to continue our thoughts on hearing the voice of God, we would say that the traditional way we think about hearing God's voice occurs when we say we hear God through the bible and other spiritual practices such as prayer and worship.

to this i would also add the church as mediating God’s voice. but, to say the church filters to us the voice of the LORD, even if it is true, is only ok as far as it goes. by this i mean there is much more content that needs to be poured into the word church.

there is a concept introduced to me by william j. abraham that will help us here. it's the catch-phrase: canonical theism. dr. abraham edited and contributed to a book by the same name. (go here) he defines canonical theism in 30 thesis (go here). there are three of them i want to emphasize. i will quote a portion of #1 and all of #9, and i will end with #13:

Thesis I:
"Canonical theism is a term invented to capture the robust form of theism manifested, lived, and expressed in the canonical heritage of the Church. It is proposed as both a living form of theism and a substantial theological experiment for today..."

Thesis IX:
Canonical theism is intimately tied to the notion of the canonical heritage of the Church. The Church possesses not just a canon of books in its bible, but also a canon of doctrine, a canon of saints, a canon of Fathers, a canon of theologians, a canon of liturgy, a canon of bishops, a canon of councils, a canon of ecclesial regulations, a canon of icons, and the like. In short, the Church possesses a canonical heritage of persons, practices, and materials. Canonical theism is the theism expressed in and through the canonical heritage of the Church.

the word canon we take to mean the recognized, authoritative scriptures, practices and people coming out of the well-spring of the church's history.

one example will suffice. take the practice of what is called communion, or the mass, or the LORD'S supper -- the bread and the wine. to be sure, this practice means different things to different parts of the church, but all churches who practice this rite (sacred ceremony) also in some way experience the presence and the speech of God while doing so. in some parts of the church this is also called a sacrament, which means a practice where God is particularly present.

still another way to say this is to say that what activates the presence of God in the canonical practices of the church is the Holy Spirit. 

here, we close with dr. abraham again:

Thesis XIII:
The ongoing success of the canonical heritage of the Church depends on the continuing active presence of the Holy Spirit working through the relevant persons, practices, and materials.

Tags: theology

often, i find myself in the chair of the christian skeptic. i have faith of a kind, but for some reason it does not allow me to believe there's an angel in every room or a demon behind every bush. i suppose i have been too deeply grounded in the school of the rational.

having said that, i would confess that my point of view could be wrong. it's happened many times before. so, when someone tells me, "the LORD said this-and-such to me," i try to be open minded. i mean, who am i to deny someone else's reality? but when they say, "the LORD told me to tell you to do thus-and-so (like send money), then they bury the peg on my skeptic meter.

so, how do you know when it is the LORD speaking or when it's a different voice. i used to be much more sure of this than i am now, but in the next few posts i'll give it a shot.

i do believe that the LORD still speaks to us today, but not as often or as clearly as say when moses was around. the burning bush experience, for example, was what walter brueggemann calls an "unmediated experience." that is, moses experienced the divine directly, while most of us experience the reality of the LORD through mediators such as the church, the bible and the experience of worship. another way to say this is to say that our experience of the Divine is real but filtered.

[MORE NEXT TIME]

Tags: theology

i want to continue with my thoughts on how the God who is there allows us to begin again.

as i re-read yesterday's post i was reminded that some are so wounded, so broken by life-events, that starting again may be a goal too far, and that they may only be able to just go on. that is, they are so wounded that putting one foot in front of the other constitutes true victory.

back in the day, when i directed an inner-city ministry, one time we would see this guy clean and sober, and the next day we would be fishing him out of the gutter. our goal was to treat each encounter like it was the first time we had met. that is, we could not allow our own expectations and life-experiences to dictate to him how he should be. we also had to remind ourselves that the God who is there loved the guy in the gutter just as much as he loved us. to remember this, all we needed to do was to remind ourselves of our own selfishness. evidence for that was always abundant...

Tags: holiday

new year remains my favorite holiday. the day contains symbolic food (for our family it was always corned beef and cabbage), worship at the shrine of college football, and the distinct feeling that i get to start all over. in fact, the opportunity to celebrate a day dedicated to do-overs offers a hope that the other holidays neglect.

of course, one cannot completely start again. if i could really do things over i would not eat my way to diabetes or a heart-attack. having said that, there is something cheerful about turning the page and starting a new calendar that presents us with a clearing of the head and heart.

taking the thought in an even deeper direction, i would say that new year may be the most spiritual of holidays (with the exception of mothers day & father's day) because the new year reminds us that it is the God who is there who gifts us with new beginnings and second chances. it is the God who is there whose grace opens to us new life and a new way to live, and no matter how badly we make a mess of it, he stands by us in love.

Tags: holiday

on october 12 of this year i suffered a heart attack. i wouldn't recommend it. i will tell you this, it rocked my world. besides the loss of stamina and concentration, however, there were some benefits. being laid up for six weeks gave me some time to reflect upon my understanding of just who God is in this experience.

first, let me say that everything in our theology (not just theology proper) hangs on our view of God. this is true if our theology is well-reasoned and thought-through (studied), and it is also true if our theology is haphazard and garnered from television evangelists(rote).

take for instance the idea of the sovereignty of God. i would argue that our view of God’s sovereignty offers us an authentic snapshot of what we think about God and his world.

to get an unvarnished statement of the historic protestant stance on sovereignty we can read the words of the gifted theologian john murray:

"The sovereignty of God I take to be the absolute authority, rule, and government of God in the whole of that reality that exists distinct from Himself in the realms of nature and of grace. It is a concept that respects His relation to other beings and to all other being and existence. It is, therefore, a relative concept, or a concept of relation."

as far as it goes, this statement is without offense, but if we were to ask the question: if God is sovereign over the whole of reality, is God then the author of evil? dr. murray would say that he was:

"It [the "all-pervasiveness" of sovereignty] respects good and evil, so that even the sins of men come within the scope of his rule and providence...the teaching of Scripture on the divine sovereignty requires us to recognize with Calvin that all events are governed by the secret counsel and directed by the present hand of God..."

[for all the murray quotes go here: http://www.opc.org/cce/sovereignty.html ]

so, am i to conclude from dr. murray that God caused my heart attack? you mean it wasn't that i had eaten wrong for 50 years, and had poor sleep and exercise practices? really? it was God's fault and not mine?

of course, this is not how the sovereignists would put it. they would say something like this: "no, fat boy, you are responsible for what you do, but God is ultimately responsible."

now, i've heard plenty of this kind of theo-speak during my life-time, and i don't pretend to know what this means anymore, but i can tell you that this kind of double talk no longer holds any attraction for me. i’m fed-up with it because the personal, cognitive security here sought by the sovereignists comes at too high a price.

take my recent experience while convalescing. people often said to me, "well, God must not be done with you yet," or, "God never puts on you more than he puts in you to hold it up." these kind statements were meant to encourage me by offering angles of the sovereignty of God. but if the sovereignty of God means what dr. murray proclaims, i am not comforted. if sovereignty means that God is the author of evil then i am not encouraged.

for example, (an irreverent question) is God the author of Auschwitz?

this is important. the jews are God's chosen people after all, and yet when push came to shove do you think God actually incited the nazis' ovens? is God responsible?

here is where the sovereignists retreat for cover under the "secret counsel of God's will." dr. murray's answer, quoting b.b. warfield, is an example: "the moral quality of the deed, considered in itself, is rooted in the moral character of the subordinate agent, acting in the circumstances and under the motives operative in each instance."'

that is, God caused the deed, but the secondary agent is blamed. how does this help?

for me, if God is ultimately the author of Auschwitz, then i walk away. if God is ultimately the author of swollen bellies and maggot filled eyes and race-bating and poor seniors choosing between food and medicine, then i walk away.

now, of course, i will be told that this argument is not cerebral enough. it is too emotive, too inflammatory, too personal. i stand guilty as charged.

let me tell you a story. back in the day i used to lead an inner-city center in indianapolis. we had a gal, a raging drunk, who used to come in for food. she was a little thing, always emaciated, face as black as coal and eyes so yellow from sickness that each time you saw her you had to figure that this would be your last.

I remember one of our workers catching her on a sober day, and since we had been working with her for years she trusted us enough to let her story come out. She had lived in baltimore where a house fire had claimed her entire family, including her babies. it seemed she felt this was all her fault -- whether it was or not i don't remember -- which was enough to drive her off the ledge.

by all "christian" accounts this gal was as "lost" as she could be. but i began to think about sovereignty in a different way after her. i began to ask, could God really condemn a person like this, who had already suffered the tortures of the damned? could God really decided before the foundation of the world that this little gal would be forever a throwaway and i would be ok? is this really the God we serve?

oh, i know well the sovereignists’ favorite question, will the pot say to the potter, why have you formed me this way? but i say to you -- the God of the sovereignists destroys and crushes humanity to powder. it leaves us (all but the chosen few) without meaning in a meaningless universe.

said another way, it’s a funny thing how the sovereignists always believe that they are one of the chosen ones. why?

so, today, if i'm asked, “is God sovereign?” i always say it depends on what you mean. if you mean that God is the absolute author of war and greed and hate and genocide and treachery and homelessness and heart-attacks and fires, then no, i don't believe in sovereignty. but if you mean that God accepts our choices with ultimate seriousness, that he accepts our human responsibility with seriousness, that he accepts our prayers with seriousness, that he is not immutable at all but is actually touched, truly touched, by the feelings of our infirmities, and that he takes all these things and in real-time is still able, in his creativity, to accomplish his will, then, well, yes, i guess i do believe in sovereignty.

Tags: theology

A Christmas Message from the Pastor...

Tis the season to be jolly?

Well, maybe, if you're a child. But, if you're a parent, or on a fixed income, or have a son or daughter in the military or trying to get into college, it's perhaps less than a jolly season.

I don't suppose, since the Great Depression and WWII, we have faced the challenges as a society that we do now. Some would say that all this is cyclical, that following the boom there is the bust, but they are quick to add that the boom is surely on the way.

Perhaps. But, I would offer one observation for your consideration. Never have our institutions been so shaky at the foundation and so riddled with blatant and rank greed at the heart. To be sure, the government and our financial institutions have always favored the monied and the powerful -- the elites. This is the American way, after all, but now, even the powerful-with-wealth have been stiff-armed into economic submission.

To tease out the problem in more detail, the god of America has always been wealth. We overly reward the athlete, the tycoon, even the government official with both wealth and honor for their service, often relegating altruism to an asterisk. This means that wealth equals success. And, I should quickly add that people on the Jesus-way are not immune from this notion of wealth and conspicuous consumption as the fulfillment of the American Dream. No, the seduction of possessions and high-rolling credit hits both the lifestyles of the rich and famous and the saved and faithful.

But, with the economic crash this idea has been called into question. Put differently, since the god of mammon has fallen on hard-times, one might well ask, where do we go from here?

Perhaps it is in difficult times that we can return to the core of who we are, to our deepest values. For the follower of the Christ, in the midst of these steep struggles -- as we face layoffs and unemployment and falling wages and shrinking retirements -- what do we have to offer the Savior this year? Perhaps it may be the most precious gift of all -- our attention.

Said another way, perhaps with the downward turn of all things economic, we have the opportunity to look upward to the God who is there; the God who sent his son into the world as a peasant, so that in his brief life he would learn what it means to suffer in this world. You ask, did the Savior learn? Of course he did! The writer of the New Testament letter to the Hebrews tells us that: " So even though Jesus was God's Son, he learned obedience from the things he suffered." (Hebrews 5:8)

This is meant to explain to us that the LORD understands not only our suffering, but how we are to endure suffering as he did. Later in that same letter to the Hebrews the writer says: "...let us run with endurance the race that God has set before us. We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, on whom our faith depends from start to finish. He was willing to die a shameful death on the cross because of the joy he knew would be his afterward. Now he is seated in the place of highest honor beside God's throne in heaven. Think about all he endured when sinful people did such terrible things to him, so that you don't become weary and give up." (Hebrews 12:1c-3)

Part of the way we endure is that we hang together. We hold each other up in prayer to the God who now understands our suffering. We stand beside the weary, the poor, the unemployed and the under-employed, and we, together, allow the power of the risen Savior, the one who came to us through the dirt of Bethlehem's manger, to guide our way. We no longer look to Washington or Wall Street for our strength. Instead, we travel light, and we travel together, and we travel on the narrow-way for a change.

Tags: christmas

a new video i put to amy grant's tune: "welcome to our world."

Tags: music

in this post i want to continue with this theme of how class and not religion and not theology often determines points of view in the culture war.

the basic idea here is that how we were raised, how we have learned to view the world -- what lenses we were given to see it - what values we obtained from our education or lack thereof, our family background, our manners, refinement and grooming, or lack thereof, all of this gives us our own particular group Zeitgeist.

another way to say this is to say that very often what we see as the particulars of the kingdom of God comes not from holy writ, much less from jesus or the holy spirit. no what passes for "truth" for our group is often based upon our social class.

peter l. berger has written extensively on this subject, and it's his thought that i am following closely. he writes:

"Precisely the issues on which Christians divide today are those that are part of the current class struggle and of the Kulturkampf that symbolizes it. One of the easiest empirical procedures to determine very quickly what the agenda of the new class is at any given moment is to look up the latest pronouncements of the National Council of Churches and, to a somewhat lesser extent, of the denominational organizations of mainline Protestantism.

Conversely, virtually point by point, the Christian New Right represents the agenda of the business class (and of other strata interested in material production) with which the new class is locked in battle. What is more, while undoubtedly there are religious reasons for the upsurge of right-leaning evangelicalism, much of it can in all likelihood be explained as a reaction against the power grab of the new class. In that, of course, evangelicals are part of a much wider reaction, the political crystallization of which (temporary or not -- that remains to be seen) was the major event of the 1980 national elections. As to the reasons for this alignment of different religious bodies, they could not be simpler: the main reason, of course, is the class character of the respective constituencies of these bodies."

this article appeared in 1981, but tell me it doesn't explain, for example, the current debate on whether to give money to the big three auto makers or not?

anyway, my the point here is that we must be very careful not to entangle the kingdom with the latest political agenda, either from the left or the right. the kingdom must be a-political or post-political or even anti-political, but it must no longer be politically driven. this is easy to say, but very difficult to accomplish.

Tags: culture, class

well, i'm back, sort of...and not a moment too soon, apparently. it seems momentous things are afoot in the culture and i have yet to pen one word about it. frankly, i was amazed that american was willing to elect our first african-american as president. i never thought it would happen, at least not in my life-time. but it did. and i was simply amazed at how this one event has brought hope to our struggling country.

as you know if you read my thoughts, i do not write about politics. this is so i can criticize all sides. but several things happened to me while i was convalescing that, taken together, has given me pause.

i re-watched ken burn's documentary on the civil war. i am a life-long student of this war, but this time i was taken by one of the commentators statement about abraham lincoln. she criticized him roundly, saying that his early views on slavery -- some free states and some slave states -- just couldn't be excused as him being a man of his times, especially since there were others during this same time who saw slavery as evil and wrong and the actual reason for the war, and not union.

i attended a musical at a baptist university. seated next to me was an elderly gentleman whom i did not know. before the production began he proceeded to explain to me his work against california's proposition 8 -- a ban on on gay marriage. (to be honest, i do not understand all the banter back and forth that goes with this issue. i think understand the religious argument against gay marriage, but how just the fact of gay marriage itself, how this attacks marriage in general, like it somehow attacks what my woman and i have, i just don't get.) anyway, after he bragged up his involvement, this elderly gentleman said this: "i just don't know what going to happen with this guy in the whitehouse. i think we're probably going to have a revolution.” now, why he was against the new president i did not pursue, (i could care less-- this is american after all) it could be any number of things. but to surmise that violence was in the offing because of his election was a curious reactions indeed.

i pull these two things together because we must remember that we are not only people of our own times (re:generation), but we are people of culture. that is, what we consider as clear and secure as holy writ or our next vote, is often nothing more that a result of class. said another way, a good sociologist can with, astounding precision, guess where a person will come down on questions of the culture-war by asking a few simple questions concerning background and class. this should give us pause the next time we are sure of our interpretation of the text, or the meaning of a national vote because our ideas may be wrong and on the wrong side of history, no matter how sure we are, and neither class nor generations is any excuse.

Tags: culture, class

on 10.12.08 mark randall powell suffered a heart-attack. he is currently recuperating and is scheduled to return in one month.

after watching the tone of presidential politics this week past, i thought it might be wise to offer this important reminder of the signs of fascism:

caveat: this is not in any way a political statement or endorsement. i don't do that. (for an exellent history of fascism go here)


anyway, while surfing with google recently, i came across an important reminder from freelance writer, matthew lyons, who took the time to describe fascism. he writes that it is "a form of extreme...ideology that celebrates the nation or the race as an organic community transcending all other loyalties."

he goes on to elaborate these additional ideas:

* it emphasizes a myth of national or racial rebirth after a period of decline...
* [it] calls for a "spiritual revolution" against signs of moral decay such as individualism and materialism...
* [it] seeks to purge "alien" forces and groups that threaten the organic community...
* [it] tends to celebrate masculinity, youth, mystical unity, and the regenerative power of violence...
* [it] often, but not always...promotes racial superiority doctrines, ethnic persecution, imperialist expansion, and genocide...
* [it] usually fascism espouses open male supremacy, though sometimes it may also promote female solidarity and new opportunities for women of the privileged nation or race...
* it seeks to forcibly subordinate all spheres of society to its ideological vision of organic community, usually through a totalitarian state...
* both as a movement and a regime, fascism uses mass organizations as a system of integration and control, and uses organized violence to suppress opposition, although the scale of violence varies widely...
* [it] is hostile to Marxism, liberalism, and conservatism, yet it borrows concepts and practices from all three...

especially important for lyons is the idea that fascism is bred within a populist approach to politics. he writes: "fascism's approach to politics is both populist--in that it seeks to activate "the people" as a whole against perceived oppressors or enemies--and elitist--in that it treats the people's will as embodied in a select group."

elsewhere, i also found on the net the following as early warning signs:

* Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
* Disdain For Human Rights
* Identification of Enemies As a unifying cause
* Supremacy of the military
* Rampant Sexism
* Controlled Mass Media
* Obsession With National Security
* Religion and Government Intertwined
* Corporate Power Protected
* Labor Power Suppressed
* Disdain For Intellectuals & and the Arts
* Obsession With Crime & Punishment
* Rampant Cronyism & Corruption
* Fraudulent Elections

take the "a" train

clifford brown trumpet
max roach drums
harold land tenor saxophone
richie powell piano
george morrow bass

Tags: jazz

of late, i have been allowing the larnell harris song: WERE IT NOT FOR GRACE to minister to me. i have included the song below as well as the lyric. enjoy...




Larnelle Harris - Were it not for grace Lyrics
Album: FIRST LOVE

Time measured out my days
Life carried me along
In my soul I yearned to follow God
But knew Id never be so strong
I looked hard at this world
To learn how heaven could be gained
Just to end where I began
Where human effort is all in vain
Chorus
Were it not for grace
I can tell you where Id be
Wandering down some pointless road to nowhere
With my salvation up to me
I know how that would go
The battles I would face
Forever running but losing this race
Were it not for grace
So here is all my praise
Expressed with all my heart
Offered to the Friend who took my place
And ran a course I could not start
And when He saw in full
Just how much His would cost
He still went the final mile between me and heaven
So I would not be lost
Repeat Chorus
Forever running but losing this race
Were it not for grace

Tags: grace

recently, i was introduced to an international, evangelical anti-poverty initiative called the micah challenge. the organization takes its name from micah 6:8:

“And what does the LORD require of you but to act justly, love mercy and to walk humbly with your God."

i was introduced to this program from three different directions: 1) a christianity today article -- Evangelicals make case for bolder poverty response, 2) the evangelicals for social action website, and 3) a cbf email news release.

the micah challenge website offers this as their purpose:

"Micah Challenge USA is a Christian campaign that is part of a global Micah Challenge campaign. Our aims are to deepen our engagement with impoverished and marginalized communities; and to challenge leaders to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, and so halve absolute global poverty by 2015!"

for a list of their core values go here.

i like the idea of working together with other congregations around the world in fighting the devastating paralysis that poverty brings to the human potential, and offering this fight in the name of jesus is even better.

Tags: poverty

continuing our conversation about the bill maher's new film, religulios (which rhymes with ridiculous), i thought i would offer links that review the film. i have decided to wait to view it until i can get it on netflix.

but, before you read the links, i think it is important to remember that, while maher asks tough questions from a decidedly atheististic point of view, that doesn't mean we should dismiss the questions. as i tried to say here and here, to criticize maher alone is to miss the point. we must respond to our (those of faith) deepening plausibility crisis with the death of christendom.

anyway, here are the links:


the first comes from ethics.com:

HBO's Maher Attacks Mostly Christianity in Docu-Rant



and the second comes from dan kimball's vintage faith:

Religulous: Lee Strobel, John Walter and Compassion International needed

Tags: film

in general terms the idea of divine grace can mean the entire movement of God toward the world. that is, christian theology says that God has declared himself for the world, for its continuation. God desires the world to flourish. God has good-will toward the world.

but, what does this mean in a world of religious fundamentalists and atom bombs and freeze dried foods and nano technology and islamic terrorists and pedophile priests and on and on?

bonhoeffer says that God has allowed himself to be pushed out of the modern world, but i wonder. actually, it seems that God, or at least the word "God" is the hot topic and the coinage of the realm today. someone has wisely said that, while 20th century violence was secular (nazism, fascism, communism), the 21st century will be the time of religious violence. it would appear to be so.

but, in a way this makes bonhoeffer's statement even more poignant because it’s the old view of God that has been lost, this view of a benevolent God that actually has good-will toward the world. it is this view that has been pushed aside & in its place we have thor, the god of war.

much is lost here, not the least of which is the view of God that offers the good news that God's concern for the world was so great, that he became part of that world in the christ.

those who hold a supreme sovereignist theology would have us believe that God controls the world without the inflection of the human voice. this is nonsense. humans are responsible for this mess we are in not God. humans have given up on humanity, not God. humans have lost trust and hope and a willingness to listen to the point of view of another, not God. humans have given up on the God of good-will, and in his place we rely on politics and money and possessions and elite power. smoke and mirrors.

said another way, we are free to make choices that have good-will toward the world, or we can destroy the whole thing. we are free and we are responsible. this is God's greatest gift of grace to us.

what must be remembered, however, is that, while we are free to make choices, choices that shape the world, God is free as well. God is free to allow himself to be pushed out of the world (and out of our lives) for which he has good-will. we can have it either way.

Tags: grace

this one's for fun...

Tags: music

Tags: video, music

a couple links bumped into each other this week that need comment. first, this friday bill maher's satire film, religulous, hits theaters, and it is sure to be a "borat" type success. i've commented on the bill maher and the film before, but we should be ready for the onslaught of derision. and, from the clips i've seen as previews, he picked the most ridiculous examples of wacky-religion to showcase.

second, robert parham of ethicsdaily.com wrote an editorial on the new atheists (go here), tying the rise of atheism with the crack-up of fundamentalism. one statement was especially to the point:

"Fundamentalists are seen as the God-believers who soil the public square. They are symbols of intolerance and violence. They are intolerant of those inside and outside their faith traditions, those who prioritize a competing set of values. They reject those who see gradations of gray in what should be a world of absolutes—black and white, light and darkness. Diversity and ambiguity are not virtues for fundamentalists."

i weary of trying to explain to questioners why, "we're not like that." but all such explanations are really to no avail. and i guess, by now most of us are used to being painted by the same broad brush.

the genuine response must be to act. that is, to offer threadbare theology in the face to such withering criticism will do nothing but further our demise. said another way, to argue is to lose. our only defense is to participate in the continuing incarnation of that first century carpenter, who loved those who despised him.

this, of course, has nothing to do with a romantic view of the world -- us against them, where we condescend to toss a little help over the wall. no, we are all of us hip-deep in the blood of others, no romance there. and while we argue among ourselves over who has the greatest influence, the most bodies on sunday, the most political clout, or the most cutting-edge ministry, the culture disintegrates before our eyes. children still eat lead paint; they are still bitten by rats and abused by relatives and religionists.

the time for talk is over, and unless and until the church -- and i mean all flavors and versions -- acts credibly toward the watching world, we should just shut-up and take our lumps. we've gottem coming...

Tags: atheism

look, the question is: does true spirituality consist of what we do -- externally acting in the name of the christ, or does it consist in what we think -- internally relating to the christ?

this is not a new question. is faith to be done or thought?

for the most part, my tradition comes down on the side of thinking. we are very much a "people of the book," which means we prize knowledge as the primary mark of spirituality, as in "wow, she really knows the bible!"

i am coming to the conclusion that this may be wrong-headed, and that in fact this part of our dna may have contributed to our current inaction and failure of nerve in the face of the post-modern/post-christian context.

bonhoeffer leaves little doubt where he comes down on this question, especially in his latter writings such as the letters and papers from prison. for him, religion asks, "how can I find a gracious god," but christians in a world come of age ask, "lord, what wouldst thou have me to do?" (martin marty about bonhoeffer), or take what Heinz Zahmt wrote in a tribute ten years after Bonhoeffer's death in Flossenbürgy: "there have been martyrs who called the world to the church...bonhoeffer is a martyr who called the church to the world."

bonhoeffer himself said:

"she [the church] must tell men, whatever their calling, what it means to live in christ, to exist for others." (lpfp)

"The Christian, unlike the devotees of the salvation myths, does not need a last refuge in the eternal from earthly tasks and difficulties. But like Christ himself ("My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?") he must drink the earthly cup to the lees, and only in his doing that is the crucified and risen Lord with him, and he crucified and risen with Christ. This world must not be prematurely written off. In this the Old and New Testaments are at one. Myths of salvation arise from human experiences of the boundary situation. Christ takes hold of a man in the center of his life." (lpfp)

"In what way are we in a religionless and secular sense Christians, in what way are we the Ekklesia, "Those who are called forth," not conceiving of ourselves religiously as specially favoured, but as wholly belonging to the world? Then Christ is no longer an object of religion, but something quite different, in deed and in truth the Lord of the world." (lpfp)

"Is it not true to say that individualistic concern for personal salvation has almost completely left us all? Are we not really under the impression that there are more important things than bothering about such a matter? . . . Is there any concern in the Old Testament about saving one's soul at all? . . . It is not with the next world that we are concerned, but with this world as created and preserved and set subject to laws and atoned for and made new. What is above the world is, in the Gospel, intended to exist for this world. . . . "(lpfp)

Tags: bonhoeffer

in baptist life, at least this baptists' life, there are few icons as large as will campbell.

i'm sure such a designation would not please him.

campbell, who is both an baptist pastor and an activist (and a noted author as well), recently participated in a video for the baptist center for ethics on racism and the church.

i've put a short clip of campbell's interview below. it is well worth thinking through:

Tags: racism

ok. so, the issue of rich christians in an age of hunger continues, and in fact becomes even more poignant today with the current economic crisis on wall street, and the movement toward bail-out.

what is the christian's response to this current greedfest and the prospective trashing of the future of all, all but the most wealthy?

first: repent.
i think those of us who claim allegiance to the christ must repent. certainly, unless we are a wall street tycoon, we are not the cause of the current problem facing the u.s. economy, but as followers of the jesus-way, our calling to be kingdom people compels us to a wise, compassionate use of our accumulated wealth. if this is not occurring in our families and in our churches, then we are not faithful followers of the christ, no matter what else we are.

second: untangle.
we must untangle ourselves from the seduction of possessions and this ongoing captivity to culture. somehow, we must get beyond the next fix of acquiring more stuff (surely by now we know that heaping more things to ourselves will not satisfy), thus making us more like the christ and less like a consumer.

third: grow gratitude.
finally, we must somehow grow are heart of gratitude. that is, we must become thankful for what we have & we must learn how to be satisfied with what we have.

some links for follow-up:
Religion & Ethics Newsweekly
Evangelicals For Social Action
The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life

Tags: poverty

september 20-26
this weeks political cartoons

Tags: cartoons

Dizzy Gillespie
Birks' Works

Tags: jazz