Things I Think

#1 I can definitely relate to. We only got Cronkite. Good list.

We all have the ability to turn off our screens and start chatting with our neighbors. No one is forbidding us. We ourselves can be the change we would like to see in the greater society.

An example: For most of the time we have lived in our house (nearly 40 years) our sandy, droughty front yard looked like a cat litter box. I decided to plant drought resistant plants over the entire small yard. All the neighbors, even people I didn’t know all that well, became interested as I turned a desert into an Eden. They all came over, began talking, and they all began giving me cuttings from their own yards. This was good because I couldn’t afford to buy enough plants to fill in the space but thanks to my neighbors I have more plants than I need. And they look at my lovely garden and smile and so do I. I don’t have much in common with most of my neighbors. Some of them are very noisy people who are low-grade criminals but they really became happy about my yard and I felt a greater sense of community. Then we painted our house and they are all talking about painting their houses now. Our short street is now friendlier and nicer-looking. I overlook my neighbors’ marijuana business, I overlook my other neighbors’ code violations, I don’t call the cops when the party down the street gets too loud,

We can all do this.

Well I want to.

That’s why I sometimes write posts that I know sound very self-congratulatory. I am sorry about that, but I want to give examples to encourage people because I too am an introvert and all I want to do is stay inside and read and work on my book but I believe this is self-indulgence on my part.

Yes, loss of community and commonality – the sense that we’re all in this together. Its not that we all do the same thing, have the same income, believe exactly the same thing. For Christians, I think its that we all partake of the same Spirit, we share in the one bread, the one cup. The result of such community/commonality might even effect No. 5 on your list…

We were in Minnesota last week and I took a long walk in a very nice safe neighborhood on a weekend and there were almost no kids riding their bikes or playing outside. No skateboards or scooters, either. No girls playing jump rope, no young boys playing with Tonka toys, just dead silence. I guess all the kids were either off at planned activities or inside watching TV or playing video games.

And I never saw so many overweight kids in my life as when we visited the famous Mall of America. So very tragic.

“Methodists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians,”

Methodists and Presbyterians are evangelical, right?

#10 🙂

Oh, ok. I’m thinking both have mainline and evangelical branches. There are mainline Baptists as well. Lutheran too.

I’ll admit a certain fear of those sects.

My interactions with mainliners have been like talking to aliens. We just don’t speak the same language. I’m sure there are many pewsters who are solid, christian folks, and my bias is unfair. But the few I’ve dealt with have been very difficult for me.

Part of the issue with ‘mainline’ Christians, I believe, has to do with our own evangelical “God-speak”. Many do not express their faith in the same words which are familiar to us despite a deep personal faith. My guess is that if you had asked C.S. Lewis about his “own personal relationship with Jesus” he would have looked at you with a very puzzled blank stare. We should not confuse real faith with our particular way of expressing that faith. Just my opinion.

Regarding selfies, I work at a local Gospel mission that ministers to women. I teach a weekly class. At the beginning of each semester I get my class roster (usually 6-8 women who have backgrounds marked by drugs, abuse, homelessness, incarceration, etc.

Prior to the start of class I look up each women to see if she has a FB page (I never become FB friends with any resident) to see if there’s anything I can learn. After 3 years of doing this, I am still amazed at the amount of selfies most of these women have posted on their FB pagers. In some cases, nothing but selfie after selfie.

Just an interesting sociological observance…not sure what it means.

I think Lewis was pretty conservative on most issues. He was blessed to live in a time when everything wasn’t split in the two camps of conservative or liberal. I think if he lived and wrote today, he would probably be pressured into towing the line on his “problematic” issues. Which would be a shame, because he was such a great thinker.

I could see him in the same line as Eugene Peterson, maybe a bit more conservative.

Regarding # 9 – I was reading Tozer’s Knowledge of the Holy this morning and read a haunting quote that is related:

“The God of Abraham has withdrawn His conscious Presence from us, and another God whom our fathers knew not is making himself at home among us. This God we have made and because we have made him we can understand him; because we have created him, he can never surprise us, never overwhelm us, nor astonish us, nor transcend us.”

God help us.

Yes, an old fashioned Anglo-Catholic…

I was in Lakeside, Montana last week, where Peterson resides. I secretly kept hoping I would bump into him somewhere in town.

I feel bad about this, but I became and remain a fan of Eugene Peterson solely from the stuff that pops up in my twitter feed.

Michael #19 – THANK YOU! Reminds me of One Corinthians where Paul talks about everybody having a place in the body of Christ.

Anyone else…

I won’t defend or debate anyone here whether or not I am a Christian because I go to a “mainline” denomination. God knows who are his. You don’t. Not trying to be an a##, but I just get tired of the “we are better than them” mentality, or the wholesale dismissal of an entire group of people who aren’t like you. Like I said, God knows who are his.

Xenia (#17). I am from Minnesota and it is truly sad what you witnessed. Like that everywhere. I went to a big elementary school and one of the largest High Schools in the state, and in both schools you could count on one hand the number of overweight kids, and have a few fingers left. Sad how things have turned out.

Number 8… one reason why I am shying away from twitter and fakebook. I am sorely tempted at times to engage in hating people and want people to join me.

Number 10…Michael…kind of like last nights conversation about music, old and new. I TRY not to disparage new music, because someone likes it and someone makes a living off of it. What I consider old and classic and better was probably considered bad when it came out. The old times in general were not always so glorious as we make it out to be. Sure, Leave It To Beaver life seemed so safe and innocent, but look what else was in play during those times.

What Steve says is true: you can’t complain about lack of community if you aren’t willing to say “Hi!” first.

Josh, help me with your Tozer quote above. I he really saying that the Spirit of God has left us Christians and another, perhaps a foe has entered us?

If I walked up to a friend and said, “Brother the God of Abraham has withdrawn His conscious Presence from you, and another God whom our fathers knew not is making himself at home in you.”

That does not sound like Christian theology to me – I always thought Tozer was a weird dude or he was off on a Christian level I would never understand.

Michael – I get that, but what is the context – is he writing that to the general Christian masses?

Does God do this in the NT sense that Tozer would be speaking?

I used to see / hear Tozer quoted all the time in CC & SBC and he always left me scratching my head

I spend 8 – 10 hours a day “in community” – called my workplace. Isn’t that enough?

Right.
I was just trying to say that in my personal life, because I travel so much and am never really “part” of anything even at the office, because I’m always a consultant who automatically is an outsider, I appreciate more the feeling of community when I do get to participate.

I was thinking about it just the other day when I left the walgreens store near me. I know the manager quite well from having bought 1 million erasers/pens and index cards from them over the years. We were talking the other evening about how our area doesn’t have any place to buy fresh food since corporate made him stop selling it.
There’s only a couple gas stations, a 7-11 and fast food places around.
I was watching him greet shoppers as they came in, noticed how many of them said hello like they knew him etc. It gave me a good sense of being part of the area. I don’t get that experience when I’m traveling. I’m always an outsider.

Also, in my immediate neighborhood, there’s 6 houses in my cul-de-sac. Four of us are friendly with each other. In the last 2 weeks, some of us have exchanged food or tools, my neighbor came over and chopped off some branches we couldn’t reach, we’ve made sure that folks know there’s a person coming around asking if the nicer vechicles are “for sale”, people are trying to get the county to provide skunk traps etc….

Another way I’ve experienced community in the last couple weeks is during our backpack event. It is open to anyone in the area who wants to participate. We even had some folks drive some 90 miles to be involved this year. People of all ages, ethnic groups, and socio-economic groups participate. I’m the only person in the room with the knowledge of who is a volunteer and who is receiving assistance. It doesn’t matter. Everyone pitches in and we get the thing done.

We get good feedback because people like the variety and they like getting to meet people they otherwise wouldn’t get to meet.

Now personally, as an introvert, it nearly does me in every year. 🙂

It seem to me that it’s up to each person to make sure they are getting the amount of community they need for their own soul’s health.

3. Selfies are fun. I sometimes do them when I’m bored, or if I am with others and want to be silly. I used to be a photographer of every event I went to. I was never in any of the shots, at least with selfies, I have some evidence that I was there.
It’s a way to show that you are part of the group. That you belong.

4. I watched a lot of the Olympics. Was disappointed in NBC’s coverage this year. They showed way the heck too much of swimming, track and volleyball. I prefer when other, lesser known sports get shown. Oh well, there’s another in 4 years.

10. I miss the folks that were around in the “old days” of the blog (well, most of them). The variety of opinions and personalities were what was fun and challenging. Now, I pretty much already know what everyone here is going to say before they say it.

Michael @ 14:

Wow, count your blessings on that one man. So many preteen and teen boys only know how to spend their time playing mass-shooter games all day long where all they are doing is going around killing and maiming people for hours on end every day. It’s really sad and very concerning. From my experience, most boys are beholden to the computer and devices one way or the other, and usually in every way possible. Most teen boys specifically just seem to alternate between the video games and porn…

Praise God your boy isn’t in that trap and knows how to get outside and actually live in the real-world. 🙂

Seriously man, that gives me great hope. Having been doing mentoring with boys in this age range and recently just being very discouraged given the enemy’s traps that so many are ensnared in in this area, it is really encouraging to know there’s at least one boy out there that’s swimming against the tide. 🙂

Thought one and two.

Sorry, but I really don’t have any other place to say this.

I am not really an Athiest, and Anti-Theist means a lot of things to a lot of people. There are online groups that are quite literally are worthless. I found a chapter of Athiests in Colorado, part of a speaking tour for famous folks more than anything else.

I have inhaled quite a bit of material from amazing writers and lecturers, and taken a serious interest in theoretical physics. I get to ponder this stuff a lot, but there is nobody to really bounce thoughts off of.

The reason I say this, when I was a Christian, or whatever I was, I had people I could go to. A community. Always. Even here, it was a very critical part of who I was. When I fled Calvary Chapel and scrambled to figure out what had to be next, this place was here, and even then, I had a few actual IRL people.

Hard as it may be to believe, people like me don’t have community structured like you do. It may be easy to consider even a place like this as superficial, but it is something far more than what I can find now.

The old pastor in me ponders coordinating a minimum of a monthly get together for the few Anti-theists I know of in the general 100 mile radius. One of them was even a devout Christian at one point.

Point being, value what you have. It’s a big deal.

London @ 72 – I’m sure you’re right, it just seems that with the internet and such we’ve ramped up the witch hunts to an all-time high. But honestly, I don’t know much about Great Britain during the 40’s, so I’m just speculating.

Mld – I think some quotes can be rhetorical, just to make a point. I think he is making the same point you often make about evangelicals. The quote startled me, frankly. Particularly this part, “because we have made him we can understand him; because we have created him, he can never surprise us, never overwhelm us, nor astonish us, nor transcend us.”

My God has become very safe. That worries me.

Josh,
Isn’t Tozer just admitting that he along with the many he hangs with – well hung with, were just idol worshipers. Who is the ‘god’ that he has made?

Do you have the article that quote came from so I can read it in context. I find the quote quite troubling, not that it convicts me but that people continue to read Tozer especially with that.

Reuben,
You can community with me. Heck, if Mary Matalin and James Carville can do it – we can. 🙂

https://www.amazon.com/Love-War-Presidents-Daughters-Louisiana/dp/0399167242/ref=pd_sim_14_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=FA59WCJYHBERQW62AYWE

No one inhabits neutral ground.

I didn’t say he was on neutral ground – I thought he was on bad ground. Jean, have you replaced the God of the Fathers with your own made up God? Tozer is accusing you of doing that. If you were a weak new Christian, this would not help you – at the very least it would turn you into a legalist … at worst it would make you suicidal.

I went looking for a little more substance but I found a couple of places where you can see stand alone quotes pulled from their context.

“It is, accordingly, necessary to know and to teach that when holy men, still having and feeling original sin, also daily repenting of and striving with it, happen to fall into manifest sins, as David into adultery, murder, and blasphemy, that then faith and the Holy Ghost has departed from them [they cast out faith and the Holy Ghost]. For the Holy Ghost does not permit sin to have dominion, to gain the upper hand so as to be accomplished, but represses and restrains it so that it must not do what it wishes. But if it does what it wishes, the Holy Ghost and faith are [certainly] not present. For St. John says, 1 John 3:9: Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin, … and he cannot sin. And yet it is also the truth when the same St. John says, 1:8: If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” – Luther, The Smalcald Articles

Michael – I didn’t say I agreed with the author – I don’t know who he is – but I am aware of the Trinity Foundation and they have done some good apologetics for biblical teaching vs. Catholicism.

If I disagree with someone’s statement I am in violation of the 8TH commandment? I spoke directly to the quote and I even asked Josh if he had the article it came from so I could look at the context.

Color me confused.

MLD – I gave the context from the Tozer quote when I posted it. It is from his book, “The Knowledge of the Holy”. It is a fairly short book. You could read the whole thing in a day.

“Isn’t Tozer just admitting that he along with the many he hangs with – well hung with, were just idol worshipers. Who is the ‘god’ that he has made?”

Yes, pretty much, though I’d take it in a more poetic / rhetorical way, than a literal way. I was troubled by it too. He comes way too close to describing my Christian life.

Tozer’s is more startling. Captures the attention and makes me think more.

Thanks – I am going to make a project out of this to understand where he is going. I just gave a casual reading to this chapter and I see he has a couple of paragraphs where I can understand and probably agree with his definition of Infinitude.

His opening paragraphs, which one includes the quote in question, have me still scratching my head – the opener is a mind blower as he seems to using the premise that God has already left the church.

“The world is evil, the times are waxing late, and the glory of God has departed from the
church as the fiery cloud once lifted from the door of the Temple in the sight of Ezekiel
the prophet.”

MLD – I finished the book this morning. He wraps up that thought in chapter 23 – The Open Secret. It’s good stuff.

So God has left the Temple – should be left the Church

Xenia #5

I too live near drug dealers, beside me and across the street.

In both homes no one goes to work.

Lots of people coming and going.

Lots of partying.

Revving of engines at all hours with “boom cars” blasting our homes off their foundations with bass notes that can be heard 300 feet away from the source.

Section 8 homes with fraudulent subleasing that have as many as 13 cars associated with them.

Vehicles parked on the front lawns until the grass is non existent and the homes are run down.

After a few years of this I decided to hire a lawyer to write a firm letter to the property owner of the worst house on the street about the nuisance of his tenants, since in my state property owners are responsible for the conduct of their tenants.

After getting a condescending response from him, I resorted to knocking on doors in my neighborhood for signatures to validate my claims and let the owner know that my complaints were not fabricated.

I was amazed at how many people signed my paperwork.

The old retired folks on my street had had it with these young arrogant gang types but were too intimidated to do anything about it.

When they would come home from the bars at night, the gang dudes would light off illegal flying m80’s which would once again shake our homes and wake us up at 2:30 AM or so.

When I tried talking with them I was told by one of them, “I’m going to kill you.”

That was it.

I doubled up on my efforts.

This week is the final week that they have to vacate that home because I forced the owners hand to evict them or i would have no recourse other then to sue him.

Of course these nuisance types were angry and like bees in a hive that I hit, started to try and intimidate me.

Parking in my space that I park my work truck in.

Increasing noise and slamming of vehicle doors along with setting off car alarms at all hours.

It is going to be peaceful when they are gone.

And now that I know the law about section 8 fraud I will not let anyone the home owner has in his house under section 8 sublease there.

They are not allowed to do that when the tax payers are giving them free rent.

Section 8 has been a haven for felons.

Felons are not allowed to live together under the same roof in my state, so they sublease in section 8 homes to get around the law.

This is what happened across the street from me and other section 8 homes across the nation (USA).

The idea was that if people from lower social economic status were giving the opportunity to live in nicer neighborhoods, it would impact them and cause them to want to live up to the standards of those neighborhoods.

So the American tax payer footed the bill.

If you do the research the program (started in 1974) hasn’t worked at all except to create millionaires out of property owners who take advantage of section 8.

And section 8 types who sublease, pocketing the rent money.

Most section 8 types who are fraudulently subleasing drive nice cars, courtesy of the free rent they receive from the government and the sublease’s.

I could only wish that a nice succulent garden would have changed my neighborhood.

My next move is to take the offending home owner to small claims court and recover the $900.00 it cost me to gain peace in my community.

I have the right to enjoy my own home.

It is absolutely horrible when you get no sleep night after night.

I won’t go into the south of the border non legal immigrant neighbors who party with loud amplified music. All of the strange cars parking all over the place and the large crowd of people coming and going associated with the parties.

One call to police dispatch usually does the trick.

Disturbing the peace with loud music is not allowed.

The Tejano music has come to a halt after a year of consistently calling the police.

My neighborhood is a community but there are some rules that need enforcing to maintain that peace so people can enjoy their own homes.

I was amazed at how my neighbors were imprisoned in their own homes by a few freeloaders that our taxes enabled to torment us day and night.

Section 8 needs greater enforcement.

Here in Orange County CA. there has been fraud.

http://voiceofoc.org/2014/10/workers-allege-some-live-the-high-life-on-housing-assistance/

My own experience is not isolated.

Section 8 is a problem all over.

http://www.nhi.org/online/issues/127/section8.html

We have a very active socialism in section 8.

Gosh if only I could plant a nice garden and have a better neighborhood.

i got proactive in making my neighborhood a better place to live.

I like my home, I like my neighborhood.

I got a warm fuzzy feeling the other day when one of my neighbors said, “Thank you!” to me.

My wife is wanting to start a grass roots effort to reform section 8.

I seriously think it won’t get off the ground.

Too many rich people have taken advantage of section 8 as property owners.

They will fight back to keep their socialistic program that has enriched their bottom line courtesy of the taxpayer.

There has to be a better oversight of a program that actually helps the elderly and the truly poor among us that doesn’t make millionaires of others and that doesn’t rob neighborhoods of peace and quite.

Ok…I feel better.

Michael–we have made a determined effort to both simplify our summer and engage in the process of grief. It has been painful and lonely, but beneficial. Drew’s death has refocused our priorities and softened our hold on stuff and our responses to others. Speaking openly about loss, suicide, PTSD, depression, and other challenges has enabled others to be frank and forthright as well. It is a journey whose path extends beyond the horizon.

Lord, have mercy.

JohnnyB, we went through a very long process of having drug addicts living next door to us. They would party in a Jacuzzi till all hours high as kites keeping us and others awake. Towards the end they were openly dealing drugs during the day. What we would hear at night as their conversations were literally 10-15 feet from our back bathroom would make your skin crawl.

The owner eventually had them move but only because they couldn’t pay rent. I suspect there are other dealers ( meth, heroin, etc) still in our neighborhood but not bear us. It sounds like you have had it worse. Having children or in our case grandchildren living with us was difficult. I hope and pray you guys can have neighbors that are decent and not as you’ve experienced.

Fil…I don’t always read here consistently anymore and didn’t realize what you and your family have been through. Much love and prayers to you and yours.

Wow 113

May the comfort of the Holy Spirit be your portion in a tangible way as well in a spiritual way.

The day is soon approaching when He will wipe away every tear and there will no more be sorrow.

Hang on to hope.

Words do nothing much for those who are in heart pain, but we try in our helplessness to do something with words that could contribute to comforting.

God bless you!

I think your #1 is very insightful and probably true.