Spirit Gives Birth To Spirit

I don’t think anyone, especially Christians, should be surprised at the pope’s remarks that entertain the validity of evolution and the big bang theory, or the church’s attempts to reach out the LGBT community, or seminaries teaching us to read the bible critically instead of just taking the words on the page in English as the will of God.  Jesus followers are doing what Jesus taught us to do: to seek out those who do not know the gospel, bring the gospel (ONLY THE GOSPEL) to them stripped of all the trappings of religion, remove the disease of man’s desire to exclude and to never miss a chance to rail against religion at every chance we get.  Jesus turned the Jewish religion on its head because he saw what was in men’s hearts – the desire to know good and evil, and its result, the desire to push one’s views of good and evil on others by excluding people from the community.  Look at how he treated the Pharisees: the entrenched religious who had a vested interest in pro...

I decided that I am not going to eat tonight.  Because the homeless guy outside the café where I am sitting might not eat tonight.  It is 8:22pm and I am hungry.  The first thing I did when I decided to do this, though I haven’t eaten much today, was to go down the street to the gas station and buy a pop and smoke a bunch of cigarettes.  So I threw them out.  When I get hungry, I smoke.  So I am not going to do that anymore tonight either. The first thing I noticed when walking back to the café was all the restaurants on this street.  All warm and inviting and filled with people who were eating and enjoying each other’s company. I noticed several people smoking along the sidewalk.  I noticed the want in my heart.  Want for food, want for companionship, want for nicotine. Back at the café I settled into a Henri Nouwen book.  He describes what it means to be Beloved. “Listening to that voice with great inner attentiveness, I hear ...

You become what you behold.  Paul knew it (Col 3:2) The writer of Hebrews knew it (Heb 12:2). And Jesus knew it. When Peter walked on the water towards Jesus (Matt 14:28), it says he lost focus on Jesus, and instead began to focus on the storm around him.  As soon as he lost this focus, he began to sink. I ask myself from time to time, what my focus is.  Am I consumed with problems at work, or money, or my own inner turmoil?  Am I like Peter, so full of faith one moment, saying, if it is you, then I will walk out to meet you on the water. but then stepping out in the storm and forgetting the object of my faith?  And so I sink. I have done an experiment these past few months.  I have stopped watching TV.  Stopped reading the news.  Stopped perusing facebook and just posting a few thoughts or pics from my phone from time to time. I have switched to reading my bible and a Christian book and listening Bethel church sermons.  Alwa...

26000 children die every day from starvation or preventable illness. About 26000 children will die today, senselessly. I have seen this statistic before but yesterday I was really wrecked by it, to the point of sobbing.  I am reading a book called "Radical" on the radical love we are supposed to bring to people in need around the world.  As Christians, we are called to this.  We have a mandate to spread the gospel.  Gospel means "good news."  And I don't believe it is all about proselytizing… if proselytizing's goal is creating as many converts as we can.  No, spreading the gospel, in my opinion, is showing the love of Christ to others.  This naturally creates disciples.  And creating disciples is a slow and loving process where we care for others and God uses us, circumstance, and others that come after us to bring people into the kingdom.  Just look at Jesus… he spent most of his time discipling twelve men.  But what he did durin...

I am sitting out on the deck of the shops on Star Island, one of the Isles of Shoals off the New Hampshire coast.  The sun is warm and bright and the salty sea breeze rolls off the water and makes me feel at peace.  I am thinking back to when we arrived, earlier in the day.  We walked up to a small church that had been here in some form since the 1700's.  There was a Unitarian service going on. (Unitarianism seems to be the religion Du Jour here in this area of New Hampshire).  As they bowed low their bodies in an expression of homage to an indistinct God, the leader of the service droned on about the creator God who does not have a name but has been called many things, "God, Allah.." and so forth. I considered all the unique things about Christianity, the gospel, and my view of God based on scripture and experience.  I considered the pamphlets I had been reading on Sharia Law of Islam.  I considered the hurried apostatizing of the Jehovah's Witnesse...

So I used to believe that God was on top of a mountain, and all religions, being essentially the same, are pathways up the mountain towards God.  But what if that is all wrong? Christianity says we are not capable of making the climb.  We cannot climb to God by doing the right things or bettering ourselves through the humanistic dribble we sell ourselves from the self-help book shelves, or worse, from the modern day self-help gospel we hear in our churches.  Just do the right things, just go to church and say a simple magical prayer that you accept Jesus; just improve yourself by reading the right things or by controlling yourself.  No, we are sinners.  Dead to spirituality.  We hate God and his precepts because we are utterly incapable of not sinning. No, we cannot find our way up the mountain to God.  Instead, God came down the mountain to us. Without the sacrifice of himself, we would die in our sin.  Paul says, what I want to do, I cannot...

Where do you turn when things get rough?  When the road is hard and you don’t think you can go on?  This world is disappearing slowly, what will be left when it is gone? Why do people act the way they do?  What is the point of existence? I can tell you where I turn. When I started reading the bible I had come with many questions.  But, in it I found that I was not asking the right questions.  And when it slowly seeped into my bones, I found solace there.  And I found that to the really important questions I began to have satisfying answers. Answers for myself that gave me peace. Answers for others who were lost and disillusioned. I learned that the supreme question is “how do I love?”  And the answer for me was, “Love like Jesus loved.”  When I am burdened with questions and feel that life is unfair or I feel the burning pit in my gut, from stress and depression, or the resigned sadness that comes when I give up on little battles, one by ...