Love Like a Hurricane
May 9, 2014 Leave a comment
David Crowder Band – How He Loves
Human Rights Repository
May 4, 2014 Leave a comment
“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me, if you know so much. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone– God speaking to Job (38:4-6)
The current vision of ‘rights’ held by Progressives (the “anointed”) as contained in a quote from Thomas Sowell, economist:
“The anointed want to eliminate stress, challenge, striving, and competition. They want the necessities of life to be supplied as “rights” ~ which is to say, at the taxpayer’s expense, without anyone’s being forced to work for those necessities, except of course the taxpayers.
Nothing is to be earned. “Self-esteem” is to be dispensed to school children as largess from the teacher. Adults are to have their medical care and other necessities dispensed as largess from the government. People are to be mixed by race and sex and whatever else the anointed want to take into account, in order to present whatever kind of picture the anointed think should be presented.
This is the vision of human beings as livestock to be fed by the government and herded and tended by the anointed. All the things that make us human beings are to be removed from our lives and we are to live as denatured creatures and directed by our betters. (emphasis mine)
Those things that help human beings be independent and self-reliant ~ whether automobiles, guns, the free market, or vouchers ~ provoke instant hostility from the anointed.”
Today I am asking questions. Explore with me the idea of ‘rights.’
The fundamental notion of Human Rights comes from…random genetic behavioral adaptations, the social constructs of a group of dabbling socio-political philosophers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and John Stuart Mill, or as emanating from Kant’s Golden Rule-like categorical imperatives or as ad hoc thoughts based on current information… or ultimately and essentially from a Sovereign God?
Let’s start with what we do know about rights and where they emanate from.
Our US Declaration of Independence states that God Himself bestowed our rights and liberties upon us:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”.).
Hold the “self-evident” thought for a second. Before discussing that a priori concept, I think we can all agree that all men are created equal (some people being more equal than others if you accept materialism’s income inequality as a proper test of justice. The concept of collective envy ruminating as social justice which soon demands tyranny, is wonderfully portrayed in George Orwell’s Animal Farm.)
An “inalienable right” defined: a right according to natural law, a right that cannot be taken away, denied, or transferred. In other words, you don’t own the right to rights. They are a priori, naturally occurring.
Where does natural law come from? We understand legal rights as being those rights determined by man-made laws. But natural law, where does natural law come from?
Some ideas of natural or inalienable rights at the very least dates back to the Greek Stoics – Hellenistic Philosophers were concerned about cosmic determinism and free will. They maintained that proper behavior, not words alone but well-meaning-self-limiting actions, revealed one’s non-predetermined or free will “rights.”
Later, Catholic law would take up the strophe. Then it passed to the Middle Ages after which it coursed through the Reformation then the Enlightenment and right up to my post today. I write this post within a God-bestowed natural law and a man-made legal right of free speech. How convenient!
Are natural rights only generated from reason as Immanuel Kant ‘reasoned’ or are they God-given and then realized? Atheists might prefer man-made reason as opposed to an Intelligent Designer. But the source of their own reasoning is left outside the premises (yeah, I know).
But, If we start with a Intelligent Designer who spoke the Big Bang into existence and then, as most scientists do, recognize an orderly precisely tuned universe held together by four fundamental physical constants called gravity, the strong and weak nuclear forces and electromagnetism and the thought that perhaps all four constants are manifestation of a single underlying and unifying force then we eventually and evidentially return to an Intelligent Designer.
This Intelligent Designer (ID) decided, that after everything had cooled down from the monstrously hot plasma occurring from the Big Bang, that out of the annihilating ’battle’ between the equal forces of matter and anti-matter, that matter would ‘carpe diem’ –seize the day.
This programmed mismatch of matter over antimatter became our physical Genesis, our physical beginnings. We came forth out of God’s spoken word as Remnants of an exploding universe. And, this genesis is recorded in the elements and compounds that compose our very bodies. But there is more to us than what you see and carry around with you.
Now, this same Designer wrote the book on His universe – the Holy Scriptures. This book doesn’t lay out the physical constants. The Book assumes them to be already at work.
It is from man’s earliest recorded philosophy book The Book of Job that we learn about God’s ways with mankind. The discourse between God and man ultimately leads to Job’s sevenfold blessing but not without a lot of hard lessons learned about a human’s ‘rights’ along the way. The Intelligent Designer didn’t have to speak at all but he did speak and made Himself known. He gave Job the right to speak but up to a point. This is natural law in early human drama.
In Genesis we learn that God gave man and woman the ‘right’ to eat of every tree in the garden except for a certain tree. “Don’t go there,” God said. “That is not your right.” This is natural law revealed in the earliest human drama known to man.
Boundaries, like physical constants that keep us from spinning out of control, were set in place for mankind. Do most anything but don’t do ‘these’ things I have told you about. You have this right but not this right. There are only God-known reasons for specific dos and don’ts. This is natural law.
Example: God decided that if the weak nuclear force, this specific one out of the four physical constants, if it varied at all from its constant ‘duty’ it would mean the instant destruction of our planet by the sun. I’m glad God is not fickle. He deals in constants.
Well, man’s free will, unlike gravity, is free to transgress some of God’s prescribed boundaries. So, knowing this beforehand, God wrote things he wanted his people to know in stone – the Ten Commandments. This is natural law.
“Thou shalt…” is not a warranty list of dos and don’ts that would keep the manufacturer happy and out of the picture if you practiced them. This list is an acknowledgment of our natural rights within prescribed boundaries, within constants. This list is the first Bill of Rights and it is not open-ended. It is constrained by justice in dealing with your fellow man.
Something to think about: “We hold these truths to be self-evident…”
Self-evident truth? Like the four physical constants that scientists have discovered and then verified and now count on to be the same day after day?
As stated above, mankind is endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights that are self-evident. Truths, inalienable rights, natural law…self-evident. Sound familiar?
The Apostle Paul wrote about self-evident truth in Romans Chapter 5:
Romans 5:18
For the wrath of God is unveiled from heaven against all the ungodliness and injustice performed by people who use injustice to suppress the truth. What can be known about God, you see, is plain to them, since God has made it plain to them. There are, of course, things about God which can’t been known and seen: namely, his eternal power and deity. But ever since the world was created, they have known and seen in things that he has made. As a result, they have no excuse: they knew God, but didn’t honor him as God or thank him. Instead, they learned to think in useless ways, and their unwise heart grew….they did not see fit to hold on to a knowledge of God, God gave them up to an unfit mind, so that they would behave inappropriately. (emphasis mine)
“They learned to think in useless ways…”
Johns Stuart Mill proposed that truth and virtue originate from unconventional wisdom and by living as a non-conformist also known as his ‘experiments in living. Mill didn’t reflect on the Big picture.
Self-centered individualism and thinking in useless ways with unwise hearts while refusing acknowledgment of God have become the ‘constants’ of our souls. It has made us self-indulgent and ‘preachy’ about Human Rights while denying the self-evident truth.
At all times we are free to acknowledge God and discourse with Him or not. God’s grace as revealed in Jesus’ death and resurrection allows us to have a discussion with Him about our sin. The natural law is still in place but be we are now able to abide by it using the Constant power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus did not come, as he said, to destroy the law and the prophets. The natural law he planted as a cornerstone is still there.
Man’s pride, his ‘right’ to be atheistic may keep him from discourse with God, but God is Constant. He is righteously faithful to his word.
It is important to note that the single underlying, unifying assumption behind the list of “Ten” is that mankind has been given freedom to do whatever he wills, even fly, (but only within the constants of physics).
We all agree that Man was created with natural rights ~ a freedom to act. But after the Fall man’s rights lost their constant factor, their electromagnetic compass needle which always pointed toward God.
Inalienable rights are great but to be of any meaning they need the boundaries and the foundation cornerstone of natural law already in place whereby we align our lives with self-evident truth.
Without that compass needle or the cornerstone our ‘rights’ have become “values”, values that ‘search’ much like valence electrons looking for a place to park in a hook-up culture. One’s identity is no longer elementary and stable. And, our human rights crusades end in cruel and foolish anti-human jokes such as Global Warming.
The idea of Human Rights. Does it come from…random genetic behavioral adaptations, a French philosopher, from ‘experiments in living,’ ad hoc thoughts based on current information, an inordinate desire to “want the necessities of life to be supplied as rights” or from an Intelligent Designer who set them in place in order to show His love for us?
A nation that returned to God would be a nation that returned to Intelligent Design, to its cornerstone… and to its right mind. And, Human Rights could then be lazar-aligned from a fixed place in the universe.
Shall mortal man be more just than God? shall a man be more pure than his maker?
Job, 4. 17
Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: but I will maintain mine own ways before him.
Job, 13. 15
“Mortals, born of woman, are of few days and full of trouble.
They spring up like flowers and wither away; like fleeting shadows, they do not endure.
Job, 14. 1
Miserable comforters are ye all.
Job, 16. 2
“Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades? Can you loosen Orion’s belt?
Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons or lead out the Bear with its cubs?
Do you know the laws of the heavens? Can you set up God’s dominion over the earth?
“Can you raise your voice to the clouds and cover yourself with a flood of water?
Do you send the lightning bolts on their way? Do they report to you, ‘Here we are’?
Who gives the ibis wisdom or gives the rooster understanding?…
Who provides food for the raven when its young cry out to God and wander about for lack of food?
Job, 38. 31-41
“Look at Behemoth, which I made along with you and which feeds on grass like an ox.
Job, 40. 15
“So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning.”
Job, 42. 12
Man-Made Panic: Climate Change & Anti-Industrialism
May 2, 2014 Leave a comment
Fear of industry is major catalyst of Climate Change panic. The panic and NOT global warming is man-made:
Payoffs, Protection Money and the Persecuting PA
April 28, 2014 Leave a comment
Here is a true perspective of the situation in Israel regarding the PA.
Video H/T Legal Insurrection’s post:
Palestinian Christian woman threatened after video critical of attacks on Israel
Women, wealth & war – Islam’s perverted male only ‘human rights’ club based on antinomianism and godlessness. See and hear for yourself.
“Doubly Dead and Uprooted”
April 27, 2014 Leave a comment
The title of this post comes from the following scripture passage, written by Judah.
Judah identifies himself first as a slave of the Lord Jesus and then as the brother of James, the leader of the church in Jerusalem. Judah is the half-brother of the Lord Jesus.
Judah tells us that he earnestly wanted to write about God’s salvation realized but he turns quickly to the false teaching among his “beloved ones.” These false teachings sprung up in the early days of the church and even while the apostles, the eye witnesses, were still alive.
Beware: false teaching is happening everywhere around us, even more so since the first century AD.
In those days Gnostic teaching of the antinomian type was creeping into the church teaching. The Gnostic “false teachers” viewed the material as evil and the spiritual as good. Thus they cultivated their ‘spiritual’ lives and let the flesh to do whatever it desired to do. In effect, they gave license for all kinds of fleshy lawlessness including acceptance of the sexual perversion of homosexuality as normative within the church of the Lord Jesus.
Gnosticism exists today in all its lawless or antinomian forms within many our churches: Catholic, Episcopal, Presbyterian, Lutheran and Evangelical.
Here is Judah’s letter:
The Letter of Judah
Contend for the faith
Judah, slave of Jesus the Messiah, brother of James, to those who are called, the people whom God loves and whom Jesus, the Messiah, keeps safe! May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you.
Beloved, I was doing my best to write to you about the rescue in which we share, but I found it necessary to write to you to urge you to struggle hard for the faith which was once and for all given to God’s people. Some people have sneaked in among you, it seems, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation ~ ungodly people, who are transforming God’s grace into licentiousness, and denying the one and only master, our Lord Jesus the Messiah.
False Teachers
I do want to remind you, even though you know it all well, that when the Lord once and for all delivered his people out of Egypt, he subsequently destroyed those who did not believe. In the same way, when some of the angels did not keep to their rightful place of authority, but abandoned their own home, he kept them under conditions of darkness and in eternal chains to await the judgment of the great day. In similar fashion, Sodom, Gomorrah, and the cities round about, which had lived in gross immorality and lusted after unnatural flesh, are set before us as a pattern, undergoing the punishment of endless fire.
However, these people are behaving in the same way! They are dreaming their way into defiling their flesh, rejecting authority, and cursing the glorious ones. Even Michael the archangel, when disputing with the devil about the body of Moses, did not presume to lay a charge against him of blasphemy, but simply said, “The Lord rebuke you.” These people, however curse anything they don’t know. They are like dumb animals; there are some things they understand instinctively ~ but it is these very things that destroy them. A curse on them! They go off in the way of Cain; they give themselves over for money into Balaam’s deceitful ways; they are destroyed in Korah’s rebellion. These are the ones who pollute your love-feasts; they share your table without fear while simply looking after their own needs. They are waterless clouds blown along by the winds. They are the fruitless autumn trees, doubly dead and uprooted. They are stormy waves out at sea, splashing up their own shameful ways. They are wandering stars, and the deepest everlasting darkness has been kept for them in particular.
Enoch, the seventh in line from Adam, prophesied about these people. “Look!” he said. “The Lord comes with ten thousand of his holy ones, to perform judgment against all, and to charge every human being with all the ungodly ways in which they have done ungodly things, and with every harsh word which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.” These people are always grumbling and complaining, chasing off after their own desires. From their mouths come arrogant words, buttering people up for the sake of gain.
Rescued by God’s Power
But you, my beloved ones, remember the words that were spoken before by the apostles of our Lord Jesus the Messiah. “In the last time,” they said to you, “there will be scornful people who follow their own ungodly desires.” These are the people who cause divisions. They are living on the merely human level; they do not have the spirit. But you, beloved ones, build yourselves up in your most holy fait. Pray in the holy spirit. Keep yourselves in the love of god, as you wait for our Lord Jesus the Messiah to show you mercy which leads to the life of the age to come.
With some people who are wavering, you must show mercy. Some you must rescue, snatching them from the fire. To others you must show mercy, but with fear, hating even the clothes that have been defiled by the flesh.
Now to the one who is able to keep you standing upright, and to present you before his glory, undefiled and joyful ~to the one and only God, our savior through Jesus the Messiah our Lord, be glory, majesty, power, and authority before all ages, and now, and to all the ages to come. Amen. (emphasis mine)
“Doubly Dead and Uprooted” aptly describes the moral relativism, the lawlessness, of our day. People are uprooted from absolute truth and are just dead tree limbs, blown about by the winds and whims of our “values” culture.
I have written about our culture’s ‘uprooting’ in previous posts.
America’s ‘Devalued’ Moral Currency
Tear Down That Anthropocentricity
Many churches now teach a ‘feel-good gospel’ that is ‘inclusive’ …but also damning.
With the church failing in its mission to make disciples, America is now rebuilding itself on a foundation of sand, of lawlessness, much like Europe has already done. We will soon be washed away. The torrents will come.
My “beloved ones’: Reading Judah’s letter you can’t help notice that as someone who grew up with Jesus Judah understood his half-brother Jesus from his orthodox Jewish perspective to be the anticipated Messiah.
Finally and most important of all, Judah mentions Jesus the “Messiah” over and over again within this short missive. The Kingdom of God on earth began in those days and continues to the present! Judah urged his brothers and sisters in the faith, including us, “to contend for the faith that was once entrusted to the saints.”
(Tree limb picture from Aerophant.com)
Resurrection Doesn’t Stop There
April 19, 2014 1 Comment
Heaven
Beyond “Imagine“,
There, You Are.
Before me
Unbound Substantive Reality, The Living Word
Lifted from gilded pages to eternity’s masthead: “Alpha and Omega.”
He now walks among us with beard and white gown,
A purple sash hides a pierced side,
He is the only Disfigured One among us,
The walking Redeemed.
He is Truth Unfiltered,
Full-Colored, not developed black and white,
Heaven’s Endless Searching Light,
Light once diffused and then restored,
Among prisms of white calla lilies.
Heaven,
A hope not disappointed, no longer dot-to-dot discovered, And,
A harvest, garnering displaced ones into
The dancing embrace of the Triune God:
“That where I am, there you may also be.”
Beyond “Imagine“,
Here I am ~ a harlot,
My redemption once hanging by a Scarlet Thread,
Now I’m dancing in the streets!
Holy, Holy, Holy. Trisagion.
Come, Lord Jesus.
© Sallyparadise.com, 2014, All Rights Reserved
White lilies from www.flowers-magazine.com
Wait Here and Watch
April 18, 2014 Leave a comment
After saying these things, Jesus went forth with his disciples beyond the torrent of Cedron, where there was a garden…” (John 18:1) “According to his custom” adds Luke.
“And they came to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, ‘Sit here, while I pray.’ And he took with him Peter James and John, and began to feel dread and to be exceedingly troubled. And he said to them, My soul is sad, even unto death. Wait here and watch.’…”
A terrible sadness overcomes our Lord ~ sadness “unto death” says the Holy Scripture. Then Jesus tells also the three to wait~perhaps they are surprised to hear him say they should watch with him; it is probably the first time he has ever asked them to. Alone, he advances a few paces, falls on his face and prays…
What does faith tell us? Before all else who this man is there on his knees – the Son of God in the simplest sense of the word. For that reason he sees existence in its ultimate reality.
Wherever we encounter Jesus, it is as the Knowing One, as he who knows about man and world. All others are blind; only his eyes are all-seeing, and they see through to the very ground of human depravity. The forlornness Jesus beholds there embraces the whole of human existence. And he does not see it as one who has broken through to spiritual health and clarity with the help of grace. Jesus’ knowledge of sin is not like that of fallen mankind; he knows about it as God knows – hence the awful transparency of that knowledge.
Hence the immeasurable loneliness. He is really the Seer among the blind, sole sensitive one among beings who lost their touch, the only free and self-possessed one in the midst of general confusion.
Jesus’ consciousness of the world’s corruption is not grounded in the world and therefore the prisoner of existence. It springs from above, from God, and enfolds the whole globe, seeing as God sees: around existence, through existence, outwards from existence. Moreover, Jesus’ divine consciousness, before which everything is stripped and lucid, is not extrinsic, but intrinsic, realized in his living self. He knows with his human intellect, feels the world’s forlornness with his human heart. And, the sorrow of it, incapable of ripping the eternal God from his bliss, becomes in Christ’s human soul unutterable agony. From this knowledge comes a terrible and unrelenting earnestness, knowledge that underlies every word he speaks and everything he does. It pulses through his whole being and proclaims itself in the least detail of his fate. Here lies the root of Christ’s inapproachable loneliness. What human understanding and sympathy could possibly reach into this realm in which the Savior shoulders alone the yoke of the world? From this point of view Jesus was always a sufferer, and would have been one even if men had accepted his message of faith and love; even if salvation had been accomplished and the kingdom established alone by proclamation and acceptance, sparing him the bitter way of the cross. Even then, his whole life would have been inconceivably painful, for he would have been constantly aware of the world sin in the sight of a God he knew to be holy and all love; and he would have borne this terrible and inaccessible knowledge alone. In the hour of Gethsemane its ever-present pain swells to a paroxysm.
****
Selections from the chapter Gethsemane, from the The Lord by Romano Guardini
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Lord, I will wait and watch with you this day.
“We’re On A Mission From God”
March 29, 2014 Leave a comment
Lent may be a good time for this discourse…
“If you live today, you breath in nihilism … it’s the gas you breathe. If I hadn’t had the Church to fight it with or to tell me the necessity of fighting it, I would be the stinkingest logical positivist you ever saw right now.”
― Flannery O’Connor
I have not read Dr. Thomas Howard’s book “Evangelical is not Enough: Worship of God in Liturgy and Sacrament.” A Goodreads description about the book piqued my interest.
After reading the brief synopsis and a thread of comments about the book, I would have to say that I have perhaps made a similar journey away from formal Evangelicalism. My reasons may be similar to Howard’s, but, as mentioned, I haven’t read his book.
My own journey began with seeking wisdom and authentic Christianity. In my thirties I would find a wellspring of wisdom and a dose of ‘real’ Christianity from reading the works of Saint Teresa of Avila and some of the church fathers.
In 1984 I came across “A Life of Prayer” by St. Teresa of Avila. The book, the abridged edition out of Multnomah Press copyright 1983, was one in a series of “Classics of Faith and Devotion.”
The preface, written by Dr. James Houston a University Lecturer at Oxford University and later Chancellor of Regent College, notes that “The goal for the reader of these books is not to seek information. Instead, these volumes teach one about living wisely…Nor are these books “how-to” kits or texts…They guide us to “be” authentic, and not necessarily help us to promote more professional activities.” But I am ahead of myself.
“You have to quit confusing a madness with a mission.”
― Flannery O’Connor
I would like to share some of my journey, a condensed version, from formal Evangelicalism to Anglicanism with you. Where to begin? I’ll start like many of those who commented on Howard’s book: I was born and raised in an Evangelical Christian home.
While my parents were attending Moody Bible Institute as married students I was born. Voilà! Orbiting in such a universe my life rotated around daily Scripture reading, teaching and preaching. The ‘Word’ was heard it everywhere in my world – our small apartments.
The Word resounded from a tiny Zenith radio tuned to MBI’s flagship station WMBI. My mother had the radio tuned in and turned on every day while she worked around the house, prepared meals and changed you know who.
My earliest remembrances of the WMBI were of Aunt Theresa Worman and the KYB club (Know Your Bible Club). Through this and many other radio programs I would became bathed in Sola Scriptura at a very early age.
Later, along with my younger siblings, all of us sitting around the dinner table, my mother would read a chapter out of the book of Proverbs after each meal. And, often a missionary story as well. I also memorized tons of Scripture for Sunday School memorization contests.
With such an influx of spiritual truth each of us kids would become instilled with a desire to become missionaries or pastors or ministry involved from our earliest ages. For me, as I would later surmise, seeking wisdom, knowledge and a good understanding would be my life’s journey. I had to have the Truth – REALITY – and the discernment to know the Truth when I found it. I prayed for wisdom, knowledge and a good understanding every day.
Like my parents before me I attended Moody Bible Institute, in the ‘70s. I mainly studied Christian Education, music (I play the trumpet), Old and New Testament Scriptures and Koine (New Testament) Greek.
In my required first Personal Evangelism course I was taught that Catholicism was a cult just as Jehovah’s Witness and Mormonism are cults. It would be years before I eradicated that thinking from my head. In the mean time, though, I felt pretty proud of myself being an in the ‘know’ “Protestant.” I found out later that this smugness was a two-way street.
“Smugness is the Great Catholic Sin.”
― Flannery O’Connor
Now, after all of the jumbled background I’ve laid out here, let’s get back to the reason I ‘switched’ turf. Reading would play an important role in my ‘change.’
St. Teresa, a Catholic, wrote mainly about prayer and the inner life with God. Her work is filled with imagery, primarily three images:
There is the Journey or Pilgrimage of the soul: the coming home to the Truth, to the Presence.
There is the image of the Castle representing the wholeness of the soul where “His Majesty” dwells. As James M. Houston’s Editor’s Note points out: “For it is God’s presence within the soul of man that gives it such spaciousness and delight. How contrastive is Kafka’s Castle with its fearful absence of the landlord depicting not only the absence of the earthly father of the novelist, but also Kafka’s alienation from God.”
The soul St. Teresa depicts “is the domicile of His majesty.”
Water is the third image. Here Teresa refers to prayer. She will talk about water’s scarcity during the journey and water from a deep well of meditation, water as a conduit or viaduct poured into us as joy or as fresh rain, replenishing the parched soul.
Another image, one that I use often in prayer, is the garden of the soul. I’ll talk about this more in another post.
To put it mildly, back in the day, I wasn’t hearing anything like the above from the preachers or from the ‘Christian’ radio or from…Christians. What I was hearing, every single Sunday in E-Free (The Evangelical Free church) was that if you wanted to trust Jesus as your Savior or if you wanted to rededicate your life for the umptee-umph time to the Lord then raise your hand, walk down the aisle and kneel.
It seemed to me that people just wanted to relive their rebirth experience, perhaps vicariously through someone else. But, please don’t ask those in attendance to drink or eat anything but milk. The meat of the word was left on the side. After many years of this diet I hungered for more solid food.
And what I hungered for was the Eucharist. Not all the parading up and down the aisles.
The Evangelical Free church (E-Free Church) I attended would ‘celebrate’ communion once a month, like an after thought, like something you put on the calendar and can’t forget to do. Saving souls, replaying the salvation message tape over and over again every Sunday, selling hell fire insurance and eternal life real estate was the bottom line. That, and making ever bigger buildings to house wider aisles to accommodate the walking recycled.
Am I being polemical? Absolutely, as my Lord would be.
“I am not afraid that the book will be controversial, I’m afraid it will not be controversial.”
― Flannery O’Connor
Now, there are churches called “Seeker Churches!” What in the world?
When I was involved in the Jesus People Movement in the ‘60s and ‘70s we would hold Jesus Rallies at public high school auditoriums. This was evangelization.
There would be worship music and Street-wise Preachers. We’d invite our high school friends. Many would come to belief in Christ. We would immediately baptize them in a pond nearby. One of them was my best friend Carl.
Today churches are trying to play culture catch-up and it’s a fool’s errand.
Three point sermons? Nope. Sermons as centerpiece of Sunday morning ‘service’. Nope
The church, the ekklesia, the called out ones, are to be fed, ministered to and to minister to one another: gifts, giving, koinonia, and NOT “let’s watch a Jesus flick this morning” or “let’s listen to a raging sermon that really tells someone off” or “You really need my homiletics to get you through the next week.” No.
The church is to gather to worship as One Body the Triune God. The church universal, with those in prison, with those hurting and alone, comes together to feed on HIM. THEN, the church, fed, recharged, goes out into the world to seek the lost. Evangelization is life after Eucharist.
I chose to go to an Anglican church because the Lord had placed in my heart, since day one, the need to receive His REAL Presence through the sacrament. Yes, I have the Holy Spirit dwelling within me. He is the one saying “For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you are announcing the Lord’s death until he comes again.” I wanted the Wisdom of God dwelling in me. I need this bread and drink every week, at the very least. Come Lord Jesus.
Yes, I need the liturgy. I am a Romantic-Rationalist. I need to hear the Common Book prayers read aloud and the scriptures read aloud. I need the formal hymns AND the folk songs of the church (I listen to David Crowder at home). I need the formality, the ritual, the pomp and circumstance, the expectation of His Presence leading up to the Eucharist.
Everything that happens within the liturgy points to the Eucharist – The Great Thanksgiving. That is exactly why I attend an Anglican church – exalting His Majestic REAL Presence with us.
There is beauty in the liturgical season colors, the stained glass windows. There is beauty in the spoken prayers and Scripture. There is beauty in the truth of the hymns.
I need beauty wherever and whenever I can find it. We all do. Beauty reveals the Godhead. Beauty reveals the love of God towards us.
And yet, even though most of my spiritual needs (of gift and giver) are met at the Anglican Church, the Body of Christ can be so much more than this. The corporate church has become the church corporate – worldly configured and less Christ-centric dynamism. Think personally involved house-to-house koinonia-laying–on-of-hands-prayer and not sit-back-and-let government (or church) do “social justice.”
I have started several threads in this post. I can’t follow all of them here. Read Saint Teresa’s “A Life of Prayer.” Read the church fathers. Read Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood. Read N.T. Wright’s “How God Became King”. Read Dr. Luke’s The Acts of the Apostles. Become His Church as Followers of the Way. Feed on Him in your hearts by faith and with Thanksgiving.
“You don’t serve God by saying: the Church is ineffective, I’ll have none of it. Your pain at its lack of effectiveness is a sign of your nearness to God. We help overcome this lack of effectiveness simply by suffering on account of it. ”
― Flannery O’Connor
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“Well, toward morning the conversation turned on the Eucharist, which I, being the Catholic, was obviously supposed to defend. Mrs. Broadwater said when she was a child and received the Host, she thought of it as the Holy Ghost, He being the ‘most portable’ person of the Trinity; now she thought of it as a symbol and implied that it was a pretty good one. I then said, in a very shaky voice, ‘Well, if it’s a symbol, to hell with it.’ That was all the defense I was capable of but I realize now that this is all I will ever be able to say about it, outside of a story, except that it is the center of existence for me; all the rest of life is expendable.”
Flannery O’Connor on the Eucharist and Church History
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Cindy Wity 