The End Of The World As We Know It

There was an alarming article by AP writer Matt Crenson in Sunday’s Tulsa World.  The head of the GAO (Government Accounting Office) is warning that the U.S. is headed towards financial ruin.

"From the hustings and the airwaves this campaign season,
America’s political class can be
heard debating Capitol Hill sex
scandals, the wisdom of the war
in Iraq and which party is tougher on terror. Democrats and Republicans talk of cutting taxes to
make life easier for the American people.

   What they don’t talk about is
a dirty little secret everyone in
Washington knows, or at least
should. The vast majority of
economists and budget analysts
agree: The ship of state is on a
disastrous course, and will
founder on the reefs of economic disaster if nothing is done to
correct it.

   There’s a good reason politicians don’t like to talk about the
nation’s long-term fiscal prospects. The subject is short on
political theatrics and long on
complicated economics, scary
graphs and very big numbers. It
reveals serious problems and offers no easy solutions. Anybody
who wanted to deal with it seriously would have to talk about
raising taxes and cutting benefits, nasty nostrums that might
doom any candidate who prescribed them."

It appears that the alternative is financial ruin at the hands of the Chinese and other foreign nations.  You, dear reader, are probably in no danger yourself.  You might do well, however, to teach your children how to eat with chopsticks.

Preach Till They Call Down Curses On You

Holy smokes!

First of all, if you are interested in reading some good, evangelical, theological thoughts then you should regularly visit Euangelion, the blog of Michael Bird and Joel Willitts.  I’ve followed the developments at SWBTS regarding the newly adopted policy regarding Private Prayer Language (PPL), and commented on it even less.  But Dr. Bird shows his moxie with this post on the subject.  Check this out:

In the mean time if you’re in a SBC church and if you’re preaching this
Sunday (sadly I’m not) this is what I BEG you to do: preach Galatians,
the epistle of liberty and life in the Spirit. To those who would
shackle and fetter us with the tyranny and bondage of
neo-Fundamentalism I say let them hear the word that they fear to hear:
Freedom. As Jesus said, "He has sent me to proclaim freedom to
the captives"; as Paul says, "It is for freedom that Christ has set us
free!" As John says: "if the Son sets you free, you will be free
indeed"; Or even as Ernst Kasemann put it, "Jesus means Freedom"! So
preach freedom, the freedom of Christ Jesus, the freedom of the Spirit
over the letter, the freedom to differentiate between areas of
conviction and areas of command. The freedom to major on the majors and
to minor on the minors. The freedom to agree to disagree. The freedom
to walk hand-in-hand with those whom you don’t always see eye-to-eye
with on every controversial topic. If you preach freedom in the face of
the prayer-police they will accuse you of being a
liberal-closet-charismatic-democrat-voting-pseudo-evangelical-compromiser.
In response, preach Galatians some more, preach it until they cover
their ears and call down curses on you. Then preach Galatians again and
again. And if they preach back at you with a gospel of Jesus +
cessationism or Jesus + anything else, then you must out-preach them!
Let the gospel of grace and liberty fall from your lips like in did in
the days of John Owen, of John Knox and Jonathan Edwards. Make it clear
that we stand shoulder-to-shoulder with ALL of our brothers and sisters
in Christ no matter what ecstatic utterances they pray in. At the end
of the day, if one prays in tongues, he does so unto the Lord. If one
does not pray in tongues, he still prays unto the Lord. But tongues or
no tongues, we all pray to the same Lord, yours and mine, theirs and
ours!

See what I mean?  And that line about covering their ears and calling down curses has to be one of the best lines I’ve read on any subject related to preaching in a long, long time ever.  Check the whole post out here.

Slip Slidin’ Away

Check out Todd’s post today.  Interesting observations for which I’m sure he is donning his asbestos underpants.  FLAME ON!

Doctrine

Whenever I’ve thought of doctrines I’ve thought of things to be believed.  Websters says that doctrine is: "a principle or position or the body of principles in a branch of knowledge or system of belief."  Compelling, isn’t it?  Principles and positions.  Sounds a lot like what’s being sought in the recent parsing of denominational confessional statements.

What we believe is important.  I’ve often said that right behavior follows right belief.  Of course, the tricky part is that behavior also reveals what one’s beliefs really are.  Show me a man who says he believes we ought to love our enemies yet tells an employee to change the locks on the doors of that enemy after we just gave him a good review and I’ll show you someone who doesn’t really believe we should love our enemies, no matter what words may come out of his mouth.  Or more recently, show me someone who says integrity is important yet allows a known adulterer to serve in places of spiritual leadership, and I’ll show you someone who doesn’t really believe in integrity.  Of course, for all we know these are just hypotheticals and merely serve as illustrations of a larger reality.

The apostle Paul speaks of doctrine beyond a mere set of beliefs in 1 Timothy.  Instead, in this passage he labels right behavior as "doctrine."  Those who practice disobedience, who are ungodly, who strike their fathers and mothers, who murder, who are sexually immoral, who are liars, these he doesn’t simply label as immoral, but as opposing sound doctrine.  Not just right beliefs, but right behavior.

While we parse our confessional statements to make sure that all are in conformity with what must be believed to truly be Southern Baptist, or at least to qualify for service to the Southern Baptist family, perhaps we should pay as close attention to behavior as we do to belief.  Then we might save ourselves the embarrassment of electing denominational servants who, though highly connected, are also under federal indictment.

How A Number of Blogs Get Started

A Thousand Words

I took this in the prayer garden at the Glorieta Baptist Conference Center in Glorieta, NM a couple of weeks ago.  The knots in this Aspen tree appeared to be a set of eyes watching over the garden.  You can check out more of my photos at Flikr, and on my Photoblog.

Inspiration

If this doesn’t put a little lump in your throat then you simply have a heart of granite.

HT: Tom Cottar (Go read the SI article he posts for the background.)

Geneva Gangstas

Apparently a group within the SBC has formed its own gangsta rap group to promote a particular theological understanding of the Scriptures.  You can hear a sample here.

These pics were taken at a recent concert.

Entertaingelicalism Smackdown

Dr. Jim West throws the smack-down on church as entertainment over at the Mainstream Baptist Blog.  Check it out, but keep some smelling salts nearby.

Shared Life

Mark Scandrette co-led a conversation at the Emergent Gathering titled: Monasticism/Missional Living.  Mark is a lead organizer/President/co-Founder of ReImagine.  You can read a little about his faith pilgrimage here.  Check out what they are doing with the Jesus Dojo as well.

My interest in this discussion/topic has grown out of several life experiences.  Growing up our home was, on more than one occasion, a place for the displaced.  At least two different times we shared our home for extended amounts of time with some who’s home life was abusive and/or neglectful.  So I grew up in a home that was shared with others looking for a safe, loving place to live.

While in seminary I read David Watson’s book I Believe in the Church, a part of the Eerdman’s I Believe series.  In it he describes how his family lived out the example of Acts 4:32-37 in their own home.  They had a large, two-story home and invited people in to live with them - college students, singles, others needing a place to live.  They shared resources when needed, shared household chores, shared common meals, shared the bills, shared prayers and shared life together.  This book, along with Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book Life Together, also shaped my thinking about the practical aspects of kingdom living beyond what kingdom living so often gets reduced to these days: personal morality.

But while kingdom living includes personal morality - and witness - surely that isn’t the sum of what it means, right?  We Americans have become so accustomed to the American lifestyle that we seldom think of kingdom living as being anything different.  Too many books and too many radio and TV preachers are too busy promoting the American way of life that when someone mentions what the disciples were doing in Acts 2 and 4 it is almost required that two qualifications be given: that this is not communism/socialism and that their example is not prescriptive.  But what if it was a pattern that was meant to be emulated, not out of the external compulsion of "rules" for living, but out of an internal compulsion and love for the other that moves us to act that way?

I know a family that has a son who is worthless.  He makes the prodigal son look like a choir boy.  He’s a constant drain on family relationships and family finances.  He’s one bad decision following after another.  But the family can’t seem to give up on him.  He’s their son.  He’s going to change.  Things are going to get better.  He’ll become a responsible human being and become a contributor to society instead of a drain on it.  All of that sounds so illogical and impractical from the outside.  All of that sounds so reasonable and hopeful from the inside.  What if we really saw each other as brothers and sisters - family?  Would we live any differently with one another?  Would we share life at deeper levels than we now do?

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