Between Friends

Hey Layla!

2010-05-07T12:52:00.000-07:00

It's been a while... hopefully all is well where you are.

So, here's another lifestyle thing to discuss in the Christian mindset. I know you don't have small people, but surely you have thoughts?

http://www.generationcedar.com/main/2010/05/why-christians-should-be-appalled-at-the-dating-system.html

Sardis or Laodicea

2009-03-11T10:55:00.001-07:00

To branch off on end-times things, what I got this morning ... would you give me your thoughts?

I was writing up something this morning and reviewing the churches in the book of the Revelation and something caught my eye. I know that they're "supposed" to be a somewhat chronological account of the churches throughout Christendom, but ... it's obvious it's not quite chronological, as the persecuted church in, say, China, is certainly not Laodicean in the least, whereas our Western church is rife with Laodiceanness.

Or is it?

*I* am the WORST EVER for calling our church Laodicea (not my home church, it rocks, I mean the "western protestant church as a whole"). But I think I've been wrong.

Revelation 3:1-6 And unto the angel of the church in Sardis write: These things saith he that hath the seven spirits of God, and the seven stars. I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead. Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die; for I have not found thy works perfect before God. Remember, therefore, how thou hast received and heard, and hold fast, and repent. If, therefore, thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee. Thou hast a few names even in Sardis that have not defiled their garments, and they shall walk with me in white; for they are worthy. He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.

I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead. Um. Well THAT's us, right enough. Have a name that we live, but we're really dead inside? How many "churches" does that describe. (flinch)

Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die Again - we are in the time of watching intensely for our Lord's return. And I think that most of us who are educated Christians are trying HARD to strengthen what remains... "ready to die" ... again, that really describes what I've been seeing. Does anyone else feel a bit like fixing the western church (making it what it was, say, in 1898) is like bailing with a bucket with holes? We change and go on, or we die. We won't stay Sardis forever.

Now, this is what God has to say about Laodicea:
Revelation 3: 14-22 And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write: These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God. I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot; I would thou wert cold or hot. So, then, because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth. Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing, and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked. I counsel of thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and annoint thy eyes with salve, that thou mayest see. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten; be zealous, therefore, and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.

I am thinking (this is ME, not the various interpreters) that the church of Laodicea could be compared to the dying Mainline churches and somewhat to the church as it goes into the Tribulation. We know that there will be some saved during the Tribulation - and that will definitely be a trial by fire. White raiment is often described as what martyrs are given to wear. I'm definitely not saying that Laodicea is not part of the church as it exists today - far from it. I am saying that I believe that we have both Laodicea and Sardis extant in the West today. Sardis is going to get raptured out and Laodicea left to burn.

What are your thoughts? I'm excited by this food that I got this morning!

Addendum

2009-02-22T08:01:00.000-08:00

Just answer a few questions that I found - and apologizing for my tone. Politics pushes buttons, which is why I prefer not to discuss it.

You'll have to give me examples of Obama being worshipped. I don't know of anything I've heard or read that indicates anything more than plays-well-with-others.
I don't know if it's still on there, but there was a video - on MSN - of numerous celebrities pledging themselves "in service to Barack Obama". By name. Americans don't pledge themselves to serve a particular person, nor do Christians. One might well pledge themselves to the service of the country at large, but an individual? It was VERY creepy. It was clearly meant to inspire "normals" to the community service that Obama pushed during his campaign, but ... um... word choice says a great deal, you know? Perhaps Canada hasn't seen or heard the cult of Obama - it diminished after the inaugeration. What interested me about this (after the first shivers of fear subsided) was not Obama in particular, but how desperate those without God are for someone to worship, someone to fix things for them. They are willing to pledge themselves, no strings attached, in public... because someone says what they want to hear. (Obama hasn't had time to prove himself one way or another). I strongly believe that the real AC will use this.

It's the reasoning or lack of it that scares me silly. See above. One of the tools that the devil is using is a total lack of education about the Bible... and about everything else. I share your fear of the lack of reasoning.

Big Brother is watching your every move and the church is applauding because you ought not to mind Big Brother watching you if you don't have anything to hide. Since there will be a faux church that morphs into the church of the AC, and which is the primary persecutor of Christians and Jews in the Tribulation, you'll have no argument from me here. I could make you a very fine list of the ways in which our liberties have already been curtailed, and another list of the conspiracy theories of how our liberties will soon be. That is on my "the end is near" list!

To answer the question baldly and then to go on... the reason that *I* did not want Obama as my president (seems like a fine guy, I don't dislike *him*) is because I don't like his friends and I don't like his voting record on certain issues close to my heart. That's it.

Hope this was helpful. And if you want me to talk to you about why I think the end is getting closer, I'm happy to do that.

Laodicea

2009-02-21T21:44:00.000-08:00

I am not sure how to respond to your last post. I can feel the anger wafting off of the page... and it is justified. Yes, we live in the church of Laodicea. But I thought we were agreed on that, that the "church" in the West (America, Canada, Europe - and much of the entrenched Catholic church) was, in fact, the church of Laodicea, and not really part of the Church of Christ at all. Were we not? Had I implied otherwise?

Revelation 3: 17 Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing, and knowest not that thou are wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked,

Is that NOT a description of the Western "church"? Can you NOT find a hundred sites calling for a separation of churchianity and Christianity, people who no longer even call themselves Christians, prefering to call themselves worshipers of Jesus? Do you not know that there is a very great deal of conservative anger at exactly the same target, the visible and disgustingly lukewarm "church" in America, in Canada, in Britain... are we not agreed here?

You say, "The church should do more about the poor" but *who is the church*? The church is the body of believers. It is Layla, it is Hearth. It is the churches that *we* belong to, the people that we can influence. My church DOES feed the hungry, clothe the naked, pray for the sick. And yes, it also takes a stand on the political issues that you deem inappropriate for a church to mix itself with. Why can we not be brethren, knowing that we all have battles to fight, knowing that we are meant to both be light and salt - to show what is wrong and be uncompromising in that effort as we are also love and compassion?

On the one side you say we shouldn't mix ourselves in politics, then on the other you embrace socialism over capitalism, and tell me what a bad government I have. You're holding me accountable for things I have no control over - and you're angry. You ask me why I should want other countries to embrace Pax Americana when I don't trust our government. Well, I don't think they should. Our desire to be the world's policeman, to go and make people play nicely by force of arms is one of the good intentions that has paved Hell's Highway. We support our troops - and we know that we sent them there (the PEOPLE sent them there) because we thought we could right a wrong. The reason - the exact reason - I do not trust our leaders is because they have failed to lead us in righteousness. They lie about motivations, they steal, they cheat... and then our servicemembers, who left their homes because they wanted to do the right thing, they are the ones who die. The LEADERS are getting something out of the deal... I am disgusted with Hillary Clinton, "Human rights don't take precedence over the economy"... and you ask me to trust her? Fah! They LIE TO US every day - and no one knows all the lies save Jesus. Governments will pass away. Buildings will crumble. Souls are eternal. The powerful, of whatever stripe, do not care about individual souls, but our Master does.

Do you want me to tell you what government I trust? I trust Jesus sitting on the Throne of the world. Save that? I trust my husband. I trust my *local* police. I trust the individual people. I don't trust leaders, they are corrupt. Or they're misled. We are fast falling into fascism, where "I was ordered to do it" is going to come right back around at us. If I thought I had to spend 10 more years on this planet, the direction that things are very quickly going, I'd be on my knees begging my husband to relocate us somewhere sustainable and hard to find. The conservative Christians who do not believe in a pre-tribulation rapture are doing just that. So are some non-Christians.

This is the definition of anti-christ (lower case, the multiple antichrists, not the AC himself): 1 John 4:3 And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God; and this is that spirit of antichrist, of which ye have heard that it should come, and even now is already in the world. That definition lets out both Obama and GWB, both of whom have confessed Christ as their savior. They'd have to repudiate that to make either of them an antichrist.

The definition I was speaking of as far as peacemaker? The AntiChrist will declare/negotiate a seven-year peace treaty with Israel and "many nations". It does appear, in Revelation 6, that he comes forth to conquor... but he doesn't seem to do much slaughter up front. It's also clear, from Revelation, that he will come from Europe, not the United States. (In other words, Arnold goes home and maybe he can be the AC, but neither Obama nor GWB are qualified).

So, again... since I am instructed to keep watch for the day of the Lord, since I am instructed to keep busy, serving him and not going to sleep at the stove just because He isn't here right now... why are you angry that I'm watching? Am I neglecting my duties because I watch? Do you believe that of me? Come to my local church, and tell my pastor that because he's preaching Daniel this month, that he's not taking care of any poor people, that his eyes are closed to new ways to serve God and the community. I'm sure he could use a good laugh. Would you like a copy of my tax receipts, to see where I send my donations, and how much? I realise you were not trying to be personal, that you were angry at the "American Evangelical Church" But that's the point... that church is a fiction - if Hearth and Layla are not the church, then who is? *I* am an American Evangelical Christian, yes... because I am American, because I am evangelical, because I am a Christian. But what I really am is a servant to the Most High.

As far as crying wolf ... if the Jews at the time of Christ had been paying attention (and many of them were - do you know how many of the Jews in Jerusalem converted? I don't), they would have known that Jesus was the Messiah. They chucked Him because His first kingdom was the kingdom of the heart and He did not bring them physical victory. They *did* know that it was time, and if they'd believed the Bible and not their assumptions, they'd have converted.

I guess people say this person or that person could be the AC because of the same reason that I watch the sky - I am not a citizen of Earth, and I'm homesick. If the AC was here, that would mean at most I'd have seven years to hold out (that's assuming the Rapture didn't happen - I'm with my church and don't believe if we could *really* spot the AC that the Trib wouldn't have started). I know from our private conversations that you're homesick too. So? Look to the skies, look to Jesus, and keep your hands (and mine) busy. Isn't that what we're supposed to do?

I can understand why you're sick of the Laodicean church of the West. But I don't get why you're annoyed with my desire to go Home, so long as it doesn't interfere with my service while I am here. (Nor do I understand why anyone who truly believed in the imminent return wouldn't be getting busy cleaning up their own lives and abiding in Christ so they could bear every bit of fruit possible before the end). I can understand why you don't care for American policies - I can even get why you might be disgusted at the fact that the "American Evangelical church" was behind GWB rather than Obama, because your priority is for social justice. I do get it. But why do you assume that I'm behind this or that I wish to argue a position that I don't hold? I neither wish to criticize nor support my brethren in Christ who have different priorities. I can only argue my *own* positions.

Ask me a specific question about my specific position and we can work through things... we have gotten too broad a brush, and there's not enough paint to go around.

anti-christs, politics, and christians

2009-02-21T18:17:00.000-08:00

First off, I didn't mean any swipe at you and I'm sorry if somehow you got that impression. It was a genuine question but it might all have been poorly worded.

And yes, I know that you are one of those awaiting the Rapture and while I believe absolutely in Christ's return, I also think that you go way overboard on this like many Christians, in focusing too much on that return. Which is the gist of what I was trying to say: that Christians have a long history of crying wolf about the end of the world and the anti-Christ. Yet they were all for GWB who apparently knew enough to say all the things dear to evangelical hearts so that when there was truly a problem, they raised no hue and cry.

Yes, it does annoy me. It annoys me for the sake of the world generally, who has leaders imposed on it, via American elections. Your elections don't just impact you. When Jesus said "the poor you will always have with you" I believe he was stating a fact, not a path to follow to keep the poor poor. The anticipation of the end times ought not to become so foremost in our minds that we neglect to be our brothers' keepers.

This is why I believe Christians shouldn't be involved in politics. They/we (and I include all Christians, not just American Christians) don't have a great history of backing what is right which in turn reflects on Christianity and Christians as a whole.

I give as my example for my concern the Jews in Jesus' time who also were so focused on the end of the world, and what they thought the messiah would be or should be, that he entered unnoticed, in a stable, with no place to lay his head.

And I beg to differ that my post was primarily political. If it seems so, it is only because Americans involve God in their politics. If America was a nation where the subject of a candidate's faith didn't come up, or if America was a banana republic who had no impact on the rest of the world, it wouldn't matter.

I also don't agree that the anti-christ must be universally adored. GWB was not hated by the rest of the world until he took the world into his wars with largely the blessing of the evangelical community in the US. For example the quote describing the anti-Christ as "who is like unto the beast and who is able to make war with him" isn't necessarily about adoration. It is about fear. It is about being powerless in the face of a power who has the ability to do exactly what it wants to do and to hell with you.

Pax Romana was not about a peaceful Rome, but about a Rome so powerful no one could stand up to it, a Rome who in many ways brought law and order (their form of law and order) to the world. There's very little about ancient Rome and its dealings with countries it occupied that can't be said about the US and Rome was a form of an anti-christ state. Rome was not loved.

As far as "The AC is going to be someone universally adored, someone riding in on false pretenses of peace, someone who people will literally worship - and not all of them will have to be forced to do that."

Are you thinking of the prophecy in Daniel, where the anti-christ is said to "magnify himself in his own heart" and "by peace shall destroy many?"

Because in terms of an anti-christ, peace does not mean peace in the sense of turning the other cheek. That verse refers to the Roman policy of overwhelming force so that no one is able to fight back. That is what it means by peace destroying many. Again, rather like US foreign policy. Peace doesn't mean peace in the sense of the peaceful, when it comes at the point of a gun. Further in Daniel there is a verse that says that this anti-christ will 'divide the land for gain.' Another way of saying, American interests are paramount, not actual matters of unjust regimes. I only use the US as an example because it is *the* world power. Again, pretty much GWB's entire foreign policy.

My point is not to blacken the name of GWB but to point out the inconsistencies in how too many American Christians view their political leaders. GWB is not the anti-christ. As far as I know, no one claimed he was either. But there are folks who would have those suspicions of Obama when so far, there is far less to go on. And THAT is what I don't understand. A year or two or three from now, if Obama doesn't make a drastic change to how the US operates in the world, and pursues the idea of an imperial America, I may well have a list for him to equal a list for GWB.

The names, the individuals don't matter. That isn't the point. The point is - for me - and it is upsetting to me as a Christian - Christian involvement in politics, when it could as easily have been GWB the Anti-Christ, as Obama the Anti-Christ. It's the reasoning or lack of it that scares me silly. In our previous discussion about socialism and capitalism, you made the point that Americans don't trust their government. If you don't, why should the rest of the world be thrilled over the idea of an exported American democracy whom its own citizens don't trust to act in its citizens' best interests?

Kings in ancient times often wanted to be worshipped. Like Nebuchadnezzar for example, with his statues of himself that Daniel refused to bow down to. But I don't see that the fact that people obey a despot means a despot is loved. I think it starts with little things, like basic freedoms being taken away in the name of saving the world for democracy American-style, and before you know it, Big Brother is watching your every move and the church is applauding because you ought not to mind Big Brother watching you if you don't have anything to hide.

I don't see where the anti-christ therefore has to be loved.

As far as Obama is concerned, does being a likable guy who seems to realize that the world does not wish to conform to American standards make him a bad guy? GWB alienated every bit of good will in the world that he could have used for something good. As Christians, are we only to trust leaders who can't play well with others in order to avoid accidently praising a potential anti-Christ?

My personal way to deal with that is to absent myself from politics when it comes to things like voting because I know people can be easily, easily fooled. Obama could be the anti-christ. GWB could also have been the anti-Christ. How stupid wouldn't the church have looked then at the judgement seat of the Most High explaining how they'd bought a bill of goods?

Therefore, in times which I agree are troubled, I value caution and wait-and-see and don't advocate anyone politically. These are however, not the first troubled times mankind has known.

You'll have to give me examples of Obama being worshipped. I don't know of anything I've heard or read that indicates anything more than plays-well-with-others.

The only thing I've seen, as a non-American, wrt how the rest of the world sees Obama is that he has one endearing quality that supersedes all others: he is not GWB. The world really suffered for eight years under a man who was either a fool or misguided so badly that one circles right back around to fool.

That is all it is. Obama feels to "us" - if I may take the liberty of speaking for the non-American world - like a normal person. As if he's aware that the US can't continue to act unilaterally. So people are prepared to give him a chance while still remaining as wary of America and American foreign policy as always. Obama is well-travelled, he has a world view that isn't buried in America. He is more of a world citizen as opposed to the "Ugly American Abroad" personality that GWB presented.

So "the world" broadly speaking, can relate to him in a way that they have never been able to relate to Americans who are too American. They are willing to give him a break - nothing more. The world generally doesn't trust America and it will take more than having a nice president to get the world to change its mind. It's more along the lines of "he seems like a nice guy but we'll wait and see."

Have I explained better? I certainly am not trying to be snide or swipe at anyone. What I want is the American church to sit up and pay attention to what it's doing, and what it is doing to itself in supporting or voicing support for anyone at all politically. If Christians are 'brothers and sisters' then that relationship should supersede nationality and Christians who are not Americans are put off by the mingling of politics, secular notions of freedom instead of the freedom that Christ gives us. It's alienating. And I don't think that is right at all.

I'd be happier to have used a Canadian example in order to avoid being called anti-American but Canada is not on the world stage. A Canadian anti-christ would be really really .... strange. Who would listen? What army would back it up?

Wow

2009-02-21T16:16:00.001-08:00

Hmm... first off, yes - most of your last post was really political, and I'm going to ignore that bit of it, because I really don't want to get into it with you ... or anyone.

As for GWB, why would he be the Anti-Christ? No one LIKES him. The AC is going to be someone universally adored, someone riding in on false pretenses of peace, someone who people will literally worship - and not all of them will have to be forced to do that. So, that's why I think some folks thought Obama might be the "one". And yeah, that ad was a little silly, but /shrug - aren't political ads mostly trash?

And, um... *I* am one of those people who are looking for the imminent return of Christ and *I* am expecting to be raptured out - rather soon - and do see lots of signs that this will happen in the near future. So - maybe it's just me being PMSy, but ouch. You sound pretty annoyed at us for some reason?

Sure GWB did a lot to set up anti-liberty things. Obama will, I am sure, follow right along on this path. I actually sat down and wrote out "why Obama can't be the AC" for my own use, I got nervous enough at the worship he is inspiring in others. (There are several good reasons). Likewise, there are several good reasons to see that we are not yet in the tribulation, though things are getting very dicey.

I would, from my own reading amongst those looking for the trib, say that no one really thinks people are planning to run to Canada, we'd entirely agree that those spy planes are going to be turned on us. I read a lot of interesting things - it's occasionally hard to sift the hysteria and made-up from the truth. I've read about prisons and things ready to be used on American citizens... oh, all kinds of nastiness. (Which would fall under, "when the Trib comes").

So. I don't think Obama is the antichrist. I don't know anyone who does think that.

More specific questions, perhaps? I'm pretty well-read on this issue, so happy to elaborate.

(Blogger is being uncooperative about showing the last post while I type this one so I have lost everything but the gist of the argument).

Obama the Anti-Christ

2009-02-21T10:53:00.000-08:00

Sorry to have been gone so long. As you know, life has been a little hectic for me lately. I did have some thoughts with regard to your last post, but I think I'll just leave that for now with the comment that I think that some of the differences we have there are in how you call certain things "soft" capitalism versus hard capitalism. One could also call it "soft" socialism versus hard socialism, the difference being only in the choice of words, which is why I think it is important to define what one means when one uses certain words.

I have a different bee in my bonnet today, partly brought on by President Obama's recent visit to Canada. In Canada he has personal approval ratings of 81 percent, a figure that is pretty well average for countries outside the US.

During the election, I heard (probably the last to hear it too) about the McCain internet ad about how Obama is "the One" with it's clear intent to associate Obama with the Anti-Christ and play to the fears and prejudices of evangelical Christians.

Now I like Obama. I am a huge fan of the man. But what I wonder about is why it is that Christians of a certain stripe are so ready to allow themselves to be manipulated with crap like Obama is really a Muslim (as if it matters, sheesh! So much for freedom of religion!)

Now I don't let myself get all caught up in what seems almost like a game to me, for certain Christians to be constantly anticipating the end of the world and the Rapture. There's a difference between believing in the certain hope that our Lord Jesus Christ will return and coming up with Christian bogeymen and conspiracy theories, which if I may suggest, could well cause those who believe in an Anti-Christ, a Rapture and the end of the world, to miss all the real signs because they are busy chasing their own prejudices.

However, what I don't get is why weren't American Christians who are suspicious now of Obama suspicious of George W. Bush being the Anti-Christ? Or were they and I just didn't hear about it, not being in the anticipating-the-end-of-the-world game?

As I understand the whole end-of-the-world scenario many evangelicals believe in, GWB fulfilled a lot more of the - um - qualifications. His foreign policy consisted in the belief that American values are world values - or should be. That rule of the people by the people counted only as long as "the people" wanted the values that GWB thought they should want. He sent forces to the land that historically has been associated with the Anti-Christ - Iraq, the site of ancient Babylon and as far as the rest of the world is concerned, "by peace, destroyed many."

GWB never showed mercy when he was governor of Texas to any death row prisoner, and took his "my way or the highway" ideas all the way to deliberately circumventing the right of prisoners to a fair trial as is shown in Gitmo. Some example of standing up for "freedom and democracy." A democratic society, a free society, has no need to circumvent its own laws in order to unlawfully hold prisoners, denying them any defense.

How is the rest of the world not supposed to have seen America then as an evil empire when the government preaches "freedom" but denies that freedom when it suits its purposes?

And all the while Americans' own rights were being whittled away in the name of preventing another 9/11. They've now got a Predator (I think it is called a Predator) plane flying the border between the US and the Canadian province of Manitoba. It's a spy plane that can tell what's on the ground. Supposedly it is for stopping any drug smuggling and illegal border crossings and such things.

I have no doubt there is some drug smuggling going on. It's a long border there through thick woods and swamps and lakes and whatnot, but Manitoba is a nothing province. No big time anything. We have had a couple of Americans crossing illegally into Canada from that border the last couple of years. Due to the terrain and the weather, they were very grateful to be found by our police in time for their lives to be saved by our socialized health care system. It is so isolated, you can't just walk across the border in either direction and find yourself in a town. Without being found, you have a better chance of dying than actually making it anywhere at all.

For the sake of one drug smuggler a year being caught, it hardly seems worth a ten million dollar investment. And it hardly seems worth the violation .of privacy to have a spy plane that can track every movement for ten kilometers on either side of the border.

It makes me think of the Berlin Wall and how the Communists told their people it was to keep them safe from all the folks on the western side who might want to illegally enter the DDR. Yeah, right. Canadians will not be flooding the border trying to get out of Canada, and given the erosion of freedom in the US, freedoms that actually count as opposed to freedoms that don't, it would be pretty easy to turn those planes on their own people, to prevent Americans from escaping a right-wing fascist government. Anything used to keep people out, can also be used to keep people in.

I'm not saying GWB is THE Anti-Christ (Cheney just might be, on the other hand *said tongue in cheek*) but it seems to me that given what he did, evangelical Christians should have been all worried about him being the Anti-Christ and yet many evangelicals supported him and his policies, as though he was a small "m" messiah.

I suppose you will think that this is about politics more than religion, but it's not, although I may have worded my thoughts poorly. The gist of what I'm trying to say/ask, is how it is that evangelicals pick one over the other as fitting the idea of an Anti-Christ. In terms of what Jesus said about there being "many" anti-christs, how does GWB not qualify for that job description?

Yet more on charity, clarifications

2009-01-26T07:57:00.000-08:00

Hmm.. I think a clarification is in order as to what I think should happen. It's not that I don't think that we should give to the poor - perish the thought! I think that churches and individuals and private programs (for the atheist) should be the way we take care of our poor and needy.

When I say I have a problem with the government forcing me to give them yet more money ... that's what I have a problem with. I don't trust them. Being a government, they have to make rules and paperwork and all sorts of odd things to decide who gets and who does not. And I don't like socialism, because it depends on a large government to run it. I believe it will be inherently corrupt and/or mismanaged. It's been well proven that it's more helpful to hand a small loan to a responsible person than to have a government set up a system. It's more helpful to send a village a flock of chickens than to send them a beaurocrat with a checkbook.

What the Bible sets out is two different sets of rules to deal with the poor. In the OT, the farmers (agrarian capitalism*) were required to tithe (Dr. McGee says that their various tithes added up to 30% or so), they were required to let gleaners in, they were required to be kind to the widow, the orphan and the traveller. But that "required" was required by the Torah - not by soliders and tax collectors! And then those who were faithful in this regard were blessed yet more by God, and the cycle of blessing continued... that's the way it should be. Good stewards get more to be good stewards with, bad stewards get less. And that's the way Jesus said He works.

In the NT, we are enjoined to give to those who ask of us. We are enjoined to again be kind to the poor, to not play favorites, etc. But this gives us the opportunity to develop charity in our hearts and to be blessed in our giving and in our sacrifice. We are supposed to be in church networks where a differentiation can be made between those in need and those who are goofing off. Remember Stephen? Before he was martyred he was in charge of the charity, going around to the various homes and getting to know people and see what they needed so the goods could be shared out effectively. That is one of the purposes of a church family - folks who know you, who can step up.

Having a government tax me for the purpose of sharing my money in ways I don't even know is of no spiritual use whatsoever. It doesn't do anything for giver or givee other than provide some minimum phyiscal good. Is that nothing? Of course not. But it's not enough. And it's badly used. It's abused by some, unused by others in need, it's a system full of holes and lumps and bumps. The value of having charity dispensed by people who might potentially know those in need is that they'll know what is needed and how much. Does this person really need some help getting a job? Or are they permanently disabled, and just need to be put on the church rolls? Is this person needing a little extra food, help paying medical bills... you get the idea. People are individuals, and they should be treated that way by people expressing compassion. In contrast, when individuals are taxed so that the government can step in to provide charity, individuals have less of their own funds to be charitable with and become unable to meet the needs around them.

Now, you want to know... does MY church do this stuff? Yes, yes it does. If you are hungry and go to my church and ask for food, they'll give you a sack of groceries. There's a rotation of churches that provide hot, homecooked meals to the homeless all over my town (we have a large homeless population here). In fact, I think 85% or more of the folks serving the homeless and the programs for the homeless are run by churches. I know my church also offers financial assistance, on a case by case basis. They put "we need pasta and toilet paper" in the bulletin, and then the church members bring it in and it gets shared out.

People, individuals, are ultimately the best vehicle to offer charity and support to those around them. I don't think you can sway me from that position - and *that's* why I don't like socialism. Well, one of the reasons.

As far as the reason to have a government - I think it's to keep us from killing each other, from being killed by neighbor nations, from stealing... it's there to enforce the "thou shalt nots" rather than enforce the "shoulds". I want a MINIMAL government primarily consisting of police, fire department, infrastructure, and military.
..........

And on to the "points" clarification. :) No! I don't think that God was trying to tell me that the Western Church is Laodicean. I think He was trying to get with me about myself. When I say He's been pointing me in a certain direction, it means that wherever I go, I encounter things that make me think the same thoughts. Like, I am reading through My Utmost for His Highest right now - but I'm not on the date I'm "supposed" to be since I just start my new devotional at the beginning, even if it's not January 1. Likewise, I read 4 chapters of my Bible every day, reading it through every year, but I skip from the OT to the NT and my reading isn't tied to my devotional. And then I get Christian books, and listen to sermons, and and and... and when I start hearing the same theme from more than a couple of those places in the same day or two, I perk up my ears because I figure it's God saying, "Hey Hearth - you need to pay some extra attention to this".

When I wrote that entry, I was getting a lot of "Hearth, I want you to love Me for my own sake. I need to you get deeper, I need you to be more dependent on Me, I want you to give more, I want you to be more awake to this situation". And I wanted to know if you get the same sort of thing. Not on the same subject. We're two different women, I don't expect us to get the same message. I was just wondering if this is something that you are sensitive to as well.

* They were definitely out for their own profit, but loaning at interest was forbidden to them. Wall Street/Hard capitalism is based on that. Hard industrialism, or use of people as virtual slaves without taking care of them, was permitted - slavery was permitted - but they were supposed to love and care for their servants as part of their households, and free them after seven years if they were fellow Israelites. Hardly the same as working for your entire life in a sweatshop.

An apology and a clarification

2009-01-23T23:00:00.000-08:00

I reread my last post and I think it comes across as mean or something so I want to apologize in case it comes across like that to you and also to clarify now that I have an actual moment to myself. I was in such a hurry to post that I didn't do my usual rereading before I posted.

One thing I've noticed during our conversations, both here and before this, via email, is that we draw different mental lines around what we consider spiritual or religious topics. So to try and clarify where things that I write might seem contradictory to you, while I firmly believe that the kingdom of God has nothing in common with the kingdoms of this world and that Christians can't commit fully to either one without the other suffering, at the same time, I see everything in this world, including worldly politics and civics as something that informs and elaborates on how God wants us to live. Everything in the world reminds me of God in one way or the other. I don't draw a line whereby I rationalize that "thou shalt not kill" doesn't include everyone, at every time, including wars and self-defense. Every subject has a God aspect to it, in the WWJD sense. To me, faith isn't an airy-fairy, head-in-the-clouds feeling, it is an act, a rejoicing whenever mercy (above all mercy) is shown even in matters that appear to be secular.

My rejection of *this* world, in the sense of preferring to not vote, etc, does not mean that I don't have an interest in politics. I am always glad when laws of the state are as fair as they can be in a world that is not run God. I don't expect the world to run by God's laws but I appreciate it when they coincide on the larger matters of mercy. I would love if there was no one poor in the world, no one hungry, no one in jail, and everyone loved each other. If the state works in its limited way to level the playing field for all its citizens, although it can't legislate actually caring, it is a step in the right direction. The final step, of course, I believe only Jesus and His return can accomplish. Still, every now and then, to hear the small still voice of compassion instead of the whirlwind of self-interest, is a grace.

But civics, politics, and how states act towards their citizens is certainly relevant to me as a citizen in this world. I can be glad when the state cares for its poor and at the same time not expect the state to adopt Christian values. Unless Christians are being forced to engage in same-sex unions against their will, it does not matter to me or involve me, that I would deny others something that doesn't affect most people at all. Poverty and hopelessness can't be addressed by a 'just pull yourself up by your bootstraps." Not all are born with boots on their feet. First you feed the hungry, then once their physical hunger has been satisfied, then one can address their spiritual condition. But it's useless to offer someone who asks for bread, a stone or a prayer.

And with regards to the discussion about socialism and capitalism, it is possible that what you refer to as "soft" capitalism is what I refer to as socialism. But what I seem not to understand is how Christians pick and choose which causes they think are importantly Christian, as to what to advocate the state for and what not.

So my interest in that isn't about civics in a secular way, but rather how Christians respond to the secular. Like why same sex marriage is worth protesting over but not universal affordable health care which affects a lot more people. Why abortion is protested but addressing social ills like poverty, lack of education and the hopelessness many people feel is not addressed, because of a feeling that many express that the poor and hopeless have somehow brought it on themselves. We are told to "not store up treasure on earth." A less capitalistic idea I can't think of.

And even if people do bring on a lot of their problems on themselves - what does it matter in the context of the New Testament? When Jesus says if a man asks you to walk with him one mile, we are to walk with him two, and if he asks for our coat, we are to give him - what was it? - our robe or something? Nothing here about the asker completing a quiz so that we can determine whether giving our coat or walking that extra mile is good stewardship.

Nowhere do I read an example whereby we first must determine their fitness for our help as Christians.

Even the "if a man does not work, neither shall he eat" which many Christians use to justify a lack of compassion for chronic welfare families, who in fact might actually not want to work, might actually be parasites on society - we've been given no instruction other than to give to whomever asks us. Jesus referred to the lilies of the field and how they did not work. Jesus and his disciples could easily be considered bums since they were sent out to beg.

Now society is not obligated to help anyone on a secular level, but when society does look after the least of them, how is that not better for everyone? Who could possibly object to that? That does not mean that as a Christian I would start advocating the state to put this into law, but if it becomes a law, then I would be very happy.

As to your last part, about how you feel that when God has a point to make He keeps pointing out signs. Again, I don't really relate in the sense that I know the church is far, far away from where it should be and has become obsessed with wealth and *this* world. So for me the sticking point is your use of the word "point." When it comes to how far the church has fallen from grace, I've always known that so I don't know why God would point me to something that is as evident as the nose on my face.

So I am a little confused in what you were saying there: are you saying that the fallen state of the church was not known to you and therefore you feel that God had to make a special point to point it out to you? Or? Because, yes, of course, I believe that God can make points to people of things they are missing. But specifically the failure of the church (in the broadest sense as a community of believers) is not a new idea to me, so it just seems that while I am sure there are many things I miss and that my understanding of many things is flawed and could do with pointers, the state of the church is not one of them.

Anyway, I hope I've explained my thinking better in this post and again, I truly apologize if anything I wrote came across as abrasive.

The photos you sent were lovely; I am envious, sitting here, once again freezing my butt off.

2009-01-20T09:31:00.000-08:00

First, on this historic and wonderful day, I want to say how proud I am today to be your neighbor. If things had gone a little better here on our end, we would have been in the States today to be a part of history. The world's thoughts and prayers are with you all and with President Obama. (It just feels so darned good to print that after eight years of the other guy).

Okay, now, ironic? I don't see it as even vaguely in the same category to put the human right of health care that is not based on an ability to pay, or taxing wealthy people so that those who have nothing at all as being on the same level as same sex marriage. One is giving people their God-given rights, and the other, the same-sex marriage deal, is imposing your values and taking away from someone else something that affects you not at all.

Even if you don't agree that same-sex marriage is some kind of God-given right and even if you feel it is an out and out sin - is it somehow more a sin than the poverty, violence and despair that afflicts the inner cities of the wealthiest nation on earth?

As far as the definition you got in civics class, are you saying that it was different from the definition on the link? I'd really like to see your definition on a link somewhere. It reminds me of when we were living in East Germany, shortly after the Wall fell and one of the most popular books in English in the university library was Elmer Gantry. If you recall, that novel was about a slime-ball preacher who was fleecing the flock to line his own pockets.

That book was the communist's definition of evil, decadent America and of Christianity. You could tell by what was underlined by students in pencil and the comments scribbled next to them for essays. I've always had the feeling that something similar must go on in American schools when it comes to socialism and communism.

As to how we got into it, well, we got into this subject not from the point of civics but rather from the point of Christian behaviour. I was highly confused by the many folks screaming "socialism" when it comes to loving their neighbor in terms of things like health care.

I would way rather pay higher taxes so that my trailer park neighbours have the same access to health care that I do, then pay lower taxes and let them do with second-hand care or none at all, or have to go into debt so far that they will never have a hope of getting out.

All of society benefits from that. There's a reason infant mortality is higher in the States than it is in countries with a socially responsible medicare system, like Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom or France.

As to your other question, no, I can't say I keep coming across the same thing. I'm not sure what you mean when God is trying to make a point. About what? What would you come across? I try to be open to whatever crosses my path in the day so that I don't miss an opportunity to be, well, nice, or something. In case someone needed an encouraging word. Sometimes I will come across insights while doing certain things, something that makes clearer a thing I've wondered about. But my prayer is always for God to make things clearer to me, to push me out of my comfort zone. Since I'm actively asking for it, I wouldn't necessary consider something along those lines to be God making a point. Aren't points usually made when you're not open to something?

My main prayers and concerns these days are all about my brother. I don't want to bother him or push him in any direction but I want to be open for him to confide in me. If my advice is asked, I give it. Otherwise I don't. He did call the other day and asked my advice regarding his marriage and I've been worried that I said all the wrong things.

Sorry if this is all over the place - I have one eye on the inaugeration and the other on this, and my mind divided between that and other things I have to do today.

Moderately Ironic

2009-01-19T08:19:00.001-08:00

I am overawed at what a bad six months you've had. You are in my prayers, daily. I'm sorry to hear about the extreme cold and the well and the... egads. :( Dreadful.

As for socialism/communism, that's the definition we got in civics class. Also, I lived in China for a year as a child, having experienced socialism at first hand. (I can't call anything with a ruling class communism, no matter what *they* call it). "Study hard, or you'll end up sweeping donkey dung off the streets in -40F weather!" Believe me, pretty it was not.

Although I'm not particularly interested in civics as a conversational topic, for purposes of our discussion, let's call wall-street capitalism "hard" capitalism (I would also call pre-union industrial revolution capitalism "hard" capitalism), whereas the system of landowners set up in OT times I'd call "agrarian capitalism". I don't think we are allowed to use fellow humans in ways we wouldn't use animals in order to make more money. "Hard" capitalism may very well be anti-Christian, I will cede that point with good cheer.

However, that said... when I read the OT, what I see is that God decreed a tithe, He decreed that you should let the gleaners through, He decreed that you should be kind and generous to the widow, the orphan, the sojourner. But there was no system of police to enforce those laws. It was in faith that you brought forth your offering - and in Malachi, there is the ONE PLACE in the Bible that we are still encouraged to test God, with our giving. When you (I/they) offer to the Lord, you are blessed in return. Much of the idea is to see, as in Matthew, who is a good steward of what they've been given and who is not. (And sorry for the confusion ... "don't work/don't eat is a NT thing given by Paul to the problem of folks living off the bounty of the church).

We also see in the NT that children are to take care of their parents, that generosity to the family is the first circle of giving (ie don't send grandma to the church for groceries, you go buy them for her). Widows should be "widows indeed", and there are many places where though it enjoins generosity and sharing, that it also puts limits on it so that generosity shouldn't be abused.

So, basically - I believe that the whole system is a man and God transaction, where our right hand shouldn't know what our left hand is doing, and I don't want the government in it. (I especially do not as the government often chooses to fund things I would rather not see my money used for).

And yes, the title refers to the irony... your essay indicates that you feel we should be forced to be generous, as we can't be trusted to be on our own, and you chided me not long ago in regards to wanting to keep the definition of marriage static. 'Tis true, none shall want in the Millenial Kingdom, and there won't be gay marriage either. Perhaps we're both trying to legislate different aspects of morality? (smiles).
---------

On to something completely different. :) You know how when God is trying to make a point, you come across the same thoughts again and again from different sources? (This happens to me often).

So, first I read the book CrazyLove (you can google it, the pastor did vids for half of it). The book confronted the Western Christian with the lukewarm behavior of most churchgoers and contrasted that with the amazing love that God has for us, getting very personally convicting about being crazier in our own love for our Lord. It was very heartening to me, of course it challenged me in several areas - but I got a lot out of it.

Then yesterday in sermon, my pastor went over the first half of Daniel chapter 9, and discussed contrition, repentance, and praying for mercy. He prayed the prayer of Daniel, modified for the US - as he sees the same sins of Israel pre-Babylonian captivity in our fair land. (And who does not?)

I'm feeling rather like the church (or at least the church I have contact with) is being chivvied to a plane where we realise how close we are to full-fledged Laodecia-ness, and called to repent and beg from Christ all that He has offered us. To get closer, to be more in tune with God, to be more intense in our worship and our giving, and our serving - to be more God focused. I will say that the church I go to rocks in this regard. It's not the denomination, it's the particular mix, and a good pastor.

Have you felt any of that in your own studies lately? I know you don't go to church, but is any of that flowing towards you?

Hoping (and praying) that things are better on your end,

Hearth

Definitions of socialism and communism

2009-01-14T22:58:00.000-08:00

Sorry to have been absent so long. I can't say this year is off to a good start. The broken artesian well was capped successfully, but there is a break in the pipe that Trenching Guy #1 broke, and right now, with windchills that are reaching -50C (yep, you read that right) it isn't possible to fix it. And my horses broke out of their pasture. Since I am not sure how - all I have seen is rabbit tracks over the fence line, they are in the barn. Of course, with weather like this, they'd be in the barn anyway but I have to carry water several times a day from the house as I have no water in the barn due to the break in the pipe.

Have I ever mentioned that I hate winter??? Can I repeat that just for the satisfaction of it: I HATE winter.

First of all, I have never heard socialism or communism defined in quite the way you do. Some of it may be a matter of choice of words. So in order that we both know what the other is talking about this is my definition and understanding of both socialism and communism.

One of the main mistakes you make, is the idea that there is no private income or jobs or businesses under socialism. Not true as the link should make clear. Socialism is the next evolution up from capitalism. Capitalism is necessary as a step up from feudalism but for a society to stop at capitalism is to refuse to evolve any further. Socialism has nothing at all to do with individuals not working because everything is just given to them.

We have seen the failure of communism Soviet-style, and this market crash thing which was based on a free capitalist market, was caused precisely because the US government did not have proper controls in place on financial institutions. What is the government turning to now in order to prevent a depression? Socialism. Which does not mean that the government will take away all private business but simply that the government will regulate certain businesses which can have a national impact.

We are now paying the price for US style capitalism. Bail-outs for the big financial institutions are not about helping the rich, except insofar as those who are against the bail-outs seem to ignore the fact that it is the working stiff who suffers in the long run.

Capitalism as it has been practised in the US traditionally is in its death throes. People cannot be counted on to do the right thing, they cannot be counted on to regulate their own greed. It is a conflict of interest. Greenspan stated before the Senate, that he didn't regulate banks and whatnot because he thought their own capitalist sense of self-preservation would stop them from going as far as they did.

Canada and other nations, are not in the same predicament as the US because we never had that silly idea that banks can regulate themselves. There is a fall-out and loss of jobs world-wide because markets are interlinked

When you talk about how in socialism people are "forced" to give part of their hard-earned goods to "the government," you say that as thought that is a bad thing. In an ideal world, a communist world, people would do good things because they are good. That is not the case with this current, fallen world. Obviously this is a large subject and I don't have the time to address every point, the the heart of your argument for capitalism as Biblically justified, seems undermined by Cain's comment to God, "Am I my brother's keeper?"

That seems to be the gist of the whole capitalism/socialism/communism argument. Capitalism is based on profit and on the interests of the individual, on whatever the market can bear. Capitalism doesn't care if someone dies of hunger if the going price for bread is such-and-such an amount. It is the price that determines how one acts, not morality - except as one chooses to have a conscience.

I certainly agree that one cannot force someone to actually care but you can, in some instances, by law, make sure that people do what is morally right, which is something that every society that is not in outright chaos attempts to do. Anarchy is good for no one. If God created the world, then there is a morality that permeates the world and what some Christians like to call that `God-shaped' hole inside of all of us. That is what socialism is about - you can't always wait for people to do the right thing. You have to educate them as to how to do the right thing and you have to sometimes shame them into doing the right thing.

That is why we have laws against homicide, speeding, stealing, etc. Because we don't count on all people to do good. We don't allow people to do just whatever the hell they like. that would be anarchy and anarchy was certainly not the model God puts out for us in either the NT or the OT.

The laws against homicide, speeding and stealing etc, are in place for the greater good. Making sure that there is more equality, for example, in health care, that whether you live or die is not so based on whether you can afford to live is based on the idea that we are all equal under God but the playing field is not equal. Opportunities are not equal. And sometimes bad things happen to perfectly good people through no fault of their own as the story of Job shows us.

In Ecclesiastes, we are told: There is a sore evil which I have seen under the sun, namely, riches kept for the owners thereof to their hurt.

It was not a free-for-all capitalist society that the OT or Judaism advocated. With wealth came responsibility and it was not all voluntary. The laws of tithing in the OT were not voluntary, neither was the observance of the Sabbath day as a day of rest.

As far as your quote about "whoever doesn't work, neither shall he eat," I can't think of an actual example of that being followed in the OT. Farmers were instructed to leave gleanings for the poor. Lenders were instructed to return the blankets of their debtors for the nighttime, regardless of the amount owed. Slaves had to be freed after a certain amount of years, and debts forgiven. In Leviticus 25, the idea of the rich and the poor was dealt with like this:

And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your bondmen for ever: but over your brethren the children of Israel, ye shall not rule one over another with rigour. And if a sojourner or stranger wax rich by thee, and thy brother that dwelleth by him wax poor, and sell himself unto the stranger or sojourner by thee, or to the stock of the stranger's family: After that he is sold he may be redeemed again; one of his brethren may redeem him.

A family can be a family-family and it can be a nation family, as in Americans all are a nation family. There is no suggestion that everyone will ever be equal economically but there is a definite idea that families help each other, which Jesus took a step further in the story of the Good Samaritan.

These were Laws, not suggestions. Jesus also said famously that, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

He did not say this, in my understanding, because riches in and of themselves are sinful but rather because it seems to be a peculiar fact that the more people have, the less inclined they are to share. To take Paul's metaphor about Christians being part of one body and that no part ought to exalt itself above another, wealth exists to be used for the good of all humanity, not to be stored up by one individual for his or her own use.

And we are given an example - several in fact of the opposite situation, that of the capitalist rich man, Abigail's husband, who saw no reason to feed or share what he had with David's ragtag bag of outlaws. Or the rich man whom Jesus told to if he loved God, to give all that he had to the poor.

In Revelations 18 a whole society, a clearly capitalist society is warned about the consequences and the judgment that will befall it for its unabashed glorification of wealth: How much she hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously, so much torment and sorrow give her: for she saith in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow. Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her.

As far as Anabaptists are concerned, they are more socialist than communist, in ideals as opposed to practice. I know of only one group that is communist and that would be the Hutterites. We do not live communally, we do not share resources or own things in common or any of that stuff. Mennonites live on privately own land, with private income from jobs that can range from farmer to politician. You could not pick your average Mennonite out of a crowd of anyone else. Most of us do not have buggies and the ones that do the horse-and-buggy thing don't own their horses in common, their barns in common or their houses in common, so there is nothing communist about them either. And I don't know of anyone who has had free labour in terms of barn-raisings.

Hutterites on the other hand, do not own anything as individuals and live in small colonies within the definition of communism. Each person contributes his or her labour and there are no individual bank accounts, only a community 'purse.' Each person gets what he needs to live in terms of a roof over his head (they don't live under one roof) and each person is expected to work at something on the colony.

Sorry if this is a little disjointed. It's such a big subject, and with everything else going on here, it's not that big on my mind.

Gracious!

2009-01-06T06:50:00.000-08:00

I've been mulling how to respond to your post, since I live thousands of miles away, pulling up in my minivan with tea and hot breadish products is out - and that's definitely what's called for. I am so very sorry to hear what a dreadful month you've had. You certainly didn't need any more unpleasantness. Know that you are in my prayers, as always.

As for communism vs. socialism, those are pretty basic definitions. Communism is the idealistic place that socialism aims for. Socialism is the administration thereof, and involves a government. I really don't have a problem with communism - it's very sensible, and likely to be a big part of Millenial society, when we get our heads on straight and realise that everything belongs to God anyway. (or not... doesn't He say everyone gets their OWN vine and fig tree? Is possessiveness part of humanity? Something to mull on quiet days).

I think Americans don't like government, big government, because we're from pioneer blood. And we identify with cowboys and Laura Ingalls. "Do for yourself, cut your own piece of land and make something of it, by your own bootstraps" etc. Government is something of a necessary evil. And we trust our neighbors, other good Americans, but not the folks in Washington. /shrug. (grin) Americans are weird, but there you are. A part of our national character.

New things: Reading a great book called, "Crazy Love" by Francis Chan. Apparently he has a website too (which I have not yet checked out). So far so great - and I think you could really get into the book. About halfway through, and he's laying into the western church as being lukewarm... with a self-test to check ones own lukewarmness. It's a very good, very inspirational read. My sisterfriend bought it for us jointly for Christmas, gave it to me to read first. :)

I seem to be getting chivvied into thinking about God's greatness and gloriousness. I envy you, with your farm. It's far too easy for me to spend days on end without seeing any proper nature at all... one of my New Year's resolutions is to spend more time at the beach. But... do you meditate on God Himself very often? How do you get there? I find it daunting and a bit scary, like standing at the top of a cliff wearing a hanglider for the very first time. I'm sure I'll be safe, but oh my!

Hugs, prayers...

Love,

hearth

Quick Post After Long Absence

2008-12-30T16:45:00.000-08:00

This is what has been going on in my life: 1) one of my dogs had an operation for a torn ligament and it got badly infected. As a result she didn't walk at all for 3 weeks and she's 103 pounds. Needless to say, as a total mama's girl, I had to be at her side all the time, which meant I had no chance to go to my computer. However, my computer gave up the ghost, which I might have mentioned in a previous post and I have a spanking new laptop, which is the only good news that I have.

My dog's leg problem led in turn to a cold or the flu, probably as a result of me falling with her down the four stairs to the outside of the house at 3 in the morning when it was 30 below, and no one to rescue her or me until the pain subsided enough for me to get my voice back.

Which in turn resulted in a return visit to the vet for her and a visit to the hospital for me with a badly sprained leg and bruised ribs and some sort of body whiplash from bracing myself (apparently) before I hit the ground. I never knew you could get whiplash-like symptoms from falling.

And eventually, possibly, as the result of lying in the snow in my bathrobe, my present cold or flu. I should go to the doctor but I think I'm far too sick for that, haha.

And in the meantime, at the same time, my horse barn flooded and the guy who did the trenching for me this fall was being an asshole (excuse the language, I was trying to think of a euphemism for asshole but there doesn't seem to be one) about it so I had to call Guy Number Two who discovered that an artesian well had been broken by Guy Number One.

Then my fridge went on the blink just before Christmas. Trenching Guy Number Two and the Fridge Repair Guy both showed up at the same time on the same day. Both got fixed and then the pressure pump inside the house went, which meant we had no water inside the house, drawing water as we do from an artesian well. And it is the holiday season, boo hoo hoo. Whose holiday do I spoil? I hate to bother people at times like these.

And last but not least, my brother wants a divorce from his wife. It is only a surprise in the sense that it has taken him a long time to work up to it. I won't go into details. I would appreciate prayers but in my opinion the marriage was a disaster from the start, ten years ago. Yes, God can work miracles but they are called miracles because they are rare. There are children involved and for that I am very, very sad but the marriage as it has been for so long, isn't sustainable. It would take a very big miracle along the level of the Red Sea parting to put Humpty together again, if I can mix my metaphors.

I don't know if I should be grateful the year is coming to an end or fear it. If I seem a little snippy and my humor a little black, it is because it is either laugh or cry.

I will make one comment vis a vis your post at this time, which is that you make a difference between a Christian living life as an individual and the state. However, you don't do that when it comes to issues like prayer in schools, or abortion or....?

In any event, I think capitalism is evil but will expound on that at some future date when I feel better. And yes, I do trust my government. I've noticed that Americans have a peculiar faith in their governments as evidenced by the fact that they so often refer to the US as the greatest country on earth, defender of free speech and all that democratic stuff, and yet at the same time are great believers that governments are not to be trusted in matters like gun control, health care, etc.

It seems contradictory to believe that one is living in the land of the free and home of the brave and at the same time say one does not trust one's government in terms of doing what is best for all citizens. It's like on the one hand Americans are proclaiming they live in the best country in the world, yet on the other hand they are prone to see black helicopters hovering over head, as though people run for elections in the US for primarily nefarious purposes, not altruistic ones.

See, I know there will always be a level of corruption in government, the same way I know there will always be poor people in the world. But I trust absolutely that my government wants what is best for all its citizens. It may not always be right but its aims are to provide good government and all that it means, including liberty and human rights, for all of its citizens, not just a few rich ones. The disagreements are mostly honest ones, as to how exactly one would achieve those goals.

PS. I think your definitions of communism and socialism got a little turned around. May I ask how you came by them?

Layla

Capitalism anti-Christian?

2008-12-06T07:04:00.000-08:00

Good morning! To clear up the last bits of the Prop 8 mess, we were definitely confused, because I could have sworn that you thought that I thought that Prop 8 had failed and that thus the Christians here in Cali were being persecuted. As for the state and religion - let's face it, religion and government are always in each other's pockets. That's how life works. Because both seek to tell the person on the street what is permissiable and what is not. I could go off on a major tangent about this... :) But I won't.

Capitalism is decidedly Christian - at least if you define "capitalism" as "I work for what I earn, I keep whatever I earn to spend as I choose". (I don't think that wall street is Christian, I am certain that cut-throat business practice is not Christian). Socialism is NOT Christian. Groups of Christians, particularly the early Christians, did practice Christian Communism... very briefly, because human nature isn't set up for perfect communism. (Socialism is not Communism. Communism does not involve a government, it is the place of perfection where all share everything directly. Socialism is where you are forced to give what you earn to the government, which then distributes it).

Capitalism is part of the daily life of a Christian (or Jew). 1) It allows for the blessing of God to be shown to the world at large. This is how it worked in the OT, and what Jews still believe - godly people should expect to prosper financially. (Christians expect to be provided for by God directly and expect to go through worldly travail). 2) It allows for charity. Socialism removes charity from the hands of the individual. Both Jews and Christians are commanded to care for the widows and orphans and to give generously. 3) It allows for hard work. Again, human nature... socialism doesn't inspire individuals to work hard, unless negative sanctions are made directly. (We can certainly prove this!). If you know that you'll be provided for, regardless of what you do, you do very little. Paul commanded that if a man didn't work, he shouldn't eat!

Communism works very well in very small groups that are all committed to the same goal. It worked briefly in the early church. And then it failed. Most spectacularly in the case of Ananias and Saphira. I've always been taught that they didn't die because they held back part of the purchase price, but because they lied about it.

Everything that we own belongs to God. And we are to be stewards of that which He has given to us. We are to strive for its increase and we are to give generously to all who ask of us (individuals).

WWJD? Well... Jesus will give every human his vine and his figtree, that we are all given something to work WITH! No one will have the fruits of his labor stolen from him (war). Beast and moth and corruption won't steal either. And no orphan or widow will go hungry. Jesus' economy is a gift economy.

Now... socialism depends on the government. It depends on the honesty and efficiency of the government. And it's always been a BIG government thing. Do you trust your government? I don't!!!! Do I want my government giving money to huge corporations? NO! That's not good stewardship. They *in no way* fall under any of the guidelines of who might be found need of organized charity in the Bible. I rather think they fall under the "don't work, don't eat" set of guidelines!

So, in socialism, or in what the ranters and ravers are calling socialism, I am forced to give larger sums in taxes to my government so that they in turn can use it as they see fit. (In true socialism, I'd work for the government, they would take all the fruits of my labor, and I'd be paid whatever they felt like paying me, which I would then use to purchase whatever they felt like offering).

Christians are called to open-handed charity, but I see nowhere, OT or NT, where we are called to socialism. Small groups that take good care of each other, such as the Anabaptists, aren't socialist, they're communist, and praise God that they can make it work. I don't believe that communism is possible outside a small community that knows and works with one another. And socialism is a bird of a different color entirely.

I will try to be better about checking and posting...... all the best! :) Hearth

What Would Jesus Do?

2008-12-02T00:00:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about this more since the current financial crisis and the subsequent references by some to the bailout of Wall Street being "socialism."

And I've been thinking about it in relation to Obama being called a "socialist" because he talked about redistributing the wealth.

And I've been thinking about the many Christians who associate socialism with something bad.

And the popularity a few years ago with WWJD pins.

Do people think God is a capitalist? Or that Jesus was a capitalist? Or that the early Church was capitalist?

I can think of few things that one can say for sure that God, Jesus and the early Church were not, and that was capitalists.

We are told of the beliefs of the early Church and how they applied that to their day-to-day lives, presumably, with the idea that they were living a WWJD way, that they "held all things common."

Acts 4: 32: And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common.

We also are told the theology that led to that belief, which was the whole idea of loving your neighbour as yourself. It is a belief which Anabaptist groups such as the Hutterites who live communally and take care of their own still hold.

The very definition of capitalism - an unmodified capitalism - is that selfishness is good and that if you don't succeed as the world defines success, you are "lazy." Much as Martha, for example in the NT, she of the Lazarus fame, viewed her sister Mary, who preferred to listen at Jesus' feet rather than to cook.

Capitalism does not love one's neighbour. It is in fact human selfishness, a worldly human selfishness.

Yet in all the world, there is no greater misunderstanding about socialism, "liberalism" and Marxism than in the United States. None of them equate communism and none of them speak against communism any more than the intrinsic selfishness of a capitalist system speaks against many kind and caring individuals in the US.

Given that the US is such a conservative nation, a nation so obsessed in a sense with matters of faith that politicians have to play to the Christians in order to win elections - it kind of boggles my mind that the US isn't a socialist country, a Good Samaritan country, a country that acts in a WWJD manner by not living for earthly treasure, but by sharing good fortune in a communal or socialist way as defined in Acts.

It really puzzles me why people are so against spreading the wealth, Jesus-style.

well...

2008-11-25T03:13:00.000-08:00

Let's take this slow and see what I've misunderstood. I Googled for Christian persecution and Prop 8 (yes, I knew what that was about) and read some blogs, watched a video of what happened in the Castro district. I'm aware that the church was for Prop 8, and that the Mormons and Catholics seem primarily to have been financing/or for it, and I'm aware that it overturned same-sex marriage and that there's now a pending court ruling which will likely overturn Prop 8 and allow same-sex marriage.

And obviously gays are upset about Prop 8.

But persecution? Even if one believes that homosexuality is a sin against God, since there is no law against Christianity and no law that is intended to force Christians into becoming married homosexuals I don't see how this qualifies as anything resembling persecution. Christian rights aren't being violated. Christians are imposing their beliefs instead on non-Christians. So the non-Christians are being persecuted, if anyone is being persecuted at all.

I agree with your husband - Western Christians haven't the faintest idea what persecution is. Instead of looking for trouble in the Castro district, they could be feeding the hungry or housing the homeless. Less hymn singing in gay areas and more doing things that would bring honor and glory to Christ. Neither the Christians nor their protesters acted particularly well in my opinion.

I thought I basically said the same thing in my post? My concern is that when Christians meddle in the governing of the world, in thinking that their Christian ideas of morality (which I am not saying I disagree with) can be or should be imposed on the State, they are setting a legal precedent for their own secular freedom to be taken away at some future date.

In my opinion, it is the very meddling and insistence in the US of Christians wanting to take their Christian agenda to governments, federal and state, that has caused the very things you have talked about in relation to your doctor or your pharmacist. You open yourself up to others when you make religious issues out of government. If state and religion are supposed to be separate, why does the church keep interfering in government? That is asking for the government to interfere in the church.

I don't get that.

An epic misunderstanding

2008-11-24T15:02:00.001-08:00

I think that this is the most profound misunderstanding we've had in months! I do *not* think that Christians are persecuted because of Prop 8*. I was trying to get your thoughts about the foo-foo-rah about the aftermath. But since it seems that you didn't know about the foo-foo-rah... I'll have to tell you a bit about it to explain.

Prop 8 was pushed heavily by the church, and funded thereby. Not only Protestants, but the Catholic church and the Mormon church heavily funded the "Protect Marriage" campaign. No surprises there, I'm sure.

In the aftermath of the "Yes" vote, the homosexual community has risen up, and there have been numerous marches against large, visible churches, particularly the Mormon church. I hear that somewhere in Castro, activists broke into a church service and threw condoms.

Because of this, and because of individual unpleasantness like "Yes" groups being flipped off or sworn at and people being beaten up (again, very individually), a lot of the blogosphere is crying "persecution". The only blog I read that countered this thinking was the blog on revelife, which said, "um... guys... this isn't persecution. You don't know what you're talking about".

So the question I was trying to ask was, "Why do you think Christians in the blogosphere are crying persecution, and do you have any thoughts about Christian persecution in the social sphere to add".

I have a number of thoughts on this issue, which I'd put down quickly before, but would like to expand on at length. I was gonna blog this separately, but might as well put it here and copy/paste, since I've not managed to even start this essay separately.

1) We know that persecution has to come to the Church as a sign of the End Times, and most of the conservative protestants who would take an interest in the one issue take interest in the other. I know I want to go Home, want the Bridegroom to return, so of course I take all signs hopefully - even the ones that mean personal inconvenience.

2) My husband brought this one up. Most people of my generation who live in the West have absolutely no idea about what real hardship is. We don't know about war, we don't know about violence, we don't know about any of that on a PERSONAL level, no matter how many bloody videogames we play or how much TV news we watch.

3) We know that there are martyrs to Christ right now in other parts of the world, and we feel vaguely guilty about not being part of that movement. It's not particularly comfortable, knowing that you're the beginning of the church of Laodicea.

4) America was formed by Protestants. For four-hundred years, protestant Christianity has been the approved of norm. "Christian" used to be a synonym for "good/nice" in the same way that "white" used to be a synonym for "pleasant/civilized/kind". The former word didn't have anything to do with the person's religious associations any more than the latter word had to do with the absence of a tan. The dominant paradigm of Christian = good is that hardwired into our culture. (Which of course it OUGHT to equate, but that's another post we've covered often). So, when people who were raised to go to church and potlucks and be 10% more modest than the world at large suddently aren't "good" by default anymore - it's freaky.

I do know that individual Christians are being persecuted in America for their religious beliefs. My OB/GYN is... I wrote about him before. There are pharamacists who are. There are city clerks who got fired. *That* is persecution. There always have been people who have lost jobs because they wouldn't be dishonest. There always will be people who will lose friends, whose families will be permanently at odds because they follow Christ. We were promised that, it shouldn't be a surprise. Being the target of marches is *not* persecution.

Eyes open, we see the tide change and turn against Christian = nice. Eyes open, we see what that means, and will mean. But we are grasping at what the world will be like in ten years, or five - not what it is today. And I think we *are* dragging the word persecution down into non-meaning when we use it today, even as my emotions are with those who are doing so.

Why do YOU think we're doing that? Have you seen it for yourself? Thoughts? I think the Western Church is going to have a BIG "come to Jesus meeting" (Southern expression) when we are actually facing real hardship for our beliefs.

*Prop 8 defines marriage in California as only between a man and a woman. We voted this into law in 2000, the Supreme Court of Cali overturned it this Spring, and then prop 8 made it part of our state's constitution. Hope that clarifies.

...........

I am very sorry to hear that you're still in mourning for your dog. I agree with your belief that animals were certainly not meant for just food and work, I think they were supposed to be much more than that. Glad to hear that your other lady is doing better. Stitches are no fun!

Persecution, Prop 8

2008-11-23T04:27:00.000-08:00

I probably should be embarrassed to admit that I prayed very hard for my dog considering there are so many people suffering in the world. I rather shy away from the use of the word "miracle" but she certainly looked like she was on her deathbed. The vet said she had multiple organ failure and she seemed to be in a coma for about a week. But dying itself seemed to come hard - this was back in September.

I really prefer never to put an animal down but neither do I want an animal to suffer. My husband and I had finally made up our mind that if she didn't pass away over that particular September weekend, we would take her to the vet to have her euthanized.

That weekend, since she couldn't walk, we scooped her up using two blankets as slings and carried her outside, took her to all her favorite places. And eventually she was able to put weight on her front legs, so I walked her around with a sling supporting her back legs. I fed her people food - whatever she would eat, around the clock, and would you believe she recovered well enough to go hunting for mice? She had a lovely, lovely 4 weeks of life after that, including the day before she died.

Then just when I started to think I had hallucinated the condition she was in previously, she took a turn for the worse. I sang "Jesus Loves Me" to her and she passed away in my arms, as peacefully as any child of God going to sleep for the night.

I often think that everything I know for sure about God, I've learned from animals. There is a faithfulness and a lack of guile, and a forgiveness of even the foot that kicks them, that points the way to how we ought to be ourselves. As one prayer goes, "Lord, help me to be half the person my dog thinks I am."

I know that traditional theology doesn't allow for animals to have souls but then why did Balaam's ass speak to him about being just to animals? Why does God make a point of telling humanity "thou shalt not muzzle the ox treading out the corn" or not "seething a calf in its mother's milk?"

Why, in the future vision of the earth, do the lamb and the lion lie down together, if not to point out that even the animals have suffered in a pre-redemption earth?

Animals were given to us for more than food and meat since there is no evidence to indicate that was their original purpose in the Garden of Eden.

I miss her a lot. I am not through crying yet. I really hope my animal friends are all waiting to meet me when it's my turn to go.

My other dog had her surgery and now the challenge is to keep her from moving much for the next two months while her leg heals. She'll have the staples removed last week but she's already been removing them herself with her teeth.

Well, I tried to go to the site you referenced as having a discussion about the Prop 8 thing and couldn't find the conversation you were referring to, but I gather you're asking about gay marriage and Christians feeling persecuted because of that?

I was raised to believe that persecution was the natural state of the Christian - the best state - the state that refines. So I suppose based on that, for Christians who believe that homosexual marriage is wrong on a secular level of government, maybe they ought to be rejoicing and being exceedingly glad that they are being persecuted by homosexual marriage?

As far as me personally, I would find it hard to make the leap to feeling persecuted as a Christian by a state allowing same-sex marriage. The state's business is different in my eyes than the business of Christians. If Christians believe homosexuality is wrong and condemns souls to hell, then by all means, if they feel so called, they ought to make that point - in churches, to their homosexual friends - out of a spirit of caring for the mortality of the other person's soul.

Protest on an individual level, in other words. One soul at a time as God has seen fit to make souls cross paths to be guided.

As far as goodness and niceness being equated with Christianity, in the Matthew 5 version of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says just the opposite: For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?

He says that even the publicans/sinners do good. That is the reason for turning the other cheek, and that is the very foundation of nonresistance and pacifism - to do more than just "niceness" requires. Niceness, kindness, compassion, charity, love and forgiveness are not only qualities possessed by Christians. I know more compassionate atheists than I know Christians. Could just be the circles in which I hang though. I'm not saying there aren't compassionate Christians.

I find it hard to get worked up about abortion on the grounds that it is murdering a person when there are Christians who think it is not only a-okay to go to war and kill people who are actually born, but that it is God's will to do so. I mean, I happen to believe that a fetus is a person but I also believe that an enemy is a person. Maybe when - as in when-hell-freezes-over-when - states abolish not only abortion but also state-sponsored killings in the form of wars, I'll get excited about homosexual marriage. Until then, I just can't get terribly interested in it.

Persecution and Police

2008-11-22T08:29:00.000-08:00

I'm so sorry to hear about your dog! I know you were expecting her death, but it's never easy, even when we know such things are coming. Are you doing okay?

The police & firemen being put together is just my sloppy thinking. Police and firemen are always teamed here in the States whenever you speak of them as a group - their unions work together most of the time, take the same sides politically. Public servants willing to undertake danger? Police, firemen, soldiers... it tends to fall into the same category in my brain. And both firemen I know well would do equally well as police officers. As I said, just sloppy categorization.

I've been interested in something someone on revelife (at xanga) said in regards to persecution and Prop. 8 here in Cali. I wanted to get your thoughts on the persecution of Christians and why we here in the States are going nuts just 'cause we're getting snubbed.

Messily, I think some of the things are we're just too used to equating "christian" with "good/nice" and having them de-equated is shocking. Another would be a half-wish to be shown as "real Christians" and a grasping after an end-times kind of paradigm. (This ignores the millions of Christians who are being Persecuted with a capital P... but we've talked about nationalism and American christians before). I guess we want to be part of God's Army... so long as we don't break any nails? Church has equalled safe for SO LONG here... I really think it's messing with people's heads.

Anyway, I know you have lots to say about the persecuted church, and I'm pretty sure people flipping off churchgoers or marching - or even throwing condoms into a church service - is pretty laughable on the grand scheme of things.

Hoping you are doing better....

Hearth

I haven't fallen off a mountain

2008-11-13T00:22:00.000-08:00

My old dog died a month ago - peacefully, contentedly in my arms. And in the meantime, one of my other dogs tore a ligament and is having major surgery tomorrow. And I'm having computer problems. If it ain't one thing, it is the other.

I did have an intelligent response waiting in my head but it seems to have deserted me. However, I am thinking, wrt Mennonites and firemen (and who knows what else) somehow left the wrong impression. Mennonite theology allows particpation in everything that does not take a human life, so clearly, being a fireman wouldn't be out of bounds, no matter how strict the interpretation.

If I may ask, I'd like to know why you would have that impression? I have a number of folks in my family who are in volunteer fire departments. Policing is another matter, in the sense that obviously, you might be required at some point to take a life. However, as I said, all of this is traditional anabaptist beliefs and not necessarily something that is followed by most Mennonites today unless you go to the Amish.

I also have a lot of policemen in my family. I honor them. I pray for them. I recognize that they are performing a valuable service. That being said, I do not entirely approve on account of my anabaptist beliefs. None of them have had to take a life to date and I hope they never have to. It isn't that Mennonites don't recognize the need for policemen or have their heads so far in the clouds that they think God will save them and they are not to use their brains or common sense - i t is rather that Mennonites/Anabaptists believe that society does need all those things, including soldiers - but that given the fallen nature of the world, God knows that, and given that there is no shortage of unbelievers at any given time, it is for those unbelievers to do those things if they wish to.

While we are told to pray for our goverments and those in power, we are not told that we have to like an unjust ruler. God has ordained earthly nations and earthly rulers and when He has His proverbial nose full of thier unrighteousness, then He will send armies or allow circumstances that can provide for the overturning of unjust governments.

it isn't wrong for the children of the Most High to enjoy peace and freedom, and to appreciate those things even if they themselves believe it is a sin to fight for those things. It's like when Jesus paid his taxes, it didn't mean he approved of Caesar or wasn't aware of what Rome was all about.

I remember when it was utterly shameful - life ruining - to become pregnant and be unmarried. I remember how those girls were talked about. It isn't secular society that made it seem so sinful but Christian society. And that was a very big reason for an abortion. I can't swear at all that if I had become pregnant when I was a young teenager, that I wouldn't have had an abortion if they had been legal then (they weren't) in order to avoid the social consequences and to avoid telling my parents.

And yes, many churches support homes for pregnant teenagers. I still wonder how many would take unwanted children - handicapped children - into their own homes? Until they do, it's meaningless and along the lines of "until you've walked a mile in their shoes."

Well, wrt your comment about in a "perfect" Church - the Church ought to be perfect. We're told to be perfect. The fact that we can't be shouldn't be something we keep bringing up, as in "Christians aren't perfect, just saved." That is a cop-out. We know we aren't perfect but that idea makes people think they don't even need to try to be perfect.

As far as in that same perfect church, one should be living their faith and evangelizing - to me in a certain way that doesn't make sense because to live one's faith is to evangelize automatically. Your life is your witness.

As far as political involvement is concerned, again, to pick one candidate over another always means picking one evil to somehow be less evil in God's eyes than another evil since we do not live in a theocracy. Democracy is a great thing. It allows me to hold this opinion. But no one can lead a country democratically and be fair to all peoples and all faiths while legislating so-called Christian values.

In doing so as much as they do in the States, Christians don't seem to realise they are sowing the seeds of their own demise, that the very tolerance that allows them to practise what they will religiously, is the tolerance that they would deny to others, thereby making a democracy not a democracy. And sure as shootin', even if certain Christian ideas of morality became the law of the land, they would be at odds with other Christians' heartfelt interpretation of the Bible. And also sure as sunrise, those very same laws through which a Christian agenda took away the rights of non-Christians will be used to take away their own rights. And that concerns me.

I don't know how much you read on the link, but here is something that may explain better the attitude of anabaptists toward government.

I take a very deep interest in politics and my non-voting has only been for the last two federal elections here. Most Mennonites today vote. There are many Mennonites in powerful positions in the Canadian government. I voted from the time I was 18 up to recently when I came to the conclusion that the early anabaptists had it right. It is not God's way that he would pick one evil as somehow less evil than another evil, in a perverse version of "Sophie's Choice."

And like most of the world, I too was mesmerized by your federal election and sat watching the results and cheering loudly and weeping while wearing my Barack Obama T-shirt. But do I think that everything he stands for is in accordance with the Bible? No. Neither is everything in accordance with the Bible with the McCain campaign.

On a secular level I am glad he won. Americans may think they were electing a President but for the rest of the world, you were electing a world leader. Like it or not, all of the world has suffered from American navel-gazing and my hope - my secular hope - is that America will be respected in the world again. It hasn't been since the Vietnam War.

On a spiritual level, I know that there will be no righteousness, no end to human suffering and injustice until our Lord comes. I don't have faith in Obama (or anyone else). I have faith in God and every day say, Maranatha, Lord Jesus.

Layla

The parable of the talents

2008-10-29T13:28:00.001-07:00

Sorry, really I've not been hiding underneath a rock... :) I've been thinking and reading and running around.

To me, voting is one of the things that I've been given in this time/place. It's something like the parable of the talents - I should use, to the best of my ability, all of what I'm given in this time and place for Truth and Good, as defined by God. My vote is one of the things I'm given, so I use it. Whether or not it takes is up to God, not to me. John Piper wrote an interesting article about that... realising that our citizenship is not here, and we shouldn't get worked up about the results of political races.

As for abortion and doing things to prevent that... yes, of course. That's a great example of how the body of Christ should be out there as a whole body. One part of the body working to prevent abortions from being needful (in fact my church supports an agency that helps unwed moms through keeping their children or adopting them out) and another part of the body sitting in front of abortion centers nursing their babies and/or praying peacefully. We are supposed to do BOTH things, not pick one or the other. What can we do that is good and lawful and shows our love?

In an ideal Church (spoken of as the Church as every believer, not Mennonites or Baptists or...) we would be out there living the life of faith *and* evangelizing. Putting our hands out to the folks around us in a helpful manner *and* standing up for what our Lord tells us is good and right. Some of us are good at one, some at another.

I didn't know that Mennonites did fireman sorts of work - to me that is wrapped up in police work.

I believe that police work is just part of living in this fallen world, and is part of the authority that God has given to kings and governments generally, to protect the people under their rule. So, performing those duties is just being part of that temporal "body" of the government. Would it be best if that wasn't needful? Yes. But do I want to live without my police? No. Should I shun work that is needful? I don't think that's right, really I don't. If it needs doing, we should do it, "as unto the Lord".

Does it matter if we "win" this election, or any of the things that are on the ballot that are near and dear to my heart? No, it doesn't. Not eternally. I know God has it under control. But it matters how I vote, what *I* do. Because what I do is not to this temporal world, it's to God. He put me here... I shall do my best to make this world a place where God is given the glory.

Just adding this

2008-10-21T09:24:00.000-07:00

because somehow I missed this: "They don't do evangelism, they don't vote, they don't become firemen/policemen/soldiers, etc. Yes? "

Well, sure they become firemen and sure they do vote. The voting is relatively recent as democracies weren't around during the Reformation.

Traditionally, Mennonites did not vote. They did not become soldiers or policemen in the sense of carrying weapons because they would not kill anyone they considered their brother or sister. They were as okay with being firemen as they were with being doctors or nurses, because that saved lives, it didn't take life, life being one of those things in God's domain, not Caesar's.

There have always been Mennonites who evangelized on some level. They just weren't pushy about it, to the point of focusing so totally on the spirit that the body became neglected. The idea was that if the starving person is filled with food, and a roof is put over his house at some point that person, once his belly is filled, will ask, "Who are you and why are you helping me?"

At which point it would be appropriate to bring up Jesus, having already had your deeds bear witness that your words weren't empty.

Not saying that that's the way it is now. There are certainly pushy, annoying, evangelizing Mennonites whose deeds don't precede or follow their words. It's not about deeds saving you, but they point to your character. Jesus made mention of his deeds, not his words, when the disciples of John the Baptist came to him and said John had asked them to ask him whether he was the one, or whether they ought to wait for another messiah.

Jesus said, "Go your way, and tell John what things ye have seen and heard; how that the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, to the poor the gospel is preached. And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me. "

People believed Jesus was the Messiah not because he said he was, but because of what he did. That is the point of the traditional thinking of Mennonites, with the emphasis on deeds first, not that deeds save but that they are an outward manifestation of an inward belief. "By their works ye shall know them."

Layla

2008-10-20T22:16:00.000-07:00

To your first question, as to whether God is always in charge, yes, I do believe that.

To your next question, there isn't an answer, not because I am opposed to people doing the will of God, but rather that people who believe they are doing the will of God are no less sincere for all that it might be the wrong thing, and not necessarily the actual will of God.

Most people today, who have direct conversations with God on the level of Abraham's face-to-face encounter with the Almighty on Mount Sinai are in mental institutions, so the sense of being certain that one is doing the will of God in the world isn't enough of a standard of behaviour.

The closest thing we have to a guide to Christian behaviour in the world is in the Bible, both in the actions of Jesus and what he said. Politics was alive and well in the world in Jesus' time. The religious leaders of Jesus' time tried to trick Jesus into making political statements, into turning away from his basic message about God and Jesus responded with the familar "Render unto Caesar" phrase, which it seems to me, most people have misunderstood to mean that there is a way to serve both God and Caesar, and have intermingled the two.

There were slaves in Jesus' time too, as there were gays, the death penalty, and all the usual political hot buttons. Yet Jesus addressed none of that. When it came to the religious aspect of the death penalty, he addressed only the issue at the heart of it: "Let he who is without sin among you cast the first stone."

He did not say that they were not to stone the woman according to religious law. He basically called their attention to the problem at the heart of all judgment - the problem of who is sinless enough to sit in judgment of those who are sinners. And what is justice, if someone who is an equal sinner executes such judgment on another sinner? Is that justice when the executioner is as guilty as the prisoner?

If Christians participate in anti-abortion work, or anti-slavery work, it is the way and the mindset from which they approach those things that makes the difference. Not so long ago it was very shameful for an unmarried woman to give birth to a child out of wedlock and who were those people who made it so shameful that women would subject themselves to attempts to rid themselves of the fetus even when there was a risk to their own life?

That's the real question. The real question isn't about abortion, but about what it is that, Christians have done or are doing to make it unnecessary.

Christians are to be salt and light. James says, "do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?"

There are two kingdoms - the Kingdom of Heaven and the kingdoms of the earth, which Satan offered Jesus - worldly power over heavenly power. Christians today chose too often worldly power and want to impose Christianity and Christian ideals of right and wrong on everyone else. Jesus never did that.

He spoke to believers about what they ought to do in their own lives as believers, not about what they should be telling unbelievers to do. And their actions are the witness that has served to bring about modern notions of democracy, down to the idea that since in Christ we are not strangers but brothers, no Christian person can hold another person as his slave. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, in Christ Jesus.

So it isn't so much a straight answer. The Bible isn't a handbook in the sense that we can look up every situation or moral delimma and find a quick and clearly right solution. More often that not the answer is something along the lines of "rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar's" and having to decide whether you yourself are without sin enough to cast the first stone.

And yes, Mennonites do lots of missionary stuff, particularly the Mennonite Brethern which are evangelical. Traditionally Mennonites have believed that the Word was best spread by your actions to others which is how the Mennonite Central Commitee came to be. It does relief work all over the world.

I agree that we are God's hands on earth and that we are made to do things for him. But God's hands on earth have no national identity, no skin color or vote. God does not love the Iraqis less than you or me. So my position is that I help, without thought to where my country stands or doesn't stand politically because I do not identify with it in that way. If my country is at war with another country, my country's enemy soldier is not my enemy and I would not deny him a cup of water.

However, that is not to say that my country does not benefit if I serve at a soup kitchen, give a beggar a dollar, a moment to a child or visit someone in prison, or, like Jesus did, pay my taxes. I pray for my country. I pray for its leaders.

These things do not have the possibility of being contrary to anything God wants. This is the "treasure in Heaven" we are to store, the things that moths and time don't corrupt.

When Daniel and the other captives in Babylon were offered wine but requested water, they did not insist that everyone in Babylon ought to drink water. They obeyed God rather than man, even though they had no way of knowing whether that would mean their immediate execution as enemy captives. Why are so many Christians nowadays not content with drinking their metaphorical water but want to insist that the proper Christian thing to do is to vote in candidates who think that drinking only water should be the law of the land?

Not very free, if you ask me. Neither from the POV of democracy nor from the idea that Christ freely calls men to come to Him.

This article on an anabaptist site is really what answers your questions about me for me, better than I can do. It is the traditional Mennonite position vis a vis Christians and the nation but it is also my personal position.

We just had an election. I did not vote. The country in which I hold citizenship is not here.

Layla

Should Christians take action?

2008-10-18T10:20:00.000-07:00

I think we are in agreement that God's will is always done, and that He is in control of all circumstance, great or small. Yes?

Should, then, a Christian take action to pursue what they perceive as God's will in their lives, or in the community at large?

Should a Christian actively participate in anti-abortion work, anti-slavery work, anti-poverty work? Should a Christian become a missionary? A policeman, fireman, soldier?

As I understand it, Mennonites don't do missionary stuff (although actually there are Mennonite communities down here that do - I think?). They don't do evangelism, they don't vote, they don't become firemen/policemen/soldiers, etc. Yes? (I know that you don't hold all the Mennonite beliefs at this point - I am interested in yours more than theirs).

As far as I'm concerned, I pray hard that God's will be done. I pray hard that He show me what it is that He wants me to do. And then I go DO it. God's people are His body on this earth, His hands, His feet, His mouth. Made of clay we are.... and like clay we crumble and stumble and don't do a great job. But we are still made to do things.

And so, I vote. I sign petitions. I evangelize, in my own small way. I've fed the poor, visited those in prison... you get the picture. I don't do that to ensure my salvation, I do that to honor the One who saved me.

Will His will be done, no matter what? YES. But I want to be a part of the doing. I ache to be His servant, active in His business.

Let's dig into this, as it seems to be the core of much of our contention over the course of this discussion. :)

Got it

2008-10-16T14:50:00.000-07:00

Yes, it is illuminating. Thank you. But I don't think he sees me as his sister in Christ. I think he thinks I am an unbeliever.

And your other point is well taken, that some Christians are trying to choose between two evils. Of course, that is why I stopped voting about three elections ago. I don't think it is good enough for a Christian to choose between the lesser of two evils, but that we serve Christ and him alone.

Interestingly, on - I believe 60 Minutes, a week or two ago - they interviewed the commander of the US forces in Iraq and asked him whom he was voting for. He said when he'd gotten to a certain level (I am not sure which level that was), he'd stopped voting altogether, as his job was not to take sides but to support whatever government was in power.

Pretty much my rational for why Christians ought not to vote. That Christian loyalty to the Supreme Commander ought to take precedence over earthly rulers, and I can't think of a single earthly ruler who is "worthy", if you want to call it that, of a Christian's vote. Much like the Roman soldier who told Jesus he believed he could heal at a distance just by his say-so, I thought this commander "got" it, even if he wasn't thinking in Christian terms but rather those of his duty to his earthly masters.

Layla

Illumination

2008-10-14T13:11:00.001-07:00

I think I can offer light to both of your posts... 1) I know where the "You're not letting people be blessed by helping you" thing came from, it's from a very popular Christian book out called "90 minutes in Heaven". Don't take offense. I've seen his flavor of person many a time, what he's trying to do is just inappropriate familiarity. He figures since he's your brother in Christ, he's qualified to support you and give you counsel, etc. Which is true, to a point... there is a reason we are called to fellowship. BUT I agree, he's over the line. Again, appropriate behavior in a friend or someone who was in your small fellowship group, or even in your church if you had a small enough church. It's not just among Christians that people try inappropriate familiarity to make friends or show that they are friendly people. (Culturally this would be I guess Texan or Southern? It's not really Californian, but I can see as a Canadian/Mennonite that it would freak you out totally).

As for the conservative Christians and Palin, they fall into two camps. One is the camp that is just so happy to see someone living SOME of the morals they say that they live by (and abortion is a huge huge deal here) that they'll ignore the whole "woman in power" thing, if in fact they have it on the radar at all. Mostly I think they don't have it on radar. (On radar-in their awareness field).

The other camp can be found in plentitude here: http://www.ladiesagainstfeminism.com/artman/publish/
They give much the same arguments that you do.

I don't think it's as much logic as trying to sell yourself the lesser of two evils, for those who are Christians in politics. And of course we can't be so anti-PC as to say that women can't be in charge... nope. ;)

Insofar as I'm concerned, a woman is free to exercise temporal power over men, but not over her husband. I'm not about to obey some random man just because he's MALE. No thanks. My spiritual concerns with Palin would be more the ethical questions and uses of power that seem to be cropping up. (So she's good on abortion, but what about everything else?). And if she DID end up as President, what about her hubby? (I would be much happier if she was 20 years older, widowed, and didn't have the ethical questions - I think I'd be quite enthusiastic about her in that case).

It doesn't matter who I vote for for President, the electoral college system ensures that all the votes in Cali will be going to Obama anyway. (sigh)

Helpful?

Women in power

2008-10-14T01:30:00.001-07:00

From previous conversations, not necessarily on this blog, I know that you believe that a wife ought to be submissive to her husband in accordance with the apostle Paul's words in Ephesians 5: Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.

Or as in 1 Timothy 2: Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression

I am not sure what exactly this submitting to the man means to you, but Mennonites also traditionally have believed in the submission of the female to the male. This mean that while, if the men were farmers or something like that, the woman certainly partook and helped wherever she could outside, but that her primary purpose was to raise the children, teach them about God, take care of the garden, and do all the canning and such necessary to survival.

So women worked, but stay-at-home moms' work is often not considered to be "real" work and in my opinion, usually wasn't considered "real" work by their Mennonite husbands. The men did the "real" work.

Growing up in the seventies, I recall listening to many discussions about women in the work force - meaning women working not on the family farm, but in an actual work place. It was heavily frowned upon from several perspectives. One being that the man was seen as not being a good provider for his family, that his wife "had" to work - laziness being almost a capital offence among Mennonites, and then the other being the verses I already referenced - that those women who had a career of sorts were placing themselves in a situation where they were equal to men.

I know this isn't only a Mennonite perspective, but that was the perspective of most Christian denominations at that time.

Which brings me to the current election in the US. Sarah Palin. Apparently admired by many right-wing Christian women, who seem to see no contradiction between in her conservative Christian views, and being a working woman in a position of authority over men.

The women who support her tend to like her because she is against abortion in any circumstances, even rape or incest, and seem to believe that she holds their conservative, small "c" Christian beliefs. And I would assume that one of the fundamental traditional small "c" conservative Christian beliefs would include the belief that the man is the head of the household.

So what's up with that? I don't get it. It's not okay for a woman to have the final say in a marriage but it is okay for a woman to potentially have the final say when it comes to governing a country?

What's the rational here?

I actually heard a Baptist pastor interviewed on CNN some time ago who seemed sincere, not out for the limelight, did not affiliate himself with either candidate and confuse God and Caesar who, in spite of opposing arguments by Christian women on the same show, stuck to the point, which is basically the point I made already. He believes it is clearly written in the Bible that a woman ought not to be in position of authority over a man. He did not mock Sarah Palin. He did not endorse Obama. He made it clear that his duty as a pastor was to remind people what the Bible said, no matter how politically incorrect it might be. And he clearly was of the opinion that in running as VP, or even as Governor, she was not behaving in accordance with traditional Christian interpretation of the Bible.

I was a little relieved that someone made that point since I don't understand how the right wing Christian element, can support her nomination by their own standards, given my understanding of traditional values.

To me it seems clear that either conservative Christians who believe in a wife submitting to her husband, and that the man is above the woman, because he was created first, are playing fast and loose with their own ideas of what constitutes Biblical literalism. In which case it hardly comes as a surprise that conservative Christians lose respect since they don't actually follow any thought through to it's conclusion and then stick by it, come what may.

*I* have no problem with women in politics. But I don't believe that the way in which submission has been interpreted by conservative Christians is correct either. So I'm not contradicting my own views, which they are.

The other point this Baptist pastor made was that while many fundamentalist Christians (this was at the beginning when McCain announced her as his nominee) were ecstatic over her nomination, that actually, Biblically, a woman in power is used as an example of God's disapproval of a nation, not his approval.

Isaiah 3:11: As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths.

How is this not an example of conservative Christians picking and choosing just how they will interpret the Bible?

If you are interested in a link to the transcript, I could try and look it up on CNN. They have transcripts of a lot of interviews.

So, if you can explain this to me.....

Layla

2008-10-13T15:08:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm relieved that you find this odd too. I don't know if he is only targeting me or if he does this to everyone. I just can't see how he could stay in business long if he does it to everyone. So I think that part of how he is thinking, or was thinking originally, was that because I am of Mennonite background, that it would be acceptable. I just can't see that he would do this, in this way, straight off the bat, to someone who isn't identified with a religious ethnic group.

Again, I certainly don't find prayer offensive but like you said, it's usually your friends, people you actually know, who would tell you they are praying for you. I don't object to him praying. But I feel like I'm being pushed into a corner which makes me all the less inclined to say anything at all about my beliefs. I am pretty sure that nothing short of a grand Pentecostal display of emotion, complete with "Praise Jesuses" would satisfy him, that my soul is in the hands of the Lord.

I am not a hugger so I am certainly not someone who is ever going to do some sort of big emotional outburst in the presence of someone I don't know.

It would be easy enough to tell him to stop but the thing is, turning the tables, however gently, and giving him a Bible verse such as Matthew 6:6 in return, would still seem like I was somehow being snotty about it to a man who I think is basically well-meaning. If it came from a place of malice, I could say it. It's just not so easy when a person is basically decent and means well.

I've seen him 6 times, each time he has prayed for my back. I decided to let that go since there was nothing offensive or even overly pushy in his actual out loud prayers. But inwardly I figured that if he starts praying out loud that I will see the light, based on the assumption that I haven't, well, that is more than I think I can be quiet about. But I don't want to be rude either. I don't want to hurt his feelings.

Although his wife is of Mennonite ethnic background, apparently the family attends a Pentecostal type church, so I think that maybe his behaviour is considered more normal in that setting.

He also suggested to me the first time I saw him that my back trouble and the fact that there are a lot of things that I unfortunately depend on family members to do for me, that I "should" think about the fact that in wanting or trying to do everything on my own and not asking for help, that I am depriving family and friends of the blessings of the Lord, as in the whole "it is better to give than receive" thing.

I didn't say one word but what I thought was he's being a little unreasonable, since I *am* paying him and if he followed the thought through to its logical conclusion, he ought to be treating me for free, on the same grounds of it being better to give than receive. And it kind of hurt me, for him, that he didn't seem to realize what he was saying, if you know what I mean. Someone he is trying to "reach" who doesn't believe in God, would pick up on that right away and his witness would do more harm than good.

He is only a one minute drive from my house so I really don't want to change. It's far more convenient than having to, with my back, drive an hour to get the same treatment elsewhere where a practitioner might be a little more professional.

So anyway, I've been busy with getting ready for winter. Everything is moving in slow motion due to my back and there's so much to do here before winter which could hit any day. It's not unknown for us to have snow for Halloween.

Layla

I was wondering what happened to you!

2008-10-12T20:56:00.000-07:00

Ettiquette varies I think, but he was over the line.

Then again, my back guy always wanted to think positive thoughts with his forehead pressed to a hand pressed to my forehead when he was finishing up. (I'm pretty sure he was wiccan or new-age, based on the red-string wrapped herb bundles in the corner). It might be a health-practioner thing to urge religion on you.

I would not find his behavior disturbing in someone who went to church with you - I have friends who like to do the praying on the phone thing. But they're my FRIENDS.

If he did that here he'd be out of business in less than a month.

What would I do in a situation like that? Probably tell him where I went to church and discuss it. He probably WAS trying to evangelize you, so if you're saved, he's going to knock it off. (Hopefully).

But you don't go to church. So he'd probably find that out and urge you to go to church at his church and bury you in fellowship verses.

I'd change practioners if possible (and if it's helping). No reason to be made uncomfortable. My wiccan rolfer didn't make me uncomfortable, I just ignored his mind meld business (at the time, now I'd ask him not to do it). If it's not possible to change practioners, I'd say, "I am saved, but my relationship with the Lord is an intensely private thing, and I would prefer not to discuss it during our sessions. Thank you."

So. Yep. He was a crazy one. You get 'em. They're just like big silly dogs, trying too hard. Try to take them with a grain of salt and recognize that God takes all kinds in His family. :)

Christian witnessing etiquette

2008-10-12T01:02:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I have a situation/question about evangelical-style talking about God to strangers in non-religious settings.

I don't want to go into exact details to avoid identifying the guilty, but as you know I have back problems. Recently I started a holistic type of treatment that I'd heard had some positive results for some people. After researching it on the Internet, it seemed like there might be something to it, and I looked for a business near me that might do this sort of stuff.

Lo and behold, there's a guy who does it very near me. I had never heard of him at all. So I called the number, left a message on the answering service and later that day, the guy called me back. I explained what my medical problems were exactly and he gave me an appointment.

Then he asks out of the blue if he can pray for me. Now this is not usual or normal, at least not here, not when you don't know someone at all, and not when you're not calling a pastor. This holistic stuff has nothing to do with any religion.

However, unfortunately, sometimes when people say "I'll pray for you" it has no more meaning than "How are you?" So, I decided, given the largely Mennonite area, that maybe he thought that it (he is not a Mennonite) was good for business to say things like "Can I pray for you." That attitude is certainly not an uncommon one among certain Mennonites. And since he knew my name, he knew I was ethnically Mennonite.

So I was taken aback, and thinking this is weird, but I say "sure" because really, he's put me in an awkward position with that question. What if I was an atheist? Even an atheist might say "yes" out of politeness, rather than feel themselves wrangled into a religious discussion.

I was thinking when he asked me if he could pray for me, that if he in fact prayed for me at all, that he would do it quietly, on his own time. Instead he started praying out loud right on the phone.

So my next thought, although there was nothing wrong with his prayer, it's just that this is so totally odd, is that he's a weirdo, maybe a serial killer. It's just so not normal to do that here. I have serious second thoughts about going to this appointment since it is odd also that I've never heard of him. I call around and find no one who has heard of him.

About 30 minutes before my appointment, I actually do find someone who does have an idea of who he is and he is married into a local family. So I keep the appointment, but I'm a bit nervous. I just do not, absolutely, one hundred percent not, discuss with complete strangers my religious beliefs.

It's a little like if you were to take your car into a garage to have work done, and the mechanic asks if he can pray for you. It's not expected. It's not a specifically religious situation and I do not know this guy from Adam.

Well, during the appointment, he again prays for my back out loud. It's not that I don't appreciate prayer but if he really wanted to pray for me, and be a witness or whatever you call it in church, why not pray quietly to yourself for me until you get to know me better?

I'm all tensed up because I have no idea where this prayer thing is going to lead - if he's going to start asking me if I'm born-again or what. This feels pushy and presumptuous.

On my third appointment, he asks if he can "give me" a Bible verse. I don't even know what that means to "give" me a Bible verse but I do get that he obviously has decided that I am not a Christian and he wants to evangelize me. With a frozen, constipated polite smile on my face, I say, "Of course not."

He then says, "Do you have a Bible?"

So you see where this is going. When I reply in the affirmative, I get a look that says he thinks I'm lying.

I do not like to feel pushed into disclosing personal beliefs before I am ready to do so. Anyway, "giving" me a Bible verse turns out to mean writing a Psalm verse down on my appointment card for me to look up in my non-existent Bible.

Now if I was the heathen he thinks I am apparently, then the Psalm itself would have no meaning. And if I am not the heathen or as Biblically illiterate as he thinks I am, then he's just insulted me. Because I do not get this "giving" of a Bible verse. I understand the theory behind it, in that some Christians think they are offering comfort, but again, I have a Bible. Several. I read it regularly. I know what comforts me and what doesn't. I don't need anyone to give me a Bible verse.

I resisted the temptation to tell him that he could give me a Bible verse if I could give him one.

What is the proper, Christian, not wanting to insult him etiquette, to gently tell him (I have come to believe he is sincere and well-meaning) to back off a little or to even express my belief that even if he sees his entire life as an opportunity to witness, going about it the way he's going about it with a lot of assumptions, is not really likely to gain him any converts.

I could for instance, shoot him with a Matthew 6:6 in exchange for his Psalm 89. But it all seems so childish.

Layla

Response

2008-09-12T17:17:00.000-07:00

Well... we've disposed of niceness, more or less, although we disagree. :)

To answer the "I'm not sure what you mean that there's no segregation by race but by cultural choices. Could you elaborate?"

Sure! Little difficult to explain but I will use the example of Hispanic folks in my area. (Most of the folks in my area are Hispanic). There are the folks who dress in "normal" clothes, have "normal" jobs, and speak Spanish primarily at home. No segregation that I've noticed between those folks and everyone else. There are the folks that wear gang clothes -they pretty much hang out with other gang people (duh). There are the folks who are new immigrants, who do the yucky work, and don't speak English yet - they pretty much hang out with others like themselves.

Does that make more sense? My son's three best friends are three different races. But the kids in his class that fall into the groups that self-segregate don't really hang out as much with the other kids. Of course they don't... how am I going to set up play rules with a mom when I can't talk to her? And later, when the gangbangers take over... well, I know my husband got randomly jumped walking home just for being a big white guy. It happens. /shrug.

On to the next issue... do you have one handy?

Niceness

2008-09-06T12:29:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I'm just plain floored because I think that yes, we do live in different worlds and have different mindsets, and I always try to be careful in the sense that people often make mistakes in assuming their "norm" is *the* norm. Some things though are seeing the glass as half full as opposed to half empty. And reading and rereading what you have to say, while there are some cultural differences, I still think it is mostly a different way of seeing the glass.

I haven't ever lived in the States for any length of time and there's only so much you can ever know about another country without having lived there, but the comments Americans living in Canada make, is that Canadians are nicer, and less aggressive, less apt to judge people by their bank accounts.

I have no particular experience to say that that is true or not true. I think Canadians are a lot more worldly in their mind-sets. Americans seem very insular and not given to seeing much beyond their borders or interests, and with an unfortunate tendency to assume the rest of the world wants what they think we should want.

Canada, on the whole, is a very politically correct nation. By politically correct, I mean that generally (there are always exceptions) we are agreed that race, religion and prejudice and hate speech are not things we want in our country. We are generally agreed that each human being has an intrinsic value, and that belief in turn is what gives rise to our social programs, such as national health care.

We work less than Americans, and pay more taxes. We don't wig out about prayer said in our government or our schools. but the nature of that prayer has evolved, mostly without much conflict, into general themes of peace, rather than focusing on that which divides people.

We also want less. We don't believe that the rights of the individual automatically take precedence over the good of society. Which isn't to say at all that we don't have bigots and racists and crime problems. We have less of them than the US, but every country in the western world has less crime than the US.

Some of these things various governments instituted long before the general population was ready for them and caused a lot of vicious debate but you see, I don't see "elitism" as a dirty word. I want people in government who are smarter than I am. I don't want someone who knows no more than me there. And as years have passed, a lot of the things the vast majority of people thought they were against, have grown to be a valued part of our society. Canada had bitter arguments about multiculturalism in the 70s and 80s, and now the children of those most enraged at the time, are learning second and third languages and participating in multicultural events and have friends of many cultures.

On the other hand, people's opinions and view of their society are often formed by their circle of acquaintances, which can skew one's impression of one's country. And I'm not entirely confident that my own view isn't skewed by my circle of acquaintances, which consists in large measure of immigrants from European countries, academics and artists, with hardly a right-winger among them. I tend to think the right-wingers are the aberration, not the norm.

Of course you will find right wingers (by Canadian standards. Our right wingers would probably be considered left wingers in the US) in rural communities or in fundamentalist churches. A lot of that is a matter of education and exposure. Bible schools are not exactly educational. But mostly it is the older generation that has found it difficult to adjust, and their time has passed, for good and ill. The children and the children's children are not the grandparents.

And I am shocked - jaw-droppingly shocked - when I run into someone who makes racists or homophobic comments. People like that are not part of my norm. But the government has also tried hard over the years to educate people against racism and racist "jokes", so I think that even among racists, people here are careful before they said anything like that.

It's not that I believe that for example, there are no racists, but rather that it has become unacceptable for hate-filled comments to be spoken. People assume racists are uneducated, stupid even. I'm cool with that. I don't believe in that kind of freedom of speech. Just by not feeling as free to speak hate, by realizing that chances are good that if you open your mouth, you are as likely as not to be told that your hate is unacceptable, hate-filled people are less likely to open their mouths. Which in turn has an impact on society as a whole.

Among educated people, or artists for example, they are as likely as not to take pride in their second-hand clothes and the small "footprint" their houses leave. It's not that there aren't people who are money or status conscious and building monster houses that are a crying shame to look at, but they are the new-money, no education people. Even they change eventually, when they are trying to get into old money clubs and realize that old money doesn't live conspicuously any more, and that old money is actually concerned about the rest of the world.

And it's not that no Canadian kid ever calls another a "fag" or a "retard" but bullying, when I was in school, was not taken seriously at all. It is now. It isn't perfect, but the more it is hammered into young minds that it isn't acceptable, the more it becomes as you say, the new "cool" but I don't see a good thing being the "new cool" being a bad thing in any way. That's how you get people to do good things. It's no different from the anti-smoking campaign, which succeeded largely in getting kids to think smoking wasn't cool. The health issue alone is never going to stop a kid from smoking if it is considered cool.

I would have shaved my head if that had been cool when I was a kid. (I realize it may be cool now but it sure wasn't when I was a teenager.)

Yes, I expect things are a bit different in California and looks, if you are an actress, are obviously going to be more important because of the nature of the profession. A writer needs a laptop, an actor needs looks - in addition to acting ability of course.

I'm not sure what you mean that there's no segregation by race but by cultural choices. Could you elaborate?

As to swearing and things like kids swearing nowadays, dropping the F-bomb, when people say now publicly words they would never have dared think, I think it's liberating. I think it's a far cry from the air kisses society matrons give each other while they rip each other to shreds behind their backs.

The same moms who in the 50s would never have thought the f-word, are also the same moms who thought blacks were good for servants, the same moms who supported segregation, the same moms who would have disowned their children for marrying outside their race. I'd way rather they let lose with an f-bomb.

I'm way more in favor of the moms who march in peace rallies and disrupt the neighborhood by bringing attention to injustice. I'm all in favour of people who catch cops on videos doing bad things instead of the 1950s way of thinking that the cops were always right.

Life was not anything more than superficially pretty for white middle class people in the days gone by. The days gone by are not the good-old-days for most other people.

When you say you are looked at differently because your car isn't washed or your waistline isn't like Barbies - well I have no doubt that there are people like that, but some of it might also be your own self-consciousness. I have about ten years on you, and I know I was more self-conscious at your age than I am now.

One thing I did notice on our recent road trip, was the large number of brand spanking new trucks and SUVs - jaw droppingly expensive, and all shiny and washed, guzzling gas like there is no tomorrow, even in the smallest one-horse towns. Saw no evidence at all of people taking the gas problem seriously. You don't see much of that here. Having a gas-guzzling, bad for the environment vehicle is embarrassing. The looks you get here are not those of admiration but of disapproval.

I'm totally okay about people doing nice things because they want to look nice even if they aren't nice people. I'd rather they were nice people but if they can't be nice because they are nice, I'm all in favor of them being nice because otherwise they get the nasty looks they've subjected others to for years.

In spite of our freezing cold winters, I gave up wearing a fur coat years ago, due to dirty looks. I should say I never wanted a fur coat to begin with but it was a gift from my husband so I wore it for a while. As someone who experiences -40 degree temperatures fairly regularly, I can say that there is no man made fabric that will keep you warm in that. It is not a matter of vanity or fashion.

However, I now only wear it to walk the dogs and sometimes if it is very cold and I have to drive many miles, I stick it in the van in case my vehicle breaks down and I have to walk or stay there the night. But I don't wear it. People wearing furs do not get admiring looks here, I can tell you. And it's really not quite fair unless the people who started the whole anti-fur movement actually live in the sort of godforsaken cold people here live in for months at a time. Every homeless person in Canada ought to have a fur coat by law. They ought to be as cheap as borscht here, as necessary as bread. (I am no fan of winter.)

I feel bad about our old van, because it is so big but my husband can no longer get into a lower vehicle. But we have only one vehicle, not two. Even so, I'm keeping an eye out for a vehicle that can hold the dogs and my husband that is less bad on gas and the environment.

And I'm mostly amazed, given how incredibly hard life is, that people we love die, sometimes terribly, and people who loved them still find enough hope in them to go on. I am moved to tears when strangers go out of their way to protect another stranger in trouble. I am moved to tears by people who are ordinary, every day people who perform every day acts of mercy and grace, going forward in hope, even when we have no direct current word from God, no visions of angels to comfort us on our darkest nights, nothing but something that may be shadows seen through a glass darkly, that people are still capable of love, of putting their lives at risk for other people, even people who have seen nothing or little of that same grace and love in their own lives.

I am so impressed by how good people are.

Layla

We live in different worlds

2008-09-04T17:42:00.001-07:00

That does it, Layla... I'm moving in! You live in such a different world.

I don't know that people are any less or more nice now than they used to be, only that people as a whole aren't very nice. We've just found new ways of being mean than we used to use. No more segregation by skin color, we do it by cultural choices. And not using fag or retard as an insult? Certainly ladies of our age don't use such words - but did *our* moms? I know my pet teenager is forever using terms like that (and getting lectured by his "auntie"). He might not care if you are actually gay - but he'll still use the word itself as an insult. (He's East Coast upper-middle-class/suburban).

Likewise, there is a LOT of label consciousness and outward perfection consiousness here - but duh, I live in SoCal. (How toned you are mostly shows your bank account, likewise your accessories). Money *always* talks! I get fishy looks for my inexpensive clothes when I go shopping outside of my immediate city, and I get fishy looks for my waistline and my car (I don't wash it much) and lots of things that I think are just fine, but folks here don't agree.

PC - I am not at all convinced that PC is anything more than euphemisms updated to the 90s and beyond. I remember my PC lecture with the syllabus hand out back in college. It's about looking like a "nice" person, whatever the current definition of "nice" is. Right now it's "PC" on the coasts/cities. Elsewhere I hear that it's still a church-going person (even if you don't actually have faith). It would be best if everyone attended church and never dreamed of using derogatory terms about anyone, ever.

I am excited about prophecy right now... :) So of course I'm extra-interested in the OT as a key to NT prophecy/timing. Take it with a grain of salt, yes, but I'll be straight up - the loaf's name is hope.

I am trying to figure out how to celebrate the OT feasts/fasts in a respectful way that's both somewhat public and between me and God. Ideas are welcome! Would you like to join me in celebrating Rosh Hashana? It's trumpets, I don't have a trumpet... but seems like the Jewish folks like to stay up and light candles and generally act like the bride waiting for her groom to show up... I feel like that. Even if my Groom doesn't show *this* year, or even if He doesn't pick a Rosh Hashana to show up on at all... I've still got my lamp full of oil.

Happy!

People: better or worse?

2008-09-02T18:24:00.000-07:00

I thought of this when I read your last post about people sucking, and the general idea that things in the world are much worse, not better than they used to be.

First of all I think a lot depends on where you are but generally, in the western world, I find people are much nicer than they used to be. Political correctness is more good than not good, when it means that kids aren't calling each other "retard" and "fag" in the interests of hurting each other's feelings. I think that people are much more sensitive than they used to be to the outsider. The more outside the "norm" you are in school, the more "in" you are these days. These days you can wear anything, and still be accepted. If you wear old clothing, they call it "vintage" and you're still cool.

When I went to school, it was all about the right label on your clothes, and the exact same clothes before they went out of style, and styles used to change every season.

It's now recognized that people aren't cookie cutter shapes and there's a recognition of people's strengths and weaknesses, and people tend to give each other a hand up more, even if that niceness is legislated by the law in such programs as Affirmative Action in the US.

I see more people going out of their way to help people who are poor than they used to, when being poor was just shy of having leprosy, as though people thought you had done something to deserve it.

Going even further back, just 45 years ago, as the speech of Obama's reminded us being the anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech, black people in the US were still little better than slaves. And not so far back from that they were slaves.

Back in 1972, the death penalty was abolished in Canada, although the last execution in Canda happened in 1962, a good ten years before it was abolished. And it hasn't been that long either since it wasn't just a a man's "right" to beat his wife whenever he felt like it.

One could argue that there are more serial killers in the world today. I think what has happened is that bad people, have become more bad, while the vast majority of people have become nicer. I don't think people suck at all. I think people are amazing.

Layla

Messianic foreshadowing in the OT

2008-09-01T13:55:00.000-07:00

Well, I have a book in that case that you might be interested in. It is called The Fall Feasts of Israel by Mitch and Zhava Glaser, published by Moody Press in 1987. If you can't find it at your library, I'll be happy to mail it to you. You can send me your address privately. It is a very interesting book.

The Glazers are Jewish Christians.

You reference Rosh Hashanah, or the Feast of Trumpets in one of your posts. Now I've always believed that in order to understand what Jesus meant - to truly understand it, one has to understand the OT, the way it was interpreted by the Jews. The themes of Rosh Hashanah are those of judgement and restoration. It's not wrong to call them a foreshadowing of the return of Christ to claim the church, in that I believe that every story in the Bible is there for a distinct purpose. I don't believe the Bible is there as an arbitrary collection of Jewish stories. The stories have a point, and as I've mentioned before, God always has a point. The point of Job, isn't to be a story of God's cruelty or mindless suffering. I think Job was a story that foreshadowed Christ - in telling how the innocent do suffer through no fault of their own.

That idea is a contradiction to "Whatsoever a man soweth so shall he reap" and shows in the example of Jesus' disciples or maybe it was just some on-lookers, who wondered about the blind man whether he was blind due to his own sin or the sins of his fathers.

That's the purpose of the story of Job - to make it clear that there isn't always an easy answer. God never really answers Job, you know, as to why these bad things happened to him. And I don't believe that God is so petty that he thinks another set of children make up for losing the first set. Job may have increased his holdings and had more children, but the scar of what happened to the first must have been there always.

Both the first and second Temples were destroyed on the exact same day - the 9th of Av, on the Jewish calendar.

I don't know that I really like the link that says Christians expect Christ's return on Rosh Hashana. Number one, Rosh Hashana is a period of time. It is certainly a metaphor for Christ's return, for all the reasons mentioned. But why not the Day of Atonement?/ Yom Kippur, whose name in English means "the day of covering or concealing?" Those raptured could be said to be covered or concealed. Or the Feast of Booths or Sukkot, which means "the season of our rejoicing." For surely Christians will rejoice in the day of Christ's return. Or the spring feasts, with their promise of new growth?

In other words, for those wanting to pinpoint a day, things get really blurry really fast. Jesus is said to have been killed before the Passover, which in turn was a remembrance of when the Angel of Death passed over the children of Israel. In retrospect, of course, that fits. But he could have died on the Day of Atonement as well, and we still would have said, "Oh, that fits. He is the scape goat."

If Jesus returns on an Easter morning, we will all say, "Oh, that fits. He rose from the dead on that day." And if on Sukkot, then that fits too.

While I appreciate the way that commentators on this remind Christians that their religion was not born in a vacuum but has a history, I really don't like the attaching of seasons or dates to it. A lot of things can fit. Who would have thought that Jonah spending 3 days in the belly of a whale would be related to the Son of Man spending 3 days in the belly of the earth?

But if on the other hand, your point is about the connection between Judaism and Christianity, Mennonites never lost sight of that connection. We always valued the OT as much as the NT. But I think it might be news to a lot of Christians. I have never been able to understand anti-semitism on the part of so-called Christians considering the Jew from Galilee they claim to follow.

Layla

Next up?

2008-09-01T11:00:00.000-07:00

I can be happy with calling them "talents". :) And yes, I would call your "people come ask me for stuff" vibe to be a talent or a calling, because that gives you the opportunity to minister Christian kindness to them, which you do. Not much kindness left in this nasty ol' world... sigh.

But! Onward!! :) I am *geeeking* out on this: http://messianicfellowship.50webs.com/wedding.html
and http://bibleprophesy.org/introtrumpets.htm

So what do you think?

The first link makes me all swooooony, 'cause you know I'm a very romantic girl. :) And the second link makes me EXCITED!

Gifts and callings

2008-08-31T20:53:00.001-07:00

I wasn't very happy with my last two posts - it was like there was a word or an idea on the tip of my tongue but I couldn't articulate it. It occurred to me the other day just what it was.

You speak of "gifts." And I think what you call "gifts" I would call "a calling."

As far as I know, I have no gifts that I would attribute to the Holy Spirit. To me, the word "gift" implies something that isn't evident in non-Christians when I look around me. And I just don't see that at all.

For many years and until this day, people who are a little "off" - maybe they have mental health issues or there's something about them that doesn't fit well into the mainstream society, have been coming around my house. Maybe you would call it a gift? I have no real idea why these people feel comfortable in my house. Obviously I try to make them feel comfortable but I would do that for any guest. Even though these unexpected visits maybe don't come at the right time.

I've also had people who are outsiders come to my house and mistake me for a complete fool, presumably for having them over and getting very angry when I wouldn't get involved in things like welfare fraud, ie, wanting to use my address and my name to verify what isn't true. Won't do it. Period. Or people who end up putting you in a position where you are in danger of losing your faith for some reason. I don't feel I am obliged to do what I cannot do, what might put my own immortal soul in jeopardy. It's that avoiding temptation thing. I also have to consider those who are or might be affected by these guests.

If a person somehow causes division or confusion or might lead my husband in a direction that is clearly not a direction to go, then that person is no longer welcome. I am responsible for the souls in my house to a certain extent, just like one would or should not, even in the interests of forgiving, invite a child molester into a house with a child. So my hospitality is conditional. I might not say it, but most people, even ones without mental health issues, understand instinctively that when someone says mi casa su casa, it is not meant literally. It is conditional upon behaviour that is hardly ever spelled out (who greets guests with a long list of what is acceptable and what is not?) but still generally understood.

My parents' house is also a place for misfits to gather. Most of them have their "season," in that they aren't necessarily permanent fixtures but move on after a while.

In one way I can look at this strange attraction I have for outsiders as a "gift" but since it isn't always about good guys, bad strange people are also attracted to me often enough for me to wonder if I have "sucker" printed on my forehead. I can't ever walk down a street, even with a group of friends, and I will be the one the panhandler seeks out, or the kid selling chocolate bars for school fundraisers. I never say no.

But given that I attract con men as well as genuine hurting people, how can this be a gift? I feel I am "called" to give money to whoever asks me, in accordance with Jesus' instructions to "if he asks for your coat, give it to him." I do it because that is what I, as a Christian, am supposed to do, without worrying about where I will get another coat, as the lilies of the field.

So it's intellectual, not that I'm such a good person. Not because I hear the voice of God whispering in my ear. I give what I have, inwardly, to give, not what I don't have.

Other than one of my sisters and one of my brothers, I don't know anyone, Christian or non-Christian who not only gets approached as much as I do, but also gives. I don't worry about being mugged. That seems to be everyone who is freaked out about what I do, their main worry.

When my husband was in the hospital, and I would take breaks by sitting outside in a not very good area of town, homeless people would come around and furtively look for half-smoked cigarettes that hospital visitors had thrown away.

Cigarettes here are very expensive - more than ten dollars a pack. It bothered me, the shame I saw on the faces of many as they tried to act casual about rummaging through the ashtrays or picking cigarettes off the sidewalk. Many were Native Canadians. Tobacco is a part of their culture and religion. As well as an addiction of course.

So I would say, "Excuse me, sir/ma'am. Would you like a cigarette?" And give them whole, unsmoked cigarettes. One man asked for an extra one for his grandmother. I gave him that. These people have way bigger problems than dying of lung cancer. I assume many Christians would have a problem with me doing that, and see cigarettes as sinful.

When my husband was several hours in surgery, and I couldn't stand it any longer, I went for walks because I could not sit still. In retrospect, I think the cigarettes I had been handing out where the reason I wasn't hurt or mugged. It is not a nice area of town.

There were also a lot of people in the hospital - I spent so much time there I got to know regular faces. Some of them needed their shoes tied and nurses wouldn't stop. So I tied them. Others needed to have their wheelchairs pushed to another area, so I did that. One man who had a brain injury and couldn't speak and was in a wheelchair needed a hug. I thought so anyway. So I hugged him and kissed him on the cheek whenever I saw him. It made him feel like a man. (He was a young man. People can get starved for the touch of another human. And as sexual creatures, I think also young men who are in what this man's condition was, he wanted a woman's touch. So I touched him.

I was rather busy at the end of my husband's stay and I still think of all those people.

But this is my duty as a Christian. I wouldn't ever think of it as a gift. I never once preached Christ to them. I tried to act like Christ who touched the lepers and made the blind see, and who saw through to the emotion behind a scarlet woman anointing him with oil bought with presumably with funds earned as a prostitute. A light on a mountain can't be hidden.

I know that there are verses upon verses about gifts, but there is nothing that I read that indicates these gifts are meant for the church today. And even if they are meant for the church today, I think Paul meant "gifts" with a much smaller "g". I think he meant talents. That every person has different talents. But this is true for Christians and non-Christians alike. It is how the world functions.

These talents may include healing by doctors, Christian or not, the ability to take apart cars and put them back together in a working order, or painting wonderful paintings that make people think. Or the ability of the waitress to stand on her feet hour after hour, carrying food to the restaurant's customers. Everything works together to make the whole. Take out any one thing and there' s no society.

I'm not sure if I've explained my position any better?

Layla

Gifts post, with verses (KJV)

2008-08-30T12:34:00.001-07:00

Mark 16:17-18 And these signs shall follow those who believe: In my name shall they cast out demons; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.

1 Corinthians 14: 22 Wherefore, tongues are for a sign, not to them that believe, but to them that believe not; but prophesying serveth not for them that believe not, but for them who believe.

1 Corinthians 14:33 For God is not the author of confusion but of peace, as in all churches of the saints.

1 Corinthians 12:7-11 But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit. For to one is given, by the Spirit, the word of wisdom; to another, the word of knowledge by the same Spirit; To another, faith by the same Spirit; to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit; To another, the working of miracles; to another, prophecy; to another, discerning of spirits; to another, various kinds of tongues; to another, the interpretation of tongues. But all these worketh that one and the very same Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will.

Let’s start with the basics. Layla, I know that you are a believer in the inerrant Word of God. It’s the Bible that sets the foundation to all our conversations. Spiritual gifts aren’t just given the odd verse here and there, there are CHAPTERS about them. So, therefore, they exist. No ifs, ands, or buts – God says that He gives us gifts through the Holy Spirit, so He does.

I think one of the things that is key here is the “dividing to every man severally as he will” (my Bible doesn’t capitalize pronouns – but I’m thinking the “he” here would be the Spirit not “each man”. Otherwise we could pick our own gifts and what a mess that would be). God gives us what He wants to give us, and He gives it to us for whatever season He chooses to. Perhaps a day, perhaps a year, perhaps a lifetime. My church gets into identifying those gifts, both as a reassurance and to identify where you should be ministering and serving. I’m good at mercy and counsel – so I counsel people. I’m geeking out more and more about learning, is that the gift of knowledge? LOL. Is this conversation we’re having not being posted *as* a ministry attempt? Of course it is.

I pulled different subjects out of your last two posts and discussed them in paragraphs, I don’t think they flow particularly well from paragraph to paragraph. Sorry! :P But onward…

The popular understanding in my church is that the snakes and poison gifts were specifically given to the apostles, and are known as the apostolic gifts. Since we don’t have apostles anymore, those gifts are given only as it suits the Lord and fall under the category of miracles. I would say that the folks that drink poison and handle serpents certainly have the gift of FAITH – more than I do. (Paul had those gifts – remember the snake who bit him on that island?)

Faith as a mustard seed – well, if we had more faith, why would we *try* to move mountains? That would be mean. Not to mention kind of testing… you know if you had the faith to know you could do it, why would you do it except to test it, and if you needed to test it, you wouldn’t have that much faith. Better to plant that mustard seed and let it grow into a plant big enough that birds can sit on it (and it does, we have wild mustard on the hills here – a good wet year will see it over my head). The church of today, in the West, has about as much faith as a soggy breadcrumb. (VERY sadly, we do live in the time of the apostate church).

As for tongues, I don’t believe in a spirit-language. Tongues are given “for a sign, not to them that believe, but to them that believe not…” well, babble isn’t a sign to anyone. However, I had a pastor who said he’d once had an experience of genuine tongues – he’d been preaching in English and a few members of his audience had heard him in other languages, and grabbed their friends and said, “He’s preaching in xxx?” “No – he’s preaching in English!” Those folks didn’t speak English, but heard the sermon in their own language. Now, that qualifies as both the spirit of order and the laws of tongues, that there be someone to interpret, etc.

Do Christians have more mercy/love/kindness than non-Christians? The closer we get to the Holy Spirit, the more we see the fruits of His work in our lives. (Those are fruit as well as gifts). But it’s not a zero-sum game. We don’t all start out at the same spot on the nice-o-meter. I have a friend who is a very unpleasant person to hang out with. She’s irritating. She’s a believer, she goes to church, she has real faith. But pleasant? No. But where did she start? Oh … well, her life’s been so bad that it’s a wonder that she’s not homeless and talking to the voices in her head. She manages kindness to the people around her *even though she’s not “nice”*. Why? Because she has God. *I* am a nice person from a nice family, and I know how to play the nice game. Without God I’d still play it on the face… and be a selfish wench following my own desires in private. God knows, and He’s the only judge. (This is where we’re not supposed to be judges. You don’t judge a stranger on their walk with God).

I guess the comment about doing good things as a part of our natures might follow here. I’m glad that you live in a nice part of the world, where people still are nice. I don’t. And it’s getting worse coming up behind us. You see, folks were *taught* how to behave nicely, that it was just “something you did”. No more. Do you know that I get startled praise from shop owners because my kids say “please” and “thank you”? No, this isn’t inbred. People SUCK. The old nature is nasty and horrible, diseased at its core. YOU have a new nature, the Holy Spirit inside of you expressing His gifts of love and mercy and kindness through you. Of course you do good things. It would be against your (new) nature to do otherwise. And hey – I think that it’s great that you have kicked your old nature to the curb to the place that you don’t notice the battle. I could wish the same for myself!

Maybe that’s where the difference we are having here come down. Cultural – Mennonites don’t do self-absorbed “what am *I* good at?” things, evangelicals do. But are you gifted, my sister? Oh YES. Yes you most certainly are. J

On to the next topic, and a crunchy one. What do you think of the practice of celebrating Biblical feasts (aka Jewish) instead of the current lot that the Christian west celebrates? I’ve been reading up on Rosh Hashana in the Messianic Jewish pages (It comes next)… very interesting. I have always thought that Judaism is the most beautiful religion on the planet – ‘course it should be, since God put it together. J

Happy Saturday! :D

- Hearth

Biblical Literalism

2008-08-24T21:57:00.000-07:00

This kind of pertains to what we've been discussing. Do you find that the Christians you know are more loving, hospitable, compassionate, etc., than the non-Christians you know? If not, then what exactly do those virtues mean as they pertain to the gifts of the Holy Spirit?

I guess what I am thinking is that I don't believe that everyone receives gifts from the Holy Spirit. I don't believe in tongues as they are practised by Charismatic churches. I see no difference between that and the trances that shamans go into when they are possessed by non-Christian spirits.

I still remember when there was the laughter movement within the charismatic churches, in which they claimed the Holy Spirit manifested Himself within the congregations with hysterical laughter, in which whole congregations simply rolled around the churches, holding their bellies and laughing. Hello, people. Our God is not the author of confusion. God, in the scriptures, always has a point. They may indeed have been possessed by some spirit but the Spirit of God is not that of being drunk with laughter. There is nothing that points to God at all in such nonsense.

I don't believe that there are any modern day prophecies as they relate to the time of the end, or even the individual. I will be happy to change my mind on empirical proof that any Christian anywhere has given any prophecy pertaining to an individual or a world event that has come true since the dawn of Christianity.

It would seem to me, that just as the miracles of Jesus stood out as exceptional and supernatural - raising the dead, for instance in front of many people who surely had seen enough death to know what death meant, that the gifts of the Holy Spirit, would also be exceptional and supernatural in form - such as the visible tongues of fire that descended upon the disciples at Pentecost, and the resulting miracle that each man heard the gospel in their own language. I don't understand how such a practical application and explanation of tongues evolved into the gibberish speaking in tongues that some churches now believe in.

Sometimes one hears of exceptional stories of strength, such as lifting a car off a person. A gift of hospitality or mercy, it seems to me, would show itself as exceptional. Allowing for differences of personality, I know of no one who is exceptional in a way that would strike me as miraculous. In other words, I don't believe that God shares his glory or credit. When God speaks, there's no doubt who's speaking. If there is doubt, it's not God but one's own wishful thinking.

I think that there is a problem in reading the scriptures about these gifts that were given to the early church for its survival. Just as the snake handlers take up snakes and drink poisons based on Mark 16: And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.

I do not believe that God meant us to go willy-nilly picking up poisonous snakes or drinking poison. And if he did not mean that, he can't either have meant that the church would necessarily always have the power to cast out devils or speak with new tongues. Miracles are a sign to those who do not believe. They were essential for the early church. It seems to me that they are now handled by some churches, as though God is a trick pony that the church can make jump through hoops for entertainment purposes.

Can you pick and choose among snakes and casting out devils without admitting that there is a problem in being consistent in one's interpretation of Biblical passages? When the scriptures say that whoever has faith the size of a mustard seed has the power to move mountains - are we to take it to mean that we should move mountains?

However, I do believe that if for some reason, God wants me at Place "B" there is no obstacle that can stand in my way that God will not move. My interpretation or understanding of that scripture is both literal and not literal, depending on how you look at it. The snake handlers would say that it is not literal.

I think that, in the entire context of Mark 16, and including what happened to Paul when he was bitten by a serpent and did not die, that God was speaking of accidental encounters with serpents and involuntary encounters with poisons. The situation Paul was in for instance, took place in front of people, who saw then the power of God. I believe that God was saying that he has our life in his hands, and when he says we die, we die and not before, regardless of accidental encounters with serpents.

As Jesus said when Satan tempted him with the notion of throwing himself off a cliff because "...it is written, He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee: And in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone."

Jesus responded, "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God."

So clearly we are warned by this example to be careful how much weight we put on any one Bible verse as what they say is conditional upon others, conditional upon common sense.

Layla

2008-08-23T22:40:00.000-07:00

I know what you mean - in a way. However, somehow it doesn't make sense to me. If mercy and love and hospitality and teaching were traits only Christians had, then you have a point. But people have such traits regardless of faith or lack of faith. It may still be a "gift" in the sense that some people are better at some things than others, but specifically Christian? Only in the sense that we are made in God's image which is the reason why we possess these qualities to begin with - believer and non-believer alike. But they are always there. They may deepen as a result of loving God, and having a conscious knowledge of God.

But since I believe - know - that God exists - and believe that all life comes from God, God's existence - His goodness - His mercy is not dependent on whether anyone at all believes in Him and the qualities that He passed on, when He made man in His image, exist in humanity regardless of belief. To me, all goodness in the world is a reflection of what Paul said to the Galatians about how they, in their ignorance, and imperfectly,
already worshipped God the Father and the Son, when they worshipped the Unknown God.

I see the whole thing in a much broader way, in a societal sense. Like we need the garbage man and the business owner. The food store and the flower shop. The mechanic and the doctor. And everything works together to make life better for all of us.

However, I also think that if love of God is part of a person, the way it ought to be part of a person, that person isn't thinking in terms of gifts, or in terms of being specifically Christian - it is in the air that they breathe. To me, the other way, implies consciously thinking of doing good which isn't a bad thing by any means, particularly if the other choice is doing bad things, but if doing good is a part of your nature, it wouldn't require thought, would it? If doing what is good and right is "natural", it doesn't involve thinking consciously about those things.

I don't know. I just can't seem to think like that. I'd rather just do.

Layla

Clarification, verses

2008-08-23T19:17:00.000-07:00

Possibly this is a thing that the evangelical church gets more "into" because you know we're all into self-realisation (err... not that this is a good thing maybe), but there is discussion of the spiritual gifts that believers get in a few spots in the Bible - let me start with Romans 12: 4-8, the list there is prophecy, ministry, teaching, exhortation, giving, ruling, and mercy. There's some difference of opinion about whether prophecy means *really* hard hitting new insights into the scriptures or just literal prophecy, but the others are reasonably obvious. Everyone has something that they're particularly good at. I, for instance, am not particulary a good teacher. I would like to be, I try to be - but it's not my gift. I am gifted in mercy - people find me, and I always find I have more to give, effortlessly. This goes above and beyond my Christian obligation to show mercy or hospitality - folks gifted with those are AWESOME at it. For instance, you don't like dealing with uninvited guests, it's an effort to you. The person gifted with hospitality somehow always has a clean (enough) house, plenty of random food, and the energy to deal.

We are not all equally gifted in all areas - and we aren't supposed to be. Paul prefaces his listing of gifts by saying, in 1 Corinthians 12:4-6 Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. and there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord. And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God who worketh all in all. (The discussion of gifts continues throughout chp 12, and through the end of chp 14, with some asides).

So this would go above and beyond our general Christian duty to show love to our neighbors in whatever way that they need, this would be our specific gift.

Does that begin to make more sense?

Dazed

2008-08-23T00:20:00.000-07:00

Maybe I am having a senior moment, but in a weird sort of way, I don't have a clue what you mean and I think it is because you are compartmentalizing certain things by referring to them as spiritual gifts. Belief and life are not separated in my head that way. Just like I don't do the A, B,C thing - to me life is God.

I know what I feel I was always meant to do but I don't feel that it leads to evangelisation or prophecy or anything like that. And we're told to love our neighbour as our selves but while some people may have more of a gift for it than others, it doesn't exclude people from loving their neighbour as themselves just because it's harder for them then those that are naturally more empathetic.

I think the problem is with the word "gift" (for me). It's like some people can draw and some people can barely draw a straight line and that happens among Christians and non-Christians alike, so I don't understand how a spiritual context might be applied to that.

For example, should Christians who can draw, draw only Christian things/themes? And if you're not including gifts such as artistry, but referring to things such as evangelisation and prophecy and church leadership, then I am ungifted. I have no calling to those things at all in the sense that God is not compartmentalized in my mind that way.

For example, if "Bob" comes to me with a problem, I am not thinking "how can I save Bob? How can I make a Christian point?" I am empathizing with Bob's problem. Maybe "Bob" is hungry. I feed "Bob." That's just what I do. I don't think to myself that I am feeding Bob in Jesus' name or exercising a spiritual gift. I'm not thinking necessarily, specifically about God at all but because I love Jesus, by definition, everything I do and say is about Jesus in a certain way. It's not compartmentalized in my head though.

Which doesn't mean that the conversation might not turn to God because Bob might say "How could God let this happen to me?" and so a conversation about how we see God might ensue.

To me, your question is like asking me what I do specifically as a human woman. Since I have never been anything other than a human woman, there is nothing that I have to separate it from. If you see what I mean.

I have people in and out of my life as well, very often people who are have difficult lives. I listen where I think I ought to listen, offer hope where I think I ought to offer hope, etc. but I'm having trouble placing that in the context you place it into. I don't feel that this is a calling but rather something that everyone does or should do. In other words, I don't think it is odd or somehow special that anyone does this - to me it is odd when people don't do that, Christian or non-Christian.

I've quoted the verse before (paraphrasing here) "What does the Lord require of you but to walk humbly before God, and to love justice..." To me that is "working for God." But I don't know that I would call it a gift. As someone once said, all that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to stay silent.

Anyway, I'm a little lost here and I'm not sure why...

Layla

Eternal purpose

2008-08-20T17:02:00.000-07:00

It's very clear in Scripture that each of us is to serve a spiritual purpose while we're here in this world, and that those purposes are different. We are each given gifts and asked to use them. I know we've talked a little bit about this before, how the Mennonite way isn't to evangelize but to be there in person and show good works and come alongside folks who need help and witness through an upstanding life.

While that's a part (a big part) of what I'm talking about, I'm also talking about the other spiritual gifts - service, exhortation, prophecy, counsel, discernment, etc. How are you working for God in this world? How effective do you feel like you are? What do you hunger to do more of? How does this fit with your theology?

I was thinking about this in regards to a friend of mine who I am burdened to be very close to right now, pestering him constantly to keep his life in line with God's will. It would drive me bats to have someone do this to me, but he needs it and it doesn't bug him. I have friends that I'm just "friends" with - you know, the folks you know just need a friend?

All my life, I've had people come in and out of my "circle". It's not like when they leave I forget them, but.... the season is past and they'ved moved on. And then God brings me someone new to befriend, someone new to counsel, someone new to show love to - someone new to witness to.

So - that's what I am, that's what I do. What is it that you do? That you *need* to work on to feel whole? That calls you and keeps you up at night?

Clarified, disagreed with

2008-07-03T17:36:00.000-07:00

You did clarify. I totally disagree... but to be brutally honest, I think we will both be corrected once we get Home. :)

Surgery is on Tuesday, if you pray please pray for steady hands while he gets the nerves pulled out of the scar tissue and pray now, if you will, for steady nerves on my end!

What's next on the discussion list?

Losing salvation

2008-07-03T10:31:00.000-07:00

Yes, I absolutely believe that a real Christian can sin and lose their salvation. By that I do not mean that sins of ignorance lead you there, or even that by simply failing to be perfect (since we can't be perfect, that's where grace comes in) causes one to lose one's salvation.

I am not saying that there is a specific sin that can cause an individual to lose his salvation since I think that the sinning that causes a person to lose his or her salvation is dependant on the individual himself. How that person thinks about himself and his sin. As when Paul says that to eat unclean foods is not a sin unless you eat without being fully convinced in your own mind. Therefore to consciously keep doing something that you fully believe is sinful, or someone who deliberately hurts other people all the time, knowing the hurt he or she is causing - those are things that can cause a person to lose their salvation.

I think there is a deliberate and conscious choice involved in losing one's salvation just as there is a deliberate and conscious choice involved in choosing one's salvation. I don't believe there is a formula involved in either so I can't say precisely what could cause another to lose that salvation. I could say, if I knew a person well, if I thought they were in danger of losing their salvation based on how they live, as when Christians are told to warn each other in brotherly love.

Where maybe I could, theoretically, given what I believe about divorce, divorce my husband without feeling any condemnation, that doesn't mean that it would not be sinful for another person.

In Galatians, Paul says "Be not deceived for God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that he shall also reap. For he that soweth to the flesh shall reap corruption" but he that soweth to the spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting."

There are a lot of Christians whose lives show nothing of what they claim to believe. Who use the liberty of Christ for license to sin. The above verse shows it isn't a matter of losing some sort of reward in Heaven but of reaping corruption, or spiritual death.

In the parable of the talents, one of those who is given a talent buries it instead of using it to create more wealth. He is like the Christian who, having professed Christ, believes he is always saved, but he is not. He is not living his faith.

As to fear of Hell - some people start at that point and then learn to love God. Others love God first, and what "fear" of God there is comes as they consider the I AM that I AM. There's nothing wrong with a prod of fear as every parent knows although if the fear aspect overrides the mercy aspect, there is a problem.

And you know, it took me a while to realize we were thinking different things when you talk about "rewards" in Heaven, since I have never understood that as anything more than a metaphor. I've never thought about losing or gaining some sort of special, tangible reward in Heaven and I'm still not sure that isn't just a metaphor like the vineyard.

It isn't fear that drives me at all, except in the way that I am sometimes overwhelmed as in "Oh Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder, consider all the worlds thy hands have made...."

As a child, I think I was born with a sense of the divine that never really left me in the sense that I did not have to learn it. I first loved God. Then later, I learned fear because the church that I grew up in, while not given to fire and brimstone sermons, told me that no one could ever know they were saved until they died. I had loved God wholly and unselfconsciously. Now there was fear. For myself, for my family. I couldn't imagine wanting to be in Heaven if anyone I loved was in Hell.

But I never entirely swallowed that no one can ever know line either, because I had the gift of loving God from the time I was born. Without that gift though, I can easily see how people might have been overwhelmed by despair. Me, more or less around the age of six, decided "bullshit." Around fourteen or fifteen I stopped going to church. I am a pretty self-contained person. It wasn't a big "I am turning my back on the church" thing. It just didn't strike me as relevant. God was always in my life.

I think now, that not going to church, probably saved my life. I think it would have worn me down eventually. They would surely have excommunicated me somewhere down the line because I don't think I could have kept my mouth shut forever and I would almost surely have offended the powers-that-be, and the powers-that-be in the church where I grew up are close relatives. *G* Excommunication would have been a big deal in terms of relating to my neighbours and if I had built my house on that sand, I would have no ground under me. Now I am just a fairly run-of-the-mill heathen, I think, in people's eyes. This area isn't so completely suffocatingly Mennonite anymore either, and I can't think of a Mennonite family in which a divorce hasn't happened. But back then...

Don't know if I'm clarifying anything or further confusing the issue? When is your surgery? I'll be praying for you. Next week, probably Wednesday, I'll be leaving on a trip.

Layla

sin and damnation

2008-07-03T08:18:00.001-07:00

Faith vs. works is indeed a place where all good Christians probably agree in their deepest hearts about what *they* should do, but have difficulty explaining to other people. I serve Christ because I love Him and wish to please Him - thus my statement "I love you Lord" is expressed in my walk. Likewise, you'll find many a human saying, "I love you babe" and then walking off... people say what they don't mean all the time. Saying, "Yeah I'm a Christian" and placing no faith on Christ is hardly being a Christian. So... well enough, better minds than mine have tried to resolve this issue. :)

But what brought me to discuss it initially was not the urge to attack the impossible quandry, but what you had said (and mentioned again in your last post) about being condemned (damned?) for the sin of divorce. A divorce may (or may not) be a sin - but even when we slip into sin, I don't believe we slide away from grace. If I'm driving my car and get angry and blaspheme then run into a telephone pole and die, am I going to Hell? Um, don't think so. *All* my sins are forgiven. Past, present, and future. Do I then sin cheerfully? NO!!! Because it separates me from the presence of God and it grieves the Holy Spirit.

Our actions may be exactly the same... but what motivates me to avoid sin is that I don't like upsetting God, not a fear of damnation. I want to do His will, I want to be an ambassador for Him, I want to share His love. I can't do any of that with sin in my life. But I trip.

So with divorce - even if I left my husband for no good reason at all, I don't believe that would damn me. It would likely result in a rather unpleasant conversation with Jesus at some point... "I wanted you to do XYZ and you walked away from it to do your own thing" but damnation? No.

Did you truly mean to say that you felt that some sins after salvation could result in damnation?

Faith as a noun

2008-07-02T20:39:00.000-07:00

Well, first of all, with regards to divorce, I myself do not believe that because, as you say, "you broke the lamp," therefore you ought to live in darkness. That was the position of the Mennonite church I grew up in but not all Mennonite churches hold that position either. There isn't a central authority in the way that there is for the Catholic church, so you have disagreements about everything within different Mennonite churches except for two things: they all agree on pacifism, and they all agree that Jesus is Lord.

I wish I could remember the name of the theologian who, in his later years, when asked what he had learned from all his years of studying the Bible, responded, "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so."

That is all I know.

And I understand the difficulty people have with self-described Christian fundamentalists because you would probably describe yourself as a fundamentalist in that you are living the Bible as best as you understand it, and I too - yet I don't know that we would agree on anything beyond "Jesus loves me, this I know."

The Bible isn't nearly as straightforward as many people like to think it is. For every verse on how we are saved by grace and not by works, there is another verse that tells us faith without works is dead.

To be "dead" in the Bible meant to be spiritually dead, as when one of the disciples wanted to bury his father and Jesus responded, "Let the dead bury the dead."

Or in James, when he writes that "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world."

It isn't that Mennonites don't believe in grace. They do - they do not believe that works will get them into Heaven. Grace gets them into Heaven. But they also have to uphold their part of the contract by following that grace with action. You have said something along those lines when you say that those who claimed to be Christians but who somehow fall away were never "really" Christians and therefore that doesn't contradict the once saved, always saved thing.

To me, that's sort of playing with semantics, like my friend who felt that if her first marriage hadn't worked out it was because God had not truly joined them.

To me, ultimately, you are still recognizing that a formula said, and not lived through, has no meaning.

What I think is that you can't take anything out of the Bible out of context as different passages illuminate and expand on each other. Such as Paul saying that our works will not save us, to emphasize out utter dependency on Christ and James expanding on that by saying that pure religion reaches out to others and is lived by example, not through empty words. As James writes a few verses later:

What does it profit, my brethern, though a man say he hath faith and have not works? can faith save him?

He goes on to say that faith without works is dead and further that "yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works and I will shew thee my faith by my works."

Belief - faith - is meaningless as James says, "Thou believest there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe and tremble."

He goes on to make the point that Abraham followed through on his faith, and it was the following through part which made his faith real. He didn't just say he had faith. It didn't become faith until he had followed through.

Which is the problem with just saying some formulaic A,B,C thing. That's like Abraham saying to God, when God wanted him to sacrifice Isaac, "Sure thing, dude." And then rolling over and going back to sleep because he thought God couldn't mean what he said, to do something so horrible.

Abraham moved - he acted - he did a work - when he took his son Isaac to the mountain prepared to do the work of sacrificing him. That was when it became faith. That is why in one part of the NT we read that Abraham was justified by faith and in another (like James) we read Abraham was justified by works.

They are not contradicting each other; the term "faith"as used by Paul is being misunderstood as a passive word, not an action word. James defines faith.

I came across an interesting website, again regarding divorce. I don't agree with everything. My view on divorce is much broader than what he describes, broader than yours too. I don't believe that the only out for a marriage is physical infidelity. Infidelity comes in many forms as Jesus said when he said that whoever looked at a woman with lust in his heart was an adulterer. For myself, I am totally persuaded in my own mind, as everyone must be, that it is the spirit of the thing that is addressed, and not a specific act.

I believe that yes, we should forgive until it hurts, and God knows, I have done it my entire marriage. I think that is the best thing. But I also believe that God totally would get it if I left my marriage and that I would not be condemned. I don't think that God would think less of me somehow or that I would lose some reward in Heaven. I think that the Jesus whose feet the woman washed with her tears totally gets me. "Much shall be forgiven her for she loved much." Knowing that, I think, may ultimately be the reason I stay.

I haven't finished reading the entire web page but here's the link. I think you would find it interesting, even if you don't agree with it.

Layla

Marriage and grace and life in general

2008-06-30T13:05:00.001-07:00

Please let me start out by saying that I am sure that I don't hold the absolute truth on any of this - the Lord will no doubt correct us on everything when we get to Heaven, but grace and divorce both have to be at the top of His list of human errors. We try to make little rules and tiny boxes for things that span the heavens!

"By grace are ye saved... not of works", "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved". I truly believe that *salvation* is a matter of belief and of faith. Having given one's heart to God, it's given. I rest my hope of Heaven on the blood that was spilt for me. I don't rest it on anything I've ever done - eesh, I'd never sleep at night if I thought that salvation had anything to do with ME. My works, the works that I see in other Christians, they are *signs* of conversion... but only God knows the heart of man.

I am sure that there will be folks that I think hopeless sinners in Heaven, and other folks that I thought were God-fearing who end up in Hell. It's all about that moment when you put your hope of heaven in Christ - your faith in Him. The more you contemplate His sacrifice, the more you fall in love with Him, the more you earnestly desire to obey His commandments.

But obedience to His commandments is not, and is not meant to be, something that humans can do outside the power of the Holy Spirit. I know that every day I fail at "be not anxious for tomorrow..." does that lose me my salvation? Again with the eeesh... I should hope not! (And talk about a mindset that would make me permanently concerned with tomorrow - thinking that I had to follow a zillion rules on my own strength would do that for certain!)

I love my Lord, and I know it displeases Him when I fail... and so each day I give over more of myself to Him. It's not like I don't fail at it - giving over self, surrendering to Him, letting the Spirit work through me... those are not things that come quickly to anyone. I strive, for He has told me to strive, but my strength is not where I put my faith. In fact, the moments when I have knelt, broken, at my Lord's feet in prayer are the moments when I feel that my faith was the truest. The moments when I *knew* that I was only saved by His grace, that I was utterly unworthy to whisper His holy Name.

So. That brings us to marriage, and in it I see grace as well.

First let's look at the purposes of marriage. Procreation, social support, intimacy, friendship, stability, and a vision of the relation of Christ and the church (among others). Ideally, a man and woman marry and support one another through life - the family was the original social support system. You *need* someone to be with you when you're sick, when you're grieving, who knows your weaknesses and still loves you, is still committed to you. Even when marriage was much less about love and much more about the business end - your spouse was the one who was *expected* to have your back, no matter what.

God doesn't want us to throw all of that down the drain for just anything - and as we can see from today's world, people will cheerfully do just that given the opportunity to do so. More in former times, but still today - women get the short end of the stick financially after a divorce. Divorce is *fundamentally* unfair. You are breaching a life-long contract that is meant to be the center of your mundane existence, the thing you take for granted, the thing you depend upon. People who *expect* to be married til death can behave differently than those who expect to be discarded if things "don't work out".

None of that, of course, speaks to the abusive or ugly marriage... and I don't know what to say on that except that for His own reasons, God didn't give an out for that in His Word. Perhaps it's part of how you deal with an abusive master if you're a servant? To serve as you would serve God, and give your service to God in serving the one who hurts you?

For the folks that have been victims of adultery - they are given an out because in the act of adultery you form another primary bond, and you break the first one. "...members of an harlot" says Paul in relation to fornication - so one can assume that it *is* the act of intercourse that makes that bond. When you take an adulterer back, you forgive the sin and then you re-form the intimate bond between you. But you are free not to do so...

Remarriage? Since I think it's the act of intimacy that forms the metaphysical side of the marriage, how could I think that any marriages were "adulterous" or not?? I don't think that's part of grace *at all*. I mean... it's over, you know? If the other person is already remarried or won't take you back when you repent of the divorce - it's over. Ideally, again, you're neither one remarried and can marry each other again, but how often does that happen? Further, saying that the second marriage is adulterous, should be repented of and essentially dissolved is missing the point of marriage in the first place. Once you are *married*... you're married. You should just stay where you are. The one person a OT divorcee was forbidden to marry was her first husband...

I guess the metaphor is that if I throw a baseball and break a lamp, I should first try to fix it, and if it's not fixable, then I should get a new one. The theory that you cited seems to say that if you break the lamp and can't fix it, you should live in the dark.

Some may, indeed, be so called... but it's a hard walk, and such things scare many a convert away. I would take such a sensitive issue on my knees to the Lord in prayer, not for one day but for many, and with fasting as well. After all, that's Who our primary *eternal* relationship is with... God. Should we not consult Him in all things?

One final thought... in Heaven we aren't married, nor will we be given in marriage. Sentimentalist that I am, I pondered, and came up with this: God wants that primary relationship to be with HIM, to free us finally of everything so that we can be individuals, chained not by infirmity of body nor circumstance, free to worship Him for all eternity and rejoice in His love.

I wandered, hope this made my end a bit clearer. :)

- Hearth

Mennonites and Divorce

2008-06-28T13:20:00.000-07:00

Who knew? Someone actually put out an official statement on it. I started to think that maybe I had misinterpreted the Mennonite position on divorce but apparently not. Here's the link: http://www.anabaptists.org/tracts/divorce2.html

Turns out that I am in an "adulteress marriage" since my husband was married before. Turns out that he can divorce me, return to his first wife, and all is okay. I am stuck, according to this statement, in spite of this being my first marriage to live a life of celibacy, with no remarriage possible.

I do not believe for one instance that this is God's plan or way of thinking about people in bad marriages. The above linked statement is legalism at it's worst, straining at gnats and swallowing camels, making clean the outside of the cup while the inside is dirty and the church putting burdens on people that they themselves could not bear. I might not be sure what the Bible says exactly about divorce but this pitiless position is not it.

Layla

Divorce and Grace

2008-06-27T12:08:00.000-07:00

No, Mennonites do not believe in salvation through grace in the way that you believe in salvation through grace. Mennonites are not actually Protestants: they fall into a no-man's-land between Catholicism and Protestantism.

Mennonites believe that we are all sinners and "come short of the glory of God" and that no matter how hard we try to be good, we could never be good enough for Heaven without the sacrifice that Jesus made, and the grace that allows us to be saved. Nonetheless, they also believe that "out of the heart, the mouth speaks" and that your actions follow your heart. Therefore your faith should be evident in works, otherwise something is clearly not right there. Salvation is a gift but not a gift to be taken for granted or abused. It is also a gift that can be lost. I also don't believe when you're in, you're in.

Salvation can be lost. I don't believe that a divorce necessarily makes it so but I do believe that there are people who turn their backs utterly on God and "deliberately" lose their salvation.

But more generally, Mennonites believe that to sin knowingly, is not covered under that grace. Sinning through ignorance would be covered. You would have to sincerely repent in order for that grace to cover you. Paul addresses this actually. Somewhere he says that there is no "covering" for knowingly sinning, as that means that Christ would be twice crucified.

Since divorce is a sin and remarriage is a sin, and it may be a sin that a person doesn't truly repent in his or her heart, Communion is denied, just as it would be for instance, in the Catholic church which takes a similar view of divorce and remarriage. Although they do provide a way out, as in if only one party was Catholic then the other party isn't, Catholics conveniently "don't count" that marriage as valid in the eyes of God, even if the other party is a Christian only not a Catholic Christian.

Mennonites don't count anyone out. So you're pretty well stuck. The idea that a marriage cannot be dissolved at all and a divorced person can't remarry without sinning is from Jesus' words in Mark: Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery.

And in Romans, Paul says: ...by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage. So then, if she marries another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is released from that law and is not an adulteress, even though she marries another man.

Both Jesus and Paul seem to be saying that to remarry while your spouse is alive is adultery, regardless of the circumstances of the separation.

Layla

Something you'd mentioned

2008-06-27T07:38:00.000-07:00

Something you mentioned in the blog before last struck me, "divorced people are still not allowed to participate in Communion, and given the fact that in the eyes of many, unless you actually repent a divorce, you are going to go to Hell", don't Mennonites believe in salvation by grace?

Getting a divorce against God's will is bad, but so is doing anything against His will. You walk away, you reap the consequences of not having as good a relationship with the Lord. Those can be temporal, like the punishments He uses to get you back in line, or they can be eternal, losing rewards in Heaven. But once you're saved... you're saved. A divorce doesn't "un-save" you. Once you're written in the Lamb's book of life, you're in.

So that's just weird to me.

You do want to repent sin, of course... but... hmmm.

Can you expand?

God and Row Boats

2008-06-26T19:36:00.000-07:00

Well, I have no specific intentions of separation or divorce at this point. I just have never been able to figure out where my marriage fits in. There's an old saying about where one rat is seen, there are actually twelve. So it is with anything I might say about my marriage: for everything I say, there are twelve unsaid things.

What I do know, and which my mother has also said, is that like the evil spirit seemed to "depart" from Saul when David played the flute, however irrational my husband may be, my presence also does that to a certain extent. It is simply very, very hard to get nothing back. He is not my rock, nor my "soft place to fall."

As to what God's plans are for me, beyond doing unto others as I would have them do unto me and forgiving until it hurts, I do not know. I believe that is God's plan for every Christian, and for my every interaction with human beings, so there's no reason to believe that my husband is somehow excluded from that.

I tell myself that the God who was able to release the Israelites from Pharaoh, is able to release me from my marriage. At his time, not mine. Then at other times I think I am bullshitting myself because I am too much of a coward and am using God to avoid making a decision.

The pacifism I believe in, is a pacifism that reflects in every aspect of life, from the personal to the international. And the sorts of violence I am against, is every sort of violence - not just physical but the emotional harm people can and do do to each other. It's not the Mennonite church per se, that upsets me in terms of how it sees divorce or marriage. I went against, in a way, my own beliefs when I left, which is that God sees and knows everything today as he did yesterday and was in fact able to deliver me, but chose not to. But after years of my head feeling like it has been batted around like a mouse by a cat, I can't be sure that makes any sense to anyone.

I don't want to be like the guy who is caught on a rooftop in a flood and prays to God for someone to help him and a rowboat comes along. The guy sends the rowboat away and prays some more for God to deliver him. Three times he prays and three times a rowboat comes along and the guy sends it away. Then the fourth time he prays, a voice from Heaven says, "I sent you a rowboat three times to save you and each time you sent it away."

I don't know if I've been sending rowboats away. I also had a lot of Mennonites who are seriously religously against divorce, tell me to leave as fast as my feet could carry me. They were more than those who thought I should stay.

If God wants me to leave, He'll have to be real clear about it. Writing on the wall would do it or a sheepskin filled with dew and a dry ground and a dry sheepskin with a dew-wet ground. A light on the road to Damascus. All of the above.

Layla

Each thing is different

2008-06-26T13:40:00.000-07:00

Biblically, I think you're entitled to a separation, not a divorce, since your husband hasn't been physically unfaithful. As far as God is concerned, you *are* married until one of you goes off and "marries" someone else. From what you posted, that wouldn't take long for your husband - and I've never gotten the slightest feeling that what you want is some other person, just to be allowed to be yourself.

Practically - well, what's to stop your husband from doing what he did before, which we discussed in our private correspondence? You leave and then what? He does what he did the last time and you do what you did the last time. The purpose for you leaving is to stop the pain and humiliation... but he was easily able to continue that the first time when you left. How would this time differ?

Spiritually - what is your purpose in God's kingdom? You know that Christian women are called to witness to their non-Christian husbands. And we both know that your years of witness haven't done a bit of good, and to our mortal eyes, don't look like they ever will. But what about God's eyes? Have you asked Him? And have you asked Him about His timing? There are factors other than divorce that might free you from this time of misery.

And thank you... now I know why you're so set against the popular protestant view of being saved! MUCH has become clear.

I hope that God adds you to His list of folks to "wind up the leftovers" so that you are prepared for whatever He has next for us...

HUGS and lots of love,

Hearth

another question about divorce

2008-06-25T01:41:00.000-07:00

This pertains to things we have shared via private email but I'll be a little more open here, for the sake of those reading the blog who may be similarly confused.

Given what you know of my marriage, could I, as a Christian, divorce and marry again from your point of view? My feelings won't be hurt no matter what you say, so don't hold back although some details, as I know you know, aren't meant to be public.

Given how I was raised, with the belief that divorce is always wrong and that there is no Christian remarriage possible, no matter what has been done to you, given the fact that to this day, in the church in which I was raised (okay so I only attended until I was 14/15, something like that), divorced people are still not allowed to participate in Communion, and given the fact that in the eyes of many, unless you actually repent a divorce, you are going to go to Hell, it was not easy for me to leave my husband.

I believe I have stated before that I don't go to church, except at Christmas and for funerals and weddings, and have never been baptised in any church and yet, still, it was so very hard to leave. And Catholics talk about "Catholic guilt." Humph. Mennonites have more than their fair share of Mennonite guilt.

I am seventy-five percent sure that my husband never cheated on me physically, although I think that it was only that the opportunity did not present itself. My husband had never been faithful to any woman and has an ex-wife and a series of ex live-in girlfriends behind him. So on the literal, biblical sense of adultery, I have no grounds for divorce.

He never hit me, so I don't have any grounds there either. The only grounds for divorce I have is the violence he did to my soul and the fact that I am an adulteress. I am sure I am not the perfect wife either. To be told what a favor it is that your husband married you right from the start though, does a number on one's head. For years I didn't think I was abused - he didn't hit me. Abuse happens to low class, trashy types. I am far too independent, have too much pride, am too smart - it couldn't happen to me, like those women who are too stupid to get out of a bad relationship. That's what I kept telling myself. So, I tried harder. I lived his life, not mine. The harder I tried, the further short I fell in his eyes. The more of his life I lived, the more he wanted. I confided in no one because it was all clearly my fault, even if I didn't understand what it was that I was doing so wrong, and I feared that if I talked about it to anyone, then they would simply corroborate what my husband was already telling me: how lucky I was to have him. And also because I am an intensely private person. I joke around sorrow. I don't spill my heart.

Submitting myself, as in being a doormat, did not work. I was a doormat. I prayed to be a better wife so that my husband would love me. I didn't pray that he would change. Every single thing that went wrong, I blamed myself for, convinced myself that it was my fault. I prayed for me.

There are some people who see love and the natural expression of it - that one wants to make the other happy - as a weakness to be exploited, not as something to be reciprocated. To do something that I knew would make my husband happy because I loved him - that, as far as he was concerned, was only his due. It never occurred to him at all that when people love each other, that love and caring goes both ways, like day follows night. This, I know now but not then, was an issue in all his previous relationships. They all ended because of his infidelity - which I don't think was physical in my case, but emotionally and mentally my husband was never faithful. If there was a way he could take my "good works" and spin them to make them look bad, he did.

So as you know, I eventually left and we have been reconciled for many years by now but nothing has changed. I do not like the way that I left - I should have left in a classier way than I did but I just flipped, like a circuit breaker that's been overloaded. From one day to the next, I could not take it any more.

While I was gone, he even became a "born-again Christian" in the presence of one my religious relatives. That made me look bad, you see (if he's a born-again Christian, by definition, I would be the polar opposite, a godless heathen) and has caused a rift in the family. This relative knows better now, but he didn't know then that he was being used as a weapon against me. The irony is that this relative, being a very old-fashioned Mennonite, never believed our marriage was valid to begin with, since my husband had a previous marriage behind him. Yet, in spite of that, he told my husband (who was delighted to share the news with me and my family) that I was going to Hell, for having left him in violation of the Christian idea of no divorce.

So I am damned if I do and damned if I don't. Those certain Mennonite who have always looked askance at my marriage to a divorced man, and considered it not to be a marriage in the eyes of God, would damn me for having left a marriage, when following their logic, it never was a marriage to begin with. Odd, isn't it?

Layla

Love and War and the Kitchen Sink

2008-06-19T06:22:00.000-07:00

Why do I find it more than a coincidence that the verse of the day is the call for husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church? In any case, very appropriate.

As to western secular laws and Christian marriage, my only point is that western law is based on Judeo-Christian faith. All secular laws have their origins in faith which is why it's important to understand them, without necessarily agreeing with the direction they take as they increasingly deviate away from their religious origins. Sometimes, the secular side of society takes the brunt of what the faith-based society finds itself either too ignorant, or afraid to do. As an example, I would refer to the laws prohibiting cohabitation (meaning marriage) between races that existed in many states, due again to religion's influence on society and the way those Christians interpreted the verse that Christians ought not to become unequally yoked.

It isn't that the Bible isn't true - it is that people misinterpret the Bible all the time. It isn't deliberate or malicious. I have no doubt at all that many Christians who are racists, believe/d firmly that their ideas were Biblically sound based on the verse not to be unequally yoked, and because Paul advised slaves to be obedient to their masters, and because Ham was cursed by Noah to be a servant of servants.

Christians who believe/d those things were absolutely in error in the first instance, that of being unequally yoked and applying that to race, and completely in error in reading a validation of slavery into Paul's comments to slaves.

Which is the whole problem with many Bible literalists - they are too literally minded. Paul speaks to those who are in a terrible secular circumstance and offers them the comfort of Jesus. He does not validate slavery when he tells slaves to serve their masters with a smile on their face. He says not to worry about them, that the day of judgement is coming, and that the Lord knows their suffering.

Why would the same not apply to bad marriages? He tells us what is desirable, not what is possible.

On the subject of secular laws, just generally I find that very interesting in and of itself, and a kind of indirect "proof" that there is a God, since there is a Law inherent in all of us - what Immanuel Kant would call "the moral law within" that gives rise to religion which in turn gives rise to how we govern ourselves generally. We do not live in a moral vacuum, not believer nor unbeliever. Even the sociopath is aware of that inner Law even if it makes no difference to him or her.

Laws that are purely separate and have no origin in religion tend to be those that have sprung out of new knowledge that wasn't there before. Like for instance, at what point can a human being be pronounced dead. It used to be obvious. No breath, no heartbeat - boom, you're dead. Now we connect brain activity to death. No brain activity, if your breath can only be artificially maintained, then you're dead. Brain activity and no ability to breathe on your own doesn't necessarily mean death.

All of which requires religion to redefine its own definitions and where it believes the line is to be drawn in many things. Currently in Canada there is a case making headlines in Winnipeg in which an elderly Orthodox Jew who is in a semi-conscious state and is the subject of a court case and much controversy regarding just when you let someone go. So secular laws matter a very great deal as they are faith-based to begin with.

Just as a point of interest, the court forced the hospital to treat the patient, in accordance with the family's interpretation of their faith. That is interesting because the courts are clearly taking the position that freedom of faith takes precedence over everything else. It's also (not in a nasty way) been a little amusing to me based on the urban legend that people can get arrested for reading Romans 2 here.

However, I am puzzled by one thing that seems to be a contradiction in what you say when you say that "As for the laws governing Christians... well, aren't they supposed to govern committed Christians? I mean... if you loved your neighbor as yourself, wouldn't it be possible to *show* love (action verb) to your spouse, even if you no longer particularly liked them? "

Yes, Christian laws are supposed to govern Christians. Why then do Christians want to make Christian ideas into secular laws in the States? And if you love your neighbour as yourself, as a Christian, how can you go to war with the explanation that the secular responsibility to the state supersedes the Christian's responsibility to love everyone?

Okay, we've been over that enough times for it to be more of a rhetorical question. My mind just doesn't work in a straight line without connecting various thoughts. The head bone is connected to the neck bone, etc.

Layla

Western secular laws

2008-06-18T14:18:00.001-07:00

aren't quite the point of this blog... and I'll not argue them. I have a sneaking suspicion that though they did damage, the current set are worse. But our Lord will set us straight on that... only He can govern wisely, more's the pity.

As for the laws governing Christians... well, aren't they supposed to govern commited Christians? I mean... if you loved your neighbor as yourself, wouldn't it be possible to *show* love (action verb) to your spouse, even if you no longer particularly liked them? As for the radical exceptions you noted - I firmly believe that separation and a call for justice is the loving and correct thing to do.

It's hard to be a human, and indeed one of the hardest relationships that humans can have is within marriage. It's a metaphor of Christ and the church - it should be a way to show what will be, but too often is a way to imitate His suffering instead. I do think that He notes all sacrifices given in His name - especially those that go unnoted by anyone else.

As for sex, no I meant sex, not procreation. For sexless marriages - well, we're enjoined against that too... shall I cite? And for the time after sex leaves... hopefully a life spent together is all the joining needed.

Marriage is hard, no way 'round it. And if we fail or fall... we do.

Christians and Divorce part 2

2008-06-18T11:19:00.000-07:00

My friend who felt that because her marriage hadn't worked out, it therefore wasn't a real marriage in the eyes of God was American and not Mennonite, which is why I was curious as to whether her idea was a common American Christian one or what. I agree, it would have made more sense to say that she was sorry the first hadn't worked out, and that in spite of having gone through a divorce, she didn't actually "believe" in divorce, but nonetheless....

Well, I'm actually relieved that it doesn't make sense to you either. I was very floored since she was so bitterly against divorce, and then to find she'd been divorced...

Okay, well for years, western secular divorce laws were based on what you just said about Christians marrying and divorcing - allowable only with one party clearly in violation. In practical terms though, what that meant was PI's jumping out of the bushes with cameras to catch a cheating spouse, or if both people wanted out badly enough, one party (usually the man since men were expected to be hound dogs anyway) claiming they had committed adultery, even if they hadn't, just to be granted a divorce.

My problem with all that comes in that as in the above example, the matter of Christians divorcing and remarrying in cases of physical adultery, is that it sticks to the letter of the law, not the spirit of the law.

Paul doesn't address wife-beating, husbands who sexually abuse their children, or spouses who to all intents and purposes spiritually stray in that they are not there in the marriage as a partner and a helpmate, or perhaps even where the marriage has deteriorated to the point where the sex in the marriage is non-existent. If it is the act of sex, as Paul says, in the verse you quote, that you are joining yourself to unholy things, and sex is the act that bonds a marriage, then what about sexless marriages? If it is about the act of procreation, then where do infertile couples fit in?

To me then the whole aspect of Christians and marriage and divorce, and sticking to the letter of the law, becomes what Jesus said about keeping clean the outside of the cup, and not the inside. Which is why western secular divorce laws became easier to begin with - because they didn't and couldn't address all the different ways spouses can stray or make a marriage unendurable. It isn't just about the physical act of straying.

I know you know all that, I'm just setting it out for any readers.

When I separated from my husband, I heard a humorous thing said by one of my friends that an acquaintance had a "Mennonite divorce." I asked her what that was and she said that was where you couldn't stand each other but, by God, you stayed married and rained down judgement on everyone else for "not trying."

Which reminds me of another joke, which I've also heard as a Baptist joke: "Why don't Mennonites make love standing up? Because it might lead to dancing."

There's a lot of truth in some of these jokes - how people can become so absorbed by the letter of the law, that the spirit behind the law completely escapes them.

Well, I have a lot of work to do myself. Thanks for your response. I'm not taking issue with it. I just finally admitted to myself years ago that the Bible makes no sense for me at all on the issue of divorce and I think Jesus means that people ought not to divorce for frivolous reasons, and that an intact union was the original plan before we screwed it all up.

Layla

A lengthy answer

2008-06-18T08:25:00.000-07:00

First a summary of my church's position on divorce (this would be what I was taught as an Amercian Baptist and at Calvary Chapel). Marriage is sacred, and the only grounds for divorce is adultery. Divorced people are free to remarry. If the divorce was on the grounds of adultery, the aggrieved spouse is free immediately upon divorce. If they got divorced for other reasons, ideally the spouses should hold off on remarriage in the hopes of reconciliation. (But once one spouse remarries the other is free to do so). This is the most ideal of circumstances, they don't hold you to the reconciliation ideal once you're legally divorced... what is, is. (This would be for two Christian people).

So since that was a messy thing to write... if A&B aren't getting along that's not grounds for divorce. If A takes a mistress, then B has grounds for divorce (although the church will encourage forgiveness even so). Assuming A&B divorced because A was unfaithful, B is free to remarry. If they got divorced for "irreconcilable differences" neither are free to remarry. (With the obvious exception that starting a physical relationship with a third party would still qualify as adultery and would free the innocent spouse).

Paul's teachings are generally understood as an expansion on what Jesus said, not a contradiction. So - Jesus sets it down as "you can divorce for adultery" and Paul expands it to "but if you're both Christians obviously you're not in adultery so there's no reason to divorce, so don't".

For Christian/non-Christian marriages, officially they should never exist except that one spouse converted and the other didn't. As you know, we are specifically enjoined not to be unequally yoked with unbelievers. So... if A is married to B and B doesn't yet believe, A is to witness to B through good character (see 1Peter chp3). But if B doesn't want to be with A, B is to be allowed to depart. Reconciliation/remarriage is certainly desirable here - but if B is a non-Christian, the most likely thing is that B will immediately find a new relationship to enter into, which frees A to do likewise.

Young widows are told to remarry, older widows are told to stay single - at least as a recommendation. Mostly I think this applies to divorce as well... so if you are of childbearing age you're encouraged to get on with life, and if you're older, you're encouraged to throw that extra energy into the church. (This is because of the natural urges that women of childbearing age have, and in theory older women have the support of adult children, etc).

Okay so the metaphysical part... we are spoken of as *joined* to whomever we marry. Only... "marry" here is a euphemism for "having sexual relations with". Which makes sex a bonding, and is why adultery is grounds for divorce, whereas say non-support or abuse is only grounds for separation. 1 Corinthians 6:16 What? Know ye not that he who is joined to an harlot is one body? For two, saith he, shall be one flesh. So the act of sexual union creates another sort of union as well. (Which is why fornication is such a big deal, much bigger a deal than other sorts of sins of the flesh).

And yes, your friend sounds like a total cop-out to me. :p But maybe she just can't say, "Well I sinned in the past by getting that divorce, but I'm remarried now and am a faithful and true wife to the husband I have"? Starting that new relationship creates a new union, after all. And who among us is without sin?

So my own position... is pretty much the same as above, with a curiosity and respect to the mystical union involved in the creation of a sexual union. I know that being united horizontally is not the same as being married... but is that the case because those in this day who sleep together are refusing marriage or living a lie rather than because they don't have that union? There is a difference... but what makes it different?

Hm. Off topic that was.. For me, once you're married you should do everything you can to remain married. If you are able to forgive fornication (and if the fornicating spouse repents, which they might not!) then you should so that the original union can be remade. If not, then not. Being grumpy with your spouse isn't grounds for divorce - it is, however, good grounds to spend a lot more time in prayer and possibly in counselling.

And I'm being pestered by a seven year old who is delivering me imaginary pizzas... pepperoni and watermelon and sausage and cheese he says. So if this was unclear... pester me in turn. :)

Not poofing on you

2008-06-15T08:17:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note, I have a lot to say on this one, both "official church" "unofficial church" and "metaphysical"... but it will take me a while. Thanks for the good post! :) And wow - our churches differ heavily.

Christians and Divorce

2008-06-13T23:23:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I do have a question about something I've been thinking of for a while. I was always taught that divorce was wrong - no ifs, buts or maybes. No matter what your spouse did. For a Christian to leave a marriage was always a sin. However, in keeping with 1 Corinthians 7, your spouse could leave you but even though it might not have been your desire to be separated, you could never officially divorce him or her since it was the divorce that was the sin, not necessarily the separation. But on top of that, you could never marry again until your spouse died or you were an adulterer even if your spouse remarried.

That was the interpretation of what Paul had to say about divorce. Unlike some other points, such as Paul's reference to celibacy in the same chapter, in which he says, "I speak this by permission, and not of commandment," Paul calls his ideas about divorce a commandment from the Lord.

And unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord, Let not the wife depart from her husband: 11But and if she depart, let her remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband: and let not the husband put away his wife. 12But to the rest speak I, not the Lord: If any brother hath a wife that believeth not, and she be pleased to dwell with him, let him not put her away. 13And the woman which hath an husband that believeth not, and if he be pleased to dwell with her, let her not leave him. 14For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband: else were your children unclean; but now are they holy.

What is also interesting is that his reference to divorce mentions unbelieving spouses - presumably if both spouses are Christians, divorce would be even more unthinkable, wouldn't it?

What Paul has to say about marriage is so difficult to accept - that no matter what - it is a commandment from the Lord to remain married. There's no way out in that statement.

Jesus, though, seems to take another tack altogether when he says to the Pharisees, in Matthew 19, 3The Pharisees also came unto him, tempting him, and saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?

4And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, 5And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? 6Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.

7They say unto him, Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away? 8He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so. 9And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.

10His disciples say unto him, If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry.
11But he said unto them, All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given.

And in Matthew 5: 27Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: 28But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

Jesus, in Matthew 19, seems to leave an out for adultery although Mennonites never interpreted it that way. The way they interpreted it, was that you could leave your spouse if he or she had committed adultery but you were still bound by what Paul said not to commit adultery yourself and therefore while you could leave, you could not remarry.

So even if you were sinned against, you were still stuck. But Jesus still in Matthew 19, which is supported by Matthew 5 where he says there is no difference between lusting after someone and the actual act, seems to be saying that it is the hardness of our hearts - our imperfect selves - that stand in the way, as always, between us and reconciliation, between our flesh and our spirit, our 'old man' and 'new man.'

Jesus seems, in a philosophical approach, to be making the point that we are all sinners, and all come short of the glory of God and his words there seem more to be about how impossible it is to live that way - to live without ever having looked at a member of the opposite sex with lust in your heart, and therefore all are adulterers, not just those who have committed adultery in terms of the actual act, just as he compares someone who calls his brother a fool to a murderer. Jesus is emphasizing the futility of salvation without him.

Which again is supported by his words to the woman caught in adultery: "Let him that is without sin cast the first stone."

Jesus seems to know that life isn't as simple as maybe it was for Paul. That no matter how hard some people try, you can't get blood out of a stone, or a relationship with someone who doesn't want to be in one. And particularly if you are young, what sort of burden is it to put on a young person whose spouse has left them, to be condemned to walk through life alone, without a partner, a helpmate by their side?

Jesus and Paul to me say very different things about divorce. Paul is always more of a legalist than say, Peter.

Which brings me to another thought: I know a woman who is very adamant that divorce is always a sin. No matter what. So imagine my surprise when I discovered she was married to her second husband, having divorced the first. Her rational? It was that her first marriage didn't count because "what God hath joined let no man put asunder" and since the first marriage hadn't worked out, God clearly had not joined them.

Does that seem as big a cop-out to you as it does to me?

So what do you think? All in all, I think that the only clear thing in the Bible is that it isn't the ideal solution, and it isn't what God intended for us. Of course, most people never marry intending to divorce either, so most of us, believers or not, and God are in agreement there.

As I said already, I was raised to believe divorce, no matter what, was wrong. I have always wondered just how Christians who believe that way feel about second marriages in which it is one spouse's first marriage and her or his partner's second marriage. By the definition of marriage and divorce and adultery in which I was raised, the divorced spouse is committing adultery as long as he continues in the second marriage. Where does that leave the spouse to whom it is a first marriage? Do two wrongs (divorce) make a right here then?

I think that sometimes circumstances are such that it is impossible to stay together and remain sane, whether both people are believers or not. And I think that particularly if someone is young, then to remarry is one of those human frailty, falling-short-of-the-glory-of-God things that is covered by Jesus' perfect life and sacrifice. Otherwise, as Paul also says, ever the legalist, to the young widows, that he would rather that they marry for it is better to marry than to burn.

I don't believe the official position of the church in which I grew up has changed any although in practical terms it changed when pastors and other church leaders had children who found themselves in marriages that didn't work out. Suddenly they were no longer so sure about what they had been so sure about when it came to other people's children with the pain of their own children staring them in the face.

Unless you are asexual, it is so part of how God made us, to want a mate, that I think for most people it would be impossible to live without being intimate with someone for forty, fifty, sixty years.

Layla

Mennonites and Missionary efforts

2008-06-11T12:06:00.000-07:00

There is no one position on evangelical work among others among Mennonites. There's pretty much a whole gamut of beliefs, like there is generally in Christendom.

The church I grew up in taught that "a light on a mountain" could not be hidden and "by their works ye shall know them." Proselytising was not common. It was believed that if you lived the way a Christian ought to live, people would see that, and come to you for clarification, not that you would go to them.

What proselytising there was was on the level of looking after people's immediate needs in the name of Christ. There is no point in witnessing to a starving person. First you have to feed him bread. A good example of this is the work that the Mennonite Central Committee does, sometimes together with other Christian relief organizations.

However you have to keep in mind that traditionally, in the areas of the Soviet Union where Mennonites had settled for centuries, they were farmers and their language set them apart from those around them. There were groups like the Mennonite Brethren that formed precisely because of their emphasis on evanglisation and full-body baptism.

After the Revolution turned Mennonites of all denominations into refugees, and the resultant flow of immigrants to the US and Canada, under democracy, they were obviously unable to segregate themselves the way they had in Russia and other ideas crept in. But evanglisation itself, among most churches, was unheard of, in part because our pastors were generally farmers who had been chosen by lot to be the pastor, and the women, in those days, hardly made it off the farm, having their hands busy with farming and children and everything else.

My grandmothers, in spite of being second generation Canadians, barely spoke English. They didn't associate with non-Mennonites. It wasn't a plan to separate themselves the way the Amish do to this day, but a combination of factors, such as work and the lack of a common language. And as refugees, the first generations, were busy trying to provide for their families. Marrying outside the faith usually resulted in excommunication, and almost definitely alienation from family, even if it was another Christian denomination. The church I grew up in basically did not like the idea of its members marrying someone from another Mennonite congregation - that's how far they took the idea of not being unequally yoked.

In Russia, where many Mennonites had servants who weren't Mennonite, those were often introduced to the faith aspect/beliefs of Mennonites because they were there - in the field or in the kitchen.

Mennonites have always believed there is only one way to God and that is through his Son, Jesus Christ. They have never believed in the intervention of saints or priests as necessary to approach nearer to God.

As to my ideas about evangelisation - I am in favor of feeding the hungry, visiting the sick, those in jail, and giving a glass of water to a little child and seeing the face of the Saviour in each person. The subject of my religious beliefs either comes up naturally or doesn't come up at all. Not in a million years will I go around asking people about their faith or lack of it.

I believe that there is only one way to God, and that is through Jesus, but at the same time I also don't believe that those who don't know about God go straight to Hell and never pass go. I believe they are judged on their works, and their lack of belief, is due to lack of knowledge, not to deliberately turning their backs on God.

Layla

Well it's believable to Americans

2008-06-11T07:46:00.000-07:00

That urban legend is believable to Americans because it *would* happen here. We do have folks that sue over things like that, perceived slights. Watch and see...

But onward... :) We have gotten into the realm of patriotic pride rather than religious discussion.

I was excited by your feeling that the tribe hasn't been unreached - thank you. In similar news, a couple came to church this Sunday, raising funds for their life's work ... they're going into New Guinea for the next 20 years, to translate the Bible into the local dialect and to reach those folks for Christ. I was so happy to see that missionary work into the corners of the world is still being done. Our church runs a lot of missionary endeavours.

What is the Mennonite position on missionary activity? What is yours?

Obviously as an evangelical... let's evangelize everyone! That's ... sorta the point. I spend a lot of time building relationships with non believers or slipped believers and witnessing to them. I'm not really very good at spur of the moment evangelism, I don't have what it takes. But I try to use my other blog to talk about my relationship with God, and speak about it to folks as if it's an everyday thing (which it is).

Do you have a next topic?

Hope your week is going well... this is a busy one for me.

- Hearth

well, yikes! right back at ya!

2008-06-09T22:06:00.001-07:00

Don't feel bad. I think that you have the right idea in many ways, it's just that the example isn't true. There are a lot of urban myths circulating in the Christian world - this sort of ties into my refusal to accept end-of-the-world prophecies from anything other than the Bible. When you Google certain terms - paranoic Christian things - you'll come up with a whole host of things in which it is written slanted to give a certain impression.

My instinct is always that if it sounds too ridiculous to be true, it probably is, and for anything, not just religious stuff, I tend to first sort through what is reasonable and plausible and possible before I jump to a supernatural conclusion.

Where I think you are right is that traditional moral Bible guidelines are constantly being blurred to the point where even Christians do not always know what is the right thing to do. I think there will be a war-war, but there is also a war of ideas and spirits going on and that pressure to conform will only increase as time goes by.

Did you ever think that one of the side-effects of the scrambling of languages at the Tower of Babel separated the nations in a good way? When God says, that, with a common language "nothing shall be impossible unto them", it is true that a common language seems to up the mischief factor that people can get into. And English is pretty much the lingua franca of the day.

I would just rather we not jump at shadows and so miss the real threats. And I honestly think that Christians are their own worst enemies when they expect the state to follow the Bible.

I also think that many Americans confuse socialism (which Canada is - a social democracy) with communism, which Canada is not. I recall one debate during which an American whom I suppose most Americans would regard as left-wing or left-of-centre, basically stated that she believed that the US was the only country in the world with free speech. And yet, for all that, apparently American communists cannot be school teachers in at least some of your states. I don't understand that. Doesn't freedom apply to everyone?

Canada had at least one communist big-city mayor in the 60s and 70s that I know of, and many other communists in other positions. One of our Prime Ministers was apparently on the list of Canadians not allowed into the US due to his travels before he was Prime Minister in communist countries. It hardly seems to be fair to accuse communist countries of keeping their citizens prisoners when communists are restricted in their activities in the US. So much for freedom of ideas.

I also think that many Americans think that freedom includes the right to say what you damned well please, no matter who it hurts. I don't believe that. I don't believe in an automatic right to say anything in any situation at any time. A lot of it is common sense - don't yell "fire" in a theatre - don't incite racial hatred or any other hatred. It's like if five big crazy guys ask for your wallet in a dark alley - would you assert your right to free speech and tell them you think they are a brick short a load, or would you say, "Here's my wallet?" Sometimes discretion is the better part of valour.

You have to pick your battles and I don't waste my energy on people who don't believe in God. Why would I hold them to God's standards? God gave me the freedom of will - why would I not extend it to others?

I have full confidence that when the Lord reigns over the world, he will judge and rule righteously, and sort out all our confusion, sexual and otherwise, and then we will be in no doubt at all as to what way is God's way and what is not.

I don't think, based on what I read, that Boisson is in any danger of being fined. If anything, the paper who published his letter-to-the-editor might be fined as they obviously have to use a certain amount of discretion in what they publish. We are a very politically correct country by and large. Some people don't like that and some do.

Me, all in all, I like it. I like it that we don't have the KKK here. I'm happy that our laws infringe on their "freedom" of speech. I like it that Holocaust deniers are charged under the hate crimes laws. They are spreading lies. Why should lies be covered under "freedom?"

On the other hand, you could have a church pastor preach whatever he wanted to about race, and that is covered under our conscience laws. There is no danger at all to freedom of religion. I'm not saying that that day will not come, I'm only saying it isn't here yet, nor is that train anywhere in sight. Christ is preached every day in Canada without any fear of arrest.

Layla

Yikes!

2008-06-09T17:34:00.001-07:00

I've been caught out, believing (and perpetuating) an urban legend.

My apologies to you, and whatever readers we have.

It doesn't dissuade me from my position, but I'll edit that out of my brain... thank you!

I think I found what you're referring to

2008-06-09T11:27:00.000-07:00

But it's not the way you put it if the case in question is about Stephen Boisson. I am quite confident that no pastors are being arrested in Canada in their pulpits for reading Romans or anything else from the Bible. This case of Stephen Boisson is the closest thing I could come to, and probably what you are referencing. And it's not about the Bible, it is about his comments on gays in a non-religious forum - the newspape, not the pulpit. And he's not been arrested or fined (yet) nor will he be sent to jail.

I read a number of sites that have bits and pieces about this case but nothing that gives me a clear picture of what happened. I don't necessarily believe Mr. Boisson's slant on his website either, although maybe that is the way it happened.

Generally speaking though, I believe freedom of speech comes with responsibility and I don't believe that people ought to be able to say whatever they want to say in whatever forum just because they have an opinion. Opinions, are like you-know-whats - everyone has them. I don't believe that letters written in the style of Mr. Boisson's does anyone any good. It doesn't follow that I think he should be fined or forced into a public apology, but I just don't think he did Christ any good.

Christ didn't go out railing at the fallen women of the world, or the homosexuals. He spoke to the individual about grace and forgiveness. He knew that they knew when they were doing wrong. They didn't need to be told they were wrong. The people who needed most to be told they were wrong were the religious leaders who thought they had figured it out.

And you know, all kinds of things happen in Alberta that never happen anywhere else, with all due apologies to Albertans. It's like our version of Texas. Bigger, better, louder, richer. I recall a teacher there teaching students that the Holocaust was a lie and he too jumped on the freedom of speech band wagon....

But you can't take an example that is extreme and assume that it is the norm, even if your original belief that some pastor had been hauled out of his own church pew was true. There are nuts on the side of the law as well, who every now and then behave irrationally and contrary to the law. The system has never failed to straighten itself out.

My husband remembers when he was a kid in school many years ago and in order to promote dental hygiene, toothbrushes were handed out to students, and the parents said, "It's a communist plot...."

Layla

A quick reply for clarification

2008-06-09T07:45:00.000-07:00

***Just to clarify, I don't necessarily think that homosexual *attraction* is a choice, but that *any* sexual behavior is a choice. I'm heterosexual... but I confine my sexuality to my husband. That's a choice. It doesn't negate the fact that occasionally (not often, but sometimes) I am attracted to other men. But I am, as an adult human, capable of not following through on those attractions.

***I am, as a mother, far more well-aware of the horrors of CPS seizures than I would like to be. Unfortunately for all of us, they've made a lot of semi-governmental agencies powerful enough to take what is essentially military action. Conservatives across America have noted this, yet the vast majority of the people are more interested in the pursuit of happiness than in freedom. It pains me.

***I will look up the Canadian pastor at first opportunity. You might be interested before I get there, to read the first two chapters of Romans for yourself. I believe he was jailed for hatespeech. Perhaps it was fined? At any rate... I will find it for you.

Hope your Monday is good!

The mysterious new tribe

2008-06-09T05:05:00.000-07:00

Now on to the so-called undiscovered Amazon tribe. I don't believe that when Jesus said that the gospel would be preached throughout the world that he meant necessarily to each individual tribe. "All the world" means simply widely known, as Christianity is widely known throughout all the world and not limited to Jerusalem, or Rome for example and the areas Jesus actually walked, or Peter, or the rest of the apostles.

It is like taking all the people within a city block and because you find one who has never heard of God, taking it to mean that Christ will therefore not return until that one person has heard of the gospel. The whole rest of the block knows - therefore the knowledge can safely be caused common knowledge.

So the discovery of a new tribe makes no difference to when Christ comes at all. Christ is known in the countries that border the Amazon, and by tribes that border the so-called undiscovered tribe. But I do not take the Bible to mean that each individual person needs to have heard about Jesus before He will come.

However, in the second place, I don't believe either that this is a "new" tribe that has never had contact with the outside world. They may not currently have contact with the outside world due to bad experiences in the past, but I'd bet my house that they've had contact with others at some point. Even tribes don't live in a vacuum.

I've heard this on many news stations reporting on this so-called new tribe. Here's a link that about covers it: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/05/30/2260586.htm

Layla

Canadian Freedom of Religion

2008-06-08T07:10:00.000-07:00

I'm going to respond to your first post, first, since you obviously caught my attention with " hear pastors in Canada have been arrested for just *reading* Romans 2 from the pulpit - no commentary - just reading. "

I think that lots of urban myths circulate the church world, and unless you can find me a link to this, I don't believe it. I Googled every imaginable combination trying to discover this story and came up with nothing.

Since many schools in Canada still say the Lord's Prayer as part of their regular school day and prayers are said in our Parliament, it just seems highly unlikely that any pastors were ever arrested for reading the Bible in their own pulpits.

I know Americans find it hard to believe but I think we have far more freedom of speech in Canada than you guys do in the US. In the first place, our titular head is the Queen of England who is also the head of the Church of England. And our Parliament opens with this prayer.

Almighty God, we give thanks for the great blessings which have been bestowed on Canada and its citizens, including the gifts of freedom, opportunity and peace that we enjoy. We pray for our Sovereign, Queen Elizabeth, and the Governor General. Guide us in our deliberations as Members of Parliament, and strengthen us in our awareness of our duties and responsibilities as Members. Grant us wisdom, knowledge, and understanding to preserve the blessings of this country for the benefit of all and to make good laws and wise decisions. Amen.

It varies from province to province, but many public schools in Canada still open with the Lord's Prayer. Freedom of religion has never meant freedom from religion as it seems to do in the US. Here's a link that provides a summary of prayer in different provinces: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2008/02/13/lords-prayer.html

What I think many American Christians don't realize is that freedom is a two-way street. We have same-sex marriage and that sort of tolerance also flows back to Christians who practise their religion. People just don't get their shorts in such a knot as they seem to do in the US over every mention of public prayer.

The way I see it, American Christians have shot themselves in the foot with their involvement in politics and thinking to impose their beliefs on secular Americans. When you decide that someone else's right are not important, you are also opening a door to having someone decide that your rights are not important. You set a precedent for your own rights to be taken away at someone else's whim. A door lets traffic in both ways. Maybe that is why people generally are more content to live and let live here.

In Ontario, there is now a movement underway to change the Lord's Prayer in schools, but if you read this link, then you will notice a comment by a Jew who recited the Lord's Prayer in public school and his opinion that "it hadn't changed him."

So now just how a pastor could be arrested for reading the Bible when we have prayer in our schools and in our government, is illogical. Interestingly, a recent poll stated that 33 percent of Canadians do not believe in a god whereas only 8 percent of Americans say the same. That's a big difference and yet there is far less dissension and more acceptance here with regards to religion than there is in the US.

Witness the recent Texas polygamy thing. Just how people can go into another person's home with no more than the word of a known liar and troublemaker, and take away, not one child, but four hundred plus children and say there is freedom of religion in the US is beyond me. Which isn't to say that I support polygamy or anything but I'm telling you, that if they can do that there, they can do that anywhere in the US.

Americans like to think of themselves as individualists, and yet, when it comes to alternative lifestyles, be it by way of same sex unions, polygamists or immigrants who speak their own language, Americans want everyone to fit the same cookie cutter mould. Diversity is really not celebrated or much tolerated. Everyone has to be Americanized. We think entirely differently here in Canada where multi-culturalism is celebrated, not the whole melting pot idea.

As far as same-sex attraction and it being a choice, unlike the color of your skin, I don't believe that is true. If birth defects were limited to mobility, you would have a point but people are born sometimes intersexed - as hermaphrodites. So it is possible for people to be born sexually confused in a physical sense and if so, then why is it not possible for people to be born mentally confused about sexuality? We know more than we used to about the human brain but we don't know everything. Christians can be schizophrenic, bi-polar and depressives, without ever once having chosen it in any sense of the word due to something that went wrong in their genetic makeup, so it isn't a stretch at all to think that attraction to your own sex is also the result of something beyond their control.

I am not saying that homosexuality isn't a sin according to the Bible. I am only saying that I don't buy that it is always a choice. It may be a choice for some to experiment, to play with boundaries. There have always been people who wanted to push boundaries, who are thrill seekers and expressing themselves in all sorts of different non-traditional sexual ways, whether with a menage a trois, or with their own sex can also be part of that behaviour. But not necessarily.

I do agree with your last point that the war that is coming won't necessarily be a war fought with weapons but with words and ideas - that actually was the war fought by my ancestors. It wasn't a physical war but a war of ideas. But I also think that when Christians want to take their faith to a political level, they are opening that door themselves. Faith is a private matter.

As far as the laws in Canada are concerned with the issue of conscience, we have conscience laws. A doctor or a pharmacist can freely follow his or her conscience but they must give the patient information on where they can obtain the service they would deny on that basis. Canadians just don't sue like Americans do.

If you think of the different mottoes of our respective countries, there is a huge difference between us - Canadians believe in "peace, order, and good government" not "the pursuit of happiness."

We are far more willing to sacrifice an individual right that we don't really need for the good of everyone.

Layla

Quick question/thought

2008-06-02T08:29:00.001-07:00

Did you see that they'd found some previously uncontacted/undiscovered tribes in the Amazon?

Obviously the end isn't nigh until we get down there and spread the good news... :) But will we be allowed to? Have you noticed the cultural preseveration movement?

What are your thoughts on this?

God before family, seguing into gay marriage pt 3

2008-05-29T12:53:00.000-07:00

I think that many cultural Christians might be shocked at the concept of God before family. The church of N. America is largely a church of pudding cups and hamburger helper. (This is the milk for baby Christians vs. meat for adult Christians metaphor). Confronting the hard stuff is just something that most Christians don't do. Life has been structured for the past couple hundred years here so that it's easy to be a Christian. That is starting to change.

Because I grew up in a fundamentalist ish church, we were taught straight up that God was the first priority, followed by spouse, then kids, then other stuff. As I recall, the pastor wasn't emphasizing the difference between God vs. spouse, but more that spouse and kids came before work and friends and likewise. In most circumstances, following God involves following your husband and caring for your children.

For two hundred years, the church in North America has been blessed - or cursed - to live without persecution. "Christian" and "nice" used to be used as similes, and still are in some ways. Folks who are nice folks and vaguely believe in God consider themselves Christians. They might have no relationship at all with Christ and know virtually nothing about what He stood for, but they consider themselves Christian.

Right now, today, we are starting to move towards the North American society becoming a society where you have to make the choice of where you stand, and maybe make some sacrifices along the way. That's part of the gay marriage foo-foo-rah. I *really* don't expect gay marriage to become illegal. I'll vote for a constitutional amendment against it - but I can see the writing on the wall.

You were saying, "oh it doesn't matter, it doesn't affect Christians" but it does. The doctors who delivered my children are in a court battle that's gone up all the way to the Cali supreme court. You see, they wouldn't artificially inseminate a woman because she wasn't married. It went against their religious beliefs. They a) treated her infertility b) told her how to do the insemination at home c) gave her the name of a doctor who would do it d) offered to pay the difference in costs, as her insurance didn't pay for that doctor... but that wasn't enough for her. And she's suing, because she feels that she's been discriminated against for her sexuality. (Discriminating for sexuality is against the law, discriminating for marital status is not). So - when she and her partner are legally married (assuming they are going to be, I wouldn't know.. though they have three children now) in June... how would the doctor choose not to do something against their conscience?

What's going to happen is that Christian doctors are going to leave the OB business in droves. And city clerks - who warned *them* that their line of work might contain a crisis of conscience? You don't go into that line of work expecting it... but what if they're not allowed to pass the duty of marrying gay/lesbian couples on to a clerk that doesn't mind?

I hear pastors in Canada have been arrested for just *reading* Romans 2 from the pulpit - no commentary - just reading. That *will* come here, sooner or later.

Do I not feel sorry for people who are attracted to the opposite sex? Of course - what a heavy burden to bear! But you *don't* have to choose to make your attraction your identification. Sexual choices are CHOICES. You are born black or white - you choose whom you kiss. Would it be a terrifically hard life, to choose to be celibate because you had no desire for the opposite sex? Yes. Would it likely be impossible, outside the strength of the Holy Spirit - also yes.

But even saying that - that it's a choice - makes me a very unpopular person. But that's what *God* says. *He's* the one who says that none is tempted beyond that which they can bear. And *He's* the one who says that any sexual contact outside of marriage is sin.

And that's kind of the deal... see, the big deal (outside of the points already made) for *me* is that someday *real soon* I'm going to be guilty of discriminatory speech, maybe even hate speech, for saying that homosexuality is sinful. For speaking the truth.

Which brings us back to the start... two hundred years of ease. It's rotted half the church, and when it comes time for persecution - folks are going to have to make that choice. Will I keep my job? Will I make waves in my family? Will I choose to follow Christ? What's more important to me - truth or comfort?

I don't think our war is going to be a war like the one your ancestors waged, where they drag the Christians out and shoot them. I think it's going to be a war of words, where if you won't bow down to the dominant value system, you'll be pushed to the side. Eventually we're promised the extreme of that, when the Antichrist won't allow you to buy or sell without his mark. It has to start somewhere.... and the choice is beginning to manifest itself.

I hope this was vaguely clear, my head has been stuffed with cotton for days.

God before family?

2008-05-26T23:55:00.000-07:00

I had sort of an interesting experience over the weekend. A friend of my husband's dropped by with an article he'd clipped from a European magazine, "explaining" to Europeans, American Christians.

What had caught his eye in the article was the idea that Christians ought to put God before everyone, including family and friends.

Luke 14:26: If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.

He said he'd never heard of this before. He's a simple man, a farmer, and I have no idea what sort of religious background he has but he has been in this country a long time and is familiar with Mennonites, since they are mostly his neighbours.

Now what struck me as odd is this: wouldn't most people, if the preposition is that there is a God, by definition assume that God has to come before all else? Or is it the word "hate" that freaked him out? I don't know why he thought this was strange.

To me, it seems just common sense that if you accept, even just for the sake of argument, that God, as defined by an all-powerful creator, exists, then of course, he has to come before everyone else.

It would be like arguing with a cop over your right to speed. Meaningless. He's got the power and the law on his side.

Maybe not a debate in this, I just found it all very curious. I didn't answer him (he came to visit my husband) but I was rather shocked by his shock.

Layla

Same sex marriage and christians

2008-05-26T22:58:00.000-07:00

Well, I sometimes read your other things and wonder why you don't post them here, even if some of them are reflections and such, as opposed to a debate. So feel free to reiterate your comments about same-sex marriage.

You have a point when you say that homosexuality often identifies more than a sexual orientation and indicates a life-style and people don't tend to describe themselves as gossiping drunkards whereas they might identify themselves as gay. However.

People tend to identify themselves by what they consider significant to their identities, which often includes what they feel is in some way discriminated against. It is a different thing to say, in America, "I am a man" and "I am a black man." The latter describes a history without the necessity of describing the history of the black man in America.

I do sometimes identify myself as a socialist and a pacifist, sort of depending on the situation, when I feel it will shorten a discussion, or even by-pass a discussion I don't want to have, like if I'm being introduced at a gathering of mostly political junkies, and most of them are right-wing, I might - in a self-deprecating way that is intended to let people know where they stand with me right off the bat in case they too want to avoid conflict - say something like "I'm Layla, the token socialist/pacifist."

I usually do not identify myself as a Christian, rightly or wrongly, until I know someone very, very well. In the first place "Christian" has so many interpretations that I am afraid of a born-again/evangelical/pentecostal/charismatic Christian grabbing me in a bear hug (I don't do hugs) and singing out, "Praise, Jesus!"

I had the misfortune when I was sixteen of encountering the pastor of a church that my girlfriend's boyfriend attended, at a McDonald's. I didn't know him and he didn't know me and in that overly-enthusiastic way that so many of the Charismatics I have known have, he bellowed out, "Are you a Christian?"

I wasn't sure then how to answer it, since I figured chances were good we saw eye-to-eye on nothing, but neither did I want to be placed in the position of having him proclaiming loudly to all and sundry that he would pray for me if I said I wasn't. Since I figured with him, if I didn't say yes I was, I would be placed in the "heathen" camp, which I wasn't either.

And at sixteen, I just wasn't prepared to tell a man in around forty that it wasn't his business. So I muttered, "yes" only to find myself grabbed and swung around in a bear-hug, "Praise Jesus!" He was, of course, American. We didn't have many of that type who were Canadian.

I've been very hesitant to identify myself as a Christian to people I don't know ever since. I don't do hugs, people. Sheesh. Keep your paws off my person.

I don't understand really, the part of your argument where you say you worry about having to explain it to your children. Sex is a part of life and with young children, you answer as is age appropriate and not necessarily more than they ask. Abortion is also part of modern life, whether we like it or not.

I don't know how people can explain murderers to children, or wars, or divorce or death. The hardest conversation I've ever had is with a four-year-old whose mother died and I had to explain that. It isn't enough to explain that they are "with Jesus" when they can see their mother's body in a coffin. All a four-year-old knows is that he wants his mother. It doesn't dry their tears at night.

And I don't think that just because something is legal, like same-sex marriage, that people who would otherwise have come to Jesus will suddenly not come. God is greater than that. I don't think it works that way. That's like saying that because adulterers aren't stoned anymore, then how will you explain that to your children, and that everyone will start thinking that adultery is all right and nice Christian wives and husbands will turn away from God.

They could not turn away permanently, if they were God's to begin with. That people can fall into sin, certainly I believe that. And certainly I believe that it is far better not to put yourself into a place of temptation, lest you have occasion to sin, as I believe it states somewhere in the NT. There are places no Christian belongs.

But as far as homosexuality goes, even though it isn't against the law and we've had same-sex marriage here for years, I have never felt the slightest urge towards my own sex and no law would change that or lead me into that temptation. For those who have those leanings however, no law will prevent that.

We have a domestic partners law as well, but again, I'm sort of of two minds about it. In the first place, I don't believe that marriage is a sacrament. It was given to all of humanity in the symbolic union of Adam and Eve as first parents. It wasn't something that was set apart like Holy Communion for only Christians, or Passover and dietary laws for Jews. The animal kingdom and humanity were told collectively to "be fruitful and multiply." There was no stipulation as to how many partners that implied as is shown in the OT fathers with their multiple wives.

Christianity took a turn when Jesus said, "but in the beginning it was not so." Therefore we know that when we want to know how we ought to be, we need to look at how it was in the beginning. In the beginning there was one man and one woman and that is God's ideal. But Jesus also says that God allowed certain things, like ferinstance, divorce, "because of the hardness of your hearts."

Christianity is supposed to remedy that hardness of heart and allow a man and a woman to forgive each other often enough to enable a marriage to last. But sometimes it isn't possible, since we aren't perfect. Nothing changes the ideal though, but it is, as I see it, the ideal. What is less than the ideal comes from our hardness of heart, but we aren't perfect, and I believe God understands that and forgives us for all our failings.

All are allowed to be part of a marriage, and in many cultures, "marriage" itself is little more than an agreement to live together. A ceremony and a judge wouldn't make it more or less of a marriage.

You notice that Paul doesn't take issue with multiple wives when he talks about marriage and the Christian except as it concerns pastors and other leaders in the church - that they should be married to one wife and have a good reputation.

There are people who do not take live-together relationships as seriously as marriage but I think that a live-together relationship can be every bit as committed as any ceremony performed in a legal way.

As to God's laws and the vote, yes, we differ there, because I know of no laws that God gave that apply to non-believers and of no example in the Bible where a believer is told to impose the laws that God gave the believer on the unbeliever.

Layla

Dissension at last!

2008-05-24T16:03:00.000-07:00

Having read my blog on myspace, I'll assume I shouldn't repeat the argument that I made there, about the government tacitly giving its seal of approval to actions that it performs ceremonies in celebration of. I was not *really* going to burn my driver's license, I assure you. And you *did* make rather the point of saying you didn't consider yourself particularly loyal or associated with the worldly government of whichever country.

So let us begin with homosexuality as a individual act vs. identifying oneself as a homosexual person. People who do the latter frequently primarily self-identify as gay/lesbian as their PRIMARY self-identification. ("Describe yourself"). When was the last time you heard someone identify themselves as a "gossiping drunkard", whether or not that happened to be true?

I completely agree that homosexual relations are no worse than fornication - and I'm far from saying I've never sinned in that direction. Sins of the flesh are sins of the flesh. And we all have weaknesses in one or more areas!

My concern with gay marriage is 1) that the government will give its approval and then I have to explain to my children that the government might say that this is fine and good, but it's not (which is less easy than you might think) and 2) that the individuals who marry (or otherwise commit themselves) will then permanently turn from our Savior.

Repentance of sin generally comes as part and parcel of conversion, but if one is involved in a sin and has made a life of it... how likely is it that that person will feel the lash of conviction and change course? How will it be that someone will hear that still small voice calling them to come to Jesus and think, "maybe..." and then look at their spouse's face, and the face of their children and walk away from that? Even Christian married people are tempted with every breath to put their spouses' happiness above obedience to God (see 1 Corinthians 7).

Having previously made it simplicity itself to simply *live* in sin (California has a domestic partners law) for either hetero or homosexuals, we have now provided a way for those who are living in sin to make it feel like they are not. Otherwise why does the word matter?

It's not as if I didn't expect this to happen. And it's not as if I expect the vote in November to take us out of this. But shall I not mourn? Flexible morality is the bane of our nation! Jesus is the Way, the ***Truth***, and the Light. He's the TRUTH - there is such a thing as truth. Shouldn't someone stand up and say, "here it is"? Aren't we *called* to be lights on the hilltop?

I think that's where you and I differ with our respect towards the governments we live under. I think it's a responsibility given to me to use my vote to uphold the laws that my God has given me. I am not particularly attached to succeeding - in fact, I think it's unlikely that I will. But I have been given that vote and I think I'll be called to account for how I've used it. Ultimately, God is in charge. Ultimately His will WILL be done.

Until He returns - our duty is to get the Word out to every person on this earth, and we are in no way helped in that sacred charge by those who choose to say that light is darkness and darkness is light.

So - that's my objection, part two.

PS - no worries about the brilliant posts, personally I've been crazed busy this week and you're lucky I'm having a lazy Saturday!

Christians and Homosexuality

2008-05-20T11:21:00.000-07:00

Your mention of me in another place gave rise to this subject, Hearth.

First of all, I want to preface any discussion on homosexuality by saying that yes, I know it is a sin against God as referenced in the Bible. As is adultery, gossip, people who are habitual drunkards and a whole bunch of other things. I don't see that homosexuality is someone different from all these other sins.

Paul, when he speaks of sexual sins - not homosexuality, specifically, but generally, says it is the one sin a man commits against his own body, and that all other sins are committed outside of the body. Well, that's not quite true but he didn't know that then. Alcoholics and smokers are also doing harm to their bodies. So all in all I'm not too sure what Paul meant by that.

With regards to same sex marriage, we've had that in Canada for several years now and have been somewhat of a gay tourist destination for gay Americans seeking to get married. One of the judges responsible for ruling that disallowing same-sex marriage was against the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a very close friend.

I think that in part you misunderstand my position on church and state when it comes to the state taking positions that are not Christian positions, at least not traditional Christian positions. I don't see my earthly citizenship as anything more than an accident of birth. It has no meaning to me. I do not need to renounce it or move. I do not see myself as being part of the government of the people and therefore entitled to have the state value my values. For the most part, because I am fortunate to live where I live, the state does mirror my values.

But not always. I am a citizen of Heaven first, and have to make sure that my values mirror Heaven's values. It is not my concern necessarily how the state governs those who do not share my citizenship in Heaven.

This is the gist of my problem with voting as a Christian: do I not vote for Party A because they support same-sex marriage or do I not vote for Party B because they propose changes that would make divorce easier? Christians are constantly having to decide between Evil A and Evil B. Same-sex marriage is the least of it all. It isn't possible for any democratic state to mirror Christian values, nor would I trust any state to do that. I don't want any state to interpret the Bible for me and impose that interpretation on me.

There is only One who will govern righteously, and it is not the state and I'm not looking for righteousness from the state.

Jesus did not seek to impose Himself on those who didn't/wouldn't believe in Him. He spoke to those who sought him out. He didn't tell them to overthrow the Romans or address Roman values. He told each individual to individually seek the Kingdom of Heaven.

I don't think there is anything wrong with same-sex marriage on a secular, state level. The government of the world is there for all the people, not some of the people. It is there not to govern Christians - we are the heirs of the most High. As it pleased the Lord, the Creator of Heaven and Earth to make Himself a mere man and to allow His own creatures to put Him to death, so is the position of His followers in this world.

God at the present time, allows a certain amount of secular governance for Christians even though we are His children, not the children of the state. By obeying the law, we set an example for non-Christians. And where the law differs from what we see as the way of Heaven, well Christians aren't being forced into same-sex marriage. That would be the state usurping the authority of God.

This is the state governing the children of the world, as it is allowed to do. It is completely wrong to think that Christian values can be imposed on non-Christians. On a church level, churches chose different ways to deal with the issue of homosexuality. Some believe it is a sin and others don't.

What is good to keep in mind is that there were certainly homosexuals in Christ's day and yet he railed against the money changers, not against the homosexuals. If we look at how Christ acted towards sexual sins generally, from the woman taken in adultery, we see that Christ was much more generous in how he viewed the weakness of the flesh than he was towards moralizers like the money changers.

I do believe that homosexuality is a sin because it states in the Bible that homosexuality is a sin. But sin only comes in where there is first faith. And I see nothing to indicate it is more of a sin than adultery or gossip or drunkenness, all of which I have been guilty of at one time or another.

At one point in my life, I would have judged more harshly but life has a way of wearing you down. I don't know why homosexuality is a sin. I know a number of homosexuals and know them well enough to know how much it has hurt them. Having been judged very harshly myself for a sin I certainly admit to having committed but would also say, without any attempt at whitening my conscience, there's few who walked in my shoes who wouldn't have broken long before I did, under the same circumstances, I can't bring myself to sit in judgement of others in whose shoes I haven't walked.

I see no reason to believe that the sin of the Christian homosexual isn't just as covered by the blood of Christ as my sin. And I know, and you know from our private correspondence, that in many ways, I was more sinned against than the sinner. I can't say that for myself and then turn around and accuse someone else of using it as an excuse. I don't have any homosexual leanings myself, so I find it hard to understand quite what the attraction is, but I have enough gay friends to have seen the pain first hand.

As a sort of P.S., I had like, this brilliant post in my head yesterday, but couldn't access this space, so this post isn't as concise and I'm sure I have forgotten most of the points I had in my head yesterday.

Layla

Ah, more agreement!

2008-05-14T09:14:00.000-07:00

I am always careful about saying, "I don't believe in prophecy" because of exactly what happened to your grandmother. I know more than a few folks who have had the same sort of experiences, and I wouldn't discount them. Nor would I ignore those nudges.

I have to say - yes - if there is a prophetic surge in regards to end times, I think it's going to be church by church, God speaking to the pastors in an abundance of churches and using their voices as His own. I can't imagine Him using warnings of the End to make anyone money! The question in my mind is... is He starting to do that?

When He nudges you, my sister, and says, "You should plant a little extra this year", and He nudges me and says, "Now is a good time to make a very extensive medical supply kit", and my pastor starts preaching on persecution just about every Sunday... am I to think that He's doing that for nothing?

I think that anyone with eyes open right now can see that the next few years are going to be *very* bad. The natural disasters of the last week (China, Burma, tornados, fires) combined with the front page news of months about food prices combined with yesterday's front page picture of a corn-belt farmer's hand full of mud... soil too wet to plant... 2008 will be tight, but 2009? I shudder. Add a few active volcanos (Hawaii, Chile), stir with the usual wars (too many to list) and you've a fine mess.

I sent you an article to your private email about how they've turned RFID into a tattoo process - quick and easy. They can read it -with current technology- at about a meter away.

So the stage is set. But it has been before, from what I'm told. And like Abraham, perhaps the next years are too hard to get through without holding to that Blessed Hope of Christ's return. I am *not* attached to my own notions to the point of thinking I hold the whole truth! Should I live to be 98, rocking my chair in the window of same California home I'm in now... that's fine with me.

And yet. And yet. I do have... well, not quite theories. But I expect the next years to be *very* rough, rough enough that we'll think we are in the tribulation. Will it be pre-tribulation warmup, from which we'll be snatched just before everything topples down? I don't know. I think though - it behooves us to use the communications networks to listen to one another, to listen to what the Lord has put on our hearts, and to act wisely and according to His will.

There is a fine line between being wise and preparing for anything and being foolish and getting excited over whispers and phantoms.

What is God calling you to do? And what is He preventing you from concerning yourself with?

Modern prophecy

2008-05-12T23:47:00.000-07:00

I am sorry that I haven't posted sooner. I have written a thousand posts in my mind - they just never got put to paper. I don't normally write anything of a personal nature here but as you know from my private emails, my step-granddaughter was christening recently. Reading over the programme for the christening, and the call-and-response of it all, with the parents promising the raise her to love the Lord, I found myself hoping very much that it is true. My step-son doesn't have any faith of any sort in his background but his partner does.

Okay, so on to the possibility of modern day prophecies. You say that you are given to "feelings" and "nudges." It is absolutely Biblical to believe that the Holy Spirit guides the church. We are promised that this is so so I believe it is so. However when I speak about prophecy I don't put the guiding of the Holy Spirit to the individual in the same league as outright prophecy, particularly as it pertains to the end of the world or the second coming of Christ.

I don't know if I ever told you that my grandmother had visions on two occasions - and since to me she seemed completely devoid of imagination and ego, being a pragmatic Mennonite grandmother, I still see no other explanation. She wouldn't have invented it because I just don't think it would have occurred to her. And she had no need to feel "important" since the church I grew up in at that time, didn't have any of the charismatic type things (hadn't even heard of them) like speaking in tongues, miraculous healings or visions. I think she would never have told them to a pastor because any Mennonite pastor in our particular branch would have told her that she only "thought" she saw something.

And to the best of my knowledge, besides maybe my grandfather, she only told me and my mother about these two visions. The first time she had a vision she was in her teens and was milking the cows in the pre-electricity days, in winter, when the day is short. Her father had been sick for several months. In the barn, the lamp only lit part of the aisle in the barn. My grandmother was turning away from a freshly milked cow to milk another cow, when she saw as clear as day a coffin in the middle of the barn. She blinked, in her version of the story, and it remained there. She told herself it was a shadow, and milked the other cow before looking at the place but when she did, it was still there. And she "knew" that her father was going to die. That was the connection she made then and her father died the following day.

Her other vision came in her seventies. My grandfather wasn't home and my grandmother had lain down for a nap. She woke up "suddenly" and saw on the dresser opposite her bed, a tombstone on which she could see one of her children's names engraved with the date of birth and that day as the date of death. She immediately got on her knees to pray and stayed there until my grandfather got home. That evening, she got a phone call from the spouse of the child to the effect that the child had tried to commit suicide and very nearly succeeded. On the verge of unconsciousness, she had picked up the phone and called for help.

See, as long as my grandmother isn't having those kinds of visions on a daily basis, and as long as they make theological sense, I accept that. It is a form of prophecy in the sense of "this is what will happen or this is what could happen" but it is not a prophecy of the world ending on June 28th, 2008. It doesn't put her ego at the center of things, the way that I think it is important on the basis of national pride for some American Christians to want to see America playing an important prophetic role, and therefore make 'prophecies' out of wish-fulfillment, as if they've decided that God had to have made a mistake in forgetting to let the world know that, by Joe, America is specialer than other nations.

My grandmother's visions neither add to the Bible, or take away from it. They don't lend themselves to speculation or wild interpretations or book tours in order to publicize the private warning of God to an individual. And I'm sure that my grandmother isn't mentioned in the Bible. Most people aren't. There's no ego trip there. She didn't get up and think she was some sort of new prophetess. She got up and made chicken noodle soup for supper, crocheted some more of the hideous (much as I hate to say it) afghans she was forever giving us, her grandchildren.

But as far as prophecy about world events, I do think that those days are over. Your last question about how just because the US isn't mentioned in the Bible, that there are no possible, Christ-centered prophecies possible in this day? Yes, that's exactly the way I see it. I don't believe that a brand spanking new prophecy not in the Bible canon is at all possible in this day and age.

However, I still want to qualify that a little further. There are prophetic passages in the Bible that are vague, that make vague references to nations, that could still include the US (and Canada). In many of the prophecies, the prophets are told that the vision is sealed until the end of time. What seems vague now, may yet become clear as the Day of the Lord approaches, and then, in retrospect, it could be that we will wonder why we never saw it before.

Just like the prophecies of the coming messiah - the suffering messiah and the reigning, messiah made no sense to the apostles before they were fulfilled, there are prophecies that may have the US playing a major role but because the US is not named as in "The Lord saith unto the US of A", we don't know. One thing to keep in mind about prophecies is that the Lord himself didn't enlighten the apostles as to how he could be both the suffering messiah and the reigning messiah who would put all nations under his feet. They were as confused about that as anyone.

When Jesus rode into the holy city on a donkey and people proclaimed him king, they thought, surely now he will send the Romans and Herod, his pawn, running for the hills. But they were thinking in human terms and on a human time frame - God's way is far more complicated and far longer.

When Abraham was promised children too numerous to count, he surely must have anticipated an encampment full of children with his wife Sarah, in his own life time. He never would have interpreted that promise to mean year after year of waiting, only to have only one child with his wife Sarah.

I think maybe that God sometimes doesn't explain his promises in greater detail because our hearts would break under the burden of years if we knew just how long (in the way we measure time) it would be before the promise found its fulfillment. Abraham and Sarah could hope year after year, for quite a lot of years, that that would be the year of a child. Hope kept them going. Then, when their bodies were old, and a certain resignation had set in and without a doubt, they must have thought that whatever God had meant, they weren't going to have any children. But at the end of their lives, it wouldn't have hurt nearly as much as it would have at the beginning, to think that they would spend so many years childless.

Would the hearts of all the new Christians have failed if Jesus had told them that they wouldn't be seeing him for at least two thousand years? I think the "hope deferred" might well have killed the church before it got started. Instead, by telling us that only God knows the day and the hour, each year, Christians have allowed themselves to hope that this is the acceptable year of the Lord and the year of our redemption.

Hope is a wonderful thing. I don't know how humanity could have endured what it has already endured without hope. But that amount of space also means we must be careful not to let our hopes take on the aura of prophecy, and led people away instead of to Christ.

Even so, marantha, Lord Jesus.

Layla

Ah well, we agree and yet not

2008-04-17T14:00:00.001-07:00

I do agree... America is not in the Bible. I agree, it's dangerous to think that we have a voice from on High about... anything. But - yet I disagree. We are (some of us) given prophecy - and much to the disgust of my co-religionist blogger (the Baptist, not you), I am OFTEN given "feelings", "nudges", "the still, small voice"... and I *know* it's from God. How do I know? Well the first thing is that that small voice *never* asks you to do anything that contradicts the Bible. Never. Not in the smallest thing. Similarly, if we're given what we think are prophecies, I think they should be concrete and testable - and we *should* test them privately before claiming the gift of prophecy as a public ministry.

But is it impossible, simply because America does not fit into Biblical prophecies about the specifics of the last days (I agree we are in the spiritual famine and the apostasy), that no one can have a prophecy about America, in the times before?

Honestly, I don't think there's come a prophet with the true gift of Godly prophecy for nations. I've heard more than a few national prophecies and they are either vague or don't happen. That doesn't mean I think it's not possible, especially as the close of the age draws near. (It does mean I then discount those prophets).

What do I think? I think that instead of proper prophecy, many of us are given the gift of discernment. And those folks can perceive the truth of a situation, the dangers we happen to be in, the state of the souls around them, etc. If you use logic and the Bible and a good eye for the truth... you can get to where *most* of the so-called prophets take themselves.

That's what I read prophecy for. I'm searching for grains of truth. Ideas. Possible futures. Paths through the fog. We *know* that the West is not in the book of Revelation. So... where do we go? When do we disappear? How?

I think we will get very small prophecies that are filled before the very end, to get the attention of non-believers on God. Big stuff? No. Our Lord has a timetable, and it's His and His alone.

And we, we are commanded to watch for His return.

(And sorry for A) taking so long and B) being so scattered. I am suddenly terribly busy just living life and doing phys therapy - and other things that you know about from our private correspondence).

Modern Christian Revelation

2008-04-15T15:01:00.000-07:00

I have been doing some searching on the net and came across this blog by a Baptist that illustrates, to me, what is wrong with accepting extra curricular prophecies, better than my previous post did.

One of the things that I should have mentioned is that God being beyond time and space, has foreseen everything already. We can't say that we are Biblical literalists and believe, for example in Noah and his ark, and then turn around and say God didn't foresee the United States and therefore the US isn't mentioned in the Bible. God has foreseen everything important. He has never forecast for anyone, a play by play account of their lives, although in the case of special people, he has occasionally seen fit to mention them via prophets in the Bible.

We are in a spiritual famine, where we are hungry for words from God and longing for his coming. All that is natural but also sets us up to want to believe there are still prophets. I should clarify that when I speak of prophets, I don't believe that there are any prophets sent by God who make Spirit-filled prophecies of the End Times. I believe that God however, can reassure a person on an individual level, with regard to things like health concerns. Not earth-shaking events, but personal events.

All that there is to say about the End Times has been said repeatedly by the prophets of the Old and New Testaments, with John the Beloved, being the last. There is no new revelation. The interesting thing about the so-called new revelations, whether it is Nostradamus or Washington, is that they are always vague and can never be pinned down to anything. It's like someone thinks that if they use Biblical language with 'thees' and 'thous', that is enough to fool people. Some of these so-called prophecies can't be contradicted that easily not because they are from God, but because evil disguises itself in the vagueness and the Biblical references and language.

I would say, that those who seek modern and new revelation are rather like the rich man in Luke 16, who begged Abraham to send someone to the world of the living so that he could bare witness to his brothers:

Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father's house: For I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment. Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them. And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent. And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.

If belief will not come with what we have already been given in terms of revelation in the canon, then belief will not come with new revelation.

Matthew 16 has something to say about this too:

(and you say) And in the morning, It will be foul weather to day: for the sky is red and lowering. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times? A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given unto it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas. And he left them, and departed.

Layla

more on prophets and prophecies

2008-04-14T00:48:00.000-07:00

When you say, "I've always understood it to mean that you shouldn't take away or add to the Bible as a whole, and the book of Revelation in particular. "In the last days your sons and daughters shall prophesy..." that's more what I think of when I think of current prophecies" then how is it that you don't think that extra-biblical prophecies aren't adding or taking away from Revelations?

To me it would seem that any prophecy particularly as it refers to the End of Days, is adding. To me it seems as though you are saying that as long as other prophecies aren't attached directly and printed in the Bible, then they aren't in violation of the warning not to take away or add to Revelations, which to me, seems in keeping with the letter but not the spirit of the warning.

In the first place, we must remember that evil doesn't always manifest itself as something ugly. The serpent tempted Eve not with lies, but with a version of the truth: "thou shalt not surely die." And they didn't drop dead on the spot when they ate the forbidden fruit.

It seems to me that there is often a grain of truth in all of the religions, and that that is what the wolves in sheep's clothing use. They draw you in with a partial truth.

The verse from Joel that you quote about how "your young men shall see visions" is fulfilled with the first coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, as in Acts 2, when Peter says,

these are not drunken, as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day. But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel; And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams: And on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy:

I am in complete agreement with you that every last word of a prophecy must come true, but what prophets have there been in the Christian church, from the Seventh Day Adventists, to The Crystal Cathedral guy who claimed God was going to take him home if he didn't raise X amount of dollars before such and such a date, who have ever been right? None.

I think that some people genuinely believe they have a special prophecy from God, but more often than not, it is the result of wishful thinking. Of wanting to be special enough to warrant a prophecy. I think that they 'prophecy' out of vanity as Ezekiel wrote of the prophets of Israel:

And her prophets have daubed them with untempered morter, seeing vanity, and divining lies unto them, saying, Thus saith the Lord GOD, when the LORD hath not spoken.

If one doesn't draw the line at Revelations, and allows, the very weird thing by Washington to stand as a possibility, then why not allow the prophecies of the Mormons to stand, or the Koran?

I see the post-Revelation period as the period spoken about by Amos in Chapter 8:

Behold, the days come, saith the Lord GOD, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD: And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the LORD, and shall not find it.

To me it seems as though Americans are almost desperate to be included in prophecy so they have to invent scenarios, like a good guy-bad guy script, in which they will be invaded and have some sort of role to play in the last days. That's how the Washington prophecy reads to me: all the "Son of the Republic" stuff. Maybe Washington actually did see something but who is to say it was a good angel or an evil one? But maybe he felt he had to invent as legitimacy for the new republic, since he was rebelling against the King. Kingship was traditionally believed to be handed down by God and whoever rebelled against the King rebelled against God. Kings could only be removed by God as in the story of Saul and David. David could have killed Saul but said, 'I will not lift my hand against my master, because he is the LORD's anointed.'

And later, when Saul is killed, David asks his killer,

David asked him, "Why were you not afraid to lift your hand to destroy the LORD's anointed?" Then David called one of his men and said, "Go, strike him down!" So he struck him down, and he died. For David had said to him, "Your blood be on your own head. Your own mouth testified against you when you said, 'I killed the LORD's anointed.'

It may seem strange to you in this day and age, but Washington, as an example, would have been fully aware of the prohibition against killing or rebelling against any king. It may have bothered him to such an extent he either dreamed or invented a prophecy, the way people tend to do when they feel the need to rationalize their behaviour.

This whole idea of kingship being handed down from God is also evident in the stories of the Pharaohs - even Ramses, who held the Israelites captive. In the story God says basically that Pharaohs had become so full of himself that he thought he had somehow 'earned' his position and that is why God used Moses to kill two birds with one stone: to make Pharaoh realise that he was answerable to a higher power still, and to reveal God's majesty to the children of Israel, and also free them.

I know Americans are very proud of a democratically elected leader and the whole notion of kingship as being handed down from on high is probably all but forgotten, but even today, the Queen of England is anointed in the presence of God and the people. It was that very sacred act that made the Duke of Windsor's abdication 'for the woman he loved' so terrible. It wasn't about breaking a vow to people, or simply deciding that he didn't like the job or wasn't suited for it, but about breaking a sacred vow to God.

The prophecies in the Bible always have Israel at their centre. What role, if any, the US has to play, I don't know. The Bible isn't clear on that. I don't believe that the US has to be named straight out in order for it to play a role since the enemies of Israel are often identified by the direction in which they come vis-a-vis Israel.

I could see it if some interpret the US to be the evil nation that attacks Israel from the north, since Biblical prophecies of the end times always have the attack coming from the north, most especially from Babylon (Iraq), which the US is currently occupying., and Iran, which the US would dearly love to invade and probably will. None of which speaks for the US as the good guy in the end of the world scenario, but as the anti-christ.

But insofar as an invasion by the Chinese or anyone else, I just don't think the US on its home territory rates anywhere on God's scale since it doesn't rank a mention.

The US is too far away for China to want American territory. It's not like they can just march across the ocean and take over for Lebensraum as the Germans could march over Europe. That there could and probably will be a worldwide nuclear war, that affects the US and obviously Canada as well, sure, I can buy that. But an old-fashioned ground invasion just isn't plausible, nor is it even necessary in Biblical terms. And all in all, you don't have anything China wants, and most especially not democracy.

In Canada we worry about the US invading us - for our oil and our water, or just because we don't agree with you about some things. I can see that happening.

I don't believe that God gives his children an idea of what is about to happen. He gives us a broad idea in the form of the OT and NT, which boils down to that there is a day of reckoning coming for all of us, and that he sent us all in his infinite mercy, a redeemer, a Prince of Peace. I'm sure you've heard the saying that blood is thicker than water and you know how kids sometimes (used to) cut each other in order to become blood brothers and swear undying friendship? That's based on the same idea - that blood is thicker than water. When Jesus shed his blood on the cross, that is what he did for us - he claimed all who believe in Him as his true blood brothers, his kin.

But he never did give us a play by play account of all the nations in the world.

Layla

Prophecy Addict

2008-04-08T11:51:00.001-07:00

I suppose I could be counted as one of the people that looks forward to prophecies. Instead of interpreting the last verse of Revelation as a caution to not allow prophecy into my life, I've always understood it to mean that you shouldn't take away or add to the Bible as a whole, and the book of Revelation in particular. "In the last days your sons and daughters shall prophesy..." that's more what I think of when I think of current prophecies.

However, I look at extra-Biblical prophecies primarily as entertainment or as warnings, or sometimes just as "what-ifs". If they A) Don't come true to the last smidgen - they're not of God (that's his OT way to test a prophet). B) If they disagree with the Word, or cause you to doubt anything in the Word, they're not of God.

I'm interested in prophecy. I *do* think God gives some (even most) of His children some fairly good "feelings" about what is coming. I am positive that He puts us where we need to be, when we need to be there. But for me, it's more about my personal desire to have Christ come and take us Home... I like to put my thoughts there, so of course anything that aims me that way is welcome.

*Something* is coming to end America (and Canada too, most likely). If it's an economic depression or an invasion, it makes little difference. No one you know disagrees with that... Could China/the East attack the US? Um. Yeah. Hardcore. We're even causing them to lose a tremendous amount of face over the Olympics this year... not so much with the happy. And we owe them a lot of money, what with trade deficits and all. Am I making my personal plans with that taken into account? No. I live near a port on the West Coast. If God wants me moved, He'll move me!

Extra Biblical prophecy should be stringently tested and watched closely. But automatically false? No - I don't think so, not at all.

Visions: True or False

2008-04-07T12:28:00.000-07:00

I've been wondering about prophetic-type visions for a while now. What is it about modern visions, or visions not in the canon of the Bible, that would make Christians take them seriously or not?

The US seems to be a particular hot bed of such prophecies, from Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormons to the evangelical tent preachers who kept predicting the end of the world.

Recently I came across a vision that George Washington had and there seems to be a segment of Christians that take it seriously right down to interpretations ranging from an invasion of US soil by the Chinese to this.

I have always believed that the prophetic age closed with the book of Revelations. We were always taught that new prophecy is blasphemy, according to Revelations 22:18-19:

For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.

What do you think about this and if you accept prophecies outside the Bible, where do you draw the line?

Layla

more this and that

2008-03-27T00:07:00.000-07:00

I'm sure you're right for the reason for our different reactions, that you identify with the state, and I don't. I have, I think, the same hurt though, only it comes from a slightly different direction. My hurt that things aren't going right doesn't come from a sense of a state having let me down or not following a right path, but a terrible grief that we humans are so cruel to each other, that humanity as a whole has let itself so down. I just don't know sometimes how we - humanity - will ever answer the Almighty when he asks us why we have not been our brothers' keepers and why we weren't kinder to each other.

In the story of creation, God specifically assigns humanity the task of being the keepers of the Garden and all we ever do is blow it. Around Easter time there was an interesting thing on the Discovery Channel on Cain and Abel, and the point was made that the word "blood," as in "thy brother's blood cries out to me from the ground" - the word in Hebrew would actually translate to the plural - "thy brother's bloods cries out to me from the ground."

In other words, what the person was saying, was all the generations that would have come from Abel cried out to God from the ground. That has been haunting my dreams lately. All the generations that cry out from our bloody ground.

My thoughts aren't as organized as I would like, due in part to what I am doing on the side, but the thought occurred to me yesterday, that was I was trying to say about Jeremiah Wright's speech is that the essence, to me, of what he said, of what I heard that he said is that the rich countries, like the US, or like Canada, whatever charitable things we do, we are like the rich men in the Temple, pouring our coins with great pomp and circumstance as an offering. There are others who give little, like the widow's mites, but that what they give is all that they have.

I don't speak simply of money, but of the spirit of our giving.

Well, you certainly ask an interesting and hard question at the end of your post about searching for common ground with other faiths. Paul searched for common ground too, as in when he told the Ephesians, I believe, that he was there to preach the "Unknown God" to which they had set up altars, to them.

However, the difference is that he used what there was in their culture to preach Christ not to water down Christ. Far too often when people search for common ground, what that means is that they deny Christ the place at the right hand of the Father in their effort to find common ground. They become unequally yoked.

Layla

Ah there's the rub

2008-03-26T13:19:00.000-07:00

Perhaps it's because you don't vote - but the reason I ignore politics as much as possible isn't a lack of interest in the way the world works or things go together, but because it always seems to be done so very wrong. It's been long and long that anyone's done something I could be proud of being part of as an American. Because I *do* so self-identify, it's painful to me.

For myself, I'm more likely to pay attention to international politics or religious trends worldwide, or what one might call the "mental state" of a group of people rather than what my own government does or doesn't do. Heavens, my *city* government annoys and disgusts me, how much more so the other levels?

Speaking of which, what are your thoughts on the efforts by (some) leading Muslim and Christian leaders to find common ground?

more on fools

2008-03-25T17:19:00.000-07:00

You're more than welcome on my front porch. I realized however, that I didn't specifically include Canada in my general feel of how things are going. I think that the west has seriously sinned in the eyes of God. I don't think we want so much to do good to the world as we want to do what is good for us personally. Sometimes the two coincide, but if they don't we are more than happy to turn a blind eye, like what happened for instance in the genocide in Rwanda. They had nothing at all that the west wanted. So what did we care, generally speaking, if they died or if they lived? Our chickens will all come home to roost. We have had the benefit of the word of God and we have twisted it and used it for our own ends and to keep other people under our thumbs. I do not believe that God will leave that unpunished.

Ultimately we are all, black and white and brown and yellow, responsible for our own sins, but there is also a judgement of nations on the final day. And I don't think that either of our countries is going to look that good.

For myself, I am interested in politics because I live in the world. I am interested in the whole sociology of it all, how things fit together and what has led to what. I am not interested in politics in the sense of believing there is a future here to be had - I firmly, and every day more believe the only citizenship I have is in Heaven, so in terms of an eternal POV, I find I don't really favor one side over the other.

My half black and half white nieces and nephews live in a large city and they go to a private Catholic school which is very mixed, upper middle class. In spite of it being a Catholic school, there are Muslim students as well as Christians from many denominations, including nominally Christian, and children from atheist families. But they have been called the 'n' word. They didn't know what it meant.

My sister and BIL are not at all activists in any sense of the word, not even in terms of informing them that different races exist. To my nieces and nephews, every one is just people. They have black grandparents and white grandparents, black aunts and uncles and white. They don't know the difference - or didn't until someone focused on a difference.

What I see the worst of here is people's attitudes towards First Nations peoples. I wouldn't ever say that Canadians are better than Americans because there's less racism towards blacks - I have no doubt at all that that is only because we have far less blacks here. Whatever is more in evidence, people will be prejudiced against. Here it is the First Nations who live in poverty, in crime because we as a white society have put them there. They did not put themselves there. And we have kept them there while loudly and proudly proclaiming our distaste at the UN over other nations' human rights violations. We are no better than they are. Our discrimination and our violation of their God-given dignity has simply taken a different form.

And I know it is more than a little weird that I have no fear of walking down dark alleys regardless of who is there. It is quite possible that if it were someone other than myself, I would fear, I don't know. I don't know why I have no fear at all in that regard. It's not even that I deliberately put myself in danger. I don't think about it until later when I realize what I have done. Anyway, whether through absent-mindedness or whatever, I've been in enough strange places to find myself fearless in that regard, but only because I know who holds my life in His hands.

I once found myself in a country in Latin America, not Mexico, btw, lost in what was a very poor area of town. I wasn't familiar with the area and wanted to find a restaurant. I hadn't realised that it was Sunday and almost everything was closed. All of a sudden I found myself surrounded by at least a dozen men wanting to know what I wanted. "A restaurant," I told them.

One of them escorted me to his grandmother's house, where I ate, and then realized that I had forgotten my wallet at the hotel. They spoke poor English and I didn't speak whatever dialect they were speaking. But jeepers that was embarrassing. I made myself understood as best as I could, hurried back to the hotel, got my wallet, and hurried back to the place and paid the lady. In retrospect I realized how badly it could all have gone. I was also wearing embarrassingly expensive jewellery. I only learned later that the area had some serial killer on the loose who preyed on tourists.

In real life, if I were to have actually thought about it, I wouldn't have found myself there to begin with, and I wouldn't have been there wearing the jewellery I was wearing. God takes care of his fools, I guess.

Layla

Hmm

2008-03-25T10:52:00.000-07:00

I'm going to have to look up that text of Obama's speech, I hate listening to those things, but reading is another matter.

As for racism/classism - of *course* racism still exists and prior generations of racism have affected what class you end up in. My caveat is that some radical speakers (of whatever stripe) persist in acting like people today are still in that mental place. Maybe it's because I live in a very mixed city... I don't know. Maybe I object to it so much because I took a very liberal subject in college and I've found so much of what I was taught was tilted so much as to be virtually useless. It does make a difference in how you think if you live a big town and you have no way of evaluating the relative danger that someone presents other than their skin color and manner of dress.

Here I'd say it's *vastly* more how you dress than your skin color. I remember back in HS, my male friends all used to wear field jackets and occasionally spoke German - someone thought they were starting a skinhead gang. If I was a middle aged non-white woman, seeing that group walk down the street would have made me justifiably nervous. When I see young males of any color in a group, the first thing I look at is what they're wearing. Gang clothes? "Normal clothes"? (You'll remember the Angeleno gang member - which you could see by his clothing - who had the SWAT team two doors down from me. He glared at me for looking out my *own window* on a Sunday morning when he and his cronies were on their way back from something requiring identification concealment). Am I afraid? Yes... sometimes a bit. It's a reaction, like having your knee whacked and kicking. Do I live in that fear? No, I agree - if God wants me dead/hurt, He will arrange that (she says, looking at her crutches).

Yes, America has hurt other nations. I ... think the reason we try to defend ourselves is that (at least the way it's presented to the people of this nation) is that we want to HELP. And we do. We try to be the police officer, the social services worker, and the conscience to the world. If the elite who bend reality use that well-meaning for their own foul purposes... how is that surprising? I see us trying and trying and failing... and the only thing I come up with is, "Come, Lord Jesus, Come!" His rule will be perfect - it will also be totally authoritarian and very strict. Governed by the Living Christ, 1000 years afterwards, Satan will be able to stir up rebellion... not even God's Son, a member of the Trinity, will be universally liked.

I don't know if you remember or not - but I do agree with the comparison of America and Rome. And I also agree that we're about to fail, just as Rome did. I live in a completely non-sustainable area... there's not enough water here to support 1/10th of the people that live here. Forget food, forget transportation, there will be NO WATER if something dire happens. And it's about to - I believe that with all my heart. I don't *like* it, but I believe it.

In the year 2010, the euro will go paperless. Right now the dollar is dying. Europe is about to become one country for all intents and purposes. Russia and China and India are doing things under the surface. Africa is dying out. South America is ??? but news there isn't good. Famine is going to be widespread this year as wheat prices are rising and the effects of the weather here and the wheat rust haven't taken effect. Corn's going up. The rice harvest is off, prices are going up there. And America is fat and lazy and focused on bread and circuses. What do you *think* will happen? Hungry people don't play nicely. Hungry governments don't either. No, I believe we're about to die off... but hopefully Jesus will come and rapture us out before it hits. If not... you may find me on your front porch, kids in tow.

Wright speech

2008-03-25T09:08:00.000-07:00

Thanks for clarifying and you're welcome in my garage band anytime.

If I might say something, hopefully without causing offence, since I don't know just how much you followed about what Obama's pastor actually said, what he said was that if America did not change it's ways, then "God damn America if it does not change its ways" for among other things, enslaving their black brothers, for putting Japanese Americans in concentration camps, for causing the deaths of millions of innocents over the world. There is not one word in that that is a lie. That, as far as I can see, is perfectly in keeping with all of the prophets in the Old Testament, from Israel to Nineveh and on.

God warns nations with damnation all the time if they do not change their ways. It is hard for Americans to hear, and it is very hard for non-Americans to say to an American, but American policies have caused a world of hurt to many throughout the world and what that pastor said, is how the world sees America. Outside America, there are many private conversations these last few years, in which - and not with glee at all - people believe they are seeing the last days of America, just as Rome experienced its last days. To many outside the US, there is no difference at all between Rome and the US.

The first news bites regarding Jeremiah Wright that came out only had the "God damn America." They didn't have the context. It's unfortunate that they hardly ever do have the context but go for what will create the most outrage. I would link to the text but it seems only to be audio and my computer can't handle that. CNN played the whole context the other night which is why I happen to know it.

But, if you are interested in Obama's response, this is the written link. And here is a rather interesting article that someone wrote on Wright's speech.

I would beg to differ slightly about your observation about class and racism though in the sense that it is the racism that brought about the class. When people have been torn from their roots, when families have been sold apart in slavery so that all natural family ties are broken, when up until the 60s black men had their masculinity looked down upon and were to step aside every time a white man came along - where is the pride supposed to come from?

I have a friend in the northern US. I wince because she always refers to race. As in if two people get into a fight, she will say that a black man and a white man fought. Race is always mentioned. Honestly I think I am probably a little weird because I think I might just be color-blind. I don't notice race. It has to be pointed out to me. There can be one black man in a room full of white people and if someone were to say "that black man over there", I would be the one staring around the room asking, "Where?" I just don't see color.

I also think that just like Germans with their Nazi past being a little sensitive to subjects like Jews, Americans are more than a little sensitive in the same way about black Americans and haven't yet come to terms with what slavery did and how it reverberates to this day. It is hard, as a person, never mind what color you are, to forgive and move on when there is no true understanding in the heart of just how you were wronged by the other party.

I think white Americans aren't even aware of how pervasive the racism is. Obviously there are going to be differences depending on where you go in the US, but I've traveled through most states, and I've never not been aware of the racism. It just comes out in the strangest situations when there isn't even any reason for it. It's sort of like when you live somewhere, you don't notice certain things because they are the norm. I'm sure you would notice a lot of things here that I don't notice because I live here. And it's the same thing with other nationalities when they travel to the US - they notice because they don't live there.

Please don't think I'm throwing stones. We do not have the history of slavery here that you have. But what we do have is native Canadians living in similar poverty and taking up similar positions in our jails and having a similar lack of 'class' which isn't a matter of class, it is a matter of racism which is what led to the poverty to begin with.

We are one of the richest countries in the world and we ignore our native problem like we had nothing to do with it, as though we are not our brothers' keepers. The people living today may not have personally done what was done to the natives, but there is a responsibility. It is not easy to just pull yourself up by your bootstraps when someone stole your boots. And it isn't up to us to judge others but to help our brothers, whoever they may be, in whatever need they happen to be.

Of course, I should say here that a lot of people think I'm a little insane in that there isn't any street anywhere I'm afraid to walk down, in any city. When people ask me for money, I give them money with a "God bless you." I've never had any problems. The God who brought the children of Israel out of slavery across the Red Sea is surely able to keep me from harm if he wishes to. But I haven't read anywhere where I should pass by or not give to someone who asks me for anything.

Who you are isn't always your choice. My half black and half white nieces and nephews are always going to have their every move judged by the black color of their skin. If they get into trouble as teenagers, there are people who will attribute that to their black skin. The fact that they are half-white will never enter into it. They will be judged by blacks and whites alike as black people, not as whites. There will be people who will not hire them because they are black. They won't be told that's the reason, but that will be the reason.

They will never have the choice to claim only their white heritage. They shouldn't have to make a choice, but that's not really the point. They will have to deal with things that I, as a white person, will never have even considered. I never have to wonder if I'm turned down for a job or someone seems unfriendly to me if it is because of my skin color. They will wonder that. Although, again, the circumstances here are quite a bit different since there are a lot fewer blacks here. Most of the racism is directed at Native Canadians, and it is there, believe me, and as strongly as the racism against blacks in the US.

Anyway, my main thing that I don't understand is how "God bless America" said in church either by or related to a political situation isn't taking God's name in vain and isn't perceived to be a bad thing, and "God damn America" said in church and either by or related to a political thing is a bad thing. I don't get it.

I don't see how you can have things both ways. Either all mention of political things should be kept out of church (which I am highly for) or not. I remember when Bush was running for president, there was a pastor somewhere who apparently threatened his flock with excommunication if they didn't vote Republican. There was an outcry, but it wasn't nearly the outcry that there has been over an oppressed people calling attention to injustice.

And just to be perfectly clear for anyone who reads this post, I'm not American, don't vote, and it's not about whether Obama should or shouldn't be president.

Layla

Quick responses

2008-03-25T08:38:00.000-07:00

A garage band sounds like fun! :) Yes, I really do sing poorly. If I got training and all, I would probably be a half-way decent alto - but most of the current church music is set for tenor/soprano voices and I've nothing in that range. Fortunately you can't hear me for the guitars. I remember going to women's Bible study and we'd have a small group with just a woman and her guitar to lead us... this woman had a very light soprano and I sounded like an ox singing along. I do love to sing! Well, at least someday our Maker will tune up what He's given me and point me in the correct direction for song.

As for the objection - yes, I object to a pastor saying "God Damn America". I don't care why he said it. He's a *pastor*. If a political leader says it, if an actor says it, whatever - I won't care for that person, but I hardly think they're shirking their duties. But I don't hear Paul saying, "God damn Rome" - a much worse place to live. Nor do Christians in other countries, far more repressive than our own, call from the pulpit for damnation to come on a country. Either he was taking the name of our Lord in vain or he was being serious - either is disgusting.

I think, and have thought for a long time, that race problems in America are largely a camoflague for class problems. We have a taboo about discussing class issues in America -we are supposedly all middle class! There is nothing that prevents someone of any color in America from climbing to the top - provided they have the self-expectations to do so. That comes with class. Education, in my opinion, means less what you know that what you expect of yourself to achieve. I could give you endless examples from my own family and my inlaws. Yes, there is still some racism, but *far* less than you might think. Certainly less racism that would affect opportunity (for instance I can't even imagine race being taken into negative effect in a hiring situation, and non-white/Asian races are given college entrance preference). Yes - African-American males are disproportionally in jails, etc. Is that racial? I'd say 20% race, 80% class. If you grow up in poverty, around people who expect nothing of themselves other than survival, and value is given to surface things - of course your opportunities will be limited.

There's no fix outside of our Lord's return. Or a total do-over... in which case we'll have new problems. (Okay, our grandchildren will - we will be frantically dealing with survival).

Don't know if this was helpful at all... :)

This and that

2008-03-24T00:35:00.000-07:00

Hmmm. Is your singing dreadful? The reason I ask is I am pretty sure I am going to be having a garage band this year. I always wanted to be part of a garage band and at over forty, I seem to have lost all shame. Since you're under forty, I can tell you it's a great relief not to worry about what people might think. One of the benefits to being over forty.

My grandmother was a fiddle player as well as a guitar player and she and her five sisters had quite a singing group. My great-grandfather was a shocking man because he was a fiddle player who welcomed all to his home where he fiddled away as his five beautiful daughters danced the night away with the young men who came a courting.

Anyway, my parents played the guitar and the harmonica and my mother at least has lost all shame. Bob Dylan is her favorite singer. I have various brothers-in-law and nephews who are also into the guitar and I think my shamelessness has finally convinced them to lose theirs. So so far I have four guitarists, if I count myself, two trumpet players, alas no drummers, but the parents of one of my BILs play the clarinet. And one possible mandolin player. I have two seed-filled foreign things that someone can shake in time to the music. Surely something can come of that this summer. Doncha think?

I get to the the girl singer as well since no one else is volunteering at this point. I am calling this my second childhood and we are all practising that 80s shake of the head that everyone had to get the shaggy hair out of our face. I emailed everyone a bunch of songs to practise with and when the snow is gone and the dog poop raked up, hopefully once or twice a month, we will shake, rattle and roll.

Anyway, back to Obama or maybe Jeremiah Wright, the pastor. What was the horrible thing he said in your opinion?

First of all, I thought that the controversy which seems to be mainly among white Americans, not blacks, illustrates perfectly my opposition to religion in politics as practised in the US. However, that being said, I also thought it illustrated the differences between Christian blacks and whites in the sense that unlike many who have been adversely affected by missionary efforts that decimated entire cultures and left people without anything to lean on, black American slaves took heart from the stories of Moses leading the children of Israel out of bondage. They took the gospel of Christ, and the dignity that we are all children of God and there is in Christ, neither slave nor free, to heart and it is that sort of politicising that led to the eventual abolishment of slavery. Christ gives strength to the prisioners and gives them courage to fight (without weapons) for freedom.

I don't think that most white Americans get it really. In a very real sense slavery only ended with the Civil Rights movement in the 60s when school finally became integrated and people weren't sent to the back of the bus based on race. That is not a long time for anyone to get over it, although it is always easy for the person who wasn't wronged to believe that the wronged party should just get over it already.

Slavery, particularly as practised in the US destroyed families, destroyed human dignity and self-worth, something that blacks have yet to recover from. And it is debatable whether US foreign policy has done more good than harm, on the scale of things. One can make an argument for the US in terms of WW2 but US policy has destroyed and kept in poverty most of Latin America. Like the whole which came first, the chicken or the egg, it becomes a question of whether two wrongs make a right or whether two rights right a wrong. But there are plenty of people all over the world who have every reason to damn America.

It's strange to me how white Americans can applaud a politician speaking in a white church and saying "God bless America" and promoting the idea that the US is somehow better morally than other nations and that is not seen as a bad thing, but when a member of a race that is still oppressed says the opposite, that suddenly is a bad thing.

That's my beef with religion and politics and why I just don't vote any more. Everything seems to be a choice between the least of evils and nothing is actually a choice for the good.

Although, and I don't know if you heard it at all, but the speech that Obama gave after all the controversy and reruns of J. Wright's sermons, was brilliant. I don't believe that Obama will ever be president but that speech will take its place in the history books along with Martin Luther's "I Have a Dream" and Kennedy's "Ask not what your country can do for you."

It was a grownup speech. He didn't throw anyone to the wolves just because it was politically expedient to do so. He very neatly and clearly expressed the racial divisions as they are, not how people like to pretend they are, right down to his white grandmother expressing her fear of black men on the street to her dearly loved black grandson without ever seeing the irony in that.

My utter distaste for politics and religion aside, I stood up and cheered when I heard that. I have mixed-race nieces and nephews, and in him, I saw them, trying to walk the line between their two cultures.

Layla

Welcome back!

2008-03-23T08:56:00.001-07:00

And Happy Easter... He is Risen! :)

Good Friday services were needed and a true blessing here as well. I went in exhausted and beaten down from a long bad day and walked out full of my Savior's love. Sure, my church is noisy (oh boy howdy are we noisy) but it is definitely a "joyful noise unto the Lord". I'm old-school and really prefer organ and piano music, but the electric guitar and amplifiers do serve to break down the barriers - you are *there*. And no one can hear my dreadful singing, no matter how loud I want to be! :)

As for Obama... I work very diligently to ignore the candidates until they've figured out who the ones you can actually vote for are. Too many years have passed where I've become enamored of someone early on and they've garnered virtually none of the votes needed to even to the real election. But I couldn't completely ignore the foo-foo-rah about his pastor's remarks. Frankly - his pastor has said some horrible things. Do I think that means that Obama follows his pastor? Doubtful. I ... am sorry, my dear. I don't like any politician, and I tend to think that they do the most politically expedient thing rather than the most honest thing. Claiming religion is one of those things - unless I can see proof in action (and action going back well before elections were part of the picture) I tend to think they call themselves "Christians" because most Americans are Christians at least in name. Is Obama's religion that sort? No clue - as I said, I've been ignoring it most diligently. I would counsel, however, not to become too enamored of anyone whose charisma is powerful. Charisma, generally speaking, is rarely given to our brothers and sisters in Christ. My concern is that some of Obama's more vocal and powerful supporters are not the sort that I would wish to ally myself with.

Then again... I am a cheerful optimistic fatalist and I'm rather expecting the end of the world in the next few years, so expecting to get a President that I could trust and be proud of is far too much to ask. Instead I'm expecting someone who will sell his or her soul to the AntiChrist *or* someone who dies in office and is replaced by someone who will.

Speaking of which, I read the other day that the euro will be going paperless in 2010. Interesting? Ah yes, the world is extremely interesting - more so every day.

Very glad to hear that you've been so wrapped up in your project that you've been happily unaware of time passing by. :) I think it's time for me to go make coffee and get my kids ready for Easter Sunday School.

Christ is Risen

2008-03-23T06:58:00.000-07:00

On Good Friday we went to a concert of Mozart's Requiem. The old stone church we attend once or twice a year unfortunately has no parking lot and the city has grown up around it which meant we had to walk six blocks.

I have been reflecting on some particularly bad times some years ago, which you know about in part, dear girl, and how reassuring I found it that in every country I lived in (Europe), in each village there was a church steeple to remind me that my dear Lord was known here too and that no matter what, I was not as alone as I felt. That although I was quite without any earthly relations where I was, I was not without the more important kinships that Jesus, through his blood, made possible.

Happy Easter.

Layla

Obama

2008-03-22T13:16:00.000-07:00

First of all, dear lady, I'm so sorry I've been MIA. *Giving myself a quick, hard slap across the face.* I've still been busy with what I had privately emailed you about. Not that is a good excuse at all.

I have a ton of questions about Barack Obama for you. The way that fits into this board, is my usual I-don't-get-the-way-Americans-mix-religion-and-politics-but-I-don't-like-it.

I like Obama though. Political views completely aside, just as a human being he is the most charismatic person I can ever remember seeing. Canadians are crazy about him and from what I hear he has the same effect in other countries. I know politics don't interest you overly much but I've been wondering if you caught any of the Obama-Jeremiah Wright pastor stuff on the news?

If so, what do you think about it? I won't ask any more just now in this post since I don't know what you've been following.

Layla

sermon link

2008-03-02T19:03:00.000-08:00

We disagree quite often on the judgement of believers and the loss of salvation, this sermon goes over the various judgements, including those pertaining to believers, and I think clears up my position quite nicely (it should since I've been listening to Dr. McGee since I was a preschooler).

http://www.oneplace.com/ministries/Thru_The_Bible_Sunday_Sermon/Archives.asp

Definitely disagreeing

2008-02-28T08:44:00.000-08:00

For the first - corporate worship - I think most of our disagreement comes from cultural factors. When you say, "Everyone worshipping God sincerely" I look around and see 85% of my church doing just that. Frankly, there's little or no pressure here to be anywhere in particular on Sunday morning - the people in church (other than the odd spouse or whatnot) are there because *they* want to be there. I honestly expect to stand next to you and a million or five other people and sing praise songs in Heaven, jointly worshipping our Lord. So YES - that's what I meant. There is definitely a vibe there, worshipping with other Christians, that is different than the vibe I get in my 'prayer closet'. I wouldn't want to do without either of them. Now, do we have to identify with that congregation? No... I don't think we do. It can be helpful, for the reasons I posted a few go-rounds ago, but not at all necessary.

We are, and continue to be, at total odds with OSAS. I am not sure that salvation comes at repeating a phrase with no heart behind it - I think we can agree there wholeheartedly - but once you have been given salvation, it is yours forever. When you say, That's what once-saved-always-saved reminds me of. That there is a prize awarded to everyone who runs the race. 1 Cor. 9: Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? I think of works based salvation. We aren't running the race to be saved!! We are running the race to receive awards in Heaven, to receive the "well done, good and faithful servant" from the lips of our Savior. *Not* everyone will receive a prize. We are not promised equality in Heaven, we are promised justice. Our good works will be known, and the chaff will be burnt off before we get there. It would be the worst kind of mockery for me to be given the same award as someone who was beaten to death for our Savior's name.

Which brings me to more cheery and agreeable topics... :) What do you *want* in Heaven? I know the first thing I am looking forward to is getting rid of the old nature - getting rid of the capability to hurt those around me, to do wrong, to misstep. I'm looking forward to a new body (hopefully one that looks like I think I *ought* to look). I'm hoping for eons to sit under a tree near a street of gold, talking to my friends and watching Heaven roll past.