Several months ago some atheist told me that I might be a Christian now, but one day I’d be an ex Christian. At the time I thought he was an idiot. Well -
The fact is, by this time next year I’m going to belong to that religion that thinks it’s wrong to put up Christmas trees. I can't remember what the religion is called but I know it's out there. My hair cutter used to be one of them. She's dead now - from cancer. I don't think she got it from being against Christmas trees. Anyhow, I'm finding a way out of this horrible ritual.
This year, while lifting the tree off the shelf in the garage, I was this close to coming off the top of the ladder. Even though it breaks down into three pieces, the stupid tree weighs just about as much as me. Lifting it back onto the shelf yesterday made me feel like one of those Strongest Man contestants on Spike tv, staggering through the sand with a full keg of beer.
To be fair, our tree has built-in lights that work every year and I am truly grateful.
But never mind that.
Christianity loves Christmas trees. I hate putting them up.
AND taking them down!
These are irreconcilable differences.
I used to think those anti-Christmas Tree people were a bunch of spiritual kooks. Not so - it’s a stroke of genius to come up with,"God says it's bad to have a Christmas Tree." And the verse they use from the Old Testament about not going out to the forest to cut down trees to decorate them.
How did they find that?
Sure it has nothing to do with Christmas trees, sure it’s about idols, but the kids don’t know that!
Nope, I’m done lugging that thing around. And to do it, I’m losing my religion.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
“In The Womb - You!!”
When my nephew was about 3 years old, he was trying to explain something to my father-in-law who was just not getting what the kid was trying to say. In response to his grandpa's question, “Where is this thing that you’re talking about?” my nephew screamed, “In the woom (couldn't’t say his r’s) you!!”
Remembering this made me think of how a family really should be like a womb. We should at birth be making a transition from one place of physical and emotional warmth and safety to another place of physical and emotional warmth and safety. Instead and unfortunately it is often far, far from this ideal. Even in homes that are known as “Christian” sometimes no one is safe from wounding or threat of abandonment. And it would be easy to say that the fix is simply to quit wounding or to quit divorcing. If it were only that easy.
The problem of course is that for our families to be places of safety, we’d need to become the kind of people who don’t WANT to wound or abandon. We need to become the kind of people for whom wounding or abandoning is simply not an option. This is nowhere more true than in the marriage relationship. Sadly our society is becoming one where we don’t even know HOW to be married.
Many vows seem to be a declaration of love (infatuation) as opposed to a promise of commitment to love.
In more and more cases, we’ve become two people simply living under the same roof, waiting for the other one to make us happy. People no longer understand the concept of being one - this with no thanks to pagan society and in many cases even the Church that these people attend. Both society and the Church (which is increasingly taking its cues from society) are losing the ability, desire and the resources to teach oneness. Instead of seeing an entire culture’s loss of ability to love as cause for alarm, society instead sees a tolerance for divorce and serial relationships, as well as partnering with whomever seems like a good choice at the time as an advancement in sophistication; it’s seen as something to be celebrated.
To be married is to give oneself to another person without regard for the response of the other. It is truly a surreal experience to sit with a “Christian” couple and fail in convincing them that they should be nice to each other, to fail in convincing these Christians that obeying Jesus, rather than disobeying Him is the right and expedient thing to do.
“Will you love . . .” was asked in the traditional wedding vows. Will you give of yourself regardless of wealth or poverty, in sickness and in health, for better or for worse.” Will you provide a womb of safety for your partner within which s/he can learn to grow in love and mercy and grace and a perpetual state of forgiveness. I’m afraid that what was once the norm is now seen as quaint and perhaps even naive. Willful submission, one to another in pagan eyes is seen as foolishness and weakness and so we have what we have. A world where “the love of many will grow cold.”
Remembering this made me think of how a family really should be like a womb. We should at birth be making a transition from one place of physical and emotional warmth and safety to another place of physical and emotional warmth and safety. Instead and unfortunately it is often far, far from this ideal. Even in homes that are known as “Christian” sometimes no one is safe from wounding or threat of abandonment. And it would be easy to say that the fix is simply to quit wounding or to quit divorcing. If it were only that easy.
The problem of course is that for our families to be places of safety, we’d need to become the kind of people who don’t WANT to wound or abandon. We need to become the kind of people for whom wounding or abandoning is simply not an option. This is nowhere more true than in the marriage relationship. Sadly our society is becoming one where we don’t even know HOW to be married.
Many vows seem to be a declaration of love (infatuation) as opposed to a promise of commitment to love.
In more and more cases, we’ve become two people simply living under the same roof, waiting for the other one to make us happy. People no longer understand the concept of being one - this with no thanks to pagan society and in many cases even the Church that these people attend. Both society and the Church (which is increasingly taking its cues from society) are losing the ability, desire and the resources to teach oneness. Instead of seeing an entire culture’s loss of ability to love as cause for alarm, society instead sees a tolerance for divorce and serial relationships, as well as partnering with whomever seems like a good choice at the time as an advancement in sophistication; it’s seen as something to be celebrated.
To be married is to give oneself to another person without regard for the response of the other. It is truly a surreal experience to sit with a “Christian” couple and fail in convincing them that they should be nice to each other, to fail in convincing these Christians that obeying Jesus, rather than disobeying Him is the right and expedient thing to do.
“Will you love . . .” was asked in the traditional wedding vows. Will you give of yourself regardless of wealth or poverty, in sickness and in health, for better or for worse.” Will you provide a womb of safety for your partner within which s/he can learn to grow in love and mercy and grace and a perpetual state of forgiveness. I’m afraid that what was once the norm is now seen as quaint and perhaps even naive. Willful submission, one to another in pagan eyes is seen as foolishness and weakness and so we have what we have. A world where “the love of many will grow cold.”
Monday, January 3, 2011
Rest For You Soul
Are you weary to the depths of your soul? Do you long for rest? Have you lost track of the locus of control in your life and found that it has somehow fallen to external factors?
A soul at rest is a soul in harmony with reality. That means that it is not dependent on circumstance for it to be at rest or at peace. In fact a soul at rest is one that is able to make right decisions regardless of circumstance because it is in a right relationship with its Creator.
“How can you have been a follower of Jesus for so long and still look for reasons to not obey Him? Have you not experienced the benefit of doing what He says?”
Those are the thoughts that run through my mind as I sit and listen to soul weary Christians. For years and sometimes decades, these people have been reacting to life in the same manner as their pagan neighbours and then they wonder why life is so difficult and why they are so worn out with worry and anxiety and sometimes even a dread of the future. Do these people not know that following Jesus, obeying Jesus makes us like “trees planted by streams of water” (Psalm 1)? How can they not know that we are blessed when we don’t walk in the counsel of the wicked; when we don’t follow the pattern of sinners; or take advice from those who mock God?
How can you know Jesus and not get that?
Someone whose soul is at rest is someone who does not live as though God does not exist. God Himself says that those deny His existence (either literally or through negligence) are fools! Why would you deliberately copy the thoughts and behaviours of fools? It’s like the Israelites in the Old Testament who, only with the help of God, defeated their idol worshipping neighbours and then, and THEN those same Israelites began to worship the very same idols that the people that had been defeated had been worshipping!
If we want a soul at rest we must not live by human wisdom. It we do, we will be constantly making huge life decision mistakes. Instead, a soul at rest delights in God’s law (Psalm 119)
If you aim for anything less that total obedience to God and with His Spirit for help, you will never, ever find rest for your soul.
A soul at rest is a soul in harmony with reality. That means that it is not dependent on circumstance for it to be at rest or at peace. In fact a soul at rest is one that is able to make right decisions regardless of circumstance because it is in a right relationship with its Creator.
“How can you have been a follower of Jesus for so long and still look for reasons to not obey Him? Have you not experienced the benefit of doing what He says?”
Those are the thoughts that run through my mind as I sit and listen to soul weary Christians. For years and sometimes decades, these people have been reacting to life in the same manner as their pagan neighbours and then they wonder why life is so difficult and why they are so worn out with worry and anxiety and sometimes even a dread of the future. Do these people not know that following Jesus, obeying Jesus makes us like “trees planted by streams of water” (Psalm 1)? How can they not know that we are blessed when we don’t walk in the counsel of the wicked; when we don’t follow the pattern of sinners; or take advice from those who mock God?
How can you know Jesus and not get that?
Someone whose soul is at rest is someone who does not live as though God does not exist. God Himself says that those deny His existence (either literally or through negligence) are fools! Why would you deliberately copy the thoughts and behaviours of fools? It’s like the Israelites in the Old Testament who, only with the help of God, defeated their idol worshipping neighbours and then, and THEN those same Israelites began to worship the very same idols that the people that had been defeated had been worshipping!
If we want a soul at rest we must not live by human wisdom. It we do, we will be constantly making huge life decision mistakes. Instead, a soul at rest delights in God’s law (Psalm 119)
If you aim for anything less that total obedience to God and with His Spirit for help, you will never, ever find rest for your soul.
“What makes life worthwhile is having a big enough objective, something which catches our imagination and lays hold of our allegiance, and this the Christian man or woman has, in a way that no other man or woman has. For what higher, more exalted, and more compelling goal can there be than to know God?”
J. I. Packer
J. I. Packer
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Correct Goals Mean Everything
If you choose something other than God’s will for your life, you will spend your entire time on earth living in disappointment and frustration.
If you hold to expectations of God that are in conflict with His revealed purposes for your life, your entire time on earth will be spent living in disappointment and frustration.
“Our inability to develop a truly God-shaped set of expectations easily could leave us wandering out the forty years or so of our adult lives in our own self-made desert wilderness. In my case, the greatest consequence of long-term, misplaced expectations has been their deadening effect on spiritual vitality. I questioned God, myself, my circumstances . . . God must not love me the way He loves others, I thought. I must be on Jesus’ blacklist. I guess I’m just one of those Christians that God can’t use.”
Carol Kent
Bottom line, our purpose in life is to love God, love those with whom we come into contact and leave the outcomes - ALL outcomes - to God.
If you hold to expectations of God that are in conflict with His revealed purposes for your life, your entire time on earth will be spent living in disappointment and frustration.
“Our inability to develop a truly God-shaped set of expectations easily could leave us wandering out the forty years or so of our adult lives in our own self-made desert wilderness. In my case, the greatest consequence of long-term, misplaced expectations has been their deadening effect on spiritual vitality. I questioned God, myself, my circumstances . . . God must not love me the way He loves others, I thought. I must be on Jesus’ blacklist. I guess I’m just one of those Christians that God can’t use.”
Carol Kent
Bottom line, our purpose in life is to love God, love those with whom we come into contact and leave the outcomes - ALL outcomes - to God.
Proof of Miracles?
“Here's a word you can take to heart and depend on: Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. I'm proof — Public Sinner Number One — of someone who could never have made it apart from sheer mercy. And now He shows me off — evidence of His endless patience — to those who are right on the edge of trusting Him forever.”
From Paul’s letter to Timothy - 1 Timothy 1:15-16
Paul says that apart from God’s mercy, apart from God’s calling (John 6:44) he would have never turned from his evil and violent ways.
On the one hand I don’t believe that there are miracles being done, or taking place like those that Jesus did (complete, instant, forever) to prove His divinity - not anywhere in the world. All “healing” miracles are either done by bogus shysters like Benny Hinn or they’re psychosomatic complaints temporarily disappearing. On the other hand, the fact is, each and every born-again Christian is proof of God’s existence and power. No one turns from rebellion against God or even against the idea of God’s existence unless God calls that person from h/her slavery to sin, self-worship and rebellion against h/her Creator.
Why one type of miracle and not the other? Because being physically well isn’t nearly as important as being spiritually well in a healed and forgiven relationship with Jesus. When you think of the consequence, really, nothing else counts in comparison.
In exactly the same manner that Jesus called Lazarus from the grave, God calls us to come out of death and enter into eternal life.
. There was nothing about Lazarus that enabled him to bring himself from death to life.
. There was nothing about Lazarus that enabled him to respond to Jesus’ call.
. There was nothing about Lazarus that enabled him to come out of the grave.
God, all God and only God brought about a new life in Lazarus.
God, all God and only God brings every born again soul into being.
It is a miracle on the level of bringing a universe into existence.
Bringing a universe out of nothing, and bringing a believer out of spiritual death is bringing into existence, new creations.
Neither would have happened absent the miraculous work of Creator God.
From Paul’s letter to Timothy - 1 Timothy 1:15-16
Paul says that apart from God’s mercy, apart from God’s calling (John 6:44) he would have never turned from his evil and violent ways.
On the one hand I don’t believe that there are miracles being done, or taking place like those that Jesus did (complete, instant, forever) to prove His divinity - not anywhere in the world. All “healing” miracles are either done by bogus shysters like Benny Hinn or they’re psychosomatic complaints temporarily disappearing. On the other hand, the fact is, each and every born-again Christian is proof of God’s existence and power. No one turns from rebellion against God or even against the idea of God’s existence unless God calls that person from h/her slavery to sin, self-worship and rebellion against h/her Creator.
Why one type of miracle and not the other? Because being physically well isn’t nearly as important as being spiritually well in a healed and forgiven relationship with Jesus. When you think of the consequence, really, nothing else counts in comparison.
In exactly the same manner that Jesus called Lazarus from the grave, God calls us to come out of death and enter into eternal life.
. There was nothing about Lazarus that enabled him to bring himself from death to life.
. There was nothing about Lazarus that enabled him to respond to Jesus’ call.
. There was nothing about Lazarus that enabled him to come out of the grave.
God, all God and only God brought about a new life in Lazarus.
God, all God and only God brings every born again soul into being.
It is a miracle on the level of bringing a universe into existence.
Bringing a universe out of nothing, and bringing a believer out of spiritual death is bringing into existence, new creations.
Neither would have happened absent the miraculous work of Creator God.
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