April 30, 2006 - Unfortunately, the church is asking questions of God that make no sense, like, “Is yellow square or round?” and, “How many hours are there in a mile?” While we should be asking Him what His will is for rescuing and renewing our lives and the planet we live on, we’re instead more interested in the after-life. Come back to earth, saints!
Monthly Archive for April, 2006
A simple, yet complex question for today. As I sat trying to silence my mind in the midst of a busy week, a question kept coming back to me and I knew why. I was finally compelled to get up off my comfortable couch and come to the computer to write this. Who can you live life with in an honest relationship with no fear or retribution or heavy-handed judgment?
Seldom do you find that where you should: in church relationships.
Continue reading ‘Church Life’
We still don’t get it. We’re still struggling to find the meaning!
So much has changed in the last two thousands years and yet so much remains the same. The world and nature herself knows that things are not the same since that Sunday morning when heaven shuddered, shook, and groaned under the weight of something traumatic, profound, and energizing. What happend when the stone was rolled away? God only knows!
Continue reading ‘Struggling To Find The Meaning’
I get this blank stare when I say that the early church fathers agreed upon a New Testament canon of twenty seven books, but they didn’t agree on the translation to be “canonized”.
It’s like, “what did you say”? Or, “what’s that mean”?
Actually I should back up and say that the “church fathers” never did officially agree as a group, an ecumenical council, or a formal meeting of the tops dogs as to what the NT canon would be. There was nothing resembling the Council Of Jamnia that approved the Old Testament canon. There was no press meeting, a Fox News Alert, or a meeting of the G-7.
Continue reading ‘The New Testament’
Where have we landed, as Christians living in America in 2006?
Many things have changed since Jesus walked and lived among us, but some things have remained the same. As Christianity tried to find its legs and establish itself after the death of Jesus, the battle for “who would be right” began in earnest. Not that it didn’t rage DURING His life. Can you say Pharisees and Sadducees? How about Essenes, Zealots, and a dozen other sects?
Continue reading ‘Where Have We Landed?’
Self-assessment is such a deceptive endeavor!
If there was ever a reason to get married, this might be the reason. And because one gets that objective opinion in married life, we have a sky-rocketing divorce rate. Wonder no more why God created men and women so differently. He knew it was the quickest way to the cross, if we’d participate and not run.
Case in point.
Continue reading ‘Self-Assessment’
Why is Christianity doing so well in the third-world countries? Why are miracles in such abundance outside of America? Why are Christian converts exploding outside of America compared to next to no growth at all here in the States? In fact, 2004 statistics show that there was less than one new convert per church in America.
April 23, 2006 - The Bible is filled with hundreds of stories within one big story. To a large degree our lives are like computers that are being operated by a software program that is filled with images, pictures, and stories that power our existence. If we can grasp the reality of the stories of the Bible, that truth will set us free beyond anything we’ve seen or imagined.
Anyone who has known me for a few years will have heard or discovered that I love history. It was one of my double majors in college (political science the other one). Someone has said, “You can’t know the present or the future, unless you know the past”. And then there’s this one, “Those who don’t know the mistakes of the past must commit the same mistakes again”.
Here’s what that still small voice has been saying, or at least what I think I’ve been HEARING, to me this morning. By living from our HEAD and we’ve missed the HEART of the Gospel.
Continue reading ‘The Godspel’
Biblical Interpretation
Whatever you might think of Nicodemus, you have to give him credit for discovering 2,000 years ago, what it took 1,900 years for the fact-fundamentalists to discover- Literalism! To wholly subscribe to such a concept leads one to positions like: the earth is flat, the sun moves around the earth, and so on. Of course only a few believe the Bible 100% literally (yes there are some). Most only believe in a literal approach when it suits their theology.
Same argument and principle that metaphorical-historians use.
Continue reading ‘Biblical Interpretation’