[VOCATION]

We have a chance at the end of one millennium and the start of another to announce this message to the world that so badly needs it. I believe we have this as our vocation: to tell the story, to live by the symbols. to act out the praxis and to answer the questions in such a way as to become in ourselves and our mission in God's world the answer to the prayer that rises inarticulately, now, not just from one puzzled psalmist but from the whole human race and indeed the whole of God's creation: "O send out your light and your truth; let them lead me; let them bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling." And when we ourselves are grasped by that light and that truth, by the strange glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, we from within the crisis of truth in the contemporary world can say to those parts of our world that are still puzzled, to those parts of ourselves that are still dismayed: "Why are you cast down? Why so disquieted? Was it not necessary that these things should happen? Hope in God; for we shall again praise him, our help and our God." And we shall say it not just with words but with deeds; with policies, with symbolic praxis, that reveal in action the healing love of God.

excerpt from "The Challenge of Jesus" written by N.T. Wright

When Israel sheds blood, the world demands its pound of flesh.

When asked about Israel's decision to put guns on the ground in Gaza my co-worker (we'll call him "Lib") responded with a quick, passionate, "Israel needs to pull back its claws!" I promptly made my hot pocket and went to sit by nice, non-political "Norm" and asked him how his christmas was. I had no interest in trying to appeal to someone who had obviously, like so many, bought in to the media's bias view point against all things "God's People". It's getting really old, radical Islam, namely, Hamaz has some how acquired there own little media cheer squad in The Newyork Times, CNN and tax payer funded BBC. They somehow think that Israel is over-retaliating, as if they aren't allowed to have a more efficient military than a radical religious terrorist organization! The numbers are just a testimony of Hamaz's incompetence. Look, Israel builds bomb shelters for its citizens on the border, Hamaz stock piles bombs and amunition in schools and masques hoping for civilian casualties to hold up to they're guilt ridden, liberal media fellows!

If there was an anti-american militant group in Canada, held up in a girl-scout camp, shooting missiles across the border, you can bet that we would have guns on the ground, and it wouldn't have taken this long! As long as Hamaz refuses to acknowledge Israel, there will be conflict. Look at the situation with Egypt, its was settled, and there is peace between the two! Lets talk this over people! But the problem is logic can appeal to radicalism as well as affection can appeal to flaming hatred.

The situation over there is increasingly hostile and increasingly sad, my argument is never pro-war, quite the contrary! It's just that I get extremely upset when our media is so dead set against the current political power that they will go to any extreme to oppose them, even if it means siding with our enemies (and in the case of terrorism, all of humanities enemies). People choose to be blind to issues that would shake up there political views or agendas.

Politics aside, this has all been prophesied (no rhyme intended). And one thing I know that is not dependent on my world view or my political allegiances, this will all continue, as a consequence to ancient decisions. One thing we can do however is to pray for the safety of Gods People in the middle east, believing that your prayers can reach heaven and move the heart of God. 

For me the words of the hour are lyrics to the Bob Dylan song "When He Returns", they are as follows;

"Can I cast aside all this loyalty and pride?

Will I ever learn that there'll be no peace, that the war wont cease 

Until He returns?"

Even so, Jesus come quickly!

Religion::According to Heschel

Religion begins with a consciousness that something is asked of us.  Religion consists of God's question and man's answer.  Religion is not what man does with his solitariness.  Religion is what man does with the presence of God.  Irreligion is not opiate but poison.  Our energies are too abundant to live indifferently.  We are in need of an endless purpose to absorb our immense power.  We are either the ministers of the sacred or slaves of evil.

Little does contemporary religion ask of man.  Religion has become institution, dogma, ritual.  It is no longer an event.  It's acceptance involves neither risk or strain.  Religion has achieved respectability by the grace of society.

We define self-reliance and call it faith, shrewdness and call it wisdom, anthropology and call it ethics, literature and call it bible, inner security and call it religion, conscience and call it God.  However nothing counterfeit can last forever.  It is customary to blame secular science and antirelgious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society.  It would be more honest to blame religion for it's own defeats.  Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid.  When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion, it's message becomes meaningless.

It is an inherent weakness of religion not to take offense at the segregation of God, to forget that the true sanctuary has no walls.  Religion has often suffered from the tendency to become parochial, self- indulgent, self-seeking; as if the task were not to ennoble human nature but to enhance the power and beauty of it's institutions or to enlarge the body of doctrines.  It has often done more to canonize prejudices than to wrestle for truth; to petrify the sacred than to sanctify the secular.  Yet the task of religion is to be a challenge to the stabilization of values.  Religion is not for religion's sake but for God's sake.

To be said of the Mormons who just left my home;

"They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption (in this case, the corrupted gospel). For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved." -II Peter 2:19

uno opus!

I've decided to start blogging.
This is the first post.

Here we go...

Maybe this isn't the best time to begin this blog, as I'm quite a bit out of my element. I'm in the lobby of a Holiday Inn in Kansas City MO. on a dell with a GIGANTIC monitor, like, extremely big, like, siting so intimidatingly close to it makes me kind of feel like a lesser creation. And looking at pictures on it is sort of like being right up in someones face. You should see This Guy like I have, its like I can smell his breath and his brute cologne! Anyway...
Kansas City is ok, since I'm not having to drive in it. Shauna and I are up here with John and Diane at the Luke 18 Project leadership summit, which so far is a lot less like a leadership summit and more like the normal college outreach that the IHOP usually offeres (for free). Aside from that, I have little to say, so now that i've notified you all of my dicision to start blogging, i will leave you in peace.

A.M.D.G