Tuesday, October 26, 2004
Someone sent me this article, you will have to look it up yourself. It compares Christians to the Jihadists as a result of the final installation of the Left Behind Series.
Jesus And Jihad
By Nicholas D. Kristof
19 July, 2004
New York Times
The following is my response:
This is another example of the media entirely missing the point. Wherever you are on eschatological beliefs continuum, The basic point of the whole thing is that Jesus gives every possible chance for people to come to Him. He is both ultimately fair and ultimately loving. He has an unchanging standard. The tribulation should be seen as nothing more than Jesus turning up the heat and giving people every possible opportunity to turn to him. By the time it gets to this point, all other options have been exhausted. People such as this writer have such a tough time with a God who has an absolute standard. I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me. Think about that standard for a moment. Jesus says I am the only way, pluralists hate that, but frankly, it doesn't matter what pluralists hate. God is God. He gets to set the standard. By hating this standard, they miss one thing that they really need to know. When all things are said and done, Jesus made the requirement for salvation easy enough that anyone can do it, because He paid the price. Compare this to the Jihadists. Their god would ask that you give your son for him, our God gave His Son for you. Their "faith" requires suicide bombers, our God asks for living sacrifices. When it gets right down to it, that is the key. Our society is all about me and the idea of sacrificing self is a foreign concept.
Am I a Jihadist? absolutely not. Jihadists take it into their own hands to kill the "infidels," Christians pray for the "infidels," reachout to the "infidels," love the "infidels" and try to share the truth that will set the "infidels" free. (or at least that's what we're supposed to do).
Jesus told us men would hate us and this piece is the type of propoganda that we will see more and more of in the last days. Remember how Hitler started. Propoganda dehumanizing the Jews until many Germans thought nothing of killing them. Now the New York Times is comparing Christians to the people who flew the planes into the twin towers. Yes I know he says he's not saying we would do that, and yet these are the very people that He compares us to. The body of Christ has got to unite and get to work. I fear it gets tougher from here.
Â
(0) comments
Jesus And Jihad
By Nicholas D. Kristof
19 July, 2004
New York Times
The following is my response:
This is another example of the media entirely missing the point. Wherever you are on eschatological beliefs continuum, The basic point of the whole thing is that Jesus gives every possible chance for people to come to Him. He is both ultimately fair and ultimately loving. He has an unchanging standard. The tribulation should be seen as nothing more than Jesus turning up the heat and giving people every possible opportunity to turn to him. By the time it gets to this point, all other options have been exhausted. People such as this writer have such a tough time with a God who has an absolute standard. I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me. Think about that standard for a moment. Jesus says I am the only way, pluralists hate that, but frankly, it doesn't matter what pluralists hate. God is God. He gets to set the standard. By hating this standard, they miss one thing that they really need to know. When all things are said and done, Jesus made the requirement for salvation easy enough that anyone can do it, because He paid the price. Compare this to the Jihadists. Their god would ask that you give your son for him, our God gave His Son for you. Their "faith" requires suicide bombers, our God asks for living sacrifices. When it gets right down to it, that is the key. Our society is all about me and the idea of sacrificing self is a foreign concept.
Am I a Jihadist? absolutely not. Jihadists take it into their own hands to kill the "infidels," Christians pray for the "infidels," reachout to the "infidels," love the "infidels" and try to share the truth that will set the "infidels" free. (or at least that's what we're supposed to do).
Jesus told us men would hate us and this piece is the type of propoganda that we will see more and more of in the last days. Remember how Hitler started. Propoganda dehumanizing the Jews until many Germans thought nothing of killing them. Now the New York Times is comparing Christians to the people who flew the planes into the twin towers. Yes I know he says he's not saying we would do that, and yet these are the very people that He compares us to. The body of Christ has got to unite and get to work. I fear it gets tougher from here.
Wednesday, October 20, 2004
Monday morning, I was once again reminded how we as Christians are judged by a different standard than everyone around us. This incident reminded me of two stories, one fairly recent and the other from a long time ago. Both merge together to a common point so please stick with me.
I wasn't always a preacher, nor was I always a Christian. In my late teens and early twenties, I use to hang out on the corner of fourth and main in Bernville, PA at a place called the Cracker Shop. It was a place where a bunch of us kids would hang out, drink beer and work on our hot rods (okay I didn't have a hot rod, but they left me hang out there anyway.)
I remember her very well, she was blonde wore a plain dress and this white doily thing on her head. It's not for that reason I remember her though. Many girls used to go through Bernville PA wearing plain dresses with white doily things on their heads. No I remember for what and how she drove. She drove the sweetest Diamond flake blue 1972 Plymouth Barracuda (I can almost hear Tim Allen grunting). It was jacked up, had Trick Wheels and some of the widest tires I had ever seen. You knew she was coming a block away because this thing roared. She would pull up to the stop sign at the corner of fourth and main, see if anyone was looking and do the most vicious burnouts across the street. Even the most hardened of motorhead had to be impressed. One day after her little performance, one of my friends quipped, "that white doily thing on her head must be a crash helmet." It stuck.
A few years later, I met a nice Brethren girl, came to Christ, fell in love and got married. Somewhere in that process, she explained to me that it was neither a white doily thing nor a crash helmet but rather a prayer covering, a tradition I respect and admire, but somewhere, in the deep recesses of my mind, it will always be a crash helmet.
The other story is not nearly as amusing. My wife now works for a public school and spends a great deal of her time trying to be a good witness and sharing the love of Jesus with her coworkers in word and deed. One day a woman came barging into the office. She also wore the plain dress and the crash helmet, er um, prayer covering. She was homeschooling her children and needed to see someone about her children's education. She had no appointment and the person she needed to see was out of the office. Rather than be understanding and wait or schedule an appointment to come back she proceeded to launch into a tyrade and demand people help her that had no idea what she needed. By the time she left, the comments coming out of the staff made it clear, at least to my wife, that most of her witness had been negated by this woman's unfortunate behavior.
What do these two stories have in common. Very simple. If you're going to wear the uniform, you better be in the game. If you are going to wear clothes that tell everyone you're a Christian whether it's a plain dress or suit or a Christian T shirt, you can't have a bad day, you can't have a bad attitude, that stuff is your cross to bear, when you wear His name, you are His representative.
Just something to think about.
Dave Weiss
Â
(2) comments
I wasn't always a preacher, nor was I always a Christian. In my late teens and early twenties, I use to hang out on the corner of fourth and main in Bernville, PA at a place called the Cracker Shop. It was a place where a bunch of us kids would hang out, drink beer and work on our hot rods (okay I didn't have a hot rod, but they left me hang out there anyway.)
I remember her very well, she was blonde wore a plain dress and this white doily thing on her head. It's not for that reason I remember her though. Many girls used to go through Bernville PA wearing plain dresses with white doily things on their heads. No I remember for what and how she drove. She drove the sweetest Diamond flake blue 1972 Plymouth Barracuda (I can almost hear Tim Allen grunting). It was jacked up, had Trick Wheels and some of the widest tires I had ever seen. You knew she was coming a block away because this thing roared. She would pull up to the stop sign at the corner of fourth and main, see if anyone was looking and do the most vicious burnouts across the street. Even the most hardened of motorhead had to be impressed. One day after her little performance, one of my friends quipped, "that white doily thing on her head must be a crash helmet." It stuck.
A few years later, I met a nice Brethren girl, came to Christ, fell in love and got married. Somewhere in that process, she explained to me that it was neither a white doily thing nor a crash helmet but rather a prayer covering, a tradition I respect and admire, but somewhere, in the deep recesses of my mind, it will always be a crash helmet.
The other story is not nearly as amusing. My wife now works for a public school and spends a great deal of her time trying to be a good witness and sharing the love of Jesus with her coworkers in word and deed. One day a woman came barging into the office. She also wore the plain dress and the crash helmet, er um, prayer covering. She was homeschooling her children and needed to see someone about her children's education. She had no appointment and the person she needed to see was out of the office. Rather than be understanding and wait or schedule an appointment to come back she proceeded to launch into a tyrade and demand people help her that had no idea what she needed. By the time she left, the comments coming out of the staff made it clear, at least to my wife, that most of her witness had been negated by this woman's unfortunate behavior.
What do these two stories have in common. Very simple. If you're going to wear the uniform, you better be in the game. If you are going to wear clothes that tell everyone you're a Christian whether it's a plain dress or suit or a Christian T shirt, you can't have a bad day, you can't have a bad attitude, that stuff is your cross to bear, when you wear His name, you are His representative.
Just something to think about.
Dave Weiss
Wednesday, October 13, 2004
Radically Real on Politics
Everyone has their issues and we are all basically all one issue people. There is a litmus test for nearly every person. I can't bring myself to vote for prochoice candidates for example. Clinton served the economy (the idol of our age?) well enough that nothing else mattered. Pacifists won't vote republican and on and on and on. Bottom line. No political solution wiill work. I'm pro life, but voting prolife is not going to change the problem, because it's not a political issue, it's a heart issue. If I see one more Christian holding up a poster of a mutilated baby or wearing an abortion is homicide tshirt I am going to explode. If we really cared we'd lay down our signs and get involved in people's lives. We'd come along side young women that have made a mistake and show them the love of Jesus and the truth that can set them free.
No politician can fix every problem and make everyone happy, and so we continue on the same old quandary. Politics is a no win situation, so here is what I have decided to do. Cast my one vote for the person I think will do the best job and get back to doing what I am called to do, pray for my leaders whoever they elect and spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ. All this political stuff is going to burn one day, we need to get back to the eternal.
I'd like to remind all my pacifist brothers and sisters that John Kerry has a snowball in hell's chance of bringing peace as does Bush. Jesus brings peace. Vote for Kerry if you must, vote for Bush if you must, then get back to reaching the lost. That's what will bring real peace, one soul at a time.
Â
(0) comments
Everyone has their issues and we are all basically all one issue people. There is a litmus test for nearly every person. I can't bring myself to vote for prochoice candidates for example. Clinton served the economy (the idol of our age?) well enough that nothing else mattered. Pacifists won't vote republican and on and on and on. Bottom line. No political solution wiill work. I'm pro life, but voting prolife is not going to change the problem, because it's not a political issue, it's a heart issue. If I see one more Christian holding up a poster of a mutilated baby or wearing an abortion is homicide tshirt I am going to explode. If we really cared we'd lay down our signs and get involved in people's lives. We'd come along side young women that have made a mistake and show them the love of Jesus and the truth that can set them free.
No politician can fix every problem and make everyone happy, and so we continue on the same old quandary. Politics is a no win situation, so here is what I have decided to do. Cast my one vote for the person I think will do the best job and get back to doing what I am called to do, pray for my leaders whoever they elect and spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ. All this political stuff is going to burn one day, we need to get back to the eternal.
I'd like to remind all my pacifist brothers and sisters that John Kerry has a snowball in hell's chance of bringing peace as does Bush. Jesus brings peace. Vote for Kerry if you must, vote for Bush if you must, then get back to reaching the lost. That's what will bring real peace, one soul at a time.
Monday, October 11, 2004
The Modern, Postmodern debate.
I find it kind of amusing that people debate about ministering to "post moderns" as if postmodernity is somehow something we may or may not have to deal with. It's like debating whether or not we will have to deal with gravity. It's amusing to me to hear people speak as if we can somehow magically program postmodernity out of people rather than embracing this group of people, meeting them where they are and trusting God to use in them what He wants to use and changing what He doesn't like. The following is response I wrote to a recent posting on a list I belong to.
I am probably going to sound as if I am terribly oversimplifying this issue but we need to approach postmodernity in a missional way. Were we going to go out into the mission field, we would not expect the people we were ministering to, to first embrace our culture, we would take the unchanging message of the Gospel to them in a format that was consistent with the way they experience the world. That's how we must approach the Post Modern generation, they have been trained to experience truth as experiential rather than absolute, so we must allow them to experience Jesus first. A lot of that comes from love. You are ministering to a culture other than the one you grew up in, there are similarities, but there are also vast differences. Remember that at least to some degree, the Post Modern generation are our children and grandchildren. We raised them and to some degree our generation allowed this to happen. We have given our children a much more complicated world than the one we grew up in.
Secondly and much more simplistically, who does the real work of reaching anyone and convincing them of the truth. Isn't it really the Holy Spirit working on hearts? Is the Holy Spirit any less powerful than He was when you came to Christ? No, He is the same yesterday, today and forever. What we need more than anything is prayer. The Spirit is able to reach people of any mindset. I know because he reached me. Oh wait that's experiential isn't it. lol.
At our recent district conference meeting, we were challenged to read a Gospel a month up until annual conference. Why? To reconnect with Jesus, to stop asking what would Jesus do and remind ourselves what Jesus did. You see one of the big things in ministering to this new culture is to realize that people are still interested in Jesus, they're just not all that interested in Christians. (There is a difference and, at least to some degree, we are to blame for the disconnect.) As we reconnect with Jesus, we strip away all the stuff that we added to Christianity and we start to deal with people as He did, meeting people where they are, serving them and showing them something better. Once people experience the love of Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit, the truth of the Gospel will become abundantly clear.
Â
(0) comments
I find it kind of amusing that people debate about ministering to "post moderns" as if postmodernity is somehow something we may or may not have to deal with. It's like debating whether or not we will have to deal with gravity. It's amusing to me to hear people speak as if we can somehow magically program postmodernity out of people rather than embracing this group of people, meeting them where they are and trusting God to use in them what He wants to use and changing what He doesn't like. The following is response I wrote to a recent posting on a list I belong to.
I am probably going to sound as if I am terribly oversimplifying this issue but we need to approach postmodernity in a missional way. Were we going to go out into the mission field, we would not expect the people we were ministering to, to first embrace our culture, we would take the unchanging message of the Gospel to them in a format that was consistent with the way they experience the world. That's how we must approach the Post Modern generation, they have been trained to experience truth as experiential rather than absolute, so we must allow them to experience Jesus first. A lot of that comes from love. You are ministering to a culture other than the one you grew up in, there are similarities, but there are also vast differences. Remember that at least to some degree, the Post Modern generation are our children and grandchildren. We raised them and to some degree our generation allowed this to happen. We have given our children a much more complicated world than the one we grew up in.
Secondly and much more simplistically, who does the real work of reaching anyone and convincing them of the truth. Isn't it really the Holy Spirit working on hearts? Is the Holy Spirit any less powerful than He was when you came to Christ? No, He is the same yesterday, today and forever. What we need more than anything is prayer. The Spirit is able to reach people of any mindset. I know because he reached me. Oh wait that's experiential isn't it. lol.
At our recent district conference meeting, we were challenged to read a Gospel a month up until annual conference. Why? To reconnect with Jesus, to stop asking what would Jesus do and remind ourselves what Jesus did. You see one of the big things in ministering to this new culture is to realize that people are still interested in Jesus, they're just not all that interested in Christians. (There is a difference and, at least to some degree, we are to blame for the disconnect.) As we reconnect with Jesus, we strip away all the stuff that we added to Christianity and we start to deal with people as He did, meeting people where they are, serving them and showing them something better. Once people experience the love of Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit, the truth of the Gospel will become abundantly clear.
Tuesday, October 05, 2004
I am a member of a traditional peace church, but I have long struggled with this issue. Jesus said there will be wars and rumors of war and then the end will come. Translation, (at least to my mind) is that war is inevitable. When we protest war we are protesting against the inevitable. Going further, there will be no peace until Jesus returns. Romans 13 seems to tell us that the government is the instrument of God's wrath, which seems at least on the surface to say that the government's job is to keep order. If this is the case, the government seems to have a job to do.
Now if there will be no peace until the Lord returns, then it would seem that the answer to bringing the peace that we all desire is that the Lord would return. When will he return? No one knows but again, it appears from the Word of God that Jesus will not return until the whole world has heard the Gospel. So what's the answer? I maintain that if we want real peace, the answer is found in missions and evangelism and isn't that what Jesus called the church to do anyway.
I do love my enemies, I can't make anyone else do that, but I can share the love of Jesus and help people find peace with God. When they find peace with God and the Holy Spirit comes to live in his or her heart, won't that change his outlook and help him to live at peace and love his neighbor? And if the body of Christ prayed and shared Jesus and reached people for Jesus, wouldn't that bring peace, one soul at a time? Maybe it's time we laid down our protest signs and took up our crosses. No Jesus, no peace!
Lastly, it always blows my mind that we are so quick to march against a war far away and yet we have much dissension in our pews that is going unattended. Jesus also said they will know you are my disciples by the way you love one another. I also wonder how much love we are showing to the military people in our midst. If the pacifist people are right about their stand on war, it would seem to me that they would be busting down the doors to become military chaplains leading these people from a life of sin to the truth that will set them free. I guess it's easier to carry a sign. Remember Jesus commended a Roman soldier for his great faith. Let's get back to doing our job, sharing the Gospel.
Â
(0) comments
Now if there will be no peace until the Lord returns, then it would seem that the answer to bringing the peace that we all desire is that the Lord would return. When will he return? No one knows but again, it appears from the Word of God that Jesus will not return until the whole world has heard the Gospel. So what's the answer? I maintain that if we want real peace, the answer is found in missions and evangelism and isn't that what Jesus called the church to do anyway.
I do love my enemies, I can't make anyone else do that, but I can share the love of Jesus and help people find peace with God. When they find peace with God and the Holy Spirit comes to live in his or her heart, won't that change his outlook and help him to live at peace and love his neighbor? And if the body of Christ prayed and shared Jesus and reached people for Jesus, wouldn't that bring peace, one soul at a time? Maybe it's time we laid down our protest signs and took up our crosses. No Jesus, no peace!
Lastly, it always blows my mind that we are so quick to march against a war far away and yet we have much dissension in our pews that is going unattended. Jesus also said they will know you are my disciples by the way you love one another. I also wonder how much love we are showing to the military people in our midst. If the pacifist people are right about their stand on war, it would seem to me that they would be busting down the doors to become military chaplains leading these people from a life of sin to the truth that will set them free. I guess it's easier to carry a sign. Remember Jesus commended a Roman soldier for his great faith. Let's get back to doing our job, sharing the Gospel.
