Road Trip

It’s been nearly impossible to blog these past few weeks, as I’ve been preparing for a motorcycle trip to California. My son and I are about ready to head west, and you can follow the adventure at this link: http://10fingergrip.wordpress.com/

Peace and blessings to all of you this Fourth of July weekend!

BTW, we’ll also be updating the trip via Twitter at http://twitter.com/Gottesfurcht

What’s Important? An Invitation

What’s really important?

God? Family? Harley-Davidson Motorcycles?

If you’re an Evangelical, then perhaps Obama’s election, potential Supreme Court nominee, the hard left turn the country is taking, the state’s and federal government’s lax approach to illegal immigration, and “internationalization” of our government portends the end times. If you’re a die hard Republican, then perhaps it’s rebuilding a party in disarray. If you’re a bum ninja or pillow biter, maybe it’s the gay marriage issue. If you’re a libertarian or fed-up and over-taxed Republican, then maybe Tea Parties are your answer. If you’re a “perpetual victim minority,” then perhaps Obama is your cup of tea.

Whatever is important to you, there can be no denying that our children and our children’s children’s respective futures are what’s truly important. Not a minority dictating who is politically correct enough to represent the USA in the Miss Universe pageant. Not the greed of Wall Street and Corporate America. Not the entitlement mentality of the non-taxpayer. And certainly not the opinion of an envious world that wants to drag America down to its pathetic level of hate, poverty, racism, and socialistic mistakes.

Personally, as Washington continues its policy of enslaving future generations of Americans (by bailing-out the very people the Washington elite aided in wrecking the economy in the first place), I’m going to take my son half-way across the country on a motorcycle ride. Although there are multiple reasons for doing so, the overarching reasons are to (1) forge a deeper bond with my son, (2) teach him about our country along the way, and (3) inculcate an attitude of self-reliance.

While taking this trip, we are planning to blog “live” from the road (thank you Starbucks), upload pictures, and perhaps even post some video from a helmet camera.

And we’re going to do so on a yet-to-be-named blog, which is where y’all come in. Since we’re not departing until July, we’d like your input. Although not quite an electronic version of the famous father-son motorcycle trip written of in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, there will be philosophical components found in the writing. However, this will not be the overarching thematic element, which is why we’re asking “What would you like to read about” and“What do you think the blog title should be”? 

For those interested in responding, feel free to post a comment on this blog for the time being. In the near future we will establish an email account dedicated to the ride that you may also use to contact us. For those who wish to respond, please limit your comments, suggestions, etc. to the three overarching reasons for the trip and suggestions for the blog title.

Nothing Left

Although definitely part of the metalcore genre, As I Lay Dying speaks to a host of contemporary issues facing today’s spiritually-rudderless world. 

The song Nothing Left video below is described by the writer, Timothy Lambesis, as taking “place in a broken down future world where the journey of the main character mimics many themes in the song’s lyrics. I originally wrote the lyrics describing the certain decay of the world around us. While more and more people pursue meaningless relationships and desire for material things, I’ve realized that we have “nothing left” in common. We are seperated by our intentions and the visual concept through the video makes an obvious point that we cannot hide these differences.“

Tim also states in the band’s FAQ (in response to a question concerning the member’s faith) “I’m not sure what the difference is between five Christians playing in a band and a Christian band. If you truly believe something, then it should affect every area of your life. All five of us are Christians. I believe that change should start with me first, and as a result, our lyrics do not come across very ‘preachy.’ Many of our songs are about life, struggles, mistakes, relationships and other issues that don’t fit entirely in the spiritual category. However, all of these topics are written about through my perspective as a Christian.“

For those that cannot accept that “Christians” can perform metal, it is probably best to consider the message before shooting the messenger.

Christos Voskrese

 

For a translation and explanation of this beautiful song.

Healing the Children

And Jesus said, Somebody hath touched me: for I perceive that virtue is gone out of me. And when the woman saw that she was not hid, she came trembling, and falling down before him, she declared unto him before all the people for what cause she had touched him, and how she was healed immediately. And he said unto her, Daughter, be of good comfort: thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace. Luke 8:46-48

Traveling around the country always provides opportunities for sharing the Gospel and learning. Last Friday was no different.

While boarding my flight in Saint Louis, I found my seat occupied by a very young boy. Before I could say anything, a stewardess asked me if I would mind sitting in the aisle seat on the opposite side. Preferring the aisle to the window seat anyway, this was not a big decision for me.

During the course of the ninety-minute flight, I learned the stew was a volunteer with Healing the Children, and that she was escorting the young boy in my seat and his sister to Dallas for their return flight to Belize. As I began asking the standard who, what, when questions, she related how the organization was strictly voluntary, that the children sitting next to her had been in the United States for two months, and that two families had opened their homes to the children during that timeframe.

It was a most informative time, and it certainly provided some warmth after a cold week in Missouri.

For those of you who are looking for a new charity, this is a worthy one to donate time, frequent flyer miles, one’s home, medical skills, etc., because “[s]ince its inception, Healing the Children has provided first class medical care to more than 174,879 children in 100 plus countries, including the United States.“

And Justice for All?

No where in the Scripture are we told, “God is justice.” He is, indeed, a just God, but the meaning of that statement is still a deeply hidden mystery. Worth the Time to Think it Through

And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him: Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all. Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering; Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye. Colossians 3:10-13

Justice. How many of us have wanted to see justice done, whether it be seeing an enemy getting his or her “just deserts” or a co-worker being found out for petty thievery or a brother or sister in Christ who inflicted pain upon us?

In Western society, the Greco-Roman influence of law and logic oft times conflict with the Gospel. Of course, I am referring to the pre-Christian Greek and Roman societies that were marked by paganism and pre-Christian thought. This influence is often reverse engineered back into the Protestant systems of theology. Who hasn’t been taught that the state bears the sword for a reason or that an unrepentant individual would be held accountable by God?

Contrarily, how many Protestants are taught to pray unceasingly for their enemies? For the true repentance of those who’ve harmed us? To pray without expectation of apology? And if one is taught to do these things, how many actually do them? As for me, I readily confess that I have failed to pray enough for my enemies because I often wanted justice more than I wanted inner peace. The key word here is “I” and such thinking is rooted in failing to focus on Him who is the source of peace.

It is easy to rationalize our behavior in this area. Many have heard someone quip that they are not Jesus. Although very true, we are called to be little Christs. Thus, we look to the cross for an example of how we are to respond to the issue of justice.

As Christ suffered on the cross, He did not ask Father God for justice; He asked, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.“

This is our example of how to respond to injustice. It isn’t about us, it’s always about the perpetrator of an injustice needing God’s love. And the Holy Scriptures are replete with forgiveness, mercy, praying for one’s enemies, and extending love to all of God’s creation in His image. Therefore, let us move from just being made in His image to purposing this day to conform to His likeness, by forgiving those who wrong us and loving as God loves us.

Humility

Man acquires true spiritual humility and finds his heart when he comes to realize that he is unworthy of such a God as Christ. Fr. Zacharias

Sometimes something simple stares you in the face for so long you miss it because its part of your environment. And, just as sin is a failure to love, humility is the realization that we are nothing. We deserve nothing from God or man, we are fallible at every level of thought, word, and action, and our hearts are often darker than a moonless night in a forest or the deepest coal mine without a torch.

When we do finally have this “ah ha” moment of clarity, we are washed anew with the realization that God loves us beyond our comprehension. There is no capability within our finite minds to grasp the height, breadth, and depth of God’s love when we see ourselves for what we are. God was beaten nearly to death for me. God was mocked in my place. God was humiliated, stripped of His clothes, and nailed to a cross in my stead. And God died an excruciatingly painful death by suffocation for me. And if I remotely grasp that I am nothing, then why did God do this?

Because God loves me. In fact, everything God does is born of love. Our oft times painful circumstances, His creation, our mountain top experiences, our talents, the Holy Spirit’s indwelling, and everything we can think of has its roots in God’s infinite and limitless love.

Yes, we’ve heard the naysayer question God’s existence because He allows suffering. Such questioning is merely an extension of  rejecting mankind’s real state for the belief that men and women are basically good. This despite the historical and ongoing evidence to the contrary. Man’s choice to sin brought suffering into the world, not God. And we cannot question God’s existence by using such fallacious logic.

Yet, despite our own wretchedness, God loves us and provides a just as infinite mercy by patiently waiting for us to acknowledge Him and then willingly humbling ourselves to be conformed to Him and His will. And in this case, taking every thought captive equates to recognizing who we are, who He is, and then thinking and acting as He does which, as noted above, is always based in love.

So as we begin this morning, let us begin anew as we listen to the birds sing their praises to a loving God before they do anything else. And despite the difficulties in our lives, the real or imaginary threats to same, the limitations each of us has, and the “worries” for our little ones, let us never be too busy to forget Who loves us and to extend this love to all men in the deepest humility.

On What Support

Over the last week I’ve been reading a meditations devotional by Lev Gillet. The back cover explains it this way: “By juxtaposing daily human routines with related incidents in the life of Christ, the meditations teach us about transfiguration, and about being heirs of God’s very nature, capable of transmitting the intention of God to this world, by sharing in the Cross of Jesus.”

Although I am still digesting this morning’s reading, since I wrote on the topic of pantheism the other day, I thought the following thoughts were appropriate to share.

Poor children, you want to manage without Me. What then will you look to for support?

Poor child, thou thinkest to escape my by plunging into what thou dost believe to be nature, into what thou callest nature. But what thou dost clasp is not nature in its truth, in its depth.

Thou thinkest to live a fuller life by estranging thyself from the Love which goes beyond all limits and loves beyond the visible. Thou desirest to give thyself exclusively to the visible. Thou dost speak of asserting thy personality, of realising thyself. Thou dost speak of earthly foods, and expect from them harmony and joy.

But thou wilt run up against the refusal with which all the elements of creation will oppose thee. The universe gives no peace to him who professes to separate any situation or person from total Love.

Thou seekest the support of reality. Thou dost conceive of nature alone as being what is real. Thou dost want to lean on a reed, and this reed will pierce thy hand.

In a world where everything is bound by a Love that is limitless, all the creatures which thou dost desire to separate and grasp by themselves, without reference to absolute Love, will withdraw from thee, one after another. Thou wilt be left alone, wounded, lying helpless on the road. Everything will abandon thee at the moment when thou dost abandon Me.

Poor child, whom wilt thou find to save thee, if not Me? Whom wilt thou find to love thee, if not Me?

From the Beginning — Limitless Love

Mankind’s existence and, therefore, that of all creation is inexorably tied to Mary because she was always to be the Mother of the Incarnate Word. The fathers say that neither the course of human events nor necessity of any kind forced the Uncreated One to join to Himself a creaturely mode of existence. God did not become flesh because some actions of the devil or of man made it necessary, but because it was the divine plan and mystery from before the ages. George Gabriel

From the beginning, it was always about God’s infinite and limitless love. Though we as finite beings may say “with all my heart,” there is no such quantitative limitation on God’s love for each of us. Regardless of ones status as saint or sinner, God does not love anyone more or less. His love is perfect. His love is pure. His love is undefiled. His love is infinite and limitless. And, because it is so, each of us can say to ourselves “Thou art loved.”

As Lev Gillet points out, when we humble ourselves before Christ’s majesty, we can appreciate this love in something as small as a dew drop.

     My child, I want thee to feel thyself in communion with the greatness of my universe, with its unformed aspiration, with its unformed thanksgiving. But above all, in those moments when thou seekest to become one with limitless Love, I want thee to be very humble.
     Thou hast seen the morning dew. It forms trembling pearls on the blades of grass and on the leaves, before or shortly before the rising sun.
     Dew is abundant where the earth is humid and exposed, when the weather is fine and perfectly calm.
     Each small iridescent drop mirrors the colours of the rainbow. No matter how minute, it reflects the basic colours of the universe.
     My child, be thou this infinitesimal drop of dew coming to life on the humid earth of tenderness, as the sun rises in a loving heart.
     Be this drop which for all its smallness, it its whole extent, reflects the beauty of the world.
     And then be re-absorbed thyself into the light and heat of the sun. Because it is the sun that gives the dew-drops their being.

Theologic Pantheism

We live in a secularized atmosphere, where “reality” means the hard stuff around us, but generally does not include what we believe religiously. We live in the neutral zone – the first floor of the universe where only a suspension of the natural law will yield contact with God. This, by no means, is the dogma of the Church. Instead, it is the legacy of the history of the late years of Western Civilization, a by-product of the Reformation and the popular response to its ideas. It is, or will be, the death of Christianity as taught by Christ unless it is resisted and renounced.  from Careful Devotion to Christ

Over the past years of my Christian walk, one realization has been placed in stark relief — if Christians only loved one another, then we would be unable to build churches fast enough. Every person in the world is born with a need for Love and Love’s call is too often drowned out by the things of the world. This is true of the just and unjust alike, and our secular Western societies have produced far too many loveless Christians.

One simple example is the homeless or those purporting to be homeless. Too many times I have heard Christians label those begging at street corners as “scammers.” Frankly, I would rather be scammed by nine fake homeless so that the one truly homeless person receives my help. Although an example of not loving the unjust, there are far too many examples of Christians not loving their own. Much of it has to do with the influences of said secular society. Football, golf, hunting, gossiping with the girls about their husbands, society demanding that husbands “earn” respect instead of giving it freely, while simultaneously expecting a husband to provide love without question, and the list goes on and on.

Although much blame can be laid at the feet of believers, the pastorate has lost focus too often as well. How many churches have a weekly “altar call”? How does an altar call relate to the undershepherd (pastor) empowering the sheep for their dual mission of loving God and loving others? It doesn’t. Altar calls are primarily directed at the lost who, if they’re in church to begin with, should be evangelized by the ones who brought him or her or a member of the diaconate or simply a church member, but certainly not the pastor from the pulpit.

Yet, there is another area that pastors lead sheep astray, and that is their theological bent.

The Western Christian tradition has been reduced to a constant battle of whose system of theology and the resulting “interpretation” of Scripture is correct. From the unjust person’s perspective, how does this glorify God? How is it demonstrative of Christians’ love “one for another”? How does it point to the message of the one True God? How is it any different than idolizing the Dallas Cowboys? 

Thus, we must ask whether there is such a thing as Theologic Pantheism. Additionally, we ask if we can we accurately apply the pantheistic label to advocates advancing different systems of theology and, if so, what are the criteria?

If we accept that all of God’s creation is good and that man defiled God’s creation with his sin, then we begin laying a foundation for exploring the question. From a Christian perspective, God loves perfectly, God is love, He saved us because He loves us, He loves us first, God plays no favorites (He makes the sun to shine and the rain to fall on the just and unjust). Furthermore, we come to understand God’s deep love the more we humble ourselves, die to self, and serve Him by allowing His love to flow through us to others. And because the Lord Love is relational, He wants us to receive His love, return His love, and then allow His love to flow through us to others.

Of course, this last element of God’s love can be lost rather quickly in a competitive Western world that screams that “self” is the most important thing in the universe. It’s really no wonder Muslims see Western Christians as infidels, because most of the time the majority of Western Christendom is acting like infidels — even by the standards of our Scriptures.

With the competing systems of Western theology come some pretty interesting interpretations. Everything from the hyper-Calvinist view that evangelizing is unnecessary because God pre-destines everyone for Heaven or Hell to the universalist view that God loves us so much He will let no one perish, regardless of their behavior or belief. In defense of these positions, and the advancing of a plethora of systems in between, men and women confessing Christ invest incredible amounts of time defending their pet views of the Great Commission, eschatology, baptism (paedo or believer’s), etc.

So how does this investment of time further the Kingdom of God? It doesn’t. And, having been privy to many different systematic theology discussions, I find the tone of them to be rather strident and unloving. Again, how does an unloving conversation further the Kingdom of God? It doesn’t.

Why the time and investment and conversations fail to achieve the very thing the participants think they are doing is simple — they are not focused on God.

To be sure, they think they are focused on God, but let’s look at a stark reality: God didn’t tell us to create any system of theology, but God did give us a liturgy to follow, and the first Christians followed the liturgy during Synagogue worship. Granted, we need to have a framework that allows finite man to vaguely understand an Infinite God, but too often the Holy Spirit’s role is discounted by theologians. Moreover, if we look at specific tenets of some systems and ask how they reflect Christ’s command to love God and love others, we walk away unable to answer the question. And if we cannot answer the question, than the tenet is not of God but of man and, therefore, the tenet’s adherents are engaging in worship of the created instead of the Creator.

Yes, we can probably devolve into a discussion of whether this is pantheism or idolatry. It really doesn’t matter which label we use. What matters is the lack of focus on Love and Mercy identified here, and those examples that readily come to mind in the reader. Thus, when we fail to love, we sin. It’s that simple. For the Lord is Love and He wants tender love-filled hearts in His bond servants. Servants who have the status of adopted children and who’ve been invited to participate with Him in loving one another and reaching the lost.

A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. John 13:34