Lord and Savior, Bono

Dear Lord Bono Christ

Thank you for your life, your care, your grace and your gift of music. Without you in my life I would be lost and out of tune. You are so amazing and understanding, I am SO glad you are in my life. Your blessings and songs are new every morning and I sing them all day long. Make your will my will. Cause me to care about the things that you care about. Help me to be more like you (where did you get your sunglasses?) in every way. You are the way, the truth, the life and the music. I want to show compassion for others the way you do. I want to care just like you and to live my life as a witness to your coolness and edgy rhythms. Lead me to the wellspring of U2, so that I might live another day, for another concert of praise and worship of you.

In Bono's name,
Amen

Jesus

It's strange how there are times when I feel largely uninspired, and other times when I can't type fast enough. Mostly, right now, I am the latter.

Where did the church... meh, *sigh* lose the sense of journey and grace and trust and scandal, and enormity, and falling, and simple trust, and smallness, and texture and wonder and life?

The point of life and faith is Jesus, period. Not Jesus' teaching, not his theology, not his good works, not his prayers, not how often or how little he had devotions, not the people who dependently followed him around, nothing, nothing but him. Jesus is the point. He stands like a giant tree on history's horizon, ever present and contemporary. There is however a s-l-o-w-l-y seeping evil, so undetectable that many christians believe it to be part of Jesus himself. Ah, but it's not. Look closely and you'll see in there, power and authority, ego, reputation, 'right'ness, and tradition, and customers, and politics, and order, and sameness, and christian-as-a-second-language, and turf, and paranoia, and presumption and...well, maybe even yourself, maybe myself. Undetectable yes, but lethal, none-the-less.
Look at it this way. Perhaps the most famous hemiepiphyte is the towering strangler fig tree which starts life as a tiny seed in the canopy. The roots grow down to the forest floor where they take root and begin to take nutrients from the soil. Gradually the roots wrap around the host tree, widen, and slowly form a lattice-work that surround the host's trunk. The strangler fig may cover the host tree with its own trunk and strangle the host tree. The fig's crown grows foliage which soon overshadows the tree. Eventually, the host tree dies leaving the fig with a hollow center trunk. Think about it.
"Gold and silver I do not have, but I give you what I have; stand up and walk," said Peter. Later on the clergy were saying: Gold and silver we have--but we have nothing to give.

Only Jesus.

We are what we've been waiting for

This is absolutely amazing, funny and ...true, you've gotta watch this:

http://www.comedycentral.com/mp/play.jhtml?player=realplayer&type=v&quality=high&reposid=/multimedia/tds/celeb/celeb_10009.html

Struggling with Intellectual Masturbation

By Dr James Cobb
President & Founder
Family Fundamentals

Most men struggle at some time in their lives with intellectual thoughts. Contrary to popular perception, even women can become ensnared by intelligent thinking. We all go through that phase where we suddenly discover we have brains and we can think! From there we can be tempted to entertain all kinds of philosophical questions, and some even begin to think seriously about exegetical issues.

First, let me say, it is normal to have a brain and to want to think intellectual thoughts. God gave us a brain. The danger is when we start thinking for ourselves and using that intellectual power to seriously consider big questions about life and God, or (worse) when we start applying that intellect to our study of the Bible. So here's some advice for anyone struggling with this.

1. Don't be on your own in front of the TV. You know what it's like -- you're flicking channels late at night and on Discovery is some documentary or other. You justify it to yourself, saying you're just naturally curious, but pretty soon you are having rational thoughts from which you just can't get away.

2. Try to avoid walking through parts of town where you might have to pass bookstores or libraries. I remember as a teenager the lure of commentaries and concordances. Walking home from work or school, try a route that takes you past a fundamentalist church instead, even if it takes five minutes longer. It's worth it!

3. Have a block on all junk mail in your email account. I have lost track of the number of young men I have counselled who were first drawn into these practices by an innocent-looking e-mail inviting them to subscribe to a theology forum or visit a website containing "reviews" and "articles" by "scholars".

4. Be accountable. If you are feeling a strong desire to think through a given topic (e.g. a doctrine) sensibly and rationally (first thing in the morning and last thing at night are the most common times), talk to someone. Have them recite prooftexts to you. 1 Corinthians 2 is the most helpful.

5. Don't let yourself be exposed to material of a scholarly nature. Don't fool yourself into thinking that just one quick look at a Bible commentary won't hurt, or that a peek at a book by a liberal will be harmless. Often it just becomes a stepping stone onto other, far worse material that may draw on tradition, philosophy and, at times, common sense. It may begin with a seemingly inoccuous trip to a secular bookstore, but it rarely ends there.

You may experience nocturnal "intellectualisms". You may awake in the morning to find you have unwittingly had thoughts of a theological or even philosophical nature during the night. This is a normal occurrence, and ought not to be feared. Alas, we are part of a fallen world where these things happen.

For parents who suspect their children may be involved in intellectual activity, do not panic. It is a normal part of growing up. They may discover at a young age that their intellect can be stimulated through the use of books and the like. They may try to engage friends in mutual debate or conversation. I still remember my natural fatherly concern on finding my six-year-old son playing "Doctors and Professors" with the girl nextdoor -- by the grace of God I interrupted their game just as they were about to examine each other's presuppositions.

Speak lovingly, yet sternly, to your child, and let them know that God loves them no matter what, but that all thinking and intellectual reflection outside of the God-ordained context of a loving Sunday School is wrong, no matter what form it may take. Explain to them compassionately and clearly where such thinking might lead (i.e. eternal punishment). Lastly, if you love your child, spare not the rod. If after your persistent counsel he is still not being wooed by the calm, grace-filled influences of the Holy Spirit, give him a damned good thrashing.

(thanks David L. Rattigan)

if my calculations are correct

42.2 > 3:59 = 9:07/mile or 5:40/kilometer

42.2 > 3:50 = 8:46/mile or 5:27/kilometer

and so on...

Pope John Paul II - What's the big deal?

Andy Rooney had some interesting comments about Pope John Paul II last night on CBS's 60 minutes. Here's just an excerpt:

"For most devoutly religious Americans- Catholics, Protestants, Jews, even Muslims, the church doesn’t dominate their lives the way it use to and considering how highly everyone thought of Pope John Paul, it’s interesting that more Catholics than ever ignore their church’s admonition about things like birth control, and they don’t pay much attention to the church’s edict about divorce either. American Catholics work, play and have a family life now, pretty much independent of religion. This attitude is allowing religions to exist together more amicably than they once did. Catholic men marry Presbyterian women, Methodist women marry Catholic men, Catholics and Protestants both marry Jews, it’s no longer a big deal."

In one sense, having the church NOT dominate the lives of devoutly religious people is a good thing. The church, or what many have done to it reeks of hypocrisy, power struggles, quota agendas, backslapping and backstabbing, guilt-trips and 'sameness' producing requisites. Not to mention the bad preaching. These are things that most of us can do without; in fact most of us are getting tired of them. There is also much reassurance in knowing that work, play and family life has now wriggled free from the oppression of 'religion'.
If however, Rooney is suggesting a brightening future because fewer and fewer people are taking an interest in God, trading compassion for cohabitation, or flattening out the values and scandalous grace of Jesus...then there's a problem. We tend to gulp grace--we can't get enough, until our conscience becomes so dull that we then presume upon grace, and then demand it. John Paul, or more importantly, Jesus Christ modeled grace with conviction. A candor of truth and tolerance tempered with the sense of the eternal. I'm no social scientist (nor American), and I suspect Andy Rooney isn't either, but the way to peace, healing and wholeness does not come from segmenting life so that the soul withers. Calculated amputation is always a big deal!