Response to US response to Israel/Lebanon conflict

The White House continues to do all it can to "win friends and influence people" in the Middle East.

Jon Trott coined a little winsome tribute.

Here's my response on BlueChristian.blogspot.com:

My prayer this year is that I can set every other truth I say I believe to one side for the One truth that we humans are somehow made in God's image. All humans. Heaven will be a shock to our system in that we will encounter all these "castoffs" that we never knew about but who are near to God's heart.

Our US culture is all about setting a price on human worth. But that price is so low. We assign value based on buying power. This very imaginative construct is failing. We see it all around us. What should make us Christians different is that we take God's values seriously. But that will involve being transformed non-conformists who live and imagine life by different values.

Here is a portion of a liturgy from the Ekklesia project gathering this year:

"We confess that we are double-minded. We seek to have both our way and yours. We believe those two paths to be the same, but we are deceived. How great is the destruction caused by those who presume to know the way. How great is the darkness within those who trust in their own righteousness and fail to submit to yours."

Tags: Israel/Lebanon, Bombing, humanity, USA

this morning's thought

Which world view, Christian or Atheist, provide the social mores that
benefit universal human existence?
What a lousy question! That's gotta be another Elijah fire test that
doesn't work. Do we have sociological/historical examples to argue
sides? Let's be honest and say God alone could judge. Whoops!

Tags: world view, Christianity, Atheism, humanity, Elijah

it matters whether

It matters

I do not expect any one to believe me.

Worse than not taking my word I fear that what I say has with time ceased to matter.

But it does. . .

It matters whether it is in a man to love. It matters whether a man can truly love himself.

It matters whether he can truly love his neighbor. It matters whether humans are truly made in God’s image. It matters whether we can love in Community.

Tags: Community, humanity

Love?

If my life were a question it might be worded this way: “Is it in a man to love?” I want to believe in love with all my heart, with my whole life. But my personal history has hardly been an example of faithful love. Even as I have desired to be loved throughout my life and that desire has been left wanting, so my efforts at loving completely and with faithfulness have finally met with failure.

It’s been said that love is an overused word, that we really don’t even know what we mean when we say it anymore. It’s a code word for any number of things. For some people “I love you” falls so easily off the tongue that we question the depth of their sincerity. And it’s also true that words themselves fail to be taken seriously anymore as we humans drift in and out of relations with each other without thought for our proximity or the effects of any forms of language we encounter.

I also see people desperate for real relationships but unsure of themselves. There are few things more frustrating than a promise unfulfilled, and the ultimate promise is from God. The first part of God’s promise is that he himself shaped people in his image and called them (male and female)“very good.” He created them from earth so that in relation to creation and to himself they would be as he intended. God’s creation act is the first sign of promise. We are made for a reason. We are good.

Far from being exhausted with humans or fearful our weaknesses, God emptied himself and became a man to reconcile us to himself. Jesus set an example of love for his disciples in washing their feet, commanded that they love each other as he loved them, and then laid down his life in the Supreme act of love. This activity precluded one simple belief on God’s part. That we are capable of Love. That in spite of the possibility that we would choose otherwise God invests himself in us for a future joy, a future hope that he will right us.

Tags: proximity, love, humanity, fear, weakness, faithfulness, "Is it in a man to love?"