to not believe in something because our culture tells us to. If we are to believe in something, let it be proven, unlike the concept of a lucky rabbit’s foot, that ironically was extremely unlucky for the rabbit.
Class
Sadistic was the being who first nurtured the brainchild some call social ranking. This way of advancing one’s self by degrading another to the point of stripping away humanity from both parties is not only cruel but also costly. For such an act blurs the image wrought into humans before time, and likens us more to animals.
Wealth, or the accumulation of resources, is the factor that defines class across cultures. Or perhaps it is the desire to see one’s self raised above another, with a disregard of what happens to that other. There are three levels of societies that have class systems in place: Egalitarian, rank and stratified.
Egalitarian societies have little or no segregation based on wealth. It is interesting that the societies that have this level of social class are people who live and depend on people. People groups who live in community with each other are less willing to use their neighbor as a human stepladder to increase their own standing.
Rank societies are sort of like the typical medieval society, in which the king and his nobles all get special privilege and everyone else must work harder to see that they get it.
Stratified societies are those that are most inhuman. These societies hold up those who are wealthy, powerful and prestigious and ignore or push down those who aren’t. Marginalization is a huge side effect for this type of society. These are found in industrialized societies that have political systems. I’m sure that some sort of popular media telling people what to love and what to hate plays a hand as well.
I'll give you fifty guesses which type of society we Americans live in, but you're only going to need one. This is why the Christian church is moving toward small home communities. Even within a larger church, it is important to be in a small community in which the members care and rely on each other. That's what we do at Endeavor, the church I belong to. Our Missional Communities are the places to meet needs and to have your own needs met.
Wealth, or the accumulation of resources, is the factor that defines class across cultures. Or perhaps it is the desire to see one’s self raised above another, with a disregard of what happens to that other. There are three levels of societies that have class systems in place: Egalitarian, rank and stratified.
Egalitarian societies have little or no segregation based on wealth. It is interesting that the societies that have this level of social class are people who live and depend on people. People groups who live in community with each other are less willing to use their neighbor as a human stepladder to increase their own standing.
Rank societies are sort of like the typical medieval society, in which the king and his nobles all get special privilege and everyone else must work harder to see that they get it.
Stratified societies are those that are most inhuman. These societies hold up those who are wealthy, powerful and prestigious and ignore or push down those who aren’t. Marginalization is a huge side effect for this type of society. These are found in industrialized societies that have political systems. I’m sure that some sort of popular media telling people what to love and what to hate plays a hand as well.
I'll give you fifty guesses which type of society we Americans live in, but you're only going to need one. This is why the Christian church is moving toward small home communities. Even within a larger church, it is important to be in a small community in which the members care and rely on each other. That's what we do at Endeavor, the church I belong to. Our Missional Communities are the places to meet needs and to have your own needs met.
Thoughts About Marriage
It would seem to be difficult to give a singular, cross-cultural definition of marriage. What I mean is, I have found that marriage is much like the color red. There is a story about a tribe in Indonesia who didn’t have the color “red” in their vocabulary, and what they saw when someone like me see’s red is merely a different shade of another color. Marriage is much like this. I have gotten my personal definition of marriage from my parents, marriage is between one man, and one woman, and this union is meant to be forever; no divorce. This personal definition was reinforced by the Christian cultural influence I grew up under. My beliefs in Christianity lead me to believe that marriage; that is, true marriage is exactly how the Bible describes it: between one man and one woman. I understand that a person’s understanding of marriage is heavily impacted on their own personal religion or world-view or culture. What I am saying is if I am to believe in Christianity then I must believe that marriage was itself conceived and created as the Bible describes it in Genesis with Adam and Eve. This train of thought leads me to say that all other additions or variations to what other cultures may say marriage is, are tweakings of what marriage was meant to be.
Now that my personal convictions are laid to bear, I believe some people like anthropologist Gary Ferraro would have me believe that marriage is a union (legal, implied, understood etc) between two or more organisms (usually involving a man and a woman or some combination of one or more of these) for the benefit of both parties, and the parties-parties (or family’s etc). Somehow this definition weakens the potential and the substance of what marriage truly is.
Now that my personal convictions are laid to bear, I believe some people like anthropologist Gary Ferraro would have me believe that marriage is a union (legal, implied, understood etc) between two or more organisms (usually involving a man and a woman or some combination of one or more of these) for the benefit of both parties, and the parties-parties (or family’s etc). Somehow this definition weakens the potential and the substance of what marriage truly is.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)