”Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.”
“The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood.”
“Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for mankind to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Mankind must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.”
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
~all quotes from Martin Luther King Jr
This week at IKON (a bible study for post high school young adults meeting at The People’s Church in Franklin, TN, 8ish, Tuesday nights) we’re finishing up a four week look at salvation called REVOLUTION EVOLUTION. We never teach a series like this. Instead, we teach through whole books of the bible, verse by verse, but I felt strongly that so many of the frequently asked questions at IKON could be answered or replaced with better questions if we took four weeks to better understand how we are saved, what that word “saved” means, what we saved from, what we’re saved for etc. And it seems to be working. Lights are coming on, shame and despair are being replaced with confidence and hope that comes from understanding just what it means to be a “new creation.”
Tomorrow, the last night of the series, is the part of the salvation story that was left out when it was told to me growing up. Being saved from Hell and sin were always in the tale but the part about the Kingdom of Heaven coming through me right now, the part about me building God’s Empire today, what that looks like and exactly how it comes about, those parts were mysteriously absent. Until…
I was working at Word Publishing in Waco, Texas as a phone rep. My job was to call church librarians and convince them to buy many many copies of whatever it was we were selling that month. Along came Tony Campolo and his book Carpe Diem. I sold many copies of Carpe Diem to churches because I read and believed it. In it the existential version of Max Lucado waxes philosophical and simply about the Kingdom of Heaven in ways I’d never heard before. He talked about the Kingdom of Heaven in a present tense and this piqued my interest and study of the phrase. And it sent me searching for other words by this conspicuous Evangelical. While I don’t always agree with Mr.Campolo’s words, I always come away thinking and living differently, especially about the Kingdom of Heaven, the role of Christians in aiding the poor and oppressed and the eternal value of the smallest act of love and compassion.
Here’s just some of what he said in a 1990-something interview that got me thinking way back when:
“You know the difference between the sixties and the nineties is that in the sixties young people wanted to change America and they thought they could change it from the top down. They thought that all they needed to do was to elect their people to office. All we needed to do was to get in positions of power and we could impose a new and better world upon the entire society. Well, it doesn’t work that way.
Jesus said it doesn’t work that way. The kingdom of God doesn’t come from the top down. The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. I always tell my students that we are part of a mustard seed conspiracy. We do a little thing here and a little thing there. We work in a project here and we work in a project there and it begins to grow. It begins to move up through the entire system.
All across America people are becoming actively involved. I hate to say it but they are not really primarily concerned about national politics. They are interested in building a house with Habitat for Humanity in their own neighborhood. They are interested in working out of their local church or their local service club. They want to do something that they can see, that they can get their hands on. They want to deal with people face to face and they want to make a difference that they themselves can witness. That is what is new. It is not this macro-change; it is micro-change. The belief is that when there are enough micro-changes going on society will change.”
Thank you, Mr.Campolo, for believing in the Church more than the White House and for infecting me with the same rightly placed confidence.
VATICAN CITY (Reuters)—Pope Benedict has warned against rampant materialism which he said was polluting the spirit of Christmas.
“In today’s consumer society, this time of the year unfortunately suffers from a sort of commercial ‘pollution’ that threatens to alter its real spirit,” the Pope told a large crowd gathered in St. Peter’s Square on Sunday to hear his weekly Angelus blessing.
A little personal update.
The number of people coming to SHLOG.COM has dramatically dropped off in the last couple weeks due mostly, I’m guessing, to my lack of daily posting. Sorry about that, and thanks to those of you who’ve hung with me and kept on stopping by in hopes of reading something new. I’ll be more consistent and maybe even interesting soon...I think.
We sold our house, as frequent readers know by now, and bought another house, a smaller house in need of love - and a kitchen, floors, wall repair, lighting, air duct cleaning and paint. Apparently it takes a while to do such things. A lot of time. Three weeks so far and lots more to do.
That leaves us somewhat homeless. Over Thanksgiving we lived in a hotel - for about a week I think. Hard to say. I stay in lots of hotels so I was pretty confused as to when I was “home” and when I was “on the road.” Then we moved on to Brian and Amy’s house (Amy is my wife’s sister. Brian is her husband/my friend/business partner/co-pastor.) Brian and Amy have four kids and I have three so things were a bit crowded. Brian and Amy baby sat often while Becky and I demolished, painted, cleaned, picked out flooring and cabinets and met with workers and sometimes said we were doing those things while we went out to eat and saw movies instead. I’m kidding of course - or am I.
Then, with the house beginning to take shape Brian and I left town on this Christmas tour of ours. On top of all this I’ve been teaching a series at IKON while Brian gets a much deserved speaking break, working on a redesign of the IKON web site, and STILL writing on a book and being a husband and father and part time exotic dancer - OK, not that last one, but I’ve been very busy and that’s my point. Just seeing if you’re paying attention. And aren’t we all. Busy, that is - not paying attention.
But all the dust is clearing. Tour ends soon (Dec. 9). Brian takes over teaching at IKON for a couple weeks soon. The IKON site is almost ready to go live and looks great. And we’ll move out of Brian’s house this week as well - without cabinets and appliances of any kind, but we will have a home with floors and fresh paint on the walls and clean air.
And then regular SHLOGGING should commence. Merry Christmas to me and SHLOG readers everywhere...and God bless us everyone.
SG
Saint Nicholas is the common name for Saint Nicholas of Myra, who lived in 4th century Byzantine Lycia, (modern Turkey), who had a reputation for secret gift-giving. This is as much as is generally known about him in the West. This historical character was the inspiration for a mythical figure known as Nikolaus in Germany and Sinterklaas in the Netherlands and Flanders, which in turn was the inspiration for the myth of Santa Claus. Among Orthodox Christians, he is remembered with more reverence and less frivolity. Saint Nicholas is revered by many as the patron saint of seamen, merchants, archers, children, prostitutes, pharmacists, lawyers, pawnbrokers, prisoners, the city of Amsterdam and of Russia.
In 324 Licinius was defeated in a war against his Western co-ruler Constantine I of the Roman Empire (reigned 306 - 337). The end of the war found the Roman Empire unified under the rule of Constantine. Under his patronage the Christian church experienced an age of prosperity. But the relative peace of his reign brought to the forefront the internal conflict within contemporary Christianity. One of the apparent main reasons of this conflict was the failure to agree to a commonly accepted concept about God in general and Jesus in particular. At this time the teachings of Arius in Alexandria, Egypt were gaining popular support but also attracting great opposition. They would form the basis of Arianism. Emerging fanaticism in both opposing factions only resulted in spreading tumult across the Empire.
Deciding to address the problem as a matter of the state, Constantine called the First Council of Nicaea which also was the first Ecumenical council in 325. The number of attendants at the council is uncertain with Eusebius of Caesarea reporting as few as 250 and Athanasius of Alexandria as many as 318. In any case Nicholas is usually counted among them and was noted as an opponent of Arianism (Arius taught that God the Father and the Son were not always contemporary, seeing the pre-incarnate Jesus as a divine being but nonetheless created by (and consequently inferior to) the Father at some point, before which the Son did not exist).
A later writer claimed that after Arius had presented his case against Jesus’ divinity to the Council, Nicholas hit Arius in the face out of indignation. Nicholas was kicked out of the Council for this offence, and jailed as well. However, according to this account, that night the Virgin Mary appeared in a vision to many of the bishops of the Council, telling them to forgive Nicholas, for he had done it out of love for her Son. They released Nicholas and allowed him back into the process the next day.
The council lasted from May 20 to June 19, 325 and resulted in the declaration of the Nicene Creed and the formal condemnation of Arianism. The books of Arius and his followers were condemned to be burned but the execution of this decision was left at the hands of each bishop for their respective territories. To what point this decision was followed remains uncertain.
FOR MORE INFO CHECK OUT WIKIPEDIA’S SAINT NICHOLAS STUFF
”Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.”
