I will admit that I have been one late to jump on the Coldplay wagon, but be for sure that I am now on. I have recently just started to listening to them and I the song, “Fix You” is perhaps one of the most prophetic and beautiful songs I have ever heard as a Christian.
Archive for September, 2006
Well, at the sake of my ego and my frustration, I am going to have to silence myself from this latest letter from the Director of the Missouri Baptist Convention. Of course, our ability to focus on trivialities never ceases to amaze me. I believe this article to have good intention, but bankrupt in its logical conclusion. Once again, evangelicals (and I can speak for them since I am one) are superb at pointing out individual sin, but blindsided with systemic sin of socities, that actually LEADS to individual sin. Are there any evangelicals that are familiar with the word “redemption?”
“The work of Jesus was not a new set of ideals or principles for reforming or even revolutionizing society, but the establishment of a new community, a people that embodied forgiveness, sharing and self-sacrificing love in its rituals and discipline. In that sense, the visible church is not to be the bearer of Christ’s message, but to be the message.”
taken from an excellent article from the Christian Century on the Emerging Church.
“The work of Jesus was not a new set of ideals or principles for reforming or even revolutionizing society, but the establishment of a new community, a people that embodied forgiveness, sharing and self-sacrificing love in its rituals and discipline. In that sense, the visible church is not to be the bearer of Christ’s message, but to be the message.”
Click above for the Link
Christianity today has jus released an article about the resurgence of Reformed theology (aka “Calvinism”) amongst younger evangelicals, typically those in their 20’s and 30’s. However you may feel about this issue, I sympathize with you because throughout Christian history, there has never been such an issue that brings up such vitriolic accusations and arguments. Regardless of your opinion, there is one point to aknowledge positivley in regards to this resurgence: it’s a reactionionary approach to the modern’s church failure to teach doctrine; and for this, we must aknowledge the Reformed approach for clarity. In Redford (my theology school), there seems to be a new resurgence of it despite the fact that most professors are non-Calvinist or indifferent to the topic. I would put myself somewhere in the field of a moderate Calvinist, mostly because Calvinists have been plagued as arrogant, pontificaters, and what I affectionately refer to my own extreme Calvinist friends as “Calvinazis.” Anyway, this article is fantastic and reveals what I believe to be a great swing in Christian maturity.
Jim Wallis was on CBS last night with Tony Perkins…
Published September 22, 2006 Uncategorized 1 CommentJim Wallis was on CBS last night with Tony Perkins. Click here to check out the video.
taken from Willzhead
Amos, For Our Times
Reading the book of Amos, specifically 5:18–27, inspired the following piece. I wondered what God might say to the contemporary American Church. This is one suggestion:
God, Speaking To the American Church:
You spend too much time thinking about and wishing for the end of the world. Why are you so anxious to bring about God’s judgment? And what kinds of people have you become, thinking the world will end tomorrow?
In your arrogance and laziness you have forgotten why I placed you here. You have endless conferences and seminars on how to do church, but you have forgotten to be the church, a people who faithfully live as an alternative community, pointing all people toward Me through loving service.
You have grown rich exploiting the poor. You bring a tiny pittance of that money back to Me and say, “God, you have been so good to us.” But your money smells like crap in My nostrils. It sickens Me and I don’t want it. Give it back to the poor from which it came.
You grow more food than you need by destroying the very soil I gave you to tend. You sit down to a sumptuous buffet and say, “Look how God has blessed us.” I have not blessed you. I have left you to your own destruction.
There will come a day when the womb of the earth will no longer produce and the poor will rise up and pledge never to sew a cheap garment again. You will grow hungry and your shopping malls will close. Then you will turn to Me and cry, “God, why have you rejected us?” And I will say, “I have not rejected you. I have been here all along, waiting for your return.”
So turn your face toward Me now. Seek after Me. Live out My commands. Do you want to be people after My own heart? Then care for the poor, the needy, the marginalized, those for whom My heart has always beat loudly. Cease your endless Bible studies, searching for the answer to righteous living. Commit yourselves to following what I already told you to do. Don’t believe you are pursuing Me if you are not seeking to do justice.
Care for the planet. You have become so worried about who might also advocate this course of action that you forgot it was one of My first commandments to you. Tend well what I have given you.
Seek the welfare of your community. As people in exile, your future and the future of the place you live are one and the same. So make your world more whole, that you might be more holy.
And live in love. I had hoped you would get that message when My Son joined humanity and demonstrated sacrificial love in action. But you are so worried about His return that you forget why He came. Be a people shaped by the model of Jesus, not just the prospect of escaping the world I have asked you to help heal.
Jim Wallis, the well-known social activist and editor of “Sojourners” is now officially blogging. I read his book, “God’s politics” over the Summer of 2005 and fell in love with it. Wallis has some very prophetic undertones, and honestly (though he is a liberal evangelical), strikes a tone of fairness and yet will not hesitate to “stick it” to anyone that needs confronted. Wallis was kicked out of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School for his radical social views. As the story goes in his book, he and another seminarian took it upon themselves to demonstrate the need for social justice within Christendom by actually taking an “exacto” knife and cutting out every phrase or reference of God’s concern for the poor. When the project was done, all was left was a tattered Bible missing over 2,400 references. I would really encourage all of you to read his blog as he is making a point to dialogue with all political and theological spectrums. You can read his blog here. In fact, I would encourage all of you to subscribe to it on an RSS feed.
Well, in a strange turn of events, analysts are only expecting gas prices to continue to plunge. Unexpectantly, how far these prices plummet is another story. Here is a link to an article I found that will most likely make you jump for joy and make you want to buy a SUV.
Gas prices=$1.15?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
