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Name: David
Country: United States
State: Arkansas
Metro: Harding
Birthday: 3/30/1982
Gender: Male
Interests: Jesus. Peace. War. Joy. Mourning. Hope. Despair. The Kingdom of God. People. Relationships. Girls. Relationships. Astronomy. Biology. Geology. Baseball. Stand-up comedy. Preaching. Singing. Chick flicks. Sad songs. Geography. Languages. Harry Potter. Lord of the Rings. Cooking. Weight lifting. Playing the guitar well. Etcetra. Etcetra. Etcetra.
Expertise: Failing miserably at all aspects of relationships. Being preachy. Playing the guitar lousily. Singing (I'd like to think so, anyway...). Being flirtatious without trying. Trivia (in many different areas). How not to be funny. How to un-funny what should be funny. How not to understand people. Being messy. Being nostalgic. Becoming quickly infatuated. Etc. Etc. Etc.
Occupation: Student
Message: message meEmail: email me
AIM:  shoelessdave82
Member Since:
6/21/2005
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| Anyone ever hear of a stave church? Apparently they were the traditional building form for churches in Scandinavia. While the rest of Europe was building impressive cathedrals, Norwegian Christians, especially, were meeting in beautiful, simply constructed (but often well ornamented) wooden buildings such as this one:
There are a few well-preserved specimens to be found in Norway
still today. They are important cultural artifacts in Norway, though
that land is now very much post-Christian. They remind even Americans
that there was a time when the church building was the most important
building in a village or town, for the life of the community revolved
around that building.
The Restoration Movement has always placed
a certain emphasis on the fact that the people are the church, and that
the place they meet is just a building--a "church building." Yet we
still talk of "going to church." Perhaps we betray the fact that our
lives still revolve around the church building. Perhaps our lives
don't really revolve around the community of faith as much as we'd like
to think they do. I wonder if the buildings we meet in actually hinder
us from being a true "community of faith."
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| I think everybody should check this out. Lemme know what you
think. Ben Witherington, the author, is a well-respected
conservative Biblical scholar. Like, as in, Harding Bible
professors are fans of his and greatly appreciate his work.
benwitherington.blogspot.com/2006/10/not-so-separate-church-and-stateshould.html
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|  | Currently Watching
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure
By Keanu Reeves, Alex Winter, George Carlin, Terry Camilleri, Dan Shor, Tony Steedman, Rod Loomis, Al Leong, Jane Wiedlin, Robert V. Barron, Clifford David, Hal Landon Jr., Bernie Casey, Amy Stock-Poynton, J. Patrick McNamara, Frazier Bain, Diane Franklin, Kimberley Kates, William Robbins (III), Steve Shepherd (II)
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"Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down to us from the Father of Lights...." (James 1:17)
I hear people talking about how God has blessed America all the time. We feel richly blessed--we live in a "land of plenty" in which certain freedoms are guaranteed. There's nothing wrong with being thankful for the "good gifts" God gives, of course, nor is there anything wrong with desiring God's blessing. Christians are told that "we are given every spiritual blessing in Christ" and we often remind each other that our God is the "fount of every blessing." But just what are the "good gifts" that God gives?
Israel always perceived that God had blessed the rich. So ingrained in Israelite culture was this idea that the common, poor, landless Jew of Jesus' day was completely oppressed: being poor and uneducated, he was completely dependent upon the Temple system for the blessing of God--and much of the Temple system was nothing but a forum for spiritual abuse.
Jesus saw the sickness. In his Sermon he turned the world of the Israelites on its head:
"Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you hungry, for you shall be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep, for you shall laugh. Blessed are you when men hate you, and ostracize you, and insult you, and scorn your name as evil, for the sake of the Son of Man. ...But woe to you rich, for you are receiving your comfort in full. Woe to you who are well-fed, for you shall be hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep. Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for their fathers used to treat the false prophets in the same way." (Luke 6:20-22, 24-26)
Our Lord and his disciples never speak of wealth as though it were a blessing--they seemed instead to think it perilous. This is hard teaching for us, who are rich. We think ourselves blessed with our riches and our freedoms--things our Lord never spoke of by way of blessing. Christ's message is consistently one of surprising grief for those who are wealthy and comfortable; he always seems to shock the poor and persecuted with hope, with a message of God's favor. It is precisely the people who are in the most dire of straits, whose backs are hardest against the wall, that our Lord calls "blessed."
Does Jesus overturn any of our tables when he pronounces as woes the very things we consider blessings? What does it say about who we are and what we value when we call our rich and free land "blessed"--though Jesus often seems to say the exact opposite? Perhaps God's "good gifts" are not what we thought, after all?
Behold; he turns the world upside-down!
Peace. Holla!
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|  | Currently Watching
The Illusionist
By Edward Norton, Brian Caspe, James Babson, Alistair Macnaughtan, Jake Wood, Dusan Fager, Karl Johnson (II), Tom Fisher, David Fellowes, Rufus Sewell, Eleanor Tomlinson, Aaron Johnson (III), Robbie Kay, Ellen Savaria, Erich Redman, Ivo Nov�k (II), Paul Giamatti, Jessica Biel, Eddie Marsan, Matthew Blood-Smyth
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Faith is....?
Consider a tree. Its roots dig into the earthen ground. Its bole climbs up, up towards the sun; it throws its branches out into the free air.
As a disciple of Christ, I am a tree; at the root of who I am is my faith, which is "grounded" in Christ. The trunk and branches--all that you can visually see--are my life of discipleship, which grow up from the root of my faith. If my faith is strong and deep, the tree will not easily be moved. If my discipleship is strong, the tree will be tall and broad and fertile.
Authority in the Life of Faithful Discipleship
"All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth; therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." (Matthew 28:18-20)
Too often, we allow ourselves to be rooted in the epistles of Paul, John, Peter, et al; in the heritage of the churches of Christ, we have appealed to them more than to Christ himself--as though they were the authority. But what were they but the first messengers who teach us to obey all that Jesus commanded, show us how to interpret Christ's death, and work out the practical dimensions of being Christ's "city on a hill"?
Discipleship is rooted in faith in Christ's authority to command. We do what he says because we believe that he had the authority to say it. Loving your enemy doesn't make sense; turning your head and offering your enemy your other cheek to slap doesn't make sense; giving more to those who would rob you than they ask for doesn't make sense; such suffering and "carrying your cross" doesn't make sense. Christ's commands don't make sense unless he has the authority to command.
Discipleship grows in the knowledge that Christ does not command us to do anything that he did not do himself. If he did not live what he taught (and thus show us how to do the same), then his commands to love your enemy, to turn the other cheek, or to carry your cross are absurd. But here is the man who loved even the Roman soldiers who put him on the cross, even Pilate (who gives a human face to the inhuman Roman Empire) who oppressed the Jews and massacred them when they attempted to protest peacefully, even the Jews who put the prophets to death with the sword and condemned him to the Romans though he was one of them; here is the man who "did no violence" (Isa. 53:9), who refused to defend himself or those of his own nation who did not know the ways of peace (Luke 13:34, 19:41-44); who did not protest the punishment to which the powers sentenced him, but took up his cross and died upon it. Behold the Man on the cross who "suffered as an example to us, that we might walk in his steps" (1 Peter 2:21-23)! The cross to which he calls us is not any and every kind of suffering, sickness, or tension; it is not inexplicable or unpredictable; it is not an inward wrestling with self and sin. The believer's cross is the end of a path freely chosen after counting the cost; it is the social reality of representing in an unwilling world the Order to come, and his people will experience in ways analogous to his own the hostility of the old order: "The servant is not greater than his master; if they have persecuted me they will persecute you." (John 15:20)
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| Before I begin, let me say that many of you know that I have problems reconciling Christian discipleship (life in the kingdom) with political participation (the goal of most Christians who participate in politics seems to be to use Caesar's means and methods--political power--to try to accomplish kingdom ends). Most of my readers do not have such qualms. So I write this article for them, knowing that I cannot enforce upon them my philosophical views concerning political participation and office-holding and war, yet believing that if a person is going to participate in politics or hold office, they need to consider each facet of the thorny problems of politics in order to address those problems in all their complexity.
Bill Clinton once famously offered his philosophy concerning
abortion: "Abortion should be safe, legal, and rare."
Of course, few of my readers will agree with him when he says
that abortion should be legal. I certainly don't. But I
have resigned myself to hopelessness on the issue: it seems that the
American people will never elect both a president and a delegation of
senators who will make it their mission to secure a majority
anti-abortion Supreme Court. In any case, considering the other
positions of those political personages who oppose abortion, I would
not wish such a combination of political power-brokers on any free
society. And whether abortion should be legal or not, for at
least the foreseeable (short-term) future, abortion will be
legal.
So Caesar says that abortion will be legal (1973's Roe v. Wade
and a couple of subsequent rulings: no state may enact a law that
deprives a woman of her right, per Constitutional Amendment 4, to
have done what she will with a fetus that cannot survive without her;
i.e., until a fetus can survive outside the mother's body, the states
cannot keep her from aborting that fetus). And Christians have
been fighting to change Caesar's opinion on this issue for at least
the last 30 years--and fighting very strongly for as long as I can
remember. But Caesar hasn't changed his opinion very much--at
least, not in any way that has actually effected legal change.
Because life is at stake, all who will should keep fighting.
But it is precisely because life is at stake that Christians should
also take thought for those months and years in the future in which
abortion remains legal.
You may ask, "Why?" If abortion is
legal, as long as it remains so, then it should without question be
both safe and rare. Safe, because we cannot claim to truly
value life if we do not ensure the safety of those women who choose
to abort (while they have the governmentally-guaranteed freedom to do
so)--their lives are important too. (And seriously, does anyone
actually believe that bombing abortion clinics is doing God's work?)
And no one, I think, would argue that abortion should be as rare as
possible under whatever legal circumstances exist.
So...what should the church do to promote the rarity of
abortion? Two things. The first is to learn enough about
economics to call upon our elected officials--and perhaps our
Christian businessmen and women--to promote positions that lead to
job creation. Check this article out for reasons why:
http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=news.display_archives&mode=current_opinion&article=CO_041027_stassen
The second and more challenging thing is to simply support
pregnant women, especially unmarried women and teenagers.
Eighty percent of abortions are performed upon the choices of
unmarried women between the ages of 15 and 24--girls who are
convinced that their families will not love them so wholly as before;
who see in their futures expenses that they can't afford; who see all
their career ambitions and hopes for stable, normal families
disappear like night-shadows under the sun. But how to
"support" these women?
That I think I should leave up to you. Think about all the
fears and concerns of a jobless and unwed expectant mother (whose
high-school or college education is incomplete), and try and think
about ways in which each individual concern can be answered and each
specific fear can be stilled. Jesus seems to imply in Luke 16
that his followers should be crafty and ingenious in devising Godly
ways to accomplish Godly ends. For him to accomplish the work
of our salvation required a cross. How inventive can you be?
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