WAS BEN FRANKLIN RIGHT IN WRITING THAT GOD HELPS THOSE WHO HELP THEMSELVES?

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I think so. First of all it is a great doctrine of the Reformed Faith that our salvation, meaning a relationship with God, is by GRACE ALONE through CHRIST ALONE. We cannot earn grace. But we can make the effort to cooperate with grace to make progress in our Christian life.

I think it’s what Paul meant when he wrote to the church in Philippi for the folks there to work hard on their salvation because God was at work in them to live for God’s will and pleasure. (See Philippians 2)

Make no mistake. God acts first in our lives while we are absolutely helpless to do anything for ourselves in the way of a relationship with God. This is all affected through the sacrifice of Christ for our sins.

If we though want to learn the scriptures to draw inspiration and direction in our lives from God we make the EFFORT to open the Bible and carefully read. These words will not come by placing the Bible under our pillow and waiting for the scriptures to somehow radiate into our minds.

If we need and want to forgive someone we first depend upon God’s grace that has forgiven us and then we make a determined effort to forgive the other perhaps in some small first steps moving to cooperate with God in God’s desire to pardon and free us and the other. And while we do so we will experience GRACE at work.

Like in sports, grace is the invitation to be on the team. Grace is making the cut. Effort is like practicing, sharpening the God-given skills and sometimes you discover just how great grace can be through efforts that you make.

Effort is the opening of the door for the Holy Spirit to affect God’s will in our lives.

Effort is making the decision to decline so much of the world’s invitation to conform and thus work towards allowing God to transform our minds through disciplines such as prayer, reading, fellowship in order that we can better know the will of God. (See Romans 12)

I think of Abraham called by God (grace) and then leaving his homeland (effort) to find out what God had willed for him. Sometimes we won’t know the full measure of God’s grace until we step into the abyss and abandon ourselves to our Lord. And if we find that we cannot make that effort, no worry. God’s grace is full of patience, understanding and another door WILL open.

By the way, I read that Ben didn’t originate that phrase but as a deist he perhaps did not understand the full effect of God’s saving grace in his life.

Honest To God Christianity

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I have been thinking recently how living the Christian life faithfully is not so easy or simplistic as sometimes we would like to make it. Even though we are new creations in Christ there is still the ‘old’ at work in us. We are sinners and saints at the same time. We are citizens of heaven and worldly people.

Let’s take for example Jesus statement that we cannot love God and material things at the same time. I think we can and we do. It is a tension of the Christian faith that needs to be realized, admitted and even confessed.

I love God and as I recently discovered I love my material and worldly circumstances. My wife and I moved from New York to Colorado for family reasons and I found myself quite obsessed with the ‘things’ around me, most of all my muddy yard that needs to be landscaped and fenced. Day after day I look at it with some anxiety about getting it fixed up before the winter comes.

And there is much else to be concerned with as any knows who has ever moved some distance away from all the known to the mostly unknown. Things like internet and good TV. service were on the priority list. What WOULD we do if he evenings were oh so quiet?

So I began to think, ‘Hey, how can I love and trust God while at the same time loving all this stuff. And even if I don’t term it loving, well, I am certainly spending an inordinate amount of time thinking about it. So am I going against what my Lord would want of me? In some ways yes but it’s the journey I am on and Jesus knows it so well.

Think of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, so in love with God and in some ways so desirous to avoid his own agony. It was the fullness of his earthly journey that brought him to the place of saying to his Father, ‘Thy will be done’.

And so it will be with us in those hard places even though one foot is stuck on earth and mired in the things of this world. We are a work of God. Sometimes I like to think of myself as a ‘real piece of work’ as the expression goes.

And if we stay with the disciplines of faith and not quit being the apprentice/disciple that Jesus calls us to be, we will love God more and more and the things of earth will grow dimmer as the old hymn suggests. I hope it will be sooner than later, for myself at least.

So as I gazed upon the mud surrounding my new home I also gave glance to a passage of scripture I read in the MESSAGE PARAPHRASE, which is a wonderful rendering of scripture by Eugene Peterson. This passage is Colossians 3:2.

So if you’re serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it. Pursue the things over which Christ presides. Don’t shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. Look up, and be alert to what is going on around Christ—that’s where the action is. See things from his perspective.

Wow, this puts life in a proper perspective. So I walked on out my deck, looked over the yet to be landscaping and thought, ‘this is nothing compared to loving God.’ I want to be thinking and praying about what Christ is up to, what he thinks about all this material stuff. And I know that he brings me back to reality. His reality. So while material things DO have some value in my life I want God to know that it’s God who I want to put FIRST.

Oops, hold the presses. My wife just informed me that we are going to have the lawn put in. Well, the dialectic of living the Christian life continues.

 

Message for Roseburg

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If I were a pastor in that little community of Roseburg, Oregon or any community that is connected to the people there here is what I would want to say:

Let’s stay with Jesus for a while. Let’s not hurry on even to a sense of victory. The resurrection is muted. We just need to stay with Jesus. Look at his body, the blood, his tears. See his weakness on that cross. Don’t turn away with some easy answer to the senseless tragedy. No, stay with Jesus. Each one of these lives, these precious souls whose death has pierced their loved ones hearts, belongs to Jesus, the Jesus who suffers with each aching heart.

Don’t rush to change laws right now. Don’t rush to blame. Don’t rush to judgment. Just stay with Jesus.

Don’t rush to revenge. Leave that to the Lord. There was none of that on Good Friday. They just stayed with Jesus, cried with Jesus, and something in each of them died with Jesus just as something in all of us dies with these young men and women, their families and communities right now. They stood for Jesus. Jesus stands with them. Their hurt is his continuing pain. Don’t rush to find the end just yet. Believe right where you are, right where your heart breaks right not. If you need to doubt or rage against heaven, go ahead because heaven knows how to bear our doubt, disbelief or uncontrollable anger. Heaven has been here before.

Just stay with Jesus right now. That’s right. Where their blood poured out it is mingled with the blood of Jesus. That word ‘Jesus’ right now is the only word we can speak.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said, ONLY A SUFFERING GOD CAN HELP NOW. May each of our hearts find a place where that suffering God can rest for a while.

PRO LIFE SHOULD MEAN PRO LIFE ALWAYS. BABIES & GUNS.

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PRO LIFE SHOULD MEAN PRO LIFE ALWAYS. BABIES & GUNS.

I am a Conservative, theologically, in that I believe in a sound Biblical, Christ- centered reading of Scripture, one that informs life within the church and within society. I am pro life, for life, for the flourishing of life by all means possible since life comes to us through Christ and in the image of God.

So here’s what I don’t understand. How can Conservatives say that they are ‘pro life’ and deny a woman’s right to choose what happens to and within her own body to save to life of a child that is to be born, and then in the same discussion NOT be willing to somehow deny the right to GUNS in order that little children as well as adults might have life along with their families and the society that would benefit from their lives.

Please don’t tell me it has to do with some obscure reference to ‘swords’ that Jesus makes when you can readily assess the heart and mind of Jesus with regards to peace and violence and ‘enemies’. Is it because we good capitalists don’t want to destroy the arms industry? Are we as conservative Christians so callous to life and so conformed to the world that we are so afraid of giving up guns rights to save more lives?

Help me out here. How can I defend the little child’s right to life within the womb when some of my brothers and sisters aren’t willing to TRY to save the lives of children in the school, on the streets, and in their homes and when they grow up?

This is a decision of THE CHURCH and not just an individual opinion based on a misinformed conscience. This is an opportunity for the church to speak a prophetic word to the church and say, in ‘Christ’s name, STOP.’

Don’t blame the criminals. They are only doing what they know to do. Blame the good people for doing nothing.

Mrs. Clinton’s Modern World

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“Now extreme views about women? We expect that from some terrorist groups. We expect that from people who don’t want to live in the modern world,’’ Clinton stated. “But it’s a little hard to take coming from Republicans who want to be the president of the United States, yet they espouse out-of-date and out-of-touch policies.

Hilary Clinton made these remarks about the Republican presidential candidates. ‘Modern world’. Hmmm. I want to live in the modern world but my sense of modern considers a different ‘reality’ from Mrs. Clinton’s. The modern world in which I live is the world of the Kingdom of God as revealed in the Scriptures. It is a world where every life matters to God who created these lives even as difficult a situation as some may find themselves in. Even though Mrs. Clinton accuses some candidates of being so wrong about not choosing abortion in cases of rape or incest I doubt that this ‘would be’ President is interested at all in protecting the lives of all the unborn in most any situation. I am not sure what kind of ‘modern’ world Mrs. Clinton envisions but it seems to be one that does not include babies within the womb.

I am not in favor of criminalizing abortion. But I believe that in the Kingdom of God modern world we as intelligent people should be doing everything possible to help families NOT to have to choose abortion. It is a barbaric Dark Age world where abortion is used as a tool of convenience for choices people make in their lives. And I am personally aware of one situation where a young woman who was raped and still carried her child to term. She did this with the help of many loving people. And her little girl has a good life.

The Kingdom of God is about living a ‘good’ life, something the people of God need to encourage even in the hardest situations. We live by the Book that says God works all things to good for those who are in love with God and I suspect for lots of people who don’t even trust God.

Calling Republicans ‘terrorists’? Well, I guess that goes with the political territory. That’s modern world language for you. And it is most likely fodder for the news cattle.

I am sure that much of what I believe would be considered by Mrs. Clinton as ‘out of touch’. Out of touch with what, I don’t know. But I am more concerned to be ‘in touch’ with the reality of God’s kingdom. I want to search out God in all these matters and I want to do God’s will as best I can discern it. I’m not sure I will find it in all this political ballyhooing, but hey, you never know where God’s graceful presence may surprise us.

Just Good Enough

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Luke 13:24 “Exert every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to.

In high school I had grades that were just good enough to make the ‘honor society’, but never to achieve loftier goals of any academic excellence. I played baseball just good enough to make the team but not to be very good. I played various musical instruments just good enough to get by but never really well to be the best at any of them. I have come to discover that just good enough is not really ‘good enough’.

And so sometimes I think have faith just good enough to be accepted into God’s kingdom, love that’s just good enough to care about a certain number of people near me and some who live on the fringes of life.

But Jesus says to exert myself or as the original language says, ‘strain every nerve’, or we might say to strain every muscle or fiber of your being, to step into the way of grace where with God nothing is impossible and where we can be the best and give God our best. Like those two women who made it into the Army Rangers, straining every ounce of muscle, energy, and emotional stamina to be not just good enough to get by but to be the best.

For me it has to do with my thoughts, my prayers, my reading of Scripture, my search for good fellowship and worship and striving to live my life as Jesus would live his life in me.

And as my grandfather used to say, ‘we don’t want to do it just good enough. We want it to be ‘right’’. Amen. And in this day the world needs to experience the excellence of a Christian witness that is much more than ‘good enough’.

 

“Faith is believing something you know ain’t true.”- Mark Twain

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Three mighty big words in that quote; faith, belief, true. A lot of folk think that the first two belong to the realm of the unreasonable while truth is what science and materialism and the real world is all about.

I like what the late Dallas Willard writes in his book Knowing Christ Today. He uses the illustration of how science taught us how to kill crop pests by using DDT. And what we eventually learned was that it killed all kinds of wild life too. He then goes on to write that ‘scientific knowledge’ will not solve practical problems in life. It takes knowledge plus wisdom of HOW to live. “The best physical, chemical, and other scientific knowledge will not tell us what to do or who to be.”

Religion answers the question of how and who. There is a knowledge beyond but may include science. There is a knowledge given by God to those who will listen. We call that knowledge ‘faith’. Faith is trusting that what God has said and what Jesus said and did are true and that they inform all life.

Woe to humanity that would toss religion out because of the mistakes religious people have made. Better it would be to correct those mistakes with a sincere faith that is informed by knowledge.

Let me give an example that is all too real in our world today. And in doing so I am aware that there who those who agonize over choices they must make.

We as a nation allow and, it would seem through some recent investigation, even promote the taking of human life. Science has taught us the procedures for abortion but science has not taught us the God given sanctity of all human life. Abortion is a realm that needs more than materialistic, scientific or even enlightened thought. This is a realm of life that needs to be informed (given information) by the religious meaning of ‘life’, in all its forms.

If there is no God, and we are but atoms, electrons, molecules and such, then the practical answer to an inconvenient life is what is approved today according to the desires of society. But if there is a higher truth, a more informed truth, a truth that governs this creation we need to discover that truth by all means possible. For such truth will tell us who we are, and how we are to live on this planet in the best possible way.

If there is a way to investigate the reality of God then we as an enlightened people ought to do our best to discover a knowledge that might just best arrive in the form of faith. And that is as true of religious people who have ‘used’ faith to rationalize some terrible behavior. We can all ‘learn’.

Faith, real faith, is an informed confidence in Christ from whom we learn ‘truth’ and not blind irrationality.

For Skeptics and Believers: What draws me to Christianity

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At the outset I admit, without being trite, that it’s Jesus who attracts me to the Christian faith. The most attractive quality of Jesus is the way he shows us the character of God that is loving, and forgiving. God, through Jesus, has told me I am loved and God has told that nothing can separate me from God’s love. Not even my own stupidity, negligence or sin. God in Christ pursues me until he brings me back into God’s wonderful embrace. This is for me the essence of Christianity in my being and worked out through my life and the community of faithful believers.

It’s difficult to imagine that Jesus is just an imaginary figure created to satisfy the human need for a god or a crutch in life’s hard times. The character of Jesus is not the sort you would, on your own, invent. I will admit that the church has been guilty over the years of producing a version of Christ that takes the form of power but those powers are hard pressed to find the Jesus they affirm from the scriptures of the New Testament particularly the Gospels.

There we find Jesus, the wisest and most loving teacher who ever lived, instructing his followers to ‘love one another’, to ‘love their enemies and bless those who curse them.’ In Christ we discover a religious master who seeks all who feel lost and left out and find themselves as society’s outcasts. His harshest condemnations are reserved for the proud, the self-confident and judgmental.

Jesus taught his followers to engage the world through ‘weakness’ not ‘strength’. He said they should take up a cross and be willing to die for one another and that behind such ‘foolish’ talk was the love of the Father, God. That kind of teaching goes against the grain of our ego but aligns itself with the Creator. And Jesus not only teaches these principles. He lives them, taking upon him, servant-hood even to the point of death.

I am currently watching all the political posturing of the possible candidates for the office of President and all I witness is self-aggrandizement, judgementalism, pride and power. Maybe I need to look harder and elsewhere.

A skeptical view of Christianity usually addresses the failures of the church, the institutional and individual sins and while it could be made abundantly clear that the church has done more good on this earth than any other institution let’s admit that the church has had its share of failure and sin.

Skepticism does have its place for they wonder if the church didn’t invent this Jesus within the pages of history of the course of the first few centuries C.E. And skeptics do well to question Jesus role today especially in matters of evil, suffering and injustice. These are valid queries into Christianity as long as those asking are willing to do the appropriate searching into the person and work of Jesus. And those of us willing to believe them must be willing to bear a healthy investigation.

To dismiss Christianity because of perceived contradictions in the Bible is not sufficient because most skeptics have seldom read the Bible. And contradictions that might be found are to my mind evidence of the veracity of the witness accounts. Eyewitness accounts rarely find total congruence. We would be even more suspicious if they did.

I think a bigger problem is that Christianity has been around for 2000 years and has been put up on our mental if not physical shelves to be disregarded and a dust collector at best. Many people have simply not tried to place their confidence in everything Jesus did or said. And we are part of a society, which is pretty self-absorbed whereby life, the way we decide to live it, is just fine. THAT would be a religion created in our own image, a religion that we take off the shelf every once in a while, blow the dust off and look for the self-help section.

But not so with Jesus. In every aspect of life Jesus claims Lordship and he calls for our devotion not because he is an egomaniacal dictator but because as God he knows what’s best for his creation.

People say that Christianity is a ‘weak’ religion. I say that dying to self takes more ‘guts’ than to live by any other code. And what is so incredibly reassuring about it is that we don’t have to go it alone.

Grace and Peace

george

Christ at the Center

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Bonhoeffer has a book by this title and I tag along to him by saying that everything in this creation has come through Christ. Christ is the victim and the victor and he calls us to be his followers. Those folks in South Carolina, centered in Christ, have found the ability to grieve and grief deeply while they witness to God’s love in Christ through forgiveness. Few of us can understand their grief but those of us who do know it realize it that there is anger and sadness in the midst of anything else we are feeling. We are not naive but at the same time we are not unfaithful. We know the weakness of God in Christ and we know the defeat of death through Christ. Those families and faithful ones in Christ through their forgiveness and their celebration of life know weakness and strength.
The church is to experience both. We are to live with Christ and we are to die with Christ knowing all the while that we are in Christ and Christ in us and not even Satan and all his legions can stop God’s children from marching forward.
I pray that the light of AME Zion churches and those who stand with them will know that God’s grace is always sufficient as well as ultimately victorious.
P.S. Hopefully through it all our nation and we as individual believers will be sufficiently humble to hear God.