Things I Think…
1. We experienced another mass shooting yesterday…10 more people lost to violence. We will trot out our standard explanations for these killings, but they will all be wrong to one degree or another. All I know is this…that murder as Jesus defined it is in the air everywhere and we have yet to see the bitter harvest of the seeds we’ve sown…
2. What postmodern society will not concede is that the primary problem of humanity is sin…the church isn’t doing a bang up job either…
3. Trump lawyer Sidney Powell is being sued by the makers of the voting machines she claimed were rigged. Her defense is that no reasonable person would have believed her … I agree, but she will lose on the basis of a lack of reasonable people…which is what she was counting on…
4. When I pay attention to such things, it’s easy to see that identity politics is the politics of micro segregation and the salting of common ground…therefore I try to pay little attention to such things…
5. Gun control is now an oxymoron and a lost cause…mental health care isn’t and would be more effective…
6. When God judges a nation He curses it’s leadership…unfortunately half the nation will always think that would has been cursed is blessed…
7. I have become a holy fool in some eyes because I keep saying that the church must repent of it’s idolatry and seek Jesus…which is better than being a damned fool thinking righteousness will come from a political party…
8. I’m in full emotional and spiritual retreat from any social media that doesn’t include a cat video…
9. Always remember that when we are trying to discern why someone does something evil the answer is “they wanted to”. Why they wanted to will start with the sin nature and end in someplace we can’t fully understand…
10. My hope is in the Christ of the Eucharist, where the broken body and blood remind me that Jesus is still reigning and He has prepared a place for me not made with hands or legislation…
No reasonable person should have believed Trump!
Sorry for the troll comment.
Bob,
It’s ok.
The interesting thing is that she trolled millions and it worked.
We all believe what we want to believe…
“We all believe what we want to believe.”
Its called rationaluzing, i think… Satan has mastered using the technique against us – to our regret
So if Sydney Powell posted something on social media claiming voter fraud, would you read/watch it as long as she included a cat video on the posting?
And no reasonable person would forget to claim “FIRST!”, when posting the first comment.
And no reasonable person would misspell the name of the person making unreasonable claims. Both in the original posting and in the subsequent smart aleck comments. Sidney, not Sydney.
Eighth!
KevinH,
I made the correction…used to have a cat named Sydney that always told the truth…
8
My normal YouTube perusal consists of music.
And music.
And military jets breaking the sound barrier.
And music.
Michael…
RE: social media and cats… you have chosen the better way. You posted that message to me a week about a choice I made to live that weekend for the better.
Blessings!
#7 I’d rather be known as a faithful and flawed follower of Christ than for my allegiance to a political party. We only get into heaven because of Jesus’ gift of salvation, not because we follow candidate A or B.
Dan @ 1:10. You’d enjoy our valley – the Navy figjter jets use it to practice low level maneuvers
Dan,
I’m committed to reading well again…and to silence.
I’m committed to being present with pets and people without thinking about someone raging, lying, or crying on social media.
I have a timer on my watch that tells me it’s time to go outside.
Youtube…music.
I’m no longer going to apologize for being a sports fan or needing naps.
The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference…and I have grown very indifferent toward much lately…
Michael,
Understood about the sports thing…occasionally I still pull up the KFAN call of the Minneapolis Miracle, bittersweet and all. I find as I grow older, the less I need to pontificate….some stuff I don’t know about, some stuff I don’t care about, and some (all?) the stuff that I rage about falls flat.
And wife and I love our dogs to no end!
Em…yes, I have seen videos of those canyon flights from some very talented photographers….cool stuff.
Is Powell essentially admitting that she filed frivolous lawsuits in federal and state courts, violating her oath of office?
No. She’s just saying she did not commit libel.
She was expressing an opinion regarding plaintiff. An opinion is protected speech.
It does not warrant libel, because no reasonable person would have excepted it as fact. Plaintiff’s position is the statements where outrageous. The Defendent says this is evidence no libel could have been committed.
..accepted it as fact..
Pretty sure Nathan Priddis nailed it.
Frivolous lawsuits would be in the direction of her disbarment would they not?
Kraken Dread
Yes, disbarment and eligible for monetary court imposed sanctions (but that didn’t happen, as far as I know).
I believe Michigan is seeking such sanctions against Ms. Powell and three other attorneys…
Duane,
If a movie is ever made about the election, imagine who might be cast in the roles of Giuliani and Powell? As an actor, those would be fun roles to play.
Jean
The Michigan complaint to the Texas Bar…
https://www.michigan.gov/documents/ag/Powell_atty_complaint_-_signed_714982_7.pdf
Dan from GA,
Since you like military jets and you have a meteorology background/experience may I present BOTH for your enjoyment:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vapor_cone
#2 Isn’t it correct to say that the first segment of the church to assent to postmodernity on this was the mainline churches. The study in the 90s about Why Conservative Churches are Growing pointed out the collapse of the mainline churches … Joshua Mitchell goes back to the earlier years of the 20th century as mainline churches abandoned issues of guilt and forgiveness. More correctly he states that the mainline churches transferred custody of innocence and transgression to political concerns. Niebuhr he points out lamented his failure to bring an understanding of Original Sin back to the mainline churches. It is in the grappling with sin that we find our way to a Gospel.
Anyway the project that I see so often celebrated on this blog is the slower collapse of the evangelical churches (mostly from those who have migrated to the mainline seeking haven). The evangelical churches sin is so often parodied here … and frankly that sin is real… but Michael has a point that we are overlooking. The sin problem– which has become the political problem. Yes Duane laments this switch often.
So when I was a young man the evangelical fervor and expansion was overwhelming and the mainline was in complete collapse… now the evangelical has followed.
The categorical imperatives of the culture are such that we are simply not speaking a language that the public mind feels any need to embrace. Furthermore the gross and obvious sins of the church have shifted from the crusades and the inquisitions to the shame casting of the fundamentalist culture and the moral collapse of its leaders.
Anyway…. I am merely once again lamenting… even as I consider where a home might be found to await and consider the personal apocalypse that we put off by postulating the corporate.
BD,
Yes, the mainlines went first and as a result they will all soon cease to exist.
They travelled too far left theologically and culturally, evangelicalism is drinking the red colored poison.
Finding one I would set a foot in of either brand is too time consuming.
The reason for racism, broken families, and every other plague consuming us is sin.
We in the church have the remedy.
Unfortunately, we have wrapped Him in tribal flags and He is no longer recognizable.
We will not tolerate Him without a flag, however…so the descent into various hells is inevitable.
I’m beginning to look forward to the heat…for then He will unwrap Himself and we can begin again…
Dread,
It’s not all churches, but it’s enough of them, especially of the high-profile ones, that people don’t take us too seriously anymore. Check out Julie Roys article from earlier in the week:
https://julieroys.com/orlando-pastor-sexual-sin/
Orlando seems to have become adultery central for pastors.
My current church does deal with stuff (i.e. the adulterous elder we had a few years ago; strong boundaries and background checks, etc). That still doesn’t mean something won’t happen-we are all sinners, after all. But, the message from the pulpit regarding leadership is-if it happens, we will deal with it, and you will no longer be in leadership. i’ve been there 20 years, and we have only had the one elder incident. HIs marriage was restored, but he has never been an elder again. That other things may have occurred without the elders being aware, I can’t deny, but the leadership seems fairly solid as to their moral compass.
My church has had other issues I haven’t agreed with (the whole being open during the pandemic), but now that churches can be open in our area, with certain guidelines (which they are following-there was quite a bit of blowback from the older members, especially when there was a sermon about the “weak” who were staying home and doing virtual worship. The “weak” probably also pay half the church budget, and I think the leadership picked up on that. They have become much more gentle in their approach). However, after a lot of prayer and soul-searching, I have started back to see how things progress. It has been a good place for me for many years, and forgiveness and understanding need to work both ways in these uncertain pandemic times. I know that people who write/read the blog have been praying for me, and those prayers have been mightily answered.
Its hard to take much of this serious any more.
I’m remembering 30 years ago that a significant event took place while I was still on active duty that sealed the deal for me and I left the service after 10 years. Everyone thought I had lost my mind, and in truth I had, but not for the reasons they had thought.
I found refuge in an evangelical, non-denominational (so they claimed) church. It felt like heaven on earth until I could not longer ignore the inconsistencies and injustices that were right in front of me from the very beginning. I just wanted to be a part of something, and when I left, I searched for a replacement that looked the same, thought the same, believed the same, and acted the same. And I got the same. History repeated itself and when I finally left, I went through my own struggle of feeling as if I had been cast out of the garden.
Thanks CM! Awesome phenomena. You can hear people gasp when they see this happen at, for example, The Blue Angels shows. More generally, this kind of condensation is actually quite common, and can be seen on the top of a passenger airplane’s wings, especially during landing…have seen it quite often here in ATL on rainy days while driving up I-85 and passing west of the airport. You can also see it on display in the trailers for the upcoming Top Gun 2 flick…actual F/A-18 Super Hornets were filmed in flight by IMAX cameras.
There is no safe place as an all encompassing entity, i.e. national, regional, denominational, etc. There are, however, relatively safe places that are local, smaller, intentional… but they are hard to find.
Like the pandemic, politics has become an equal opportunity destroyer of the Church… of the mainline denominations and evangelicals alike. Once the virus takes hold there is only one antidote and that is repentance.
In my reading this morning I came upon a quote that impressed me…
“In these terms, both baptism and suffering have a key place in the ecclesiology of 1 Peter. Unlike other contemporary religions, Christianity’s claim is not that their God is greater than others, or more successful, or more likely to ward off famine and disaster or to bring fertility and health. It is that the meaning of life is to be found somehow in suffering, and uniquely in the suffering of Jesus, a real person with whom adherents could identify and could ‘join’. And the suffering of this real person also has cosmic significance in a God who can go to Hell and back (3:18, 19) and has prepared an inheritance for his followers in heaven (1:4, 5:4). This is often described, therefore, as an eschatological community.”
“Baptism, in 1 Peter, as admission to this household, is related to its social functions. It is a statement of intent, an intentional identification with Christ, demanding transformation of life to rehearse Christ-like behaviour. It is a statement of identity and belonging, it is a means of community cohesion and solidarity. At a very practical level, it is an acceptance of the risk of further social harassment or even violence. It is taking up a cross.”
John Holdsworth
I’m not so sure that the illness in churches right now is political involvement or failure to rise to every crisis. I’ve been reading lately about the early church–the faith walk that our forefathers took. They witnessed miracles. They prayed for and saw healings. They laid it all on the line. I think we’ve castrated our faith. We’ve come to expect nothing and in turn we see nothing.
“Perhaps the illness in churches right now isn’t just political involvement..”. Perhaps there are other ailments, but it is political involvement that is causing millions ( like myself) to leaves church that are becoming too political. I have read books about how millennials are leaving their churches in droves for this reason alone. So political involvement is definitely emptying the pews and weakening the church, because a church without a body of believers is nothing. I’ve never heard anyone refer to a “castrated” faith before. I don’t think of faith in such graphic terms as that…weakened is one thing, ‘castrated’ is quite another. Someone castrated has been victimized, or castrated by another, against their will. In your opinion, who or what is causing our faith to be “castrated”?
Dan from GA,
Glad you liked it. Top Gun 2 could a be good movie. Though Tom Cruise may need a chair lift to get into the cockpit of the F/A-18. 😀
As an aside, have you ever ran into folks who believe the conspiracy of the chemtrails (especially Evangelicals)? That is another nutty conspiracy that seems to be on the upswing along with all the other ones. It is rapidly transforming from “The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind” to borrow the title from Mark Noll’s book to “The Tragedy of NO Evangelical Mind” with all these growing beliefs in conspiracies, IMHO.
Thanks CM! I have run into a Christian who believe’s in the chemtrails lie. I’ll get back to you about that later today…busy at work.
CM,
Our (now former) handy-man believed in Chemtrails, and most likely the other conspiracy theories. Good handy-man, but for some reason thought he could text me YouTube videos of how evil Hilary Clinton was, or Chemtrails, or other stupid conspiracies. We no longer contact him for this reason. What floors me is with some of these people, one conspiracy is not enough…they believe ALL of them.
Read an article a while back of a lady who’s husband had cancer, and she blamed electromagnetic waves. She finally ditched those beliefs, but it was hard letting go and realizing that there are things in this world which we don’t know about and cannot have control of. And that may be the root of gullibility to conspiracies…a desire to know the unknown and to have control over those things that are unknown/frightening/etc.
BofC- I don’t think the damage to our faith has come so much from the outside, but from inside. We have chosen to not see or believe. We’ve done it to ourselves. We’ve chosen to live in the church like we live in the rest of the world- defeated.
Linnea,
I’m curious as to who and what you’re reading…because the historical record past the apostolic age is not full of miracles, but martyrs…
Dan from GA,
That is very much true. Once they put on the tin-foil hat for one conspiracy, go for most if not all the others (though some still select from the Chinese menu of conspiracy theories). The sad thing is that this is nothing new.
That desire for control and know is part of it. The other part is ego much like the Gnostics of old. They claimed some super secret and hidden knowledge and use it for control, bragging, manipulation, etc. And just like the early church had to deal with Gnosticism, the modern church has to deal with this new Gnosticism of the conspiracy theories. Here what researchers say are three driving factors for belief in conspiracy theories:
A need for understanding and consistency (epistemic)
A need for control (existential)
A need to belong or feel special (social)
In doing so, they completely overlook principles like Occam’s Razor and Hanlon’s Razor.
I am not sure how old you are, but here some oldie but goodie conspiracy theories that were making the rounds of the Fundie and Evangelical circles over the decades:
– Fluoridation community water supplies
– Mike Warnke and the Satanic child kidnapping/abuse/pedophile/human sacrifice group and their infiltration everywhere (gov’t, daycare, etc.)
– Just about everything pitched by Jack Chick
– The whole Proctor & Gamble logo
– The Bilderbergers, Rothschilds, Council Foreign Relations, etc.
– Satanic and other evil lyrics back-masking in rock music (where you hear message if the record is played backwords)
– Chemtrails
– EM fields and cancer
– Vaccines and autism
– 5G cellphones and COVID
– COVID plandemic, fake disease, etc.
– Vaccines and Bill Gates and implanted microchips
– Q-anon and the Pizzagate/Pedophile rings run by Democrats
– 2020 Election Fraud and Trump really won.
You notice that many of the 2010s and 2020s conspiracies are just variations of the same old ones that were prevalent and debunked in earlier decades.
I’d still like a explanation of The Georgia Guidestones… best case was a millionaire, trolling.
Michael,
Late to this thread by about a week, I don’t get to read as much as I’d like.
But I wanted to share this with you, based on your #7, “I have become a holy fool…….”
This song has carried me through a lot, may it help you as well…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEJrjGa106U