but please ... for, by and through the love of God come back. come back to me and to others and demonstrate, live, and teach what you have learned.
go away though. seriously.
find a separated room, a closet of sorts; a lone park bench; a long open stretch of road; maybe a large stack of dishes.
Imagine if in a romantic relationship a couple only were able to express and then understand and learn about the other's love in the context of being together with the partner AND other friends and community? God wants to be able to show her love on the level of personal separated intimacy you would expect in that relationship.
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Eighth Letter
So, the next evolving church conference is called Eighth Letter. The point being another letter (on top of the 7 in Revelation) written to the North American church. The organizers challenged possible attendees as well as speakers to write a letter to the church in North America. I thought for about 10 minutes, and after that felt I was pretty sure about what I wanted to say:
A letter to the North American Church:
The Scripture scholar Ernst Kaseman is noted with saying that what is wrong in the world and in the churches is that the pious aren’t liberal and the liberals aren’t pious. The theologian Ronald Rolheiser notes that this sentiment is paralleled in the Western culture’s divorce of private and social morality. My question for the North American church is exactly that:
The Kingdom lies in the balance in more ways than one. It lies in our ability to balance an every-day-search to abide in God by keeping his commands, and an every-day-search for ways in which to bring about God’s loving justice for all. My prayer for you, the North American church, is that the divorce would be undone. A revolution is a community committed to both private and social morality. A revolution is a church evaluating how they live in relation to one another as often as how they live in relation to those around them.
Thank the Lord that we often find his power working in existing communities in North America that try to live in the balance. Let the ache and the desire for both unite us and not the vision for one separate us.
A letter to the North American Church:
The Scripture scholar Ernst Kaseman is noted with saying that what is wrong in the world and in the churches is that the pious aren’t liberal and the liberals aren’t pious. The theologian Ronald Rolheiser notes that this sentiment is paralleled in the Western culture’s divorce of private and social morality. My question for the North American church is exactly that:
Are you equally satisfied with both your personal morality; the ethics of self, and your social morality; justice for all? Do you pour through Scripture with the same aching, searching desire to find truths about how to live personally as Jesus did as you do to find truths about building the Kingdom as he did? Conversely, do you judge the systems-of-power, political and commercial institutions with the same ferocity as you do the sins you find in that person you love so dearly?
The Kingdom lies in the balance in more ways than one. It lies in our ability to balance an every-day-search to abide in God by keeping his commands, and an every-day-search for ways in which to bring about God’s loving justice for all. My prayer for you, the North American church, is that the divorce would be undone. A revolution is a community committed to both private and social morality. A revolution is a church evaluating how they live in relation to one another as often as how they live in relation to those around them.
“If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love… This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you.”
John 15
Thank the Lord that we often find his power working in existing communities in North America that try to live in the balance. Let the ache and the desire for both unite us and not the vision for one separate us.
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