You have three magic genie wishes, what are you asking for?
Let the genie be the combined energy, willpower and courage of one generation!
Christ is probably not visiting certain churches any more, and one might think that because Felonius I has not visited your church that you have nothing to say to rebuke him and all the other rogues seeking adulation. Because you’ve decked yourselves out with the trappings of Judaism or draped yourself in flags, cultural and national traditions does not mean you have contact with God or courage to face the foe. The foes that are exacting a cost from Christians are not foreigners to our several nations – that would end up in a racist and xenophobic fight – but the cowardly leaders who have failed to connect themselves with Christ and the apostles. Would they have rebuked Hitler? Would they have rebuked any of those abusive Roman emperors of the 4th, 5th and 6th centuries? Would they have rebuked Herod the fox? Did their ancestors deride the Ethiopian Emperor in 1936 at the League of Nations?
Your church’s name says something urgent and decisive about you, not just your church. It is unlikely that there is a theologian who does not have a few things in common with the representatives of the Messianic communities anywhere.
Failing to stand firmly for the weighty matters of faith and practice is confusing millions of people today. The focus so many people lack is the wonder of the cross. Of course those focused on this world will define themselves as acting responsibly for their small things, but small things are not Christ’s priorities. Incarnation is no peanuts. Atonement by blood is not a minor detour or inconvenience to God. The believer – prospective convert – loses his way by the time the church finishes its introductory speech. Looking away from the cross and expecting glory is like the horse calling the pond whither it was brought to drink a mirage. Christ is not Moses. Need I say Moses is not God’s Anointed? Understanding Levitical priesthood is not an essential for salvation and God’s way is his own Son.
The wielding of power by national leaders seems to begin and end with taxes and birth/death. The life and the living are not birthright issues. Most living people and the thirst for security are under the thumbs of unscrupulous and undisciplined persons. Some lessons are really hard to grab. For eight years the entire den of Jim Crow and White supremacist devotees watched their fiery darts fall at the feet of one Barrack Obama. The felon of Mar a Lago is America’s racist reaction – it is not a response – to Black intelligence and skill. Their noses will never lose the smell of their own excreta, even if they can design immunity for cops and presidents, or even if they can engineer a 3rd presidential term. “No one is able to serve two masters” is a lesson every generation has struggled to grasp. The slave trade and Jim Crow has drilled the idea of independence as a quality for some people, so expecting the agents of racism and xenophobia to wake up one morning and bring non-poisonous loaves of bread to their Black neighbours is not happening any time soon. The preachers of a money-loving Jesus will not call for justice. The third generation of American racists will not say Blacks are humans made in the image of God. That is how deeply ingrained American discrimination is. Imagine how steep a climb down it is for Jews, with millennia of a green light to stop denigrating Gentiles! Who indeed will effectively call for the beastly and prostitute nations to heed their master?
If you address as Father the One who impartially judges according to each one’s work, conduct yourselves in fear during the time of your stay on earth; (1 Peter 1:17)
Peter’s theology and Christology are respectively familiar and rare. He accurately separated rewards from the gift of salvation. For the children of God, judgment is a thing of the past. A strong delusion snaps relentlessly at the feet of those who see the church and the kingdom of God as matters of necessary indictment, inescapable conviction, and ongoing uncertainty, righteous idleness and terror.
The priority that comes from the exercise of faith in something other than creation is a breath of fresh air. Islam and Judaism are grounded in a Creator God, but they have nothing personal on which to build a life directly flavoured with divine finality as the creation was. Creation is over. The king and Lord of creation is not so lackluster as to have no essential channels for relating to humanity.
Peter’s disciple rolls out his gospel as sourced in God. John immediately declared the new creation. Matthew and Luke get to gospel after laying out the historical context.
John and Mark leave no opening for James and his Pharisee friends to align the grace of God with Moses and the prophets. We know the prophets could not personally relate to what they were being told, because what they were being told included the coming revelation of the messiah. It is catastrophic that so many Christians gather up under the flag of Mosaic tradition (prophets, temple, and law). We don’t know how many leaders like James existed in the churches in Palestine and Asia, but the absence of salvation by sacrifice from James’ letter puts him and all the people who think they have earned (or inherited) eternal life in a pickle. In some ways the dilemma of people who think that the cross can be relinquished at any point, is also like quicksand. Grace salts, unbelief pickles.
How much would you pay to go to the moon?
A trip to the moon would have interested me when Armstrong stepped on the moon’s surface and announced that he was pioneering a human journey. However, going to an uninhabitable place is the stuff of fantasy and extreme adventurism. Even to a mind brimming with creative energy, the vast sums spent of a single mission to the moon has to be reprehensible as long as hunger and poverty are still ravaging any part of the earth.
There are many humans who can easily spend the money for many trips to the moon, and that fact highlights the priorities of humanity. May the moon and earth that have supported life as we know it never become terminals in a one-way traffic industry for anyone.
It was the Allied Nations, led by the United States that retired German Nazism. Italian Fascism, and Japanese imperial adventurism. The cowardice of many in the face threats from China, Russia and the Middle eastern tigers has landed us in the lane of shallow slogans and inhumanity. In times of war nationalism facilitates an optimum military machine. Most nations have not built armies that can circle the globe, and many do not even have the forces to keep a nation safe from invasion and insurrection. Now that the United States is leading the charge back to borders, brutality and grandiosity it cannot be long before the Allied Nations cut the knot with mercurial governments.
While the United States and Canada remain joined in geography and North Atlantic security closet, Canadians and Americans are in a real tango for the foreseeable future. Decency will be seen in tatters and the things most feared will become commonplace. Haiti has come to America. Israel makes no convert and gathers no ally better itself. This is where the bloated generals and mighty men, the trades and cargo transporters start building shelters, even calling on unthinking entities. Canadian courage does not mirror US bravado.
When was the first time you really felt like a grown up (if ever)?
In my early teens, discovering ancestral heritage and the possibilities of romance, I felt I had arrived. I have spent the decades since then clinging to the glow of what should have been a speedy transition. I realize I have missed some of the essentials of growing up, but do not expect me to carry any guilt when a large number of my peers have also been clinging to priorities of the transition into adulthood.
Life is Fun, But Not a Joke 