Vital

The things that are important in the world are things that we often take for granted within churches. The core issues of forgiveness, acceptance, hope, salvation, reconciliation, mercy, etc. are not just “givens” in the real world. In the church, we often see these as so obvious – obvious to the point of being neglected. We talk about them a lot, but rarely take them seriously. But, if you want to follow Jesus into the real world, these are truths that matter. In the world outside your door, your doctrinal statement doesn't matter whatsoever. But, living a life of love, forgiveness, acceptance, mercy and hope will set you apart.

Two Goodbyes

• The first picture is a young man saying "Goodbye" to his brother who is leaving for Iraq.
• The second picture is the same young man saying "Goodbye" to his brother after his brother was killed in Iraq.
• Thank you veterans.
• And thank you, veteran families.

Thanks, Dad!

Happy Memorial Day!

Following Truth

There is a difference between searching for truth and accepting predetermined truths. One begins with an honest attempt to discover what is real and the other is an attempt to bolster preconceptions. In religion, truth is defined as adherence to whatever that religion has already decided is the truth. The longer the religion has been in existence, the longer the list of doctrines, tenants and declarations. A new convert is not asked to search for the truth, instead he is told that these are the truths he must accept. Following Jesus is a search for the Truth itself. In Jesus we find truth living and embodied. He is not a list of doctrines to be studied and believed. Jesus is the truth meant to be followed and lived.

Where Do You Live?

There is a common thread which unites all of the women and men of the past. The famous and the infamous, even the obscure and unknown, are united by one thing: they are dead. What they did or didn't do or what they accomplished or didn't accomplish can be debated from now until the end of time. But, they themselves cannot enter into the debate. We sometimes live as though we will be aware of what others say of us. We believe that we will know whether or not we become famous (or infamous). But this kind of living is living for another world. We live in this world. We live in this time. It is to the Father to sort out our "legacy." It is to us to live faithfully in this age.

Unity

"So far as the Evangelical Confessions are concerned we are determined to put an end to existing divisions, which are concerned only with the forms of organization, and to create a single Evangelical Church for the whole Reich…."
-Adolf Hitler, Nuremberg 1934

"Christianity means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ. No Christian community is more or less than this. We belong to one another only through and in Jesus Christ." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, 1938

How It Began

For the first 300 years of its existence, the church was comprised of small bands of believers who met in homes and who shared their lives. This unity within community is recorded not only within the Scripture; secular historians writing of the sociology of the first several centuries also highlight this phenomenon.

Eric Dodds writes in Pagans and Christians in an Age of Anxiety: “Christianity was open to all. In principle, it made no social distinctions; it accepted the manual worker, the slave, the outcast, the ex-criminal….In the second century and even in the third the Christian Church was still largely (though with many exceptions) an army of the disinherited. Christians were in a more formal sense ‘members of one another’: I think that this was a major cause, perhaps the strongest single cause, of the spread of Christianity.”

This was not a conceptual love and concern for one another. This was genuine love that prompted action.

Rodney Stark remarks:“Pagan and Christian writers are unanimous not only that Christian Scripture stressed love and charity as central duties of faith, but that these were sustained in everyday behavior.”

How times change.