10 posts tagged “justice”
It is so encouraging, enlightening, challenging and - IT JUST NEEDS TO BE SAID! Thanks to Shane Claiborne and The Simple Way for getting the message of the Gospel of Peace out.
It's a shame the Gospel has to be taught to "Christians."
Now I'm a heretic, haha.
It seems like the US Church has done a good job of teaching people that being a bad Christian is actually being a good Christian. We've made an art of parsing Scripture to find loopholes (perceived loopholes anyway) to living a godly life. We have written books on how to live exactly like the world and still manage to live in the Kingdom of God.
When I hear of Christians or the world at large talk about "cults" it is usually talking about a group of people who have withdrawn from the world or have otherwise disengaged in "normal" activities. This weekend I found it amusing that we find this kind of activity so weird when we've been called to exactly that.
No, I'm not talking about specific ideas, not vindicating any or all "cults." What I'm talking about is Christ called us out of the world to be set apart. He called us to a new way of thinking, of living. When we live exactly like the world except we listen to different musicians, we go to Church and TiVo the football games instead, when we give a portion of our income (if we're real "good"), don't drink or smoke - and that's what a Christian life is ... really, that's the radical way of life Jesus called us to?
I heard criticism within the Church after the shootings in Colorado at the YWAM base and the mega-church. Some people said YWAM was a cult because the people who join it tend to not own much, they don't participate in most regular frivolous activities and they go on trips and arrange events. So our own Church looks down on Christian living as if its weird.
We've gotten really good at taking the teachings of Christ and of his Apostles and twisting them into our pagan way of life. When Christ said, "Turn the other cheek" we say it only applies to verbal abuse. "Love your enemy" means those you disagree with in the Church body.
One specific text I want to bring up and give a call to action is in 2 Corinthians 8:13-15. This relates to a previous topic I wrote about pertaining to community:
"Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality. At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. Then there will be equality, as it is written: 'He who gathered much did not have too much, and he who gathered little did not have too little.'"
What is this about? Equality with whom? In this case it is with our brothers and sisters in the Lord, the Body of Christ. This passage quotes from Exodus 16 where God supplies manna to the Israelites in the desert. Those who gathered much had just enough and those who gathered little also had enough. There was enough to go around.
Similarly, God has given us each enough to go around. Some have been given little, and some much. Some have so much they don't need it all, and some have not a lot at all. Paul implores the Corinthians to share with those in their time of need, and when they are in need they will receive in return.
This is clearly a well-ignored biblical teaching.
I don't believe in tithe. In Deut. 14 the tithe is clearly used as a communal service - a party if you will. The quote no pastor wants you to read, "exchange your tithe for silver, and take the silver with you and go to the place the LORD your God will choose. Use the silver to buy whatever you like: cattle, sheep, wine or other fermented drink, or anything you wish." This celebration of giving was to go to the Levites (who ran the temple), the alien, orphan and widow. But clearly Jesus called us to give 100% of ourselves to God. "Give to Caesar what is Caesar and to God what is God's." When the Apostles took the Gospel to the gentiles they removed all requirements of the law except for eating blood, meat sacrificed to idols, things strangled, and to stay away from fornication. Tithe was not in this. What was taught was this communal giving. One of the signs of the Pentecost was the believers having all things in common.
So I took a very long time to get to this point. I have things others don't that I want to make available to every believer. I want to give everything I have and everything I am to the Body of Christ. I'll start by saying that I have a washer/dryer I know not everyone has and you can come use it here at my house. Feel free to share your needs with myself and with others so that we can have our needs met by one another.
Why complain about not having community without intentionally living it? Will it just come about if we don't do it?
More theology here, but talk about the Eucharist here. The manifestation of the Body of Christ here on earth when believers are gathered in "two or three" in communion. Imagine Christ literally working through his transubstantiationed body here on earth to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, house the homeless. Perhaps we can be on the side of the Sheep when He comes in judgment through His grace and mercy on our lives.
Jeff had me thinking about our economic polices related to oil companies, especially now that they're reporting record profits.
Our tax code gives oil companies a lower tax rate. If the oil companies paid the same rate as non-oil businesses they would be paying at least $2-billion more in taxes each year. When one oil company alone posted over $40-billion in profits this is nothing. And why do we have this break for oil companies? The silly answer is that it keeps the price of gas down for the consumer. But the oil companies could make the same profits and each American would pay all of $6 more per year in gas. And that $2-billion could go to some other useful purpose. And that doesn't include the tax breaks they get on the state and local level which is over $4.1-billion per year in lost tax revenue.
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed; those who are cold and are not clothed."
President Dwight D.Eisenhower,
in The Chance for Peace, a speech given to the American Society of Newspaper Editors on April 16
1953
Damnit Tim, why'd you give me this book? I just finished the first chapter and I'm already crying and hating my life.
Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.
Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.
Time to boycott Chiquita:
Chiquita's money helped buy weapons and ammunition used to kill innocent victims of terrorism. Simply put, defendant Chiquita funded terrorism.
- the U.S. Justice Department, in court filings last month against Chiquita, which was found guilty of giving $1.7 million to the AUC, a right wing paramilitary organization in Columbia, and fined $25 million. According to USA Today, Chiquita earned $49.4 million in profit from its Colombian operations between Sept. 10, 2001, when the AUC was designated a terrorist group, and January 2004, when its payments stopped. (Source: USA Today)
Excerpt:
Adam has been created first, shaped by the hand of God from the dust, and God has breathed his spirit into Adam to give him life. But God recognizes that Adam is incomplete by himself, and so is in need of a…. “helper” or “helpmeet” (Genesis 2:18).
“Helper” is, in fact, an extremely poor and shallow translation for the Hebrew ezer kenegdo. In fact, the noun ezer is a term that implies help from a superior (and is used many, many times in the Hebrew Bible to describe God, our help), and so God, in the text, supplies the modifier kenegdo to lessen the force of the help, making the helper equal with the helped. Robert Alter insists that a much better translation is “lifesaver.” I have also seen it rendered “the one who saves me and is the same as me.” So we have Adam, the first man, who is the beginning of a new race whose life is breathed into his nostrils by God - but even in this he is incomplete. In order to be who God would have him be, in order for the human race to be what God intends, a complementary person is needed to essentially save the life of the human race.
