cairns

Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you.  For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did.

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My eighteen year old just left.  As far as I can tell she may be quitting school too.  Her reasons make no sense.  I am undone…..nothing left to say……no place to go…….no desire to talk……..EVSC was allowed to destroy my life’s work…….so there is my family, no wait that’s a joke too………You give all you have, and they just berate you for having nothing left……Some very powerful force has been attacking me and my family for the past two years and it is beyond my comprehension (and anything those nearby who claim to understand such things understand either!)……It would be very easy for my wife and I to just give up, on everything…we need prayers for those who are sitting in the abyss crying out like Christ on the cross, “Why have you forsaken me?”

12+ hours later:  Her proclamations of God telling her to defy us and go her own way keep reminding me of how often the “voice of God” tells exactly what we already wanted to hear.  Not what the Bible records.  I find a lot more responses there of, “You must be kidding, God!”  But, we all do it.  I am guilty.  I know pastors and “super” Christians who do it constantly.

What really hurts is combining it with, “I really love you and don’t want to hurt you.”  In John 14 and 15 Jesus very clearly states repeatedly that loving Him is not a matter of some emotional response, but of obedience.  To say you love somebody and refuse to heed their authority, counsel, dreams, or thoughts — a very broad definition of disobedience ( to completely disregard the view and counsel of the one who loves you) I know — is not what Jesus called love.

And, it all brings me back to grace.  If it hurts this bad to be rejected and betrayed as an earthly father, what must it be for a Father who is Creator and Sustainer, who doesn’t just have good intentions but actually knows and offers only the best?  What must it be like to have it multiplied by the population of the planet?  How easily we sing Amazing Grace.  I only begin to understand how amazing is grace that ignores our betrayal, ignorance, intentional blindness to Truth, willful demands for independence from the very source of Life.

To be constantly and repeatedly (not just in a magic once for all blame it on the garden fall, but everyday and time after time) rejected by us in our ignorant confidence that we know it all, and then to pursue us so hard it kills Him??  Grace!  It is a word of power and mystery far beyond our easy use of the word.  I need some, to be able to keep giving it.  I need to see the next rock, the next positive step in this chaos.

peace

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I’m hard-pressed to find anywhere in Scripture where Jesus commanded people to worship him.  His life was simply an invitation of grace.  I heard one theologian say that one thing we can learn from Jesus is that the gospel spreads best not through force but through fascination.  That’s Jesus.  He doesn’t force; He fascinates us with love.  Good leaders live in ways that woo people into their vision.  Force, coercion, manipulation, aggression…these are weapons of the weak.  These are the devices of empires.  These were the tools of Caesar.

We can learn from Jesus.  As evangelicals, we want people to know the love of Jesus.  But that doesn’t just happen by saying a magic prayer.  It only happens by saying, “Come and see.  Come and follow.  Come and feel.  Come and experience the goodness of God.

p. 105 Follow me to freedom

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Thinking about connections between ideas in different passages that have come up in different contexts, specifically 2 Corinthians 11:14’s angel of light, Ephesians 6’s armor, and Mathew 25’s sorting of the sheep and goats.

It’s on my mind because my mind and heart are torn by the pain of trying to live out the gospel to a person who has done everything in their power to hurt me and has succeeded.  It’s on my mind because I believe that we have power to protect each other through prayer and I thought the battle went well.  Then I went to sleep and was defenseless.  And the wounds were opened deep, old, and rotten.  I have to contemplate it all to find my own way to grace and past it.  I have to contemplate it all to live my beliefs in multiple contexts without allowing one extremely painful arena to destroy so much good in the others.

So I turned some of it outward to general theology instead of painful personal psychology.  And I was thinking about how badly the church hurts the church.  We damage each other at a far greater rate and cause more lasting damage than any outside force ever could.  And I wonder, is it because we let the pretender of light stay in our midst?  We put on “the armor,” but allow the enemy inside our circle of shields.  We read the famous goat passage as if it is a future tense once and for all event, but Jesus declared the Kingdom to already be upon us, and us to be the body.  Maybe we are supposed to be sorting out goats before they drive away sheep.

Problem is we always pick the wrong goats, the ones whose lifestyle we choose to call sin instead of our own, the broken man who confesses his wrongs instead of maintaining the charade of all our perfection, the woman does what it takes to stay alive and feed her kids in the only ways our societies provide (and who has those kids because she believed our pro-life message!)….

The parable says the goats are those who fail to provide love to all in need.  The goats are not those with sin in their life, but the lack of charity.  Maybe we are already sitting on our throne and we are supposed to invite those who do not live the gospel to gather elsewhere than in our midst.  I can promise there would be grinding of teeth.  The uncharitable quoters of scripture and pretenders at discipleship hate nothing more than to be without victims.  As for eternity, that is beyond me.

Caesar comes to mind, ruler of the known world, dying with the words, “Et tu Brute?”  It is the insider who does us in.  The outsider is easily kept at bay, locked out, labeled, abandoned and safe.  And if we do that, we too are goats.  We were supposed to be advancing in love to gather up all those in need of grace!  Instead we gather in our little circles of pretty light and all too often devour each other.

This is becoming circular.

When I find myself goatish I will repent or remove myself from the area where I can harm you, fail to serve you, fail to live out the love.

When I find you goatish, I am going to learn to hold my shield closer to my chest.  And, I may just be willing to watch you walk away into the night and the hands of One better prepared for the battle and the cure than I.

peace

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I understand what Bonhoeffer meant, salvation from hell without living out the kingdom is heresy.

But, cheap grace?  We need to return to what grace does to the recipient.

We say it glibly, grace transforms us into the image of Christ.  Easy to say, but the meaning is lost by anyone who believes grace can truly be cheap.

Grace does not transform us into Bill Gates, Oprah, Hughes, Robertson, Dobson, Graham, Hefner, or even the infamous “Joneses.”  It transforms us into the image of a man who owned only the clothes on his back.

Grace does not turn us into the conquering crusader of the west, but the Savior who spent both his lifetime and his death absorbing all the suffering and hatred of humanity into his very being.

Grace does not turn us into attractive charismatic icons, but the man of sorrows — unattractive in appearance, often labeled insane or heretic, harassed, homeless, and finally crucified.

How can a gift of God which turns us into the image of the homeless suffering servant be cheap?  If it is, it simply isn’t grace.

peace,

Greg

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It is time for us to pray.

Brothers and sisters are being imprisoned, tortured, and killed in many places around the globe.  Some of them go by the name of Christian.  Folks in “safe” countries of the west are being tortured through disease, faithless friends and spouses, temptation in their own lives, and the worship of money and power.

The church is constantly doing the work of its enemies by criticizing, attacking, or refusing to fellowship with any other sect that hears the Word of God in a different key.

War continues rampant around the globe, often in the name of the “good” bringing “justice” to “the evil doers” in the form of death and destruction.  Some of the attackers are us.

We remain alienated from the earth we are made from, polluting and destroying the very stuff and sustenance of our physical being  (and since I am not a dualist, I would add that in ways we do not understand, our very souls).

We have given our minds over to trivial nonsense in entertainment, violent crimes against humanity as entertainment, and simple have-no-fears-you-can-understand-everything (what we do is right, what they do is wrong) theologies.

Our churches serve the same gods as our societies.  It is time to pray; for our neighbors far away and near, for our leaders (yes even from the opposition parties), for our world including the Earth herself, and for our very souls.  It is time to pray.

Thanksgiving week in the States is a good time for prayer.  Our work week is usually reduced.  Our minds are turned somewhat in the direction of gratitude and nostalgic images of people who lived closer to the Earth and to God.  Let us also shut up and sit silent in the presence of the mystery that gives us life and hope.  Let us listen.  Let us be grateful.  Let us realize how many brothers and sisters we have among people who have been labeled our enemies both near and far.  Let us take our eyes off the food, and the rest of our selfish desires, and pray.

May God answer our prayers with strength and wisdom to continue making small moves against the darkness, small steps toward finding ourselves home together.

peace

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I have been discussing the possibility of universalism, somehow, someway, God’s way, probably beyond our understanding with people who will listen.  But, most have been thoroughly indoctrinated in American fundamentalist evangelical dogma as the one and only read of scripture.  It is hard for some to even consider.  I get the furthest when I quote veteran missionary Marjorie Foyle’s assertion that a God who would knowingly create most of humanity to be punished forever for the crime of never hearing of Jesus just does not match the God she has known all these years.  I’m with Marjorie; I do not know that God.  Like her, I am willing to accept that there are things beyond what we know and trust the God I do know with the future, all of it.

But, my sister got the wheels turning when she asked me about Jesus’ teaching about separating the sheep and goats.  I will have to look to some experts for how others have interpreted this passage outside of the tradition I was raised to believe was the only one.  But, part of it hit me immediately and I had to come home and look it up.  First it seems to me that Mathew 7 and 25 must be read as parallel passages.  Chapter 25 defines the life that Jesus labels as “evildoers” or “goats” — all of us who fail to care for those in need and in prison.  It is not new.  The theme of God’s love for the widow and orphan runs through the entire Bible.  Those who fail to do it, are not living within the will of God.

And, here is what hit me.  I have heard those passages used so many times to proclaim that Jesus declared people are going to hell, even many who thought they were saved.  Funny thing is (and by funny I mean nauseating), is how many times I heard sermons on the “literal” interpretation of these passages from people who never lived the life Jesus says you must live in the passage (my sister is not one of them, she just asked an honest question).  If it is literally proclaiming who will make it to heaven and who will not, then why aren’t they following the teaching beyond a once or twice a year feel good trip to the food pantry, Salvation Army, or Rescue Mission?  They simply cannot actually believe what they are saying or they would realize that the passage condemns the very people who preach it without living it to hell!

The way I read it my staff at Christa, whether they claim to “believe” or not, are more acceptable to Jesus than the people who claim to be His, judge others (also condemned in the same chapters), and blame the least of these for their own troubles from the comfort of their suburban isolation.  Ew, that became a bit of a rant for a guy trying to grasp how wide is a love that truly offers grace to all.

As for me, I cast my lot with those who care and act rather than those who pretend to know it all (the very act condemned as the motive for original sin in Genesis!).

peace

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My good friend and cousin posted on Facebook about how everyone should remember the giant government takeover and slide toward socialism next election.  I understand his point of view.  But, I know too much.  I know too many families, including both the uneducated working class poor and my own adult college graduate daughters who are without health insurance when the world is left to the “good will” and “justice” of for profit companies getting the most for the least in both goods and workers.

The takeover that concerns me, and has already changed my vote to one in favor of one Republican that I had sworn never to vote for, is the takeover of foreign countries.  History is filled with accounts of powerful empires that found out you can conquer another country but you cannot rule it.  I suspect even Rome would have been in trouble if those zealots of Jesus’ day had explosives.

It has nothing to do with whether their governments were good or bad by our standards.  It has to do with whether we have the right, or the ability to decide that for them.

It has nothing to do with “justice” for 9/11 as Iraq had nothing to do with it, and our take over of Afghanistan has not enabled us to capture those who did.

It does have to do with loyalty to our brave and loyal sons and daughters who answer the government’s call to serve.  Are we more loyal to them to continue a hopeless, and in my view immoral, set of wars we cannot win; or to bring them home with honor for doing everything within human power that we asked of them and allow them to rejoin their families and get on with their lives?

And it does have to do with taxes.  My conservative friends (yes I really have them even though we disagree on specific topics) hate the idea of tax funding for health care, education, and social services.  Why don’t we hate the use of our tax dollars ($6,000,000 a missile for “shock and awe!?”) to fight wars that have no reasonable end in sight, cost the lives of our most patriotic children (even if you don’t give a damn about the lives lost on the other side, a great number of whom who are just everyday people trying to live — not to mention Christians caught in the crossfire), and are setting us up for decades of care which must be provided to unbelievable numbers who are coming home wounded and brain damaged.  Maybe if we quit spending our money to kill, it wouldn’t seem so expensive to spend it to help people live.  But, that’s just me.

I sure wouldn’t want us to become socialist like those peace loving communists in Russia and China, Vietnam, and Korea.  OK, that was snarky.

But, which way should we be more concerned about appearing like them — killing people or caring for them?  I choose the path laid out by Jesus, not George Bush, Rush Limbaugh, Pat Robertson, et al — all of whom offend me by promoting views there is no gospel support for in the name of my beloved savior.

peace, please, for your wallet and hatred of socialist methods if not for grace and love?

peace

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Its OK that we do not know, because we are already known.
We don’t have to understand everything about God.
God understands everything about us and finds ways to break through our defenses to shower us with Love beyond comprehension.

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I think I posted at least part of this before.  But, I find myself leaving port again, and I cannot say it better than:

Emmylou Harris’  “Shores of White Sand”

here i go again
back to that feeling
of no worthy cause
to carry me on

’cause my hearts been skipping
like a flat rock on water
and with each ripple
the further i’m gone

some say i’m sinking
to the muddy bottom
But somehow i’m sailing
to shores of white sand

i feel it raining
and the crosswinds are changing
blowing my chances
to make it alone

but should you get lonesome
and your child need a mother
just look for my traces
on shores of white sand

some say i’m sinking
to the muddy bottom
But somehow i’m sailing
to shores of white sand

yes, some say i’m sinking
to the muddy bottom
But somehow i’m sailing
to shores of white sand

some say i’m sinking
to the muddy bottom
But somehow i’m sailing
to shores of white sand

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