Some Interesting Things Elsewhere VI

edit: I accidently published this post too early, it was scheduled for wednesday but I pushed the wrong button…

The random picture today (going round on FB)  is a man ‘hugging’ a Japanese giant salamander… I always liked freaky animals, and this monster certainly fits that description…

For the interesting things elswhere:

Sarah Moon on Christian forgiveness, how subversive it is, but how Christians turn it completely wrong…

One of the important theological discussions of the moment is ‘what is the gospel’, and Peter Enns has an interesting post on that question. (I’m sorta with Enns, Wright, and McKnight in this discussion, for those wondering.)

I found this article on the orthodox view of ancestral sin (not original sin like Augustine and those who follow him) interesting.

Interesting stuff about Pentecostalism being pacifist in its early years…

And since we’re doing hard theological  subjects, here is Greg Boyd on the death of Ananias and Sapphira.

What we can learn from the dying…

It seems like every disaster in or around the US gives us prophetic weirdos who say that it’s Gods punishment. It’s strange that they keep silent now, with the Isaac storm and the Republican convention (except for Roger Olson in his more satirical moments)

Kurt Willems on Christian politics: Speak truth, be truth, that’s it…

Derek Flood on sojo, on gender equality and how complementarianism misses something essential in their bible reading. On his blog there’s also an interesting post about re-thinking the Wesleyan quadrilateral (in favor of experience!)

shalom

Bram

Some interesting things elsewhere III

Yes, that’s me, sitting at the beach at the mouth of most Southern estuary of the river Schelde in the North Sea, in the Netherlands, where we were with the people of our Vineyard church from Antwerp yesterday. As you can see the weather was changing at the moment of taking the picture, and not for the better…

Now onto the new list of ‘Some interesting things elsewhere’: I know I’m not disciplined enough, and not able to give my blog enough priority to do this every week like some bloggers do, but here is a new list:

Dianne Anderson  has written an interesting series on C.S. Lewis and platonism(part I, part II, part III) and complementarian use of the shadowlands metaphor. I think she has an interesting point that is much broader than her feminist application, and important in other ways too.  And then Sarah moon has a post on ‘intangible christianity‘, and I understood much more why her point is so important. Christian salvation is not something vague and mystical (in the pejorative sense) that means that somewhere in the heavenly realm your status has been changed, and your sins (actually the punishment for them) has been ‘washed away’ without anything happening here and now, but it is the Inbreaking of the Kingdom of God, ‘already and not yet’, that will only be complete after the Judgment with erasing of all evil. But salvation is something very real here and now!

Josh Hopping has a post about scriptures, politics, and the bootstrap myth, confronting the myth of the ‘do-it-yourself’-person that is even more pervasive in America but endemic to (neo)liberal Western thought but completely unchristian. Something similar from Bill Guerrant on sustainable traditions about American virtues and the seven deadly sins. (And again, what’s said about the US can be broadened to our Western culture in general…)

These stats on the sex industry from treasures in Los Angeles make me very very very sad… Kyrië Eleison! 

Related, Kurt Willems on the Pangea blog asks question ‘can porn be used responsible’, and gives an interesting observation about freedom: “God invites us to allow the Holy Spirit to shape our character to make us look more like Jesus, free from the shackles of longing for someone other than a spouse. Porn never accomplishes this aim in any circumstance.“

And for something completely different, Scott Morizot wonders about the influence of Islam on the Western renaissance in general and calvinism in specific. Intriguing idea.

peace

Bram

Some interesting things elsewhere

Travelling missiologist Andrew Jones, the blogger also known as Tallskinnykiwi, wants to write a book (that I want to read!!!) and needs some help with money to be able to do the stuff he’s doing, which is travelling around with his family to meet with all of gods children on planet Terra, and helping all kinds of Christians and Christian communities around the world.  There’s only one Andrew Jones on the whole planet Terra who does what he does, so consider helping him! Or at least read what he’s up to on the blogpost I’ve linked to…

Matt stone on glocal Christianity has started a very interesting series, which starts with six different Christian approaches to war and peace, something we need in times when it seems like a false dichotomy between ‘just war’ and ‘pacifism’ (which sometimes is explained really poorly) is dominating the discussion, while there are much forms of Christian pacifism on one hand, and ‘just war theory’ isn’t really followed by much people on the other hand actually.  His position is ‘apocalyptic pacifism’, and the other posts are OT bible verses that he sees as pacifist prophecies (part 1, part 2, part 3) to back his position up.

Apocalyptic pacifism starts from an ‘already and not yet’ framework, in which the ‘coming age’ (the Kingdom of God)  is breaking in into this age, and in which we as Christians are already living in the reality of that new age. Living as radical peacemakers is one dimension of the Kingdom, but if we read the gospels there is another one that can’t be denied: the supernatural signs of the kingdom are as clear and confronting in the gospels as the radical love for our fellow humans that includes enemy-love… And Ray Hollenbach has a very interesting meditation on this aspect of the Kingdom of God on Students of Jesus. The anabaptist peace tradition and vineyard Kingdom charismatics can learn a  lot from each other and make the Kingdom vision more complete together!

“He gave them power and authority to drive out all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick.” (Luke 9: 1 – 2)

[The perfect soundtrack here would be this gungor song, that we've sung last sunday in Vineyard Antwerpen. I love me some bluesfunk from time to time, and Michael is a very good musician!!]

And then for something else: Laura Ziesel has an interesting series on Christianity, intersex people and eunuchs in the bible. Thanks to Sarah Moon for  making me aware of them and posting an orderly list of them! We should stop seeing this kind of things as ‘issues’ and start looking at it as people who are loved by Christ and should be loved by us all the same!

shalom

Bram

The worst of all sins, the Jesus creed and an orthodox hell…

Let’s start with a quote that could come from some classic book about Christianity of the sort that should be read by everyone, but in fact just is stolen from a blogcomment by the ever incredible Scott Morizot, on Sarah Moons blog. (The context is a discussion about premarital sex, but I’m not going into that now)

The modern church has largely lost sight of the deeper understanding of the ancient church. The physical passions, lust, gluttony, and the rest can be very destructive, but they are the lesser passions. Greed, anger, hatred, bitterness. Those passions form us into subhuman beings and are more dangerous for most people in the long run.

- Scott Morizot

I think this is really important stuff. We shouldn’t put our main focus on outward sins like a lot of Christian moralists do, but on the structural sins that reside in our heart. We should not fight symtoms, but cut to the core of the problem. And the problem of sin is much deeper than breaking a law and doing what we shouldn’t do:

Sin” in the Christian sense does not mean breaking a law or violating ritual cleanliness. The closest meaning would be ‘missing the mark’ and the ‘mark’ for Christians, as I understand it, is always Christ. Communion with Christ. Forming Christ in ourselves. Being Christ to others.

- Scott Morizot

This is something I’ve been thinking about, since I’ve reread Scot McKnight’s ‘the Jesus creed‘, I’ve very clumsily started to at random times recite to myself the “Jesus Creed”, or Jesus adaptation of the Shema that we mostly know as ‘the great commandment’, and wondering if I do indeed in any way even try to live up to that. Which can be a really confronting exercise!

The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord:

And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.

And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.

Christ, From Mark 12

First comment here is that loving God is something strange, but I do believe that it means to know God, a personal relationship with God. If we believe that in the afterlife we’re going to be with Him without end, then it’s worth trying to get to know Him in this life too, isn’t it?

Another comment: If the law is summed up in “love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your fellow human as yourself”, then this must be the first thing to which we turn to see whether something is sin, even if we take the definition of sin as law-breaking. Everything that hinders us in growing this double love of God and neigbor in any way is ‘sin’. And the most dangerous sins here would be indeed things like greed, anger, hatred and bitterness. Which is scary sometimes to realise, for example if we consider that our economy does run on greed, when, like Paul says, love of money is the root of all evil…

If we allow those things to grow in our lives, they will hinder love, and in the end make it impossible. And if love is really impossible, we indeed become ‘sub-human’, we become a child of darkness that will never be able to endure the light. Which is a very scary definition of hell which I did encounter in orthodox thought: for the lost soul eternity with God IS hell, an all-consuming fire…

those are just thoughts that are incomplete; so all comments are welcome!

Shalom

Bram