Your friendly neighborhood moron
God, but I'm ignorant of how this blog stuff works! First of all, I thought that by pulling up a draft, editing it and republishing it, it would appear as the most recent post. Turns out, it keeps its original place in the queue, I guess.
Second, I now see that my friend's original comment is still there, so I essentially regurgitated his objections from memory when they were right there all the time. Maybe I'll actually get this stuff figured out one day, but I doubt it. What a dope is me.
FEASTING ST. JOSEPH (or “I AM JOE’S FIAT”)
According to the Catholic calendar, today is the feast day of St. Joseph, the adoptive, earthly father of our Lord. Even in the Catholic world, Joseph is left a bit short of shrift. We get a lot of “Mary this,“ and “Mary that,“ but what about Joseph? He seems to be regarded in many quarters as little more than a bystander playing no more than a supporting role in the Nativity miracle. Oh, sure, he’s well known as the patron saint of the baby aspirin industry but he deserves better than that.
Simply by virtue of his having been handpicked by God as the human father figure to the boy Jesus, we must assume he was a saintly man of impeccable character. Now Jesus was Jesus, so you’d suppose he was an easier than average kid to raise. Being God made man and without sin, you’d suspect he didn’t back talk a whole lot or grouse about doing his chores. But still, at least by my way of thinking, Joseph was likely not a non-entity in the process of raising the boy into whose stewardship he was placed. He was, by all accounts, an exemplary Jew and apt provider for his little family. (Just how little -- or big -- it actually was is a matter of some controversy but that doesn’t concern us at present.)
While wholly God, Jesus was also wholly human. He was, as we’re told, “God made flesh,” In a very real sense, Jesus took on created form in a human family -- eternal and perfect being occupying a particular place at a particular time in the material matrix of humanity. Just as he experienced hunger and thirst, pain and exhaustion, rest and refreshment, anger, sadness and joy, he must also have lived such human experiences as those of sons of good parents everywhere. Surely Joseph taught him things, set a good example and enjoyed his respect. Jesus was also God, of course, but the divine plan necessitated his being human and one can presume that the human aspect of his growth and maturity was attained in the usual way. Joseph, as a part of that plan, must have had a positive effect on the boy as he grew to manhood.
This unspoken assumption of Joseph’s worthiness is implied (in the Catholic world) in his saintly patronage of fathers everywhere. Even in Protestant circles (which don’t subscribe to haloed circles above the heads of those specially designated as saints) one can safely assume that Joseph must have been a father (though adoptive) whose example can only be hoped to be approached in raising one’s own children. The entire discussion presupposes that, because Jesus could choose his own parents, Joseph must have been worthy of the post.
Before all this, Joseph passed a critical test in extraordinarily difficult circumstances. There he was, a devout Jew and surely known as such to the community at large. He then finds that the alleged virgin to whom he was betrothed was rather prematurely pregnant. In his day and age, and within his culture, this was, to put it mildly, inconvenient. He might have been distressed and, one would imagine, more than a little angry and embarrassed about the whole thing. All he could know for sure was that he wasn’t responsible. Still, being a stand up guy, he didn’t want to shame the girl so he decided to quietly call the marriage off and be on his way.
But when he was told in a powerful dream that things weren’t as they seemed, he believed. In a remarkable example of faith, he accepted -- against all human fathoming -- that everything was alright. Mary had her “fiat” (“Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord,” she told the angel, “let it be to me according to your word.”) Joseph, likewise obeyed the angel who spoke to him with like authority and he accepted, in obedience and faith, the will of God as revealed to him. I think this “fiat” of Joseph’s is underplayed and should serve as an example for all of us who hope to do God’s will in our own lives.
So today, in the Catholic church, we remember Joseph, honor him and ask his prayers to help us become better, more obedient men in the service of God’s divine plan. And for those of us with children, to bid him raise us up before the Lord that we might be made worthy of the gift of fatherhood -- to be like him, that is, worthy of the post.
On Changing Nature
“But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God; who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth . . .”
John 1:12-14 RSV
The Christian conception of God and man is that they are fundamentally different in nature -- Creator and created, eternal and temporal, transcendent and limited. To use an analogy of C.S. Lewis, a painter and his painting are separate and distinct things. Lewis notes that a painting is in some manner a reflection of the artist and may tell us something about him, but it isn’t the same thing as the artist himself.
This conception is one element that distinguishes Christianity and other monotheistic religions from certain other belief systems that view nature as fundamentally a part of God (or of a Supreme Being, life force, or whatever the idea may be.) The notion that the stone, blade of grass, beam of light or antelope is actually part of God is not shared by the Christian. The Christian believes that the created thing -- whatever it may be -- may tell us something about God and witnesses to his creative power and majesty, but is essentially separate and distinct from God himself.
Christianity asserts that all of creation (ourselves included) is temporal -- limited and passing in its nature. But it also offers the prospect that God wants us to join him is his transcendence -- to make the leap from our nature that is imperfect and fleeting to union with his, which is perfect and eternal. This is what Christianity identifies as heaven.
The question that logically follows is something like, “If God is omnipotent and perfectly loving, as Christianity says he is, then why doesn’t he just make paradise happen and save all of us the misery and trouble of life as we know it here on earth?” As Lewis also points out (I don’t make any claims to original thought here) that would betray the point. God is looking for fellowship with us in a love relationship. That can’t be accomplished by his will alone. Love, in its essence, is a voluntary act. It has to be chosen in the context of the absolute freedom not to choose it. Love of him is the one thing that God can’t create. If God compelled us to love him, it wouldn’t be love at all. We would simply be automatons having no more ability to really love than so many stones. God would be alone like a boy in his room with the toy soldiers of another Lewis analogy.
The risk, of course, (and love is always a risk) is that, given the choice, we may choose not to love God. In this sense, the freedom God allows us puts him at risk of being rejected -- and perhaps even, in some way, emotionally wounded. But apparently he believes it a risk worth taking. We need only turn on the television or read the papers to see the results of failing to love God. Part and parcel of loving God is to love our fellow human beings. Both history and our ongoing present existence are rife with the effects of choosing not to love. The fruits of that choice are war and murder, loneliness and heartache -- all manner of human misery. But they are the results of human choice. And in the Christian belief that God loves and aches for each of us, those choices regularly wound him, indeed.
How, then, is the choice manifest? By what means does God enable us to choose whether to love him or not -- to remain in the temporal order, subject to death, or to opt for blessed escape into his eternal, loving nature? We find the answer in John 1:12:
“But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God”
John writes here in the past tense about those who had already become Christians in his time, but the same applies to us today. If we choose to receive him (Jesus) and believe in his name, he will give us the power to become children of God. Note John is telling us that we aren’t the children of God by virtue of our mere existence. He makes a distinction here. Our existence only establishes that we were “born . . . of blood . . . the will of the flesh . . . the will of man.” To become children of God is something else, something beyond our nature. By human nature, we are merely made. In becoming one with God’s nature, we become more than made -- we become begotten. That is, one with God in his nature. And it is arrived at by our choice to love, accept and obey Jesus Christ.
To enable the choice to become begotten -- the fulfillment of God‘s desire for us -- he has to provide us the means by which to join him in his nature. Because our nature is not that of God’s, we cannot, by that nature, join in his. Our imperfection, if joined to God uncorrected, would render imperfect the whole, changing God’s nature, which cannot change. There has to be a way for our nature to be transformed into that of God’s. The imperfect has to have the means by which to become perfect. It is necessarily impossible for us to do this on our own. We must have God’s help. He must provide us a bridge, if you will, by which we can cross from our nature into his. That bridge is Jesus Christ. It is in Christ that God, while remaining fully God, yet also becomes man, enabling our nature to connect with and be transformed into his, to wit:
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth . . . “
Here John tells us that though the Word (God in Jesus) became flesh, he remained “full of grace and truth.” That is, God became human yet retained the fullness of his Godly nature. (This is what is meant when Christians call Jesus “fully human and fully God.“) In retaining his Godliness, he is capable of offering us salvation; by becoming human, he makes that salvation attainable. God’s assumption of human nature brings that nature -- our nature -- to a summit point at which it connects to his own. Thus, the impossible becomes possible. That which is human is empowered to become divine. The bridge is built and it is ours to freely cross, fulfilling God’s desire and ours.
It's important for us to remember, however, that this bridge was built at a cost. To be perfect in his humanity, Jesus had to be perfectly obedient to the Father -- even unto the point of death in unimaginable agony. Salvation wasn’t effected in a vacuum. Humanity’s sins against God were and are real. God’s perfect justice requires that they must be atoned for by humanity. God’s perfect love moves him to become human himself so he can do the atoning for us in the person of his Son. Our role -- our sacrifice, and an unspeakably mild one -- is to simply accept and participate in our own salvation by acknowledging it through acceptance of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.
One other note on this piece of scripture, and it’s an important one, so I want to go back to the verse as it is written:
“But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.”
I think it’s important to recognize that John doesn’t tell us that by receiving Christ and believing in his name, we are made children of God. Rather, belief in Jesus gives us the power to become children of God. Implicit to this is that we also retain the power not to become children of God. To our peril, there is still time and opportunity for the believer to reject the inheritance he has so freely been given. This is why I believe the doctrine that says “once saved, always saved” is a fallacy -- and a dangerous one at that. It's true that by baptism -- a necessary step in any brand of Christianity-- we are immersed in the grace of God through Jesus. I believe that God, in his love and generosity, wants to be very lenient with us and will give us as broad a shot as possible, but the choice is still ours to make. And it will remain so until the day we die.
And so we must continue to pray, to read scripture, to be in fellowship for improvement, strength and endurance, and to constantly practice Christian charity. These are the necessary exercises to keep us ready and willing to keep the promise of our baptism alive. Accepting Jesus is just the beginning -- rather than the culmination -- of gaining eternal life in God.
A Christian Response to the Threat of Al-Qaeda
This is a piece written by my friend, Jim. His message may seem counter-intuitive to many of us, but it is eminently Christ-like. When Jesus told us to pray for our enemies, he wasn't kidding.
A Christian Response to the Threat of al-Qaeda
On a recent business trip I was surfing a.m. radio and, during my search, I happened across a talk show discussing the escalating threat of Islamic terrorism. The host’s guest was Dr. Paul Williams who was communicating his reasons for believing with certainty that terrorists have recently smuggled 7 or 8 tactical nuclear weapons into the U.S. He explained that this type of bomb has destructive capability equivalent to the blasts of August 1945 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. To be sure, I was troubled, and for two reasons. First, I currently reside in Denver, which Dr. Paul named as a city on the short list of terror targets; second, I had a dream some years ago.
In early 1994, I was experiencing a lull in relating to our Father and this dryness was a catalyst for making a simple request. A few minutes after lying on my bed at the end of the day, I asked God to interact with me in some way, so I could move beyond the staleness. As I prayed, it occurred to me to ask for a dream - not necessarily meaning an immediate one. I even requested this type of communication based on God having given an evil man like Nebuchadnezzar dreams, knowing I was in better standing with the Lord than that ancient ruler.
Within moments I had dozed off, and I received a brief but vivid dream. In it I was standing a few miles to the east of downtown Denver. I was looking west, so the skyline had the Rockies as a backdrop. Suddenly, the unmistakable mushroom shaped clouds of 8 large explosions fanned out across the Front Range from near Boulder to the south of Denver. The wind generated by these blasts blew against my face in the dream, and this sensation awoke me from sleep. The dream may have lasted 15 seconds or so, yet it had clarity like HDTV. I immediately wrote down the details, which is why I recall the dream more than 10 years later.
Rather than raise the levels of fear and hatred by suggesting that the U.S. pre-emptively attack Muslim cities, I offer this alternative response:
Certainly, any committed follower of Jesus recognizes that He loved all people, including those who hated Him enough to participate in His torture and execution. Moreover, He strongly cautioned against hating any human, and instead required His followers to love their enemies. Jesus modeled this to His disciples regularly. He interceded for His murderers when He asked our Father to “forgive them” (Luke 23:34). He also attempted to awaken Judas from his spiritual slumber when He asked him, “Do you betray the Son of man with a kiss?” (Luke 22:48) In these and many other ways, Jesus exemplified love for His enemies.
Now, in no way am I recommending pacifism leading to catastrophe. Rather, I am convinced that proactive intercession is warranted. When I first began praying about this urgency, a number of scriptures came to mind. So, because I believe that the Holy Spirit was interacting with me in prayer, I am compelled to share the experience with you.
Part of God’s Word that fluttered through my thinking was from Genesis 18. You recall that this is where it’s recorded that God informed Abraham that He intended to destroy Sodom, Gomorrah, and the surrounding cities because of their outstanding wickedness. Perhaps out of concern for Lot and his family, or for other unstated reasons, Abraham interceded for the thousands of inhabitants of the region by asking God if He intended to sweep away the righteous with the wicked, and whether the Judge of all the earth would do what is right. God was not reluctant to spare the multitude of unholy people if only a handful of upright citizens be found among them.
This truth is reinforced in Jeremiah 5:1 where the Lord tells the prophet that all of Jerusalem will experience forgiveness if “but one person who deals honestly and seeks the truth” can be found in the city. Furthermore, we are reminded in Lamentations that God does not willingly bring affliction or grief to humans. II Peter 3:9 and I Timothy 2:1-4 cement the revelation that God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked (see Ezekiel 18). So I am regularly practicing and highly recommend that we no longer have the attitude of the world concerning these threats, but that we have the mind of Christ as repeatedly demonstrated to us by Him.
Now what about my dream? I believe the answer is found in Jeremiah 18 where it says, “If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will repent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. And if at another time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be built up and planted, and if it does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it.” (Vv. 7 - 10). And the truth that “widespread destruction” prophecy is conditional is made certain by the book of Jonah. You remember that when the prophet finally arrived at Nineveh, he declared citywide that these Assyrians had about six weeks left before they would be destroyed. At this, they repented. And Jonah 3:10 says, “When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, He had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened.”
So, it is scripturally established that when people are solemnly warned that their sin is bringing about a certain and unpleasant demise, two things will divert that outcome: their repentance and/or the people of God among them interceding on their behalf.
Lastly, I share with you a brief but enlightening moment from October 2001. It was only three weeks after the terrible events of 9/11, and I was praying in the morning. In recent days, I had been reading from Luke’s Gospel, and I remembered the holy text about doing good to our enemies, including praying for them. I considered who my enemies might be, and no one’s name or face popped up. So, I thought about who might regard me as an enemy and Osama bin Laden came to mind. I willfully decided to pray for him, and immediately after starting to, Galatians 1:23 loudly interrupted me. It says, “he who formerly persecuted us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.”
I am certain that the Holy Spirit was directing me to ask the Father to effect this hate-filled man toward salvation. That’s right. I was praying that God would work to save Osama bin Laden. It was somewhat surprising, but I followed that lead and now I’m asking you to join me in these prayer efforts. Specifically, pray that the presence of the righteous among the lost would provide a level of safety not enjoyed by them without us. Next, negotiate on behalf of non-Christians that God’s Spirit would relentlessly move the unsaved toward repentance. Finally, ask expectantly that our heavenly Father would pursue our enemies and overtake them, so that His purposes for them would be fulfilled.
Remember, there once was a religious zealot who despised Christians to the point of killing and imprisoning them, all the while believing he was serving God. However, he finally met this Jesus whom he was persecuting, and the world benefited greatly - even to this day. I guarantee that Jesus’ followers were asking God to confront this man, so that they could be free from his hatred and so that he could be free from his sins. This man is the one whom we call… the Apostle Paul…
Two Together = Faith Squared
This is a piece I wrote some time ago that I've already shared with some of you. For those of you to whom it's redundant, you can skip over it. But part of my purpose in putting it out there is to see whether I can integrate a Word document into a post. I'm learning on the fly, as it were. If it works, I might have a couple of others later on. Besides, the theme of the thing is integral to what I'm trying to do here.
Cheers!
je
TWO TOGETHER = FAITH SQUARED
By Jeff Eldridge
It's obvious to most of us that having and maintaining a personal relationship with Jesus is central to the Christian life. Too many of us don't fully realize, however, that that's not the whole of the formula. Jesus makes plain that we're to live our relationship with him as part of a body of believers -- the "body of Christ" on Earth. He makes plain that we're not freelancers, that the proper exercise of our faith isn't a solo act. Surely there's a reason he tells us: "Where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them." (Matthew 18:20)
Years ago, when I was a college student (and a not-nearly formed Christian), I had a conversation with a non-believing friend. The subject of this passage came up and he had a real problem with it: "Yeah," he protested, "well what about where one or more is gathered? Where's God then?" His question made sense. I had no answer for him.
But here's what I know now: Of course the Lord is with us when we're alone. I'm sure many of us have had some of our most profound spiritual moments when we were alone. There are times when God sets us apart from others so that he can bring us to a place where he has our undivided attention. But we're also called to fellowship with the maxim that tells us "iron sharpens iron," (Proverbs 27:17) and most of the time that sharpening isn't made sufficient at one pass. It's through repeated scraping that the desired blade edge is achieved; through patient polishing that it's brought to its desired finish. In other words, when two or more of us are gathered in his name, we're able to support and encourage one another in the faith. When we gather repeatedly, habitually and prayerfully, we're able to promote in one another the Christian way of life. It's essential we realize that our mission isn't just to make ourselves better Christians, but to also make each other better Christians.
It seems to me that this notion lies beneath the surface of the Gospel story in which Jesus sends out the seventy-two as related in Luke:
"After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go. He told them, "The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves. Do not take a purse or bag or sandals; and do not greet anyone on the road.
"When you enter a house, first say, 'Peace to this house.' If a man of peace is there, your peace will rest on him; if not, it will return to you. Stay in that house, eating and drinking whatever they give you, for the worker deserves his wages. Do not move around from house to house." (Luke 10:1-7)
What catches my attention here is that Jesus sent them out in pairs. Why in pairs? After all, he could've covered twice as much ground if he had sent them out one by one. It seems to me that Jesus valued quality over quantity. Perhaps he determined that his disciples could be more effective if each had another with him. It seems logical enough if you consider the difficulty of the mission. Our Lord told them to expect rejection -- even persecution. We know that the authorities of the time were not terribly pleased with Jesus and the offbeat sect he'd been gathering around himself. They reviled Jesus because he openly challenged their authority. In fact, he did more than just challenge it -- he laid claim to it. This kind of behavior had created a lot of enemies. "I am sending you out like lambs among wolves."
He also tells them, "Do not take a purse or bag or sandals . . ." He's essentially telling them to travel empty-handed with no material possessions -- literally -- except the clothes on their backs. All he's giving them for their journey is their faith -- and each other. I don't think we can overestimate the value of a friend and fellow believer in a situation like that.
Think about the awesome privilege -- and the awesome responsibility -- it must have been to be one of the first people to carry the truth of the fulfillment of the Word of God to the human race. I sometimes think about what the scriptures don't tell us. I imagine two men -- perhaps perfectly ordinary men but for the company they've been keeping -- men with no special talents and no special courage. I imagine them walking together at the end of a difficult day. It may have been one of their less successful days and, not having a place to stay, they settle down to sleep on as hospitable a piece of ground as they can find. They're sweaty, dusty and grimy. They may or may not have eaten that day. Night has fallen and they lay on their backs staring up into the sky. In the face of their exhaustion -- and perhaps even fear and uncertainty -- they gaze at the stars before them. They illuminate the night without number, yet these men have walked with, talked with and broken bread with the one who put them there.
Imagine what they must have talked to each other about! I'd bet that such conversations helped them deepen one another's faith. I'd also bet there were times when they had to lean on one another when the going got tough. The "two together" that Jesus sent out were -- by design -- not left alone to face their challenges. Those challenges must've been daunting, to say the least. One wonders at how critical it must have been that they had each other for mutual encouragement, support and accountability. The Lord had entrusted to these men a key task in his ministry. He evidently felt that none of them could accomplish it on his own.
"Do not move around from house to house." Why not? Why not visit as many houses as possible in order to reach more people? Jesus, I think, wanted his disciples to build relationships. To spend enough time with people -- with families and groups of friends -- so that foundations could be established based upon trust and understanding. This is how the Gospel is most effectively shared. To put it another way, the seed of the Word has a better chance of taking root if it's planted rather than simply broadcast indiscriminately. Furthermore, it looks for good soil and in most cases, the good soil it looks for is cultivated rather than found.
I also suspect that Jesus didn't just haphazardly pair these men off. The greatest talent of any leader is the ability to bring out the best in each individual in his charge and to help those individuals work well together. Who could possibly have done this better than our Lord, who knows everyone's heart? Surely he knew these men's strengths and weaknesses and worked with them. My speculation is that he carefully matched them according to his perfect sense of their individual capacities and compatibilities. Exactly how and why he did this is pure conjecture, of course. But I think we can comfortably assume that he sent his disciples out in pairs because he saw that there was value in doing so. It seems to me that he very consciously sent them out to talk, preach and teach as "two or more come together in my name." Two together, in this case, was much more than the sum of its parts.
We all know that in many instances, whether in marriage, business, a musical group -- what have you -- a partnership or team may accomplish far more than could its individual members separately. There's an essence to collaboration that's somehow beyond the scope of individual striving. Individual effort is vital in any endeavor and must not be underestimated in its importance, but two or more people striving toward a common goal has a transcendence all its own. For an example of the truth of this, look at any great athlete in any team sport who's never won a championship. If you're a sports fan, how many times have you heard a star player say he would gladly give up all his individual honors and accomplishments to have won a single championship? When retired athletes reminisce about their playing days, what do most of them say they miss the most? They always seem to say that it's their teammates, the camaraderie they had, their sense of shared purpose.
The great Christian thinker, John Donne, once said, "No man is an island." I think he had it right. God designed us to live and thrive in community with one another. This is true of culture in general and it's especially true of the church. The Bible describes us as members of a single body (See 1 Corinthians 12:12:31). A finger or a foot or an eye is not self-contained but rather, each is part of an integrated whole. In the same way, we, as individual Christians, have unique gifts, abilities, dispositions and tendencies that are incomplete in and of themselves, but which can find transcendence in concert with the gifts of others. Not only does spiritual collaboration allow us to maximize our gifts; in doing so it reminds us that those gifts were not given us solely for our self-aggrandizement. In fact, when we are properly in tune with God, we actually get more enjoyment and fulfillment from our gifts by sharing them than we do by trying to keep them (or worse, by trying to claim them) for ourselves.
The whole essence of the Christian walk is to take up one's cross, an act that's inherently self-giving. The idea, of course, is to imitate Christ, whose ultimate act of self-giving is the source of our salvation. It is also a very hard thing to do. It's hard to deny oneself. It's hard to sacrifice when it hurts. It's hard to love our neighbor at moments when he or she seems decidedly unlovable. Jesus knows this. It seems plain to me that because he knew this two thousand years ago, he set us up as a church rather than as a bunch of individuals on wholly independent pilgrimages to Heaven. Most of us simply aren't that good. We need to be encouraged, we need to be reminded, we need to be admonished and at times we need to be re-directed if we've wandered off the path. (And if this doesn't apply to you, it's all the more imperative that you be a part of the Christian community because the rest of us need your help!)
It seems to me that these are just a few examples of why Jesus, in his infinite wisdom, established his faithful as a church. It's by his design that we're to be, not free agents, but brothers and sisters in the Lord, yoking ourselves to one another, the better for Him to help us work out our salvation -- together.
We're living in a society that's becoming increasingly atomized. We Americans continue to live lives in which we've become more and more isolated from one another. It's a sad fact that the way of life for too many of us is to work all day, come home tired and stressed out, eat supper and vegetate in front of the TV until we fall asleep on the couch. Television and the internet are hailed as miracle technologies that bring us the world. This is true as far as it goes, but in bringing us the world they also tend to cut us off from each other. Time spent chatting online is time not spent chatting over our hedgerows. Too many of us hardly know our neighbors on anything beyond a "Hi, how ya doin'" basis, but we make darn sure we keep up with the characters on our favorite TV shows. The convenience of technology and home entertainment have served to eliminate any real need for us to engage -- much less to know and love -- our neighbors.
It was of great comfort that, in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Americans genuinely pulled together in a spirit of community. I think this shows that in spite of our growing personal isolation, we still carry a deep-seated need for such community -- a need that surfaces when it really counts. It's intrinsic to the human condition. Jesus knew this about us, and I hardly think this knowledge was inconsequential in his establishing us as a community of believers. Again, yes, we must have at the center of our faith a deeply personal relationship with Christ. But we must also recognize that that relationship radiates out to our fellow believers and from them to us. That fellowship is part of the lifeblood that keeps our personal relationship with Jesus healthy and vibrant.
The basic element of Christian fellowship is "two or three come together in my name, (and) I with them." It's more than just going to church, hearing a sermon, singing some songs and going back home. It's being with each other and sharing the common bond of him with us, helping each other to think and act as Christ would, to the best of our limited abilities.
In his life and ministry, our Lord showed us what Christian community is -- and that it's critical to our lives as his followers. And as if to underscore the point, I don't think it's by coincidence that as the last official act of his ministry, just before he was to be given up to his death, Jesus brought his closest friends together to share a meal.
What Kind of Bloggin' Blog is This?
Glad you asked. As I stumble my way through the virtual void and gradually figure out what this particular assemblage of ones and ohs might offer, I intend to establish a forum. That forum, I hope, will be one in which friends and total strangers might put forth their thoughts on Christianity and related topics (and even not-so-related ones, as the case may be.) All denominational and non-denominational perspectives, as well of those of other religious and philosophical viewpoints, are welcome. (In case you didn't read my profile, mine is that of a Catholic Christian). The only limitations I insist upon are those of common courtesy. Critique, argue, disagree to your heart's content. Just don't be a jerk about it.
If you have ready-stocked in your quiver some article or essay you've previously composed, and can figure out how to post it, please feel free to share it with the class. I don't know boo about "officially" crediting a piece written by someone else, but if you choose to share such a piece, or an excerpt thereof, please do what you reasonably can to give the author his or her due. I'd prefer to keep the Google police from my door, and besides, it's the courteous thing to do.
The book of the moment for me is "Being Christian" by Joseph Ratzinger. If the name rings a bell to you, it's probably because it rang a whole lot of them in Rome last week when he was named Pope Benedict XVI. Long before he was pope, and long before he was a cardinal, he was an extremely erudite and deep-thinking priest, theologian and writer. The book I speak of is a collection of sermons he gave in 1965, and what he said then is just as relevant today:
"In our generation the Christian Faith finds itself in a much deeper crisis than at any other time in the past. The problem of whether it is still possible in this century to live an honorable life by this faith and to have confidence in it in time and in eternity is met not only by those who find themselves on the fringe of the Church, but every single one of us. In this situation it is no solution to shut our eyes in fear in the face of pressing problems, or to pass over them. If faith is to survive this age, then it must be lived, and above all, lived in this age. And this is possible only if a manifestation of faith is shown to have value for the present day . . ."
(c) 1970 by Franciscan Herald Press
As one who believes utterly that the Christian faith has value for the present day and, indeed, for eternity, I see it as fit and proper that it should be poked and prodded with the stick of man's intellect. Not only can Truth bear it, but one's intellect can only be enlightened in the process.
As for this nascent forum, I suspect that it will mainly be visited by those who already share the Christian faith. As to us, may this little site be a place in which we can mutually encourage and support one another. Experience may be a great teacher, but shared experience is even greater.
Wishing you peace in Christ,
je
