CULTIVATE YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD

What are you doing to cultivate your relationship with God? You and I must give thought to this. We should revisit the question. We cultivate our hobbies with new equipment and training. We cultivate friendships with shared meals and sports events. Christian belief consists of relationship with the living God is how we describe our faith. What are you doing to enrich the bond? It's a candid question, not meant to criticize. I ask it because I know firsthand how easily presumption becomes normative. We presume we are okay, we trust, we attend requisite meetings in our churches. It becomes routine. Relationship we would agree involves communication. Of course a relationship with someone who is unseen is different from others. You are confident that God hears you whether you speak to him aloud or silently. That's one aspect of communication. You are assured that God speaks through the Bible of course, and through His indwelling Spirit in you, and sometimes through expressions by other people. Granted, much about hearing God speak in these ways borders on the subjective. But let's kick that aside and get back to the question. What are you doing, or what can you do to cultivate this relationship that you say you have with the Creator God who spoke the universe into existence, who approved the perfection that characterized all of his creation, who provided salvation through the sacrificial atoning death of his incarnated son Jesus? It's a question. I am not going to answer it for you. We gravitate to articles that advise us about three steps to this or five key spiritual exercises. Fine, maybe they can inspire you, but what are 'you' now going to do to cultivate your relationship with God?

APPEAL COURT REBUKED B.C. LAW SOCIETY FOR DENYING ACCREDITATION TO TRINITY WESTERN UNIVERSITY FOR A PLANNED LAW SCHOOL

Ian Mulgrew has written a Vancouver Sun article about today’s Appeal Court ruling against the B.C. Law Society and in support of TWU’s law school.

"B.C.’s top court has set up a Supreme Court of Canada showdown between the fundamental freedoms of religion and equality by giving a ringing endorsement to a proposed evangelical law school.In a stinging defeat for the legal profession’s governing body, the B.C. Court of Appeal said the Law Society of B.C. failed to balance important rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms by denying Trinity Western University accreditation for the planned school.

UNIVERSITIES CANADA's END-RUN ON FAITH BASED INSTITUTIONS

I am on a mailing list, and this morning my inbox held this communique from Dr. Carson Pue. I have affinity for Trinity Western University which maintains impeccable educational standards within the context of Christian heritage and values. Because it has met Universities Canada’s standards for decades, and because McLeans magazine has annually cited TWU for excellence, the reported amendment to Universities Canada’s bylaws is deliberately shocking. The proposal would affect all faith-based institutions. Read Dr. Pue’s statement.   

ME & MYERS BRIGGS - YEP THAT’S ME

The test is familiar. I took the test, popping up on  Facebook. Answered questions as well as I could. It identified me accurately enough.

Results: ISFJ - Nurturer

ISFJ (INTROVERTED SENSING FEELING JUDGING)

As an ISFJ, your primary mode of living is focused internally, where you takes things in via your five senses. Your secondary mode is external, where you deal with things according to how you feel about them, or how they fit into your personal value system.

REAL MIRACLES - SENSIBLY PRICED

Comedian Steve Martin starred in a movie called ‘Leap of Faith,’ a spoof on faith healers in which a promotional display advertises his faith healing service with the slogan, ‘Real Miracles – Sensibly Priced.” It could really be humorous if it were not so accurate. (from my new book, GOD IN THE OPEN,’ come these following remarks.

“See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ.” (Colossians 2:8)

I’M STILL STANDING

Don't you know I'm still standing longer than I ever did

Looking like a true survivor, crying like a little kid

I'm still standing after all this time

Mouthing the lyrics of the songs without praise on my mind

I'm still standing yeah yeah yeah

I'm still standing yeah yeah yeah

With apologies to Elton John, "I'm Still Standing.”

If you don’t immediately recognize my point, let me explain. For the past two decades evangelical churches have been extending the length of the praise song packages within the Sunday worship service format. It began with three songs in 10 minutes, then four songs in fifteen, then twenty minutes and it can be thirty minutes in duration. And some music leadership somewhere decided it would be true to biblical form if we stood for the entire time, so we do, weekly, weakly. Granted if the lyrics contain a 'rise up’ or a 'stand up’ motif, then act the biped. God created us with ’sitter-downers’ too.  Just saying, the LORD is okay with us sitting for some of these songs. 

FREE BOOK:HEARING GOD IN CONVERSATION BY SAMUEL C. WILLIAMSON

FREE BOOK: If you write blogs on Christian themes, you might like to take up this offer, a free book for a review of the book on your blog. What follows is a copy of the advert.
Request Hearing God in Conversation ebook here - instant download
Request Hearing God in Conversation book here - U.S. residents only, please

Christians are comfortable saying that Christianity is about a relationship with God. Yet many might also say that they sense little meaningful actual connection with God in their own lives. The foundation of good relationship is communication - but conversation with God often seems to go only one way. We may sing of walking and talking with God in the garden, God's voice falling on our ears, but few have heard that beloved voice themselves. Sam Williamson acknowledges the fundamental human longing to hear God's voice and offers a hopeful supposition: God is always speaking, we've just never been taught how to recognize God's voice. Williamson handles this potentially heady topic with his characteristic straightforwardness and leavening humor. This book deftly bridges the gap between solid biblical spirituality and practical application, addressing how to truly pray without ceasing, how to brainstorm with God, how to navigate our emotions, how to answer God's questions, and how to hear God's voice for others.

PERCEIVING GOD

Perceiving God

I see a young man standing in the sun at a bus stop. He stands with a backpack slung over one shoulder. He has a pleasant face and he looks purposeful. He is of university age. He is travelling locally so he may attend a technical college. He is living in the moment. His mind may be on what lies ahead in his day, an assignment, a project, a person with whom he will spend some time. I surmise that he is not thinking, "How did I get into this world?" "Why am I here?" Big picture thinking for this fellow as the bus moves toward him, is probably concerned with nothing more extensive than what he will do after graduation? 

Yet, seated in my car, I pass him and my eyes are multi-tasking, observing the road ahead, vehicles attempting to merge, the speed I am travelling, the time on my car clock, and the blue sky that expands forever. I am projecting my thoughts into the frontiers of space and to the metaphysical reaches of origins. I am a man with a faith but fleetingly I seek to consider how a person without faith can imagine the genesis of all things.

I think of the other 7.125 billion humans on this planet, 2.1 billion of whom are overweight like me. Still we expect to live 70 years on average, and that's that. We will be gone. Others will take our place just as they presently are doing at a rate of 1.2% annually, which is why only twenty years ago we were 6.5 billion people. Forty years ago there were only 3.999 billion people on earth, and while we have almost doubled the world population, we still depend completely and solely upon this biosphere and minerals of this sphere. I marvel at my earth home being one of the four terrestrial planets in our Solar System, yet it is the densest planet and the third from the Sun, and earth is the only planet that is known to accommodate life. Mercury, Venus and Mars have not supported life. But why here on this earth and since when were we here, and who or what started this?

This is what my mind is doing as I drive to my gym to keep this body healthy for a few more years.

EVEN SINCERE CHRISTIANS ATTEND CHURCH LESS OFTEN

Even sincere Christians are attending church less often in our North American culture? This is a statement of fact rather than approval.

As we entered church yesterday I said to Christine, "it feels like we've been gone for six months." Really, it's been a few weeks when we have had commitments, preferences and holiday elsewhere. We are not the only absentees. This compelled me to read and to think about why good Christians are attending church less frequently than before. (Here is what I thought.)

Susan Mattinson, 2012-2016. Reproduction permitted with permission of creator

FREE BOOK: CRAFT BREWED JESUS

Don't take him up on this offer if you don't like questioning things that you have considered fundamental to your faith and practice as a Christian. Michael Camp is offering a pdf version of his book entitled Craft Brewed Jesus, on the condition that you write a review, good or bad, on the Canadian Amazon site for the book, or the U.S. site for the book. 

The reason I stated the proviso at the beginning is because Camp describes his book this way:  

What if the modern American church has its Christian history wrong? According to ex-evangelical Michael Camp, most American believers fail Christian History 101. Drawing on his own historical research and missionary experience, he discovers that most popular Christian views of the Bible, church, sin, salvation, judgment, the kingdom of God, the "end times" and the afterlife--pretty much all religious sacred cows--don't align with the beliefs of the original Jesus movement. Some of them not even close. Camp's Craft Brewed Jesus paves a fascinating journey of a group of disillusioned evangelicals and Catholics. When they decide to meet regularly over craft beers to study the historic foundations of their faith, their findings both rock their world and resolve ancient mysteries. They examine well-documented narratives of the early Jesus saga, Eastern streams of a lost Christianity, and the roots of our modern religious assumptions, all while striving to steer clear of either a conservative or liberal bias. What they uncover is a vital, refreshing spiritual paradigm no longer at odds with reality. Grab your brew of choice and trace this transformational journey based on a true story that will encourage you in your walk of life and faith.

It's smart to know what people are thinking, and how thinking is shaped, and how certain you are of your own belief points if you can handle the exercise.

CRAFT BREWED JESUS

Michael Camp is not the first person to make a theological shift as pronounced as his self-described journey has been. It will be interesting to hear what has changed in his mind and in his views. It may shock and worry some of you. It may intrigue others. He says he's a husband, father, author, amateur historian, Rotarian, global development practitioner, marketing director, ex-evangelical, former missionary to Africa, and pub theologian. He has written books, writes a blog, carries on conversations designed to give other theological migrants a means to question their own beliefs, shave off the assumptions and settle upon evidential truths.

His latest book is called Craft Brewed Jesus, in which he describes a captivating excursion of a group of disillusioned evangelicals and Catholics, who decide to meet regularly over craft beers to study the historic foundations of their faith. They learn that their findings rock their world and resolve some ancient mysteries. It's not fiction. What Camp discovers is that in his view, most popular Christian views of the Bible, church, sin, salvation, judgment, the kingdom of God, the “end times,” and the afterlife, all of which are sacred to believers, do not align with the beliefs of the original Jesus Movement. That's the outcome for him at least.

I will spend a bit of time these next days exploring some of his blog writings. I am fascinated that he describes himself as an ex-evangelical for one thing, and that he served as a missionary in Africa for seven years and arrives at this place.

OWNING MORE GUNS IS NOT A DETERRENT

How many good people is it justifiable for automatic weapon owners to kill? Who decides that? A culture that takes violence seriously and takes gun ownership seriously? Is violence serious only when bad people kill good people? How many more good people will have to carry guns in public to generate a serious deterrent? Cannot good people accept the logic of a syllogism that argues that fewer people die when it is harder to lay hands on killing machines? The good guys already own twice as many guns per person as any other nation on earth.

FINE LINES & BROAD STROKES

A fine line or a broad stroke from an artist's brush creates either photo-realism or conceptual abstract. Neither genre is good or bad. The beauty is in the eye of the artist and the viewing enthusiast. Not so with language. The fine line or the broad stroke affected with words, results in either clarity, sanity, logic, and analysis or libel, vilification, smear, and defamation. The first enlightens, the other deceives. The ugliness is in the heart of the wordsmith and in the mind of the obsessive. The first communication is exceptional but infrequent; the other is tactless but persistent.

ONE OF US

To all Americans I say, the Orlando shooter was one of you. More collectively I say, he was one of us. Our default will be to deny this. No solution proceeds from labeling him a terrorist, Islamic, deranged, different from. The victims too were ones with us. An avoidance response might be, "but they were gay." No one elevates himself by refusing to lower a flag to half-mast, or by asserting, "they deserved it." Politicians and NRA will honour humanity's incomparable privilege of sharing life on this planet only when weapons of war cease to be considered intrinsic citizen rights and as essential to domestic security.

THE TERMS THAT IDENTIFY US MAY NO LONGER BE EFFECTIVE

             Terms like 'Christianity' and 'christian' and certainly 'evangelical' may no longer effectively serve the faith.  They are tarnished when applied too generously in contemptible situations. They are censoriously associated with partisan political affiliations. They are borne by uninformed marginal factions. The difficulty is not a simple comical variance like the potayto/potahto, tomayto/tomahto pronunciations. It pertains to understanding and is profoundly more critical and potentially injurious to faith.  Because they derive from the Christ and the evangel, the terms are associated with one for whom holiness and perfection are intrinsic rather than performed. Divine standards, values and principles are in unambiguous juxtaposition to common human behaviour. People who claim to be Christian or evangelical yet whose lives upon even casual scrutiny, appear to be insincerely linked to Jesus, compromise the identity of believers in the world.  When followers of Jesus credibly embrace by living and conversation their Master's attitudes, they perpetually and predictably clash with societal moralities. Our Canadian culture deplores, sometimes reprimands and even legislates against the expression of faith inspired conduct. The evangel/gospel will speak to non-followers only as our personal faith is genuinely Christian and courageous.

NOBODY CAN CHOOSE NOT TO BE SAVED - IS WHAT JACQUES ELLUL SAID

I don't buy myself, but if one is to believe Jacques Ellul's interpretation of salvation, then he has news for all atheists and agnostics. They cannot reject Christ. They cannot succeed in not wanting his salvation. Here is the way he put it. I will highlight the bits that bite.

  Ellul admitted that in his correlation of sociology and theology, he seemed to be a sociological pessimist while at the same time being a theological optimist. On one occasion he asks, "Am I a pessimist? Not at all. I am convinced that the history of the human race, no matter how tragic, will ultimately lead to the Kingdom of God. I am convinced that all the works of humankind will be reintegrated in the work of God, and that each of us, no matter how sinful, will ultimately be saved." This is, of course, an explicit statement of his belief in "universal salvation" or "universal reconciliation".As explanation and justification for this tenet, Ellul writes: "Salvation is universal because the love of God encompasses all. If God is God and if God is love, nothing is outside the love of God. A place like hell is thus inconceivable. The difference between the Christian and the non-Christian is not one of salvation. Salvation is given by grace to everyone. Christians are simply those charged by God with a special mission. The meaning of being a Christian is not working at your own little salvation, but changing human history." Elsewhere he states, "It is inconceivable that the God who gives Himself in His Son to save us, should have created some people ordained to evil and damnation. There can only be one predestination to salvation. In and through Jesus Christ all people are predestined to be saved. Our free choice is ruled out in this regard. God wants free people, except in relation to this last and definitive decision. We are not free to decide and choose to be damned." "Being saved or lost does not depend on our own free decision. An explicit confession of Jesus Christ is not the condition for salvation. Salvation is always for everyone, by grace. All people are included in the grace of God. A theology of grace implies universal salvation."

from an article entitled, A Synopsis and Analysis of the Thought and Writings of Jacques Ellul by James A. Fowler http://www.christinyou.com/pages/ellul.html

NO JUDGEMENT

At my gym, along one long wall, in two foot tall lettering and stretching a full thirty feet, are two words, "No Judgement."

Gym members come in all sizes and shapes and shades and select their own exercises and lengths of workouts and end objectives. We are all there to make improvements. Company is motivational.  

Churches use mottos, slogans, rally cries, catchwords and taglines too.

Sometimes soppy stuff like 'Feed and be Fed;' or, 'God is Still Speaking,' or 'Reaching Up and Reaching Out.'

Sometimes it's a wordy, wearying précis of paragraphs. 'A Church With Respect For The Past, Passion For The Present, Vision For The Future.'

Sometimes it's unimpressive, uninspiring. For instance, 'The Bible, the whole Bible and nothing but the Bible; or, 'We are committed to teaching, preaching and standing by the Bible.'

I'm a veteran of church life. I know that a great deal of unwarranted judgement occurs where it should be least in evidence because we all sizes and shapes and shades and all equally in need of improvements and ultimately there is only one Grand Assessor and he loves us a lot.

I would like to see a church put up in two foot tall letters a banner twenty feet long that shouts NO JUDGEMENT.

Perhaps a prayer we might offer is this,