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No Variableness, Neither Shadow of Turning

No Variableness, Neither Shadow of Turning

“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” James 1:17, KJV “For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed.” Malachi 3:6, ESV The immutability and impassibility of God are two doctrines that are under constant fire. Immutability is the idea that God…

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Love God; Love Others

Love God; Love Others

“The church is always more than a school …. But the church cannot be less than a school. Its faith, hope, and love all express themselves in teaching and confession.” Jaroslav Pelikan, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600), 1 There is always a desire to give a soundbite for what it means to be disciples of Christ. One of the most popular ways that I’ve encountered to describe the…

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Fields of Separation

“When the Old Testament speaks about ‘instruction’ or the New Testament about ‘the doctrine,’ this includes teaching about both confession and conduct, both theology and ethics. A separation between them is fatal, a distinction unavoidable….” Jaroslav Pelikan, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600), 2 A quote that was often thrown around while I was in grad school is from Matthew…

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The Soviet dissident was Russian and Orthodox to the bone—and no admirer of liberal democracy.

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The Importance of Identity

The Importance of Identity

I believe that nondenominational Christianity is a dead end. What tends to happen is that any marks of identity are shed until there is nothing left. Churches that start out as nondenominational eventually occupy a denominational space. I have no problems with denominations. It is the reality in which the Church must live until the Kingdom comes in its fullness. Divisions are certainly brought…

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The Plan Going Forward

The Plan Going Forward

I will soon be working with a group of friends on a new blog that will be discussing Church of Christ identity. We will be writing about the Church of Christ as a distinctive tradition within the larger Church. We will also discuss the viability of the Church of Christ tradition going forward. We will be discussing the importance of our distinctives (a cappellacongregational singing, weekly…

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In the heart of Manhattan, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, hangs one of El Greco's remarkable creations, The Vision of St. John. Completed around 1614, it is one of his paintings that looks like it could have been painted in Paris in the early twentieth century. Its feel is not only modern but also somehow imperceptibly contemporary. Evoking the opening of the Fifth Seal in Revelation 6:9-11, the martyrs who bore faithful witness are given white robes while John (it seems) looks heavenward toward the epiphany of the Lamb. The colours of the painting are themselves a startling revelation of another reality. But the painting as we view it today is a fragment. The canvas that hangs in the Met doesn't tell the whole story. In the course of a "restoration" around 1880, the unfinished canvas was trimmed by at least 175 cm. In the name of "improvement," the scene is truncated by almost half. And so, in what seems a fitting parable of modernity, the exultant arms of John the Revelator reach upward to—nothing: to the top of the frame, to the edge of the canvas. The martyrs seem to receive gifts from nowhere, and John seems to praise the nonexistent. All of them seem to look for something no longer there. What if our modernist, secularist projects of "improvement" have unwisely severed us from what makes for a flourishing society? While some might rail against myths of what lies beyond the frame, many others might be asking: What's up there? Our calling in a secular age might be less a matter of securing our status and more a matter of bearing witness to what's missing, especially to those who are feeling the claustrophobia of that frame. We might be surprised at the response.

James K. A. Smith, "Cracks in the Secular," Comment

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Friends shared scripture after scripture, verse after verse, urging me to seek unity above division, to seek unity instead of sharing my beliefs. I stood speechless, curious and confused. His word calls for unity, yes, this is true. But what cost are we paying for a unity we create? I wanted to write about Christ, His word, His truth, yet I felt I was being told to sit down, shut up, and not rock the boat. Through all the calls for unity and all the verses thrown at me, I kept returning to these… Declare these things; exhort and rebuke with all authority. Let no one disregard you. - Titus 2:15 All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work. - 2 Timothy 3:16-17 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. - 2 Timothy 4:2 God talks about Christians being unified, but He never tells us to be unified at the cost of Truth. He wants us to be united, but He also tells us to teach one another, to rebuke and to correct. He calls us to unity, but not for unity’s sake alone. Our unity in Christ is for Christ’s sake, for God’s glory.

Vanessa Rasanen, "The Cost of Unity," Bible Beer & Babies

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Links on My Mind--8/28/2014

I believe the piece below by Tish Harrison Warren gives some food for thought. Even if we play along with those in power, we may still find ourselves kicked to the side.

Tish Harrison Warren, "The Wrong Kind of Christian," Christianity Today

Matthew Lee Anderson, "On Disrespectable Christianity," Mere Orthodoxy

Rod Dreher, "She Was the Wrong Kind of Christian," The American Conservative

Rod Dreher w/ Tish Harrison Warren, "A Response from Vandy's Misfit Christian," The American Conservative

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There is no greater disaster in the spiritual life than to be immersed in unreality, for life is maintained and nourished in us by our vital relation with realities outside and above us. When our life feeds on unreality, it must starve. It must therefore die. There is no greater misery than to mistake this fruitless death for the true, fruitful and sacrificial 'death' by which we enter into life. The death by which we enter into life is not an escape from reality but a complete gift of ourselves which involves a total commitment to reality. It begins by renouncing the illusory reality which created things acquire when they are seen only in their relation to our own selfish interests.

Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude, 3

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I had been on the ground helping Al Jazeera America cover the protests and unrest in Ferguson, Mo., since this all started last week. After what I saw last night, I will not be returning. The behavior and number of journalists there is so appalling, that I cannot in good conscience continue to be a part of the spectacle. Things I’ve seen: -Cameramen yelling at residents in public meetings for standing in way of their cameras -Cameramen yelling at community leaders for stepping away from podium microphones to better talk to residents -TV crews making small talk and laughing at the spot where Mike Brown was killed, as residents prayed, mourned -A TV crew of a to-be-left-unnamed major cable network taking pieces out of a Ferguson business retaining wall to weigh down their tent -Another major TV network renting out a gated parking lot for their one camera, not letting people in. Safely reporting the news on the other side of a tall fence. -Journalists making the story about them -National news correspondents glossing over the context and depth of this story, focusing instead on the sexy images of tear gas, rubber bullets, etc. -One reporter who, last night, said he came to Ferguson as a “networking opportunity.” He later asked me to take a picture of him with Anderson Cooper.

I will not be returning to Ferguson | Ryan L. Schuessler (via ayjay)

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In actual fact, society depends for its existence on the inviolable personal solitude of its members. Society, to merit its name, must be made up not of numbers, or mechanical units, but of persons. To be a person implies responsibility and freedom, and both these imply a certain interior solitude, a sense of personal integrity, a sense of one's own reality and of one's ability to give himself to society--or to refuse that gift. When men are merely submerged in a mass of impersonal human beings pushed around by automatic forces, they lose their true humanity, their integrity, their ability to love, their capacity for self-determination. When society is made up of men who know no interior solitude it can no longer be held together by love: and consequently it is held together by a violent and abusive authority. But when men are violently deprived of the solitude and freedom which are their due, the society in which they live becomes putrid, it festers with servility, resentment and hate. No amount of technological progress will cure the hatred that eats away the vitals of materialistic society like a spiritual cancer. The only cure is, and must always be, spiritual. There is not much use talking to men about God and love if they are not able to listen. The ears with which one hears the message of the Gospel are hidden in man's heart, and these ears do not hear anything unless they are favored with a certain interior solitude and silence. In other words, since faith is a matter of freedom and self-determination--the free receiving of a freely given gift of grace--man cannot assent to a spiritual message as long as his mind and heart are enslaved by automatism.

Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1956), xi-xiii.

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In Afghanistan, we patrolled in big, armored trucks. We wore uniforms that conveyed the message, “We are a military force, and we are in control right now.” Many Afghans saw us as occupiers. And now we see some of our police officers in this same way. “The militarization of law enforcement is counter-productive to domestic policing and needs to stop,” tweeted Andrew Exum, a former Army infantry officer. If there’s one thing I learned in Afghanistan, it’s this: You can’t win a person’s heart and mind when you are pointing a rifle at his or her chest.

This Is The Terrifying Result Of The Militarization Of Police (via ayjay)

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Canto XXIII is one of my favorites in the entire Commedia. It is the point in Dante's pilgrimage where he sees, at long last, reality in all its splendor. Here

What is the lesson from Canto XXIII for us? It is to show us that our suffering here on earth is not meaningless. That there is substance to the things we hope for, even if we cannot see it yet. That this life, and all is chaos and confusion and pain, is a dark night that is passing, and we are to make ourselves ready for the rising of the sun, cared for by those who, strengthened by faith, teach us to wait patiently by the rivers of this earthly Babylon for our deliverance.

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I used to believe that suicides went to Hell. Self-murder is a sin of which you cannot repent. I don’t know when I quit believing that, but any sympathy I might have had for that view did not survive my own bout with depression last year. I wasn’t remotely suicidal, to be clear, but I remember thinking on more than one occasion, 'If it’s this bad and I have no desire to kill myself, how much worse must it be for those who do have suicidal depression?' My own depression didn’t just come over me. It was a despairing response to events I could not control.... As longtime readers know, I finally got help. I was prideful, and didn’t think a therapist would do me any good, so I had to hit the wall and be ordered there by my doctor and my wife. To me, it was humiliating to go, but it turned out to be the kind of humility to which Dante had to submit at the foot of Mount Purgatory. He could make no spiritual progress in rebuilding his life and being liberated from his condition until he embraced humility.

Rod Dreher, "Robin Williams & Depression," The American Conservative

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Typically other people’s problems seem simpler, uncomplicated and easier to solve than those of one’s own society. In this context, the decontextualized hunger and homelessness in Haiti, Cambodia or Vietnam is an easy moral choice. Unlike the problems of other societies, the failing inner city schools in Chicago or the haplessness of those living on the fringes in Detroit is connected to larger political narratives. In simple terms, the lack of knowledge of other cultures makes them easier to help. This imagined simplicity of others’ problems presents a contrast to the intangible burdens of post-industrial societies. Western nations are full of well-fed individuals plagued by less explicit hardships such as the disintegration of communities and the fraying of relationships against the possibilities of endless choices. The burdens of manic consumption and unabated careerism are not as easily pitied as crumbling shanties and begging babies. Against this landscape, volunteerism presents an escape, a rare encounter with an authenticity sorely missed, hardship palpably and physically felt — for a small price.

Rafia Zakaria, "The white tourist's burden," Al Jazeera America

See also: John Allen Gay, "White Messiah Complex," The American Conservative

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[The spies] went on to give [Rahab] a sign, telling her she was to hang out a scarlet cord from her house - thereby typifying the redemption which all who put their trust and hope in God shall find, through the blood of the Lord. (Notice, dear friends, how in this woman there was not only faith, but prophecy also.)

1 Clement 12