tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43688984152385036322024-03-19T10:21:34.603+03:00 Onesimus Theology, Mission and Life in this WorldBill Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11939888013962360542noreply@blogger.comBlogger511125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4368898415238503632.post-35296084368034482352024-03-12T12:48:00.001+03:002024-03-13T09:23:42.349+03:00The Snow Report<p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-size: large; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2NuzqEFuW5FNi6gis3AqBdUhML2rvMSTAi_jeJOrhCHR1nEh-YPEyy4ht4e9pRHnjwua0HuBEdvr3iGb1U4ld6yPjEmoa7oRGuxWEXodlQCTUcvxae6MiPsRBRjTzohkacrYdXXADXizC4fVEP3Xw9rroFc8MUvoO2kg-9jg92tEC_RirqQSxCNU7kqQ/s1000/Vail%201.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="667" data-original-width="1000" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2NuzqEFuW5FNi6gis3AqBdUhML2rvMSTAi_jeJOrhCHR1nEh-YPEyy4ht4e9pRHnjwua0HuBEdvr3iGb1U4ld6yPjEmoa7oRGuxWEXodlQCTUcvxae6MiPsRBRjTzohkacrYdXXADXizC4fVEP3Xw9rroFc8MUvoO2kg-9jg92tEC_RirqQSxCNU7kqQ/w640-h426/Vail%201.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">All pictures are from the internet and are of Vail in Colorado</div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">I am a regular checker of the ‘snow report’, a feature of
the <a href="https://www.vaildaily.com/news/snow-report/">VailDaily</a> local news site for Vail, Beaver Creak and Eagle Valley in
Colorado.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is something about the
accumulation of snow on Colorado’s mountains that gets my heart racing. Since
my boyhood in South Carolina, have been an avid skier, learning first on the
slush piles of northern Georgia, and graduating to the ‘big’ slopes of western
North Carolina like Beech Mountain and Sugar Mountain and Seven Devils.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, all perspective was completely
undone when I accompanied my family to ski at Vail in Colorado in the early 1970s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I simply had no vocabulary to express the
utter magnificence of the Rocky Mountains, and the vastness of the ski terrain
that was Vail Mountain. I was forced to take ski lessons, but I am so glad I
did. My hurly-burly recklessness on gravity-assisted downhill rocket runs was
tempered so that I no longer was a threat to other people or myself, and I
gradually assumed the form recognized everywhere as a skier.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">I love to ski.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I love
the cold.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I love the snow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I love looking for animal tracks in the
forest as the lift glides silently up the mountain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I love the controlled fall that is skiing
a black diamond slope.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After being not
very good in all my good-faith efforts at the various team sports my upbringing
offered me, it was thrilling to find something I was good at, something that
gave me such joy, such exhilaration, such challenge, and such a sense of
accomplishment when I could pull up at the bottom of a steep face and think, ‘Did
I just come down that?’<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW054IA7WC9s8ZF48wt5o3e4xGFaKNyysKLXvz59mwNvFpSGXatxcUOJ6VI_pQv6pBMQFAEEBOSTmYhSBpfHvj-ME3OnpfsaIzi2C2stK-RpbIlfhC5krGBqGa4-3fJZiGsVq7hhGIQL6_iHQDfVj0d8bP7CmZRW2op5xXTMX1XYVc7OEcm6wr-_4w8bk/s1200/Vail%202.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="799" data-original-width="1200" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW054IA7WC9s8ZF48wt5o3e4xGFaKNyysKLXvz59mwNvFpSGXatxcUOJ6VI_pQv6pBMQFAEEBOSTmYhSBpfHvj-ME3OnpfsaIzi2C2stK-RpbIlfhC5krGBqGa4-3fJZiGsVq7hhGIQL6_iHQDfVj0d8bP7CmZRW2op5xXTMX1XYVc7OEcm6wr-_4w8bk/w640-h426/Vail%202.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">Skiing has always been a rich person’s sport.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It has always taken a lot of capacity to pull
off even a day at the slopes, much less fly out west for a week at one of
Colorado, Utah or California’s premier mountains.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it is even more so today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A lift ticket will run anywhere from $200-$300
a day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then there is equipment rental. Don’t
even look at the cost of a bowl of chili and a hot chocolate at a mid-mountain
restaurant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then there is whatever it
costs for the condominium where you are staying.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And whether you go out our eat in, it still
costs a lot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Let’s just say, economics
have decreed that my skiing days are over.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPYOo7Z3et020S6GpR8oZvZQf744vI5vAJ0eyuEVRDHs_z0HzVeGllGbYA9jrD2zranfkdlOVEN1_I8tC3dx96XvcASSvM_-RSMGwvW1HGWtwk8dk_xo9LmgeWmmnZqyFcx1w0vhMF2K9o4ysKYV8hB5-6fyzMokeB5iHlfFWo7RLrnWQi8W31V04GPlU/s1440/Vail%203.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1440" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPYOo7Z3et020S6GpR8oZvZQf744vI5vAJ0eyuEVRDHs_z0HzVeGllGbYA9jrD2zranfkdlOVEN1_I8tC3dx96XvcASSvM_-RSMGwvW1HGWtwk8dk_xo9LmgeWmmnZqyFcx1w0vhMF2K9o4ysKYV8hB5-6fyzMokeB5iHlfFWo7RLrnWQi8W31V04GPlU/w640-h320/Vail%203.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Part of Vail. There's a back side and a side side...</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">But I still go there in my mind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have pictures from days at Park City in
Utah, or Steamboat Springs and Beaver Creek and Snowmass in Colorado.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And for this reason, I check the snow levels,
wondering how long the mountains will be able to stay open before the warming
sun finally exposes too many rocks and patches of grass for skis and snowboards
and announces instead the arrival of hiking season.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">Because we are human beings, we all of us bring with us our
dramas wherever we happen to go, even on holidays. But I always found that
there was something about that first run.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>After snapping myself into uncomfortable boots and clicking into my skis
and shushing over to the lift, and then stepping slowly in line until it was
our turn and then looking back and letting the chair lift me up and away, until
the descent and then my skis slide on the ramp and I push off and glide to a
stop while I put my hands through the pole straps and wait for the rest of the
group. And then it’s off and away, me and the snow, me and the moguls, me and the powder, me and the mountain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And all
that drama has run and hidden someplace else.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It will, of course, be back.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
for a few moments, the distraction must be what heaven is like.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be so taken up by Something Else that
nothing else matters.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">Today Vail reports a base depth of 69 inches. I know what
that looks like, at Eagles Nest, at Mid-Vail, on Sunset Bowl, racing down to catch the last
lift of the day, walking back for a bus with my skis across my shoulder so
tired that I hurt all over.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it is a
good hurt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The kind I wish I had more
of.</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimuE_4iPdndtxTMhUqTAWN3Yde_RXcSj5MFmvlQxGt3EjE7XRnj11FRQw7Db0YEsm0RIDmRTmxFfPxmbTRW9lcgcNrLyUg4cByNZFZ9bGr-LW8nQn8OthYxqlovJvkzBhbmpmTdLXVf8nBSn96wcJnfLCYfqF4I-DctXInxJgg6MEj0pPlehaXQJkNXHg/s2048/Vail-Ski-Resort-Trailmap-Front.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1664" data-original-width="2048" height="520" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimuE_4iPdndtxTMhUqTAWN3Yde_RXcSj5MFmvlQxGt3EjE7XRnj11FRQw7Db0YEsm0RIDmRTmxFfPxmbTRW9lcgcNrLyUg4cByNZFZ9bGr-LW8nQn8OthYxqlovJvkzBhbmpmTdLXVf8nBSn96wcJnfLCYfqF4I-DctXInxJgg6MEj0pPlehaXQJkNXHg/w640-h520/Vail-Ski-Resort-Trailmap-Front.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Trail map front view</div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>Bill Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11939888013962360542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4368898415238503632.post-19526511210508097252024-03-04T09:23:00.002+03:002024-03-04T09:33:39.659+03:00War Is Terrible<p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-size: large; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiP9UTB3oIRtQdTzO4wfk_VVQn1Tjz0m0nQSv2UDfQFQ4qkm1KE7iHNiZv1zOCKAzLGKZ7z7ra2y0YmZt8B-VqvVPjpswo8ScDSqTohdubqvNCHQo6jCnHLo4bbA382NgASkv4lJ8jciVAOCiUAEtrX5HcI4Ze6IPBE_VxschRCcpI0ywDbdKUpdmUEVfM/s1100/Gaza%20War.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="824" data-original-width="1100" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiP9UTB3oIRtQdTzO4wfk_VVQn1Tjz0m0nQSv2UDfQFQ4qkm1KE7iHNiZv1zOCKAzLGKZ7z7ra2y0YmZt8B-VqvVPjpswo8ScDSqTohdubqvNCHQo6jCnHLo4bbA382NgASkv4lJ8jciVAOCiUAEtrX5HcI4Ze6IPBE_VxschRCcpI0ywDbdKUpdmUEVfM/w640-h480/Gaza%20War.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Source: NPR</div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">It has seemingly, astonishingly, come to the point in our Western
societies where entire cultures and subcultures must be reminded of the
reality, not the ideologically driven opinion about, but the reality, that war
is terrible. Such is the success of the Hamas/Hezbollah/Iranian propaganda
machine that daily protests are mobilized condemning the suffering of the poor
Gazans who are facing the merciless onslaught of the Israeli army. Houses indiscriminately
destroyed, families obliterated, no aid allowed in, children starving. And in
the meantime, Western governments, Western aid organizations, Western
populations, all of whom live comfortable Western lives thousands of miles from
the intractable issues that have faced Israelis and Palestinians for decades,
collectively wringing their hands, condemning the ‘hardline’ Israeli government
and its ‘land-grabbing’ policies against Palestinians, while at the same time
giving the Palestinians the free pass of victimhood. To the extent that now
there is a significant percentage of Western people who think the October 7
slaughter of Jews was justifiable, a reasonable response to decades of
oppression.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">My point here is not to reargue the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict. Neither side emerges as the pure victim they pretend to be. Both
sides have positions to walk back. Both sides have blood on their hands. Both
sides must do the hard work of compromise. Both sides must demonstrate that
they can be trusted. It may be too much to ask, and this conflict may continue to
cycle senselessly again and again into spasms of violence and war. But there is
a way out, if there is the will to make it happen.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">The Western protestors mindlessly chanting Islamist talking
points seem to forget that, with respect to this conflict, Israel did not start
it. When a nation experiences an existential threat to its existence from an
enemy that has sworn to obliterate it, no one should be surprised that the
nation that was attacked takes the attackers and their ideology seriously. The
response of the Israelis has been brutal, but it makes perfect sense.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">It seems that the brutality of Israel’s response to the
Hamas regime in Gaza is what has become so offensive to outsiders. But I would
ask, what are the Israeli’s supposed to do? Make a show of force that simply
allows the malefactors to do even worse things the next time? When Islamists
attacked the United States in September 2001, the entire country rallied around
our leaders as they made the decision to respond by going to war at what was
understood to be the source of the attack. Whether or not the way all that
played out was right or good is another issue. But having lived through those
frightening days, I understand the dynamic at work.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">War is terrible. Certainly, what is happening in Gaza is
terrible. But what about the continued Islamist attacks against Christians in Nigeria?
What about the war being waged by the government against the northern, mostly
Christian tribes in Myanmar? What about the Hindu nationalist attacks against
mostly Christian ethnic groups in India? Is their suffering any less terrible
for their lack of a global audience? What war has not inflicted suffering on
the people involved? Think Russia and Ukraine. Think Ethiopia this past year. Think
Sudan, and then the long civil war that gave birth to South Sudan, a conflict
that continues to destroy lives to this day. Think of the genocide in Rwanda –
where were all of today’s handwringers over Gaza when the majority Hutu
undertook to eradicate the ‘cockroaches,’ that is, their Tutsi neighbors? War
is terrible. How many millions died in Congo out of sight and out of mind while
impossibly rich and powerful men fought over access to Congo’s mineral wealth?
Just because impossibly rich and entitled Westerners don’t care about Congo
doesn’t make it any less terrible for the people forced to endure the madness. What
about our own involvement in Vietnam? And before that, in Korea? War in all of
these places was terrible and many, many people suffered horribly. Even the
so-called World Wars, where at least people could mostly agree that there was a
right and a wrong, millions and millions died and many more suffered great losses.
And then there was our own civil war and all the divisive issues that led up to
it. War is terrible. What about the fact that the single, most obvious defining
characteristic of human cultures is our addiction to fighting, slaughter, rape,
pillage, destruction. Every combatant has always been able to justify why they
do it, even knowing all the while that they are causing great pain and
suffering.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">I mention all of this not to justify war. I do think that
our Western cultural savants are more interested in posturing for the media, or
virtue-signaling for their constituencies, than engaging with human realities. These
are not serious people.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">If people are so concerned to stop the suffering in
Palestine/Israel (and this is suffering that has been going on for a very long
time), then they will<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>persuade the
Islamists to abandon their murderous ideology that seeks to destroy Israel. And
on the other side they will persuade the Israelis to abandon their own Zionist
ideology that justifies taking the land out from under the people who have
lived there for a long time. I am under no illusion that this is going to
happen anytime soon because the leadership of both sides of this conflict are
self-serving assholes in whose interest it is to perpetuate this conflict so as
to perpetuate their own power even though it means unfathomable suffering for
their people. This, too, is nothing new. Find leaders that care about their people and are willing to make
the necessary compromises and at that point one might make progress to a more
just (and therefore more peaceful) society for everybody involved. Will it ever
be perfect? Not while humans are a part of the equation. But I would be willing
to settle for better, and I think I’m not the only one.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">I appreciate the anger of the Western protesters. But it is misdirected
and utterly naïve. Israel wants to destroy, and will do everything they can to
destroy the existential threat against them. And presently that existential
threat exists in the form of Hamas (and Hezbollah, and Iran). An uncomfortable
fact about war is that war is undertaken to destroy one’s enemies and prevent
them from ever being able to do whatever they did before. At present, the
international community is not an honest broker in this conflict. The inability
of governments, the UN, or aid organizations to call out the Islamist agenda
pushing this conflict, not just in Gaza but across the middle east, makes one
wonder whether or not they have all been coopted to the Islamist side.
Certainly, the enormous growth in the Muslim populations of Western countries
due to immigration has provided a new dynamic in their politics and certainly
increased the numbers protesting on the streets. These governments evidently
didn’t realize that Muslims take their religion much more seriously than most
people in the West take religion these days, and I have a feeling they don’t
know what to do when confronted by true believers who are not secularists and
neopagans like them. The fact remains, Islamist ideology is the main source of
antisemitism in the world today. If it isn’t, I would welcome a discussion as
to what or who is.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">Anyway, war is terrible. And shouting about it from the
safety of the streets of London or Detroit or Paris or Stockholm will make no
difference in the realities on the ground. One can choose to do what humans
have always done, which it to pick up weapons and go and fight it out. Or one
can do the hard, hard work of listening to one’s neighbor and making the
necessary changes so that neighbors can live at least without wanting to
slaughter each other, and maybe actually in peace.</span><o:p></o:p></p>Bill Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11939888013962360542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4368898415238503632.post-42110732057612151052024-02-25T16:00:00.004+03:002024-02-26T19:10:13.740+03:00The Holy Trinity: the Origin of Love - And Why You Should Care<p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-size: large; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfpEevifzTPQwsNkoA6JndYX6Ip53QzLZzBb9znGmCPmw5xcvg1bgyjl0BmijXlqil405c7UWEw_oBsKCfwWzwIrzZZo4mhfFYShp3mhytwHnWZ6yD6jW5WKq1pqMIaiscixoj4_bivMTYx-t79WDiPs7vFSoFncer07HgCfzuaMzCakW48C9iyDoRvcU/s1870/Rublev%20Hospitality%20of%20Abraham.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1870" data-original-width="1500" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfpEevifzTPQwsNkoA6JndYX6Ip53QzLZzBb9znGmCPmw5xcvg1bgyjl0BmijXlqil405c7UWEw_oBsKCfwWzwIrzZZo4mhfFYShp3mhytwHnWZ6yD6jW5WKq1pqMIaiscixoj4_bivMTYx-t79WDiPs7vFSoFncer07HgCfzuaMzCakW48C9iyDoRvcU/w514-h640/Rublev%20Hospitality%20of%20Abraham.jpg" width="514" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Rublev's The Hospitality of Abraham</div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">Father Paul is concerned that we Orthodox Christians
understand what we believe and why. And to that end, he has undertaken to give
one Sunday a month to catechesis for everybody. I think it’s a good thing. Mainly
because so few of us Orthodox know what we believe. And our ignorance can lead
to disastrous consequences for us as Christians and for our Church.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">Just a week or so ago, headlines were screaming, ‘Greece
Becomes the First Orthodox Country to Legalize Gay Marriage.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background: white; margin-bottom: 15.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><span lang="EN" style="color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">The vote has
passed: as of tonight, Greece is proud to become the 16th EU country to
legislate marriage equality. This is a milestone for human rights, reflecting
today’s Greece – a progressive, and democratic country, passionately committed
to European values.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></p>
<p style="background: white; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #111111;">— Prime Minister GR
(@PrimeministerGR) </span><span style="color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><a href="https://twitter.com/PrimeministerGR/status/1758245681863483800?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; color: #28459d; padding: 0in;">February 15, 2024</span></a></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">The key phrase here is ‘reflecting today’s Greece.’ <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">The commentary on many Orthodox sites was furious, even
apocalyptic, with bishops and monks lining up to condemn the measure, and with
supporters of the measure threatened with exclusion from the Holy Mysteries if
not outright hellfire. This is disingenuous, little more than pious virtue
signaling. Gay marriage is not the problem, in Greece or anywhere else. It is a
symptom of the problem that has been eating the heart out of the Orthodoxy of
so-called Orthodox nations for a very long time. The real problem is <b>nominalism</b>
– people who are ‘Orthodox’ in name only. The so-called ‘faithful’ are, for the
most part, only notionally Orthodox. Same for members of the Greek parliament
and government. We are ‘Orthodox’ in the sense that being Orthodox is our
ethnic identity, it is what we Greeks (or Serbs, or Russians, or Ethiopians…)
are. Never mind that most of these Orthodox Christians do not attend services
(maybe Pascha, maybe Nativity), most of these Orthodox do not observe the
fasts, most of these Orthodox do not understand much less practice Orthodox
spirituality, most of these Orthodox live their lives essentially separate from
the Church. Most Orthodox ‘Christians’ are, for all intents and purposes,
essentially <i>practical atheists</i>. They may wear the label ‘Orthodox,’ or
consider themselves ‘Orthodox’ because that is what their ethnic group is, or
because they grew up in an Orthodox family. But in terms of their priorities
and how their lives are lived day to day, God might as well not exist.
‘Orthodoxy’ makes no difference in the way they live their lives. And if
‘Orthodox’ people are simply reflecting the values, and the priorities of the
world around them, ‘Orthodoxy’ becomes increasingly a meaningless term.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">So it should surprise no one that a nation full of nominal
Orthodox ‘Christians’ should decide gay marriage should be legalized. Since
most of these Orthodox Christians are for the most part ignorant of the values
of the Church, the teachings of the Church, the spirituality of the Church, the
morality of the Church, it should no shock anybody that the resulting vacuum is
filled by the values of the world, the teachings of the world, the faux
spiritualities of the world and the moralities of the world. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">The real scandal is that Orthodox hierarchs, Orthodox monks,
and Orthodox priests and Orthodox ‘influencers’ have been blind to the
corrosive effects of nominalism in their parishes and diocese and spheres of
influence and done little if anything about it. Rather than assume that
GREEK=ORTHODOX=CHRISTIAN, I think rather that many parishes need to be
reengaged evangelistically and reintroduced to their Lord. Identifying oneself
as a Christian just because one is of a particular ethnic group or because one
grew up in an Orthodox family is, really, a heresy that keeps people from
engaging with spiritual reality, that keeps people from seeing Christ. We tried
this in America – many people claiming to be ‘Christian,’ but for too many,
their ‘faith’ proved shallow, unable to withstand the challenges mounted by a
multitude of anti-Christian forces assaulting American Christian institutions
across the country. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">The emergency in our Church is not that the men and women in
our parishes must not hold worldly values when it comes to sexual morality. The
emergency is that the men and women and young people need Christ at the center
of their lives. To put it in terms of another kind of Christian spirituality –
they/we need to own Jesus as both our Savior and our Lord. A Christianity that
does not touch how we live our lives <i>is not Christianity</i>, <i>is not
Orthodoxy</i>. Everything that is Orthodox exists to sustain the work of the
Holy Spirit in the life of a believer, the experience and expression of the
Lordship of the risen Christ in the life of the believer. But where that
central, foundational, crucial reality of ‘Christ in me the hope of glory’ is
absent, then all that is left is the lifeless form of dead religion, a
superstructure, however impressive, surrounding emptiness. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">So that is why we need to take our faith seriously and learn
and understand and practice what we believe. When we claim to be Orthodox and
yet don’t know what we believe, we get drawn into the world’s way of
understanding things, into the world’s way of doing things. We become
hypocrites and destroy our faith. That’s what is happening in so-called
‘Orthodox’ countries like Greece. And that is happening here, too. Too many of
us don’t know our faith. And for that reason, we will be having a focus once a
month on the heart of our faith as Orthodox Christians. Today we are
considering the Holy Trinity, why God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit is at the
very core of our faith, and what it means practically for you as a Christian
and us as a Church.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">I want to talk briefly this morning about the Holy Trinity. First,
let’s start with the sign of the cross. Did you know that the way we Orthodox
make the sign of the cross is a statement of Trinitarian theology? Let me
demonstrate and you can follow.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">For most people, the Trinity is a problem. We know about God
the Father, and God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. But that is as far as
most people go. Mainly because nobody can figure out how one God can be Three
and yet still be One. If you look at Protestant Systematic Theologies, the
Trinity is often treated like a math problem, with great effort expended on
somehow proving that three = one and one=three. Our Muslim friends think the
whole discussion is both ridiculous and the core heresy of the Christian
movement, and there are plenty of others who think we Christians have lost our
minds.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">But here is the thing about the Trinity. Nobody made this up.
There wasn’t some conference of church fathers that came up with the idea, no
ecumenical council decreed that this is what we must believe. Instead, Trinity
was on nobody’s mind, mainly because human minds can’t fathom the idea. What
happened is that this is how God revealed himself, to pagans like Abraham, to
Jews like Moses and Israel. But the real challenge to everybody’s perspective
happened with Jesus. Jesus did not fit anybody’s easy categories. He was a man,
but he said things and did things that only God can do. And then he rose again
from the dead, confirming that he was who he said he was. And then he promised
the Holy Spirit to continue in his followers and the church what he had begun. People’s
understanding of God was forced to expand by their engagement with Jesus, and
by their experience of the Holy Spirit. It is true, there is no teaching in the
Old and New Testament that says this is what the Holy Trinity is, no
theological explanation to settle the arguments. In spite of all of these
challenges over so many centuries, one thing becomes clear very quickly. Without
the Trinity, Christianity ceases to be Christianity – it becomes something else.
Moreover, salvation, as described in the gospels and the epistles and in the
early Church, becomes impossible without the Holy Trinity.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">There are several ways that Christians have tried to
understand what the Scriptures teach us about the Holy Trinity. Some take an
apologetic approach, defending our faith against its critics. Some take a
systematic theology approach, pulling together all of the relevant passages in
Scripture to come up with a sense of the whole. And some choose a relational
approach. This is what many Orthodox theologians have done in the past. That’s
what I am doing this morning, because it seems to me to be the way the Scriptures
present who God is as Trinity. I can only introduce it here because of time. So
let me try to explain by taking us to the very first chapter in the Bible,
Genesis 1:26-28.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background: white;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"><span class="text"><b><i><sup><span style="color: black;"></span></sup></i></b></span></span></p><blockquote><p style="background: white;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"><span class="text"><b><i><sup><span style="color: black;">26 </span></sup></i></b></span><span class="text"><i><span style="color: black;">Then
God said, “Let us make humans in our image, according to our likeness, and
let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air
and over the cattle and over all the wild animals of the earth and over
every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”</span></i></span><i><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></span></p>
<p class="line" style="background: white; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"><span class="text"><b><i><sup><span style="color: black;">27 </span></sup></i></b></span><span class="text"><i><span style="color: black;">So
God created humans in his image,</span></i></span><i><span style="color: black;"><br />
</span></i><span class="indent-1-breaks"><i><span style="color: black;"> </span></i></span><span class="text"><i><span style="color: black;">in
the image of God he created them;</span></i></span><i><span style="color: black;"> <br />
</span></i><span class="indent-1-breaks"><i><span style="color: black;"> </span></i></span><span class="text"><i><span style="color: black;">male
and female he created them.</span></i></span><i><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></span></p>
<p class="first-line-none" style="background: white; margin-top: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"><span class="text"><b><i><sup><span style="color: black;">28 </span></sup></i></b></span><span class="text"><i><span style="color: black;">God blessed them, and God
said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and
have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over
every living thing that moves upon the earth.”</span></i></span></span></p></blockquote><p class="first-line-none" style="background: white; margin-top: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"><span class="text"><i><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></span></span></p>
<p class="first-line-none" style="background: white; margin-top: 12.0pt;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">Two things jump out at me
from this passage. First, did you hear it? God said, ‘Let US make humans in OUR
image, according to OUR likeness.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>God
uses the plural to describe who he is. Needless to say, this has puzzled
generations of both Jewish and Christian readers, and there have been all kinds
of suggestions as to what this means. Some Christians, of course, have jumped
on this as evidence that God is Trinity. But the text doesn’t say that and
doesn’t allow us to go that far. It’s always possible that God is<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>using what we call the ‘plural of majesty’
like the way the King of Great Britain speaks when he speaks of himself. But it
doesn’t happen again anywhere else in the Bible, so it’s likely something else
is going on here. At the very most, we can say that God’s use of ‘us’ and ‘our’
indicates some sort of plurality in God. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="first-line-none" style="background: white; margin-top: 12.0pt;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">We know that God is love,
according to the Apostle John (1 John 4:8/see 7-12). We know that God is
motivated by love, that God is the definition of love. And so here in Genesis
1, what other motivation can there be for God creating the universe and God
creating humanity other than love? And that is why the apparent plurality of
God here is so crucial to our understanding of reality. Love requires another. There
can be no love if there is merely a singularity. God, wanting to share the love
that he is and has in his plurality creates a being that is made <i>in his
image</i>, that shares his capacity to love. And because God is plural,
humanity is created, not as a person, not as a singularity, but as male and
female. We are created a plurality. We are created a family. We are created a
community, created in the image and likeness of God in his plurality, created
to be like God and thus created with the capacity to love.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">So let me
summarize: What emerges from the text itself is a God, motivated by love,
creating in love a universe and a world that are intended to reflect his love. We
learn in the very first chapter that God is in fact somehow a plurality, and
that God’s plurality becomes the template of human existence. And just as love
can only exist when there is another, so the plural God creates humanity to
share in God’s love. He creates man and woman in ‘OUR’ image. The result is
that ‘man’ is created male and female – a plurality, a community, just like God.
The plurality of humanity reflects the plurality of God. Plurality becomes the
context for relationship, for love<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
as humanity shares God’s ‘image and likeness,’ so the love that characterizes
God in God’s plurality, in who God is, is intended to characterize humanity’s
relationships in humanity’s plurality. This is why you and I have been created.
This is why, from God’s perspective, you and I are here today. And just as God
is love, you and I are created in God’s image and with the very same capacity,
the same ability to, the same calling.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">God is
love, and love requires the free choice of the lover to give him/herself to the
beloved. In order for there to be a free choice, there must be a possibility
for the lover to choose <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not</i> to love
the beloved, or for the beloved not to respond to the gift of love. This is in
fact what God has done with us. We are created in the image and likeness of God.
As such we are created with the capacity to love. We reflect the image of God
when we choose to love. But we can also choose not to love. And it is this
choice not to love that becomes the essence of ‘sin.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And it is living in a world that is
increasingly characterized by the cumulative choices of people all around us,
including ourselves, not to love, either God or other people, that the world, i.e.,
our culture becomes ‘fallen.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="first-line-none" style="background: white; margin-top: 12.0pt;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">So let me summarize what
this means for our discussion of the Holy Trinity. What is suggested here in
Genesis is spelled out when Jesus is born and lives and is crucified and raised
from the dead. Jesus demonstrates that he doesn’t just come from God, but that
he is God. And we see clearly what his relationship with God, with His Father
is like, it is a relationship of utter love, of utter self-giving for the
beloved. Jesus demonstrates what it means to love, to love God with all of
one’s heart, to love one’s neighbor as oneself. And he saves us from the consequences
of our choices not to love, from our sin, and restores in each of us the
capacity to choose to love again. And then he sends the Holy Spirit to make us
more and more like Christ, which means to make us more into the image of God we
were created to be, which means he empowers us to love God and love our
neighbor. And this is what salvation is.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">Jesus is
the 2<sup>nd</sup> Adam and is God’s rescue mission to reclaim his sin-marred
image, and the Trinity is the relational model of what reclaimed humanity is
intended to be, of what you and I are intended to be. And given the catastrophe
of what humanity has become as choices not to love have piled on in endless
misery and calamity, salvation is the restoration of God’s original intention
for his creation. Salvation is the restoration of what God intended when he
made you and me, us, his human beings created in His Image, the relational
image of the Holy Trinity. Salvation is ultimately an apocalypse—an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">unveiling</i> of God’s renovation of the
universe, and it begins with the transformation of our relationships right now
through the Gospel.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">Far from
being an esoteric theological side show, in Orthodoxy the Trinity is
foundational, undergirding the doctrine of God, undergirding the doctrine of
humanity, undergirding the doctrine of salvation, undergirding the doctrine of
the end times. And a truly Trinitarian theology is a theology of love. As
Christians, we are what we believe. And as love is the essence of who God is
and what the Gospel is and what salvation does, the Apostle Paul rightly points
out that wherever the Holy Spirit of God is at work, one can tell because love
is the fruit produced. It therefore is not a difficult thing to determine if
one is dealing with a real Christian or not. As Jesus Himself says, you will
know the tree by its fruit.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">As St.
Paul exhorts the Christians in Corinth at the end of his first letter to them:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"><i></i></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"><i>‘Watch,
stand fast in the faith, be brave, be strong.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Let all that you do be done with love.’</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(1 Corinthians 16:13-14)</span></blockquote><p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">Glory to
the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">A sermon preached at Sts Cosmas and Damianos Orthodox Cathedral in Nairobi, Kenya on Sunday, February 25, 2024, at this morning's Divine Liturgy.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="first-line-none" style="background: white; margin-top: 12.0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Segoe UI",sans-serif;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>Bill Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11939888013962360542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4368898415238503632.post-85890534830601323022024-02-16T10:38:00.011+03:002024-02-17T08:41:45.452+03:00Orthodoxy's Dirty Little Secret<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga0sW73slrtSqj571j0JHB-8bz76bSUhfa1coTg0xAuDW32RmpP1YNXhVtZhoAEjzy3ELD8KI4H7cj1RICuWNeOAsNbGp6eDqRUlIOvUajbiQuiS5ApMIqxaNfm8PaE2DimST-hxXD0jIt2gL1bAtcD2uzObl51q0SzGQ9PgTYM2HkPmz5DovgGWVt8Ng/s797/Orthodox%20in%20Thess.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="534" data-original-width="797" height="428" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga0sW73slrtSqj571j0JHB-8bz76bSUhfa1coTg0xAuDW32RmpP1YNXhVtZhoAEjzy3ELD8KI4H7cj1RICuWNeOAsNbGp6eDqRUlIOvUajbiQuiS5ApMIqxaNfm8PaE2DimST-hxXD0jIt2gL1bAtcD2uzObl51q0SzGQ9PgTYM2HkPmz5DovgGWVt8Ng/w640-h428/Orthodox%20in%20Thess.png" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">St. Paul Orthodox Church in Thessaloniki, Greece</div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">Headlines scream, ‘Greece Becomes the First Orthodox Country
to Legalize Gay Marriage.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background: white; margin-bottom: 15.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in 0in 15pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><span lang="EN" style="color: #111111; font-family: "Work Sans"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-size: medium;">'The vote has passed: as of
tonight, Greece is proud to become the 16th EU country to legislate marriage
equality. This is a milestone for human rights, reflecting today’s Greece – a
progressive, and democratic country, passionately committed to European values.'<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; vertical-align: baseline; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Work Sans";"><span style="font-size: medium;">— Prime Minister GR (@PrimeministerGR) <a href="https://twitter.com/PrimeministerGR/status/1758245681863483800?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; color: #28459d; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">February 15, 2024</span></a></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">The key phrase here is ‘reflecting today’s Greece.’ <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">The commentary on Orthodox sites has been furious, even apocalyptic,
with supporters of the measure threatened with exclusion from the Holy Mysteries
if not outright hellfire. This is disingenuous, little more than pious virtue signaling.
Gay marriage is not the problem, in Greece or anywhere else. It is a symptom of
the problem that has been eating the heart out of the Orthodoxy of so-called
Orthodox nations for a very long time. The real problem is nominalism. The ‘faithful’
are, for the most part, only notionally Orthodox, Orthodox in the sense that
being Orthodox is our ethnic identity, it is what we Greeks (or Serbs, or Russians,
or Ethiopians…) are. Never mind that most of these Orthodox do not attend
services (maybe Pascha, maybe Nativity), most of these Orthodox do not observe
the fasts, most of these Orthodox do not understand much less practice Orthodox
spirituality, most of these Orthodox live their lives essentially separate from
the Church. Most Orthodox ‘Christians’ are, for all intents and purposes,
essentially practical atheists. They may wear the label ‘Orthodox,’ or consider
themselves ‘Orthodox’ because that is what their ethnic group is, that is what
their heritage is. But in terms of their priorities and how their lives are
lived day to day, God might as well not exist. ‘Orthodoxy’ makes no difference
in the way they live their lives. And if ‘Orthodox’ people are living according
to the values, to the priorities of the world around them, ‘Orthodoxy’ becomes increasingly
a meaningless term.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">So it should surprise no one that a nation full of nominal
Orthodox ‘Christians’ should decide gay marriage should be legalized. Since
most of these Orthodox Christians are for the most part ignorant of the values
of the Church, the teachings of the Church, the spirituality of the Church, the
morality of the Church, it should not shock anybody that the resulting vacuum is
filled by the values of the world, the teachings of the world, the faux
spiritualities of the world and the moralities of the world. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">The real scandal is that Orthodox hierarchs, Orthodox monks,
and Orthodox priests and Orthodox ‘influencers’ have been blind to the
corrosive effects of nominalism in their parishes and dioceses and spheres of
influence and done nothing about it, or nothing meaningfully effective about it. Rather than assume that GREEK=ORTHODOX=CHRISTIAN,
I think that many parishes probably need to be reengaged evangelistically and viewed as the mission fields that they are. Identifying
oneself as a Christian just because one is of a particular ethnic group or
because one grew up in an Orthodox family is, really, a heresy that keeps people
from engaging with spiritual reality, that keeps people from seeing Christ. We
tried this in America – many people claiming to be ‘Christian,’ but for too
many, their ‘faith’ proved shallow, unable to withstand the challenge mounted
by a multitude of anti-Christian forces assaulting American Christian institutions
across the country. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">The emergency in our Church is not that the men and women in
our parishes must not hold worldly values when it comes to sexual morality. The
emergency is that the men and women and young people need Christ at the center
of their lives. To put it in terms of another kind of Christian spirituality –
they/we need to own Jesus as both our Savior and our Lord. A Christianity that
does not touch how we live our lives is not Christianity, is not Orthodoxy. Everything
that is Orthodox exists to sustain the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of a
believer, the experience and expression of the Lordship of the risen Christ in
the life of the believer. But where that central, foundational, crucial reality
of ‘Christ in me the hope of glory’ (per St. Paul) is absent, then all that is left is the
lifeless form of dead religion, a superstructure, however impressive, surrounding emptiness.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">This nominalism that afflicts our Churches separates the
religion from its necessary impact on people’s lives. We have become a Church
that is perfect with regards to form, but utterly empty with regards to
function, at least at the parish level. Our hierarchs certainly have the 'hierarch pose' down pat - they look impressive when they are dressed for work. But is there a corresponding passion to be like Jesus, to serve like Jesus, to be a good shepherd like Jesus? There are certainly wonderful
exceptions in various places. But if our Churches were full of actual
believing, engaged, growing Christians, led by Christ-like leaders, what just happened in Greece would
never have happened. What has been happening in the US would never happen. What has
already happened across Europe would never have happened.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">If our so-called Orthodox countries are full of people who
no longer understand the faith or take it seriously as a life calling, then the
fact that these countries reflect the ways of the world is not a judgment upon
the people – they are simply doing what everybody else in the world is doing. They
have in fact <i>become</i> ‘the world.’ <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead
it is a judgment upon <i>us</i> the Church, us the Bishops, us the priests and
catechists, us the seminary teachers, us the parish board members. Jesus says you will know the tree by
its fruit. We are that tree. And things are not looking good for us. Good shepherds
will not blame the sheep for being sheep. Good shepherds will first blame themselves
for not paying attention to what the sheep were eating and drinking and doing. It
is on us to get our act together, to repent, and to do what Christ has called
us to do. All the ecclesiastical hand-wringing and pious finger-pointing and
condemning of sinners does rather miss the point. People will go the way they
choose, but God will hold the shepherds responsible for the sheep. When we
start behaving like our Good Shepherd, who is our model and pattern for genuine
pastoral ministry, then we might begin to see the results that seem to have been utterly absent in the spiritual realities of our Orthodox countries.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>We</i> who claim to know, who claim to be the keepers of Apostolic faith, have wandered far from the Way of Life. And we are
reaping the consequences of our own choices, our own priorities. Nothing will
change until <i>we</i> change, until we come home, until we lay aside pride and pretense,
until we abandon careerism and ethnocentrism. What we are to be and where we
are meant to go is not a mystery. The only mystery is why our leaders, why <i>we</i>
have so consistently chosen to do otherwise. And until we see the repentance
that is so necessary, it is at this point that our outrage against sin should
be directed, because the sin is, actually, our own.</span><o:p></o:p></p>Bill Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11939888013962360542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4368898415238503632.post-70384004225703808752024-02-15T07:26:00.000+03:002024-02-15T07:26:03.585+03:00The Gospels - Are They Reliable?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWlFF9ycCOOB7BxtJmkPa1srS0ke15kA8UOOG0zuwHOpd7PbU7H5HjiMkXbSZb5UdCE5MzujzSFgKfLw0XE3viIsRhLhS6446kYxy_UB3ZADlgYwc0LGk5QZDa2geH0mgpub_kRLE0FrZxmqDs0p0kRHJDlMMxOq4voqsFq_bKiEB1g4sGM_9sYmTNo5I/s2560/Jesus%20walks%20on%20water.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1707" data-original-width="2560" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWlFF9ycCOOB7BxtJmkPa1srS0ke15kA8UOOG0zuwHOpd7PbU7H5HjiMkXbSZb5UdCE5MzujzSFgKfLw0XE3viIsRhLhS6446kYxy_UB3ZADlgYwc0LGk5QZDa2geH0mgpub_kRLE0FrZxmqDs0p0kRHJDlMMxOq4voqsFq_bKiEB1g4sGM_9sYmTNo5I/w640-h426/Jesus%20walks%20on%20water.jpeg" width="640" /></a></div><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">There are many ways one could answer this question, and many issues that one could choose to deal with. But I would like to focus on one, the one that, as I see it, controls all the others.</span></p><p></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: medium;">Your presuppositions will determine how you answer this
question.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: medium;">Do you live in a closed universe or an open universe?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: medium;">By ‘closed universe’, I mean one that is governed by
scientific laws, where everything has a scientific explanation, even if one has
not discovered the scientific reason for it yet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nothing happens outside what is allowed by
science.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Therefore, there are no
miracles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nothing is unexplained, or at
least will be unexplained.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is in
contrast to and in opposition to the superstitious world view of the
pre-scientific age, where there were constant divine interventions, ghosts,
witchcraft, legends, miracles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nobody
understood astronomy and so when they looked at the starts, the moon and the
sun, they thought that these had special powers to govern affairs here on
earth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was believed that if you
offered a chicken or a bull or a child as a sacrifice, you could impress the
gods to act on your behalf.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was a
world of gods and goddesses, of angels and demons, of forces and powers that
had us at their mercy.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: medium;">So what kind of world do you live in?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A world where you are at the whim of spirits
and forces and witchdoctors and ancestors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Or are you living in a world that can be explained by science and
manipulated for good or evil by science?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Is there room in your world for miracles, for angels, for demons, for an
incarnation, for resurrection?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or are
these just pious legends about someone who never lived and who never did any of
these things?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: medium;">This is the first and primary issue we must deal with
when we come to the gospels.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Did these
things happen, or are they stories made up by sincere followers to make a good
man seem like he was a god?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And if you
believe in a closed universe, you already have your answer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is no room in your world view for a
person like Jesus.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: medium;">This is what has happened over much of the educated
world, especially in the West. You will still find churches in the West, but
the Jesus of the gospel has been discredited and replaced by a Jesus who just
teaches us how to be good.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the
problem is, without the Jesus of the gospel, there is no Christianity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The churches wither and die.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The world is full of people with good ideas
about how to live a good life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But none
of those ideas have ever worked. And as a result, Europe and the UK and Canada
have become increasingly barren of Christianity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Christianity has been replaced by humanism,
by a scientific worldview.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And filling
the need that many people have for some kind of ‘spirituality’ has grown a kind
of neo-paganism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In some places you can
be arrested for believing the gospel, especially if you think that following
Jesus means that you believe there is a right way to live and a wrong way to
live.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: medium;">[But an even worse enemy to Christianity than a ‘closed
universe’ is hypocrisy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When Christians
claim one thing and live contrary to their profession, they bring their ‘faith’
into disrepute.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>People grow to despise
Christians because of their hypocrisy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And who can blame them?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If the
gospel is not making a difference in your life, why should I take you seriously
as someone who claims to be a Christian, who claims to be an Orthodox
Christian?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our neighbors and the people
around us ‘hear’ our lives long before they hear our words.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: medium;">So these are some of the issues that face us when we come
to the Gospels.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because in the gospels,
Jesus claims:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: medium;">To heal sick bodies<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: medium;">To heal and cleanse lepers<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: medium;">To raise up the paralyzed<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: medium;">To give sight to blind eyes<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: medium;">To raise the dead to life<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: medium;">To change water into wine<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: medium;">To calm storms <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: medium;">To walk on water<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: medium;">To cast out demons<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: medium;">To cause astonishing catches of fish<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: medium;">To feed thousands with just a few loaves and fishes<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: medium;">To foretell and then accomplish his own resurrection <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: medium;">To ascend into heaven</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: medium;">If you take these things away from Jesus, there is not
much Jesus left.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: medium;">Thomas Jefferson, the author of the American Declaration
of Independence from Great Britain and third president of the United States
among many other things, was, as a result of his Enlightenment presuppositions,
allergic to anything unexplainable and miraculous.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He took scissors or a pen knife to his New
Testament and excised everything unbelievable out of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was left with Jesus as a great moral
teacher, but nothing more, admirable, but not a savior.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is what happens when one judges Jesus
according to the lenses of one’s cultural presuppositions rather than taking
Jesus on his own terms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He becomes ridiculous
and a mere dispenser of advice.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: medium;">To that end, the European and American scholars who
decided that Jesus could not have done any of this attempted to discover from
what was left in the gospels who Jesus really was.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This was called, in the 19<sup>th</sup>
century, the ‘Quest for the Historical Jesus’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It was a fad to write books about Jesus. It still is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But one author noted that people’s portraits
of Jesus tended to look as if they author was looking in a mirror and painting
what he saw.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In other words, all of
these Jesuses shared the same values and same presuppositions as the
anti-supernatural age from which they came.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And it the result was a Jesus who did not save, who could not save, but
who was a nice guy by European university standards.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: medium;">Even though this has proven to be a disastrous dead end,
people are still trying to walk down that same path today, trying to salvage
something of Christianity whilst making sure Christianity is intellectually ‘respectable’
and non-threatening culturally speaking, which means making Christianity
conform to the beliefs and values today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And today, we have the added burden of needing Christianity to reflect
the inclusivity and diversity values of our current Western cultures, which
means, Christianity <i>must</i> affirm homosexuality and transgenderism and support
reverse racism and all the values of the western world today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And what happens if we don’t?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We Christians are declared to be bigots and
are fired from our jobs and our ostracized from our social circles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In some places Christians are being sued, put
in prison, simply for standing up for what our faith declares.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the UK, Christians who believe that
abortion is a moral evil can be arrested and imprisoned simply for standing
outside an abortion clinic and praying silently.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It staggers the mind to understand what is so
threatening about Christian prayer that it moves the greater culture to
criminalize it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But that is where we
are.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: medium;">You might think this is just an American or British or
European thing. And even though most Christians in Kenya and in Africa live in a bubble of ignorance with respect to such matters today, it’s only a matter
of time before these corrosive perspectives come here. To Kenya.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>To Africa. And are you prepared?<o:p></o:p></span></p><br /><p></p>Bill Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11939888013962360542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4368898415238503632.post-84173440067099834822024-02-11T16:55:00.002+03:002024-02-12T09:00:45.192+03:00Your New Number One Calling<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><a name="_Hlk158104702"><span style="background: white;"></span></a></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; color: #131516; font-weight: bold; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWfgfkEOuElgy5jVecrYIQ6WfJKyYollaS1uZ9Tzyr_3tga8zfoYzkU6IJ3vnZ7VcwhpgVC3RaTR1sBakSzkFid1mefh2X02HYZ4hybd7at3uvnJOuF8fzltsUK8DZRqO_YCVP1KGq7SgL53LHS2ROvWSxoSa-oW1ZwJSlTENQ5-UwpEsA3pI_wYpWpIE/s3904/Slaves%20serving%20a%20banquet.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1797" data-original-width="3904" height="294" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWfgfkEOuElgy5jVecrYIQ6WfJKyYollaS1uZ9Tzyr_3tga8zfoYzkU6IJ3vnZ7VcwhpgVC3RaTR1sBakSzkFid1mefh2X02HYZ4hybd7at3uvnJOuF8fzltsUK8DZRqO_YCVP1KGq7SgL53LHS2ROvWSxoSa-oW1ZwJSlTENQ5-UwpEsA3pI_wYpWpIE/w640-h294/Slaves%20serving%20a%20banquet.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><span style="color: #131516;"><div style="text-align: center;"><a name="_Hlk158104702"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;"><span style="color: #131516;">Mosaic of Roman era Slaves serving at a banquet.</span></span></a></div></span><span style="color: #131516; font-size: medium; font-weight: bold;"><br /></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><a name="_Hlk158104702"><b><span style="background: white; color: #131516; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="font-size: medium;">The Gospel is according to St. Matthew 25:14-30</span></span></b></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk158104702;"><i><span style="background: white; color: #131516; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="font-size: medium;">The Lord said this parable: "A man going
on a journey called his servants <b>[slaves]</b> and entrusted to them his
property; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each
according to his ability. Then he went away. He who had received the five
talents went at once and traded with them; and he made five talents more. So
also, he who had the two talents made two talents more. But he who had received
the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master's money. Now after
a long time the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them.
And he who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five talents
more, saying, 'Master, you delivered to me five talents; here I have made five
talents more.' His master said to him, 'Well done, good and faithful servant;
you have been faithful over a little, I will set you over much; enter into the
joy of your master.' And he also who had the two talents came forward, saying,
'Master, you delivered to me two talents; here I have made two talents more.'
His master said to him, 'Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been
faithful over a little, I will set you over much; enter into the joy of your
master.' He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, 'Master,
I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where
you did not winnow; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the
ground. Here you have what is yours.' But his master answered him, 'You wicked
and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sowed, and gather
where I have not winnowed? Then you ought to have invested my money with the
bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest.
So take the talent from him, and give it to him who has the ten talents. For to
every one who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him
who has not, even what he has will be taken away. And cast the worthless
servant into the outer darkness; there men will weep and gnash their
teeth." As he said these things he cried out: "He who has ears to
hear, let him hear!"<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></span></p>
<span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk158104702;"></span>
</span><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="background: white; color: #131516; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus
was a master storyteller. It’s one of the things he was best known for, even
including all the people he healed and all the demonized people he delivered. Locals
would hear that Jesus was passing through their village and they would flock in
their scores and hundreds and sometimes even thousands in hopes of seeing a
miracle. And in that crowd were always a few people who desperately hoped that
that miracle would happen to them. Notice that Jesus never demanded that anyone
give him money, he never told people that God was ready to give them whatever
they asked, but what was needed was that they ‘plant a seed of faith’ – wink,
wink. In fact if you hear so-called ‘faith healers’ asking for money or
equating how much you give to how much faith you have, that person is a fraud,
that person is a heretic. They need to learn from our Sts Cosmas and Damianos,
‘Freely you have received, freely give!’ No, Jesus just loved people. He
listened to their stories. He touched them, even the lepers. And he healed them
on the outside and he also healed them on the inside. And he called them to
repentance and life.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><span style="font-size: medium;">But
Jesus also used these times to teach people about who he is and what he is
doing. About what this life is about, and what it means to live in the Kingdom
of God that was starting right here and right now with him. And often he did
this with parables. That’s what today’s gospel reading is – a parable. We may
be so used to hearing these parables when we come to church that many of us
think we know what they are. So let’s see if we do. You tell me – what is a
parable?</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><span style="font-size: medium;">A
parable is a story that has an surprise or unexpected ending.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sometimes it’s a fully developed story like
we have this morning. Others might just be a kind of metaphor, like when Jesus
says the kingdom of God is like a treasure hidden in the field. And the
unexpected ending is that the man who discovers it sells <i>everything</i> he
has so he can buy that field and possess the treasure.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><span style="font-size: medium;">But
here is where a lot of us, including a lot of us preachers and teachers, go
wrong. We are used to taking these stories and reading meanings and
applications into them that Jesus never intended. A parable will only mean what
<i>Jesus</i> intends it to mean. And Jesus is driving at <i>one</i> response, <i>one</i>
thing we are meant to do once we get it when he tells a parable. I teach how to
interpret the Bible to our seminary students, and for one class I gave them the
parable of the rich man and Lazarus. Lazarus is destitute and dying outside the
rich man’s gate, and the rich man ignores him and lives his best life. Both of
them die, and Lazarus goes to where Father Abraham is and the rich man goes to
the fires of hell. And what follows in Jesus’ story is a conversation between
Abraham who is with Lazarus, and the rich man in torment. The rich man is
concerned that somebody warn his family so they can avoid going to hell. And he
wants Abraham to send Lazarus. But Abraham says, why warn them, they have the
Bible. But the rich man says, but if someone comes back from the dead, they
will listen! To which Abraham says, if they won’t listen to their Bible, they
wont listen even if someone should rise again from the dead. And that’s how it
ends!</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">I’ve
heard all kinds of wild explanations for what this story means. Some people
said that the lesson of this parable is about being nice to people so you don’t
go to hell! Some others want to say that Jesus is telling us what heaven and
hell is going to be like. But none of these people understand what a parable is
and how Jesus is using them. A parable is first of all a <i>story</i> – Jesus
is not giving us secret information about the geography of heaven and hell. Jesus
is not giving a moral lesson telling us to be nice to beggars. That’s not the
point <i>here</i>. He’s telling a <i>story</i>. And his story is leading to the
point he wants to make.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And he makes his
point by catching all of us out with an ending none of us expect. If this rich
man’s family refuses to change their behavior when they have access to God’s
Word now, they won’t change even if someone rises from the dead. Jesus’
audience is 100% Jewish, including many leaders and Pharisees. This parable is
about the refusal of the Jewish people to keep the law and the prophets now,
and how even if someone, and I think Jesus pretty clearly means himself – even
if Jesus rises again from the dead, they will still refuse to see and hear and
believe. This parable is about people’s response to Jesus! And everything
leading up to that was just a good story meant to draw you into asking <i>yourself</i>,
am I living according to the light that I have? So are <i>you</i>? Living
according to the light you have? Jesus wants to challenge <i>you</i>, and this
is how he does it.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2SGWebsjp9FoBibnYqmM9XRuKBQms6NhmA7T68ecASjVaZ_qaMTgL3y3Zb2rc_ZsF7-H_ZzMvLam-T2p970uHDwfuszzHJwgfEIgEPeD2owZhmHbz-5r2D3hbDa3nehLf0SAHVsfawp2POsHYmgDotBOsSz-kan7nFlQ4Z2NR6ZfdD3i41iVeek4VDhI/s600/1144e89e1854ab3a295add.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="543" data-original-width="600" height="580" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2SGWebsjp9FoBibnYqmM9XRuKBQms6NhmA7T68ecASjVaZ_qaMTgL3y3Zb2rc_ZsF7-H_ZzMvLam-T2p970uHDwfuszzHJwgfEIgEPeD2owZhmHbz-5r2D3hbDa3nehLf0SAHVsfawp2POsHYmgDotBOsSz-kan7nFlQ4Z2NR6ZfdD3i41iVeek4VDhI/w640-h580/1144e89e1854ab3a295add.webp" width="640" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In
the parable Jesus tells in today’s Gospel reading, it’s the story about a
master who is going away for a long time. And he calls his slaves together, and
he leaves them to do their work, he gives them their assignment, their marching
orders so to speak, and he gives them the means, the resources, to do that
work, to fulfill their calling, while the master is gone. The word Jesus uses
in Greek is <i><u>doulos</u></i>, and it means slave. For some reason, many modern
translators have shied away from using the word ‘slave.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They usually use the word ‘servant.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But in my opinion, by doing so they take the
edge of the harsh reality of life in the first century. A large percentage of
the population of the Roman world were <i>slaves</i>, bought and sold in the
market place. And a number of the metaphors we find in the New Testament are
based on the reality of slavery. Paul in the epistle reading we just heard
calls himself and his companions ‘douloi theou,’ the ‘slaves of God.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s translated ‘servants of God,’ but that
gives the impression that they were serving God in the tasks they were doing. No,
their whole identity had changed. They were no longer their own person. They
now had a master whom they obeyed. They did what he told them to do. They went
where he told them to go. That’s what slaves do. Their whole lives are given
for the sake of the master and the work, the calling the master gives them.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><span style="font-size: medium;">So
that’s what we see here in Jesus’ story. These slaves are given something to do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are given a calling. And they are
given the means to do it. Jesus uses the word ‘talent.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A talent was a unit of measure, in todays
terms, about 60 kilograms. So if the master provisioned them in gold, then one
talent would be the equivalent of 20 years wages for a laborer, about 500,000,000
Kenya shillings ($2,700,000 USD).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
one of them he gives 5 talents. Another 2 talents.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And a third 1 talent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So even with the so-called one talent man,
the master is being outrageously generous.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><span style="font-size: medium;">So
the master goes, and the first slave gets busy. And he works hard and earns 5
talents more. The second slave also gets busy and earns 2 talents more. The
third slave does nothing. And then he takes that immense amount and digs a hole
and buries it.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">The
Master comes back just like he said he would, and he commends the first slave
for all his hard work. You’ll get a well-deserved promotion. Enter into the
rest and joy of your master. And he commends the second slave for all his hard
work. You too will get a well-deserved promotion. Enter in to the rest and joy
of your master. But the third slave</span><i><span style="background: white; color: #131516; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"> ‘who had received the one talent
came forward, saying, 'Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you
did not sow, and gathering where you did not winnow; so I was afraid, and I
went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.'</span></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="background: white;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #131516;">And this
is where the unexpected ending comes in. So far as we can tell, the slave
didn’t squander the talent he was given. He just didn’t do anything with it. And
he gave back what he had been given. </span><i><span style="color: #131516;">' But his master answered him, 'You
wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sowed, and
gather where I have not winnowed? Then you ought to have invested my money with
the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with
interest. So take the talent from him, and give it to him who has the ten
talents. For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have
abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away. And
cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness; there men will weep and
gnash their teeth." As he said these things he cried out: "He who has
ears to hear, let him hear!"</span></i></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Who
is Jesus talking to in this story? He is talking to <i>his</i> slaves. The ones
called by his name to live for him in this world. He is talking to you and me. Our
Master has gone away. But He has given you a calling, a mission, and He has
left you with unimaginable riches so that you can fulfill that calling He has
given you. And the application is pretty direct. Are you and I like the one
whom the master gave 5 talents, and who worked hard and then was able to
present his master with an additional 5 talents on his return? Are you like the
one whom the master gave 2 talents, and who worked hard and then was able to
present his master with an additional 2 talents on his return. Or are you like
the one talent slave who did nothing? Who had been called to live for his
master, but who did nothing.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Being
a Christian is not about showing up to Church from time to time. Being a
Christian is not about being GREEK Orthodox, or RUSSIAN Orthodox, or whatever the right ethnic group might be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Being a
Christian is not about doing Holy Week services or celebrating Pascha or
keeping the fasts. Being a Christian is <b>a life changing relationship with
Jesus,</b> where you finally understand that your life is not your own. You
have been bought with a price.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And now
you have a new reason to live. You have a calling, a calling to put everything
you have and everything you are on the altar and give it as a sacrifice to God
for him to use as he wills.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Christianity
is not a religion. Christianity is not services. Christianity is not doing religious stuff, not being religious or making the sign of the cross at the right times or taking on a
pious identity. Christianity is a relationship. And out of that relationship
flows a transformed life. Out of that relationship flows your new calling. Out
of that relationship and that new calling flows the kingdom of God.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The
Master has called us all together. He is going away. He has told us what to do
while he is gone – to be His love, to be His light, to take the good news of
our Lord’s crucifixion and resurrection and our salvation not just next door,
not just to the next village and town and city, but to the ends of the earth. He
has given you a new calling , a new direction, a new mission for your life. And
He has given you and given me unimaginable riches to enable us to do it. Who
are you? The slave with 5 talents? The slave with 2 talents? The slave with 1
talent? And now that you know who you are, what will you do next? Will you do something with all that you have been given?
Or will you do nothing?</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">Glory
to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-size: large; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitkldL4_8vKQ5Si9A1pNY47QpfVG13iTyQze0F6JrX6eK9ZW44V5c83Q6nYx422IhUxDudnYxsjKNfGGXpuaplMhbqbF5vWnVRpykyIHoGPhrbPqBdGLtxZkxAl8EgjEt0Q-QWnv5W0fNt8o35uR5R1uq3Ovac3NcYafSwDJRYw_MKgo_BI46bW-Xp8hA/s1024/Slave-Market-1024x738.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="738" data-original-width="1024" height="462" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitkldL4_8vKQ5Si9A1pNY47QpfVG13iTyQze0F6JrX6eK9ZW44V5c83Q6nYx422IhUxDudnYxsjKNfGGXpuaplMhbqbF5vWnVRpykyIHoGPhrbPqBdGLtxZkxAl8EgjEt0Q-QWnv5W0fNt8o35uR5R1uq3Ovac3NcYafSwDJRYw_MKgo_BI46bW-Xp8hA/w640-h462/Slave-Market-1024x738.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Roman era slaves for sale.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;">A sermon preached today, February 11, 2024, at Sts. Cosmas and Damianos Orthodox Cathedral in Nairobi Kenya</span></div><p></p>Bill Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11939888013962360542noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4368898415238503632.post-9251248575458837752024-02-02T11:02:00.007+03:002024-02-02T19:52:32.892+03:00Some Things We Are Not Allowed to Talk About (But as Christians, We Must)<p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn1DHy7PS3O-2BNsJ5JEDDKRFI3O4FS_AGSl2YmZMMpOXVDglA2GNmq3lGrHDHdmQlmKXKvRpfiw0CllUeNgdC8RCpstqJfoO5Ak3hc3jQGPEsnfkngp6MNcVExzGAZ2R6pXlkbIVSwh8N7Dj21RzK_NAGH8_WqS4sTLGmCySHKYmjnN50jYY8w8PhdYk/s1200/Family.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1200" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn1DHy7PS3O-2BNsJ5JEDDKRFI3O4FS_AGSl2YmZMMpOXVDglA2GNmq3lGrHDHdmQlmKXKvRpfiw0CllUeNgdC8RCpstqJfoO5Ak3hc3jQGPEsnfkngp6MNcVExzGAZ2R6pXlkbIVSwh8N7Dj21RzK_NAGH8_WqS4sTLGmCySHKYmjnN50jYY8w8PhdYk/w640-h426/Family.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Stock photo from the Web</div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br />
</span><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1. </span></span>According to the data that I have seen, 72% of African American
children are born into and raised in single-parent homes (read homes headed by
their mother or by their grandmother). My teenage years were spent in a
single-parent home. I know something of the struggles the lack of a stable home
environment does to a child. Many of these children also have aspects of
poverty that defines their growing up, which is not an experience I had to face.
The cry that is heard on the part of those spokespeople who for decades have
used this community for their own ideological advancement is that the cause is
racism. In other words, baldly, it is the fault of white people. No one need
blame any member of the African American community for the catastrophe that is
overtaking them. Somehow, for too many of these people, blaming someone else is
always the solution. But when has this ‘solution’ every changed anything for
the good for the people who find themselves in a cultural death spiral of
dependency?</span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast"><span style="font-size: medium;">I choose to take a different tack. My
question is, where are the men, the African American men who made these African
American women pregnant? Why is it culturally and personally impossible for
these men to take responsibility for the women they choose to have sex with and
for the children they sire? In other communities, the rates of children in
single-parent families are truly abysmal (especially for the children who are
innocent and deserve much better from their parents), in the 20-40% range for
Latino, Caucasian and Asian families, higher for Native Americans. But bad as
they are, they are nothing like the annihilation of a functional family
structure that is going on in the African American community. The future for
these children, whether they will be able to do better than their parents (and
the bar is too often very low), is not promising. Discussing the dynamics
involved in this ongoing demolition of the African American family have been
shut down by people in whose interest it is to pretend it is not happening. When
President Obama attempted to address the issue, the outcry forced him to change
the topic. <i>Why can’t we talk about it?</i> I have my own ideas, but it is
useful just to let that question hang in the air for a while.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">According to the data I have seen, pregnant African American
women are four times more likely to end their pregnancy by means of abortion
than pregnant Caucasian women in America. The sentence I have written contains
a fact that most people among our governing elite do not want you to know, but
at least I have used the approved euphemisms currently being used in our culture to
present it. Let me state what actually is going on. Black American women are four
times more likely to kill the babies conceived in their womb than Caucasian
women. Despite valiant attempts by people who think abortion (killing and
removing the offending child in the womb) is the solution to the inconvenience
caused by an unanticipated pregnancy, their ‘compassion’ is <i>always</i> directed
towards the mother. What is happening in that woman’s uterus is ignored or
conveniently redefined as that woman's business alone. <i>But what is happening in the woman’s uterus is the
miracle of the making of another human being.</i> To ‘terminate’ that pregnancy
is to kill a human being. Abortion is <i>homicide</i>. The point that none of these cultural elites refuse
to acknowledge is that they, too, were a baby in their mother’s womb. Having
fathered children myself and having visited many pregnant women in my role as a Christian pastor, I have yet
to hear one of them discuss what is happening in their womb as if 'it' were just a part of
their body, something they can remove as if it is an unsightly mole if they
want to. All of them know that, despite the propaganda of the past 60 years,
they are carrying a new human life, a baby, and that that baby is already a
part of their family, in their mind and heart, and in reality. And there is no difference between the baby that is
conceived in their womb and the baby they will hold and feed and change and
love in a few months, <i>no difference except time</i>. It is the same baby. The same person. And to claim
that ‘survivability marks the difference between a nullity and a human being
is self-serving stupidity beyond measure, a grasping for some sort of ‘moral’
justification that does not exist. I am now the blessed grandfather of twins, a
little boy and a girl. They were born in November. But they came into our world
way too early, as their due date for delivery is not until mid-February. They
arrived at <i>24 weeks</i>. The term for them is ‘micro-preemies’ or ‘nano-preemies.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Had their parents remained in Rwanda where
they live and work, these babies would have died, as the country doesn’t have
the capacity to care for infants so small. They traveled to the US as soon as
they realized there might be trouble. And the two babies were delivered by
C-section a day or two after the family arrived in the US. And they have been
in the NICU ever sense, finishing on the outside what they should have had on
the inside. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">Current left-wing ideologues (extremists, if you ask me) are
pushing not just for killing babies in the womb to become normative, but for
women to be allowed to kill their babies up until delivery (full term). 'This procedure is vanishingly rare,' they claim with mock piety. No, this procedure is simply barbaric. People who kill babies go on trial for murder. And these people want to kill otherwise happily growing infants. It's a case where the demented, anti-human ideology driving their so-called pro-women positions has corroded both their minds and their hearts so that they themselves have ceased to be human, have lost the capacity to love, and can only attempt to game life to their advantage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And to listen to the propaganda supporting
their view, it is always about some poor woman who cannot support a child, who had
the tragedy of conceiving when sexually assaulted, whose mental instability is
such that her life must be considered in danger if she carries this baby to
term.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Pass the hankies, please. </span>So many reasons to stop a
pregnancy, to kill an unborn child.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">But
who is speaking up for the babies, for the lives of thousands, of millions who
are destroyed as if they are nothing?</span><span style="font-size: large; mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="font-size: large;">Progressives will march because of their horror at the loss of human
life currently happening in the war in Gaza.</span><span style="font-size: large; mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="font-size: large;">But will any of them bother to even consider the value of a human life
in a mother’s womb, though every single one of them was carried to term by a
mother who cared?</span><span style="font-size: large; mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">The hypocrisy is
terrifying. And if a mother doesn't care for their baby, why is that the end of the story for that baby, that human life? Is there no one willing to stand in the gap of that mother's failure to care for a baby and take responsibility for raising that new little boy or little girl? Sure, rape and assault and incest are traumatic, and becoming pregnant as a result is a horrifying reminder of that trauma. But why multiply the horror by involving an innocent child who had nothing to do with that event? Why add a self-imposed death sentence to a baby just because of how that baby was conceived? Good can come out of bad. Evil can be neutralized by blessing. But evidently these factors are anathema to those hellbent on killing innocent children, or of using evil circumstances to justify even more evil.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">In my own family’s experience, we are seeing that even at 24
weeks, babies can survive outside the womb if they get the care they need. But all
over the world, babies are routinely slaughtered who are just as old or even
older than my grandbabies were when they were delivered by C-section. These
killings are done for the purpose of not allowing a child with a deformity or a
condition to live, for the purpose of killing a little girl because we want a
little boy instead, for the purpose of ‘I don’t want my lifestyle interrupted
by having to take care of a child. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">Or, 'I don't want the inconvenience of caring for a baby that will require extra care, or who might be developmentally challenged, or otherwise handicapped. It is a mercy if that child never exists,' says the person who now believes that they can take the place of God. </span>This
will only get worse as the capacity to control characteristics is mastered. Desirable
children will be cherished. Undesirable children will be killed.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">However, the current crop of people who are in favor of abortion are
to be commended for their savvy use of the language. They have studiously
avoided acknowledging that these children developing in the womb are people, no
different than they are – <i>no different!</i> They know that if people
routinely start thinking that what is developing in the womb is a <i>child, a little boy or a little girl,</i> they
will have lost the war. At least there is still (or seems to be) an aversion to killing children
in our culture. So, they speak of 'termination' rather than bloody dismemberment
or of scissors through the back of a baby’s skull or chemically scalding a
growing child to death and then piece by piece removing recognizable human body
parts from the womb and placing them in a stainless-steel basin for
incineration as if they were an ugly cancer that has just been excised. If we
use sterile, clinical terms, we don’t have to be bothered by reality. We should
instead be appalled by reality, by what we are doing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Either by our commission, or by our silence
and turning the other way.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">There is no good argument for abortion on demand. And there
are many, many necessary arguments for responsibility on the part of lovers to
man and woman up if their passion results in a human being. Abortion is
ultimately one of the terrible consequences of individual selfishness. It is a
denial of one’s responsibility. It is an attempt to have my cake and eat it too.
It is damning about our culture that the majority of people think this is ok. A future generation is going to look back on us with horror, just as we look back on 1940s Germans, and say, 'How could they do such a thing? How could they be a mindless part of butchering their children? What were they thinking?'<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">In places like China and India, abortion is so common that
it is taking the form of femicide – little girls are being killed to make room
for little boys. In places like Japan and Europe, abortion is so common that
the population in some of these countries is dropping precipitously, so much so that their societies will soon collapse and not be able to function (actually the dwindling indigenous
people of Europe are being displaced by the immigrant communities from Africa
and the Middle East who are mostly Muslim and who are reproducing at a rate of
4-8 children per family. But that is another story.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the United States, so many African
American children are being slaughtered that I have seen some articles raising
the specter of genocide. The founder of Planned Parenthood, one of the major
promotors and purveyors of abortion in the US, Margaret Sanger, was a notorious
supporter of eugenics. Culling the population of bad elements and making way for the good elements to thrive. I will leave to your imagination who were considered to be the 'bad' elements and who were the 'good' elements. The connection between current abortion policies, the
over-prevalence of abortion among African American women, and eugenics may not
be palatable to our extremist abortion supporters who are in denial about any fact that doesn't support their opinions, but it is there. And given
the way the option of killing babies is being used in the African American
community, somebody needs to say that we have been here before, and should this continue, it will not end well.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">I live in Kenya, and though abortion is illegal here, that
does not stop babies from being killed at any time during a woman’s pregnancy. Western
NGO’s implementing a radical Western feminist agenda have led the undercover charge to provide ‘birth control services’ to
women who need them. I gave a talk at a high school several years ago on this
topic and I asked the students if any of them knew someone who had had an
abortion. <i>Everybody</i> raised their hand. I am certain that many of the
girls in that audience had been forced to kill their babies by their parents or
by their boyfriends. It would seem to me, at least, that we have a similar
problem here in Kenya that the African American community has in the US. Only
here, nobody can blame racism. Here, perceiving the real problem is easier to do, and not fraught with culture war diversions. Here is my shot at understanding at least part of what is going on.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">It takes two people to make a baby. People in the US in
general and the African American community in particular know where babies come
from. Same here in Kenya. And yet, men and women regularly choose to have sex,
unprotected sex, outside the committed relationship of marriage, knowing full
well that getting pregnant is a possibility. Here in Kenya, such is the
immaturity of young Kenyan males, they will insist on having sex, and when
their part in the act results in the pregnancy, they will treat it is if it is
nothing and either disappear (they were in it for the sex), or they will insist
that their girlfriend have an abortion (even though it is ‘illegal’). Usually
it is the former – they absent themselves from the girl’s life, leaving the
girl to either carry the baby to term or, under pressure from her mother, get
an abortion. Understand that Christian morality plays absolutely no role in this. Almost
all of these players will be ‘Christian,’ but none of them are interested in a
decision informed by Christian values. This is because ‘Christian values’ do
not touch how most people actually live their lives here. That is the reality here,
but also another issue.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">I see similar dynamics going on in the African American
community. Young Kenyan men and young African American men are an empty void
when it comes to caring about anybody else besides themselves (allow Hip Hop culture
to provide a clue as to what is valued by these young men and women). They
don’t care about the woman they are having sex with. They don’t care about some
baby. What concern they can muster is utterly self-directed. And if a woman is
not giving them the sex they demand and presents them with a complication
instead (baby), they will simply disappear. This absence of a capacity to take
responsibility for what one has done is, in my opinion, the engine driving both
the dissolution of the African American family and the terrible rates of
abortion in the African American community and here in Kenya. The sexual
revolution decoupled sex from responsibility, and this is what has happened as a
result. The family is crumbling, and we are killing our babies, offering them
on the altar of <s>Moloch</s>, I mean the idol convenience and self and the
privilege of irresponsibility.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">One more story. In the 1950s, a high school football player
fell in love with one of the cheerleaders. He was seventeen, she was fifteen. One
thing led to another, and she became pregnant. At that time, in a small American
town, this was a scandal. They made the decision to quietly go to a neighboring
county and get married. They return and lived in her parents’ home. She
finished high school; he went to the local college. She gave birth to a
daughter. That mother was sixteen. Their daughter would grow up to become a high school gradutate, a college graduate, scientist with a PhD, an environmental
toxicologist, and a professor at the University of Georgia. I have often
remembered what this young man and this young woman went through and the choices they made with gratitude.
It was not easy. It required a lot of sacrifice. But I am so glad that they
chose not to kill the baby in the girlfriend’s womb, because that baby was my
older sister. Their willingness to sacrifice, their choice to love meant that
this baby, this girl, this student, this college graduate this professor had
the chance to make something of her life. When we choose to kill our babies, we
tell God that we are in control. We tell God that <i>my</i> life is the most
important thing. Our ‘choice’ might make our own lives seemingly easier or
better. But we simultaneously deny another person their chance to live, a
chance that you and I were given by parents who understood at least something
about love, who were willing to make sacrifices on your account. But there are a lot of people who had no say in whether they were going
to live or die. They had their chance to live, a chance that the rest of us
take for granted, taken from them, obliterated by the selfishness of their parents, by the
irresponsibility of their parents. If this is what ‘choice’ is and what
‘choice’ does, I cannot fathom why anyone in their right mind would ever want
to do that to another human being like themselves.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">Additional note.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">Just this morning I read an article discussing the
distressing fact that the US has the highest maternal death rate in the
developed world. But not only that, African mothers, statistically, are three
times more likely to die due to complications from pregnancy and childbirth
than Caucasian mothers. This is both appalling and a serious concern for the
sprawling health care industry. I have looked at a raft of articles addressing
this issue. Some of them identify legitimate health issues that African American
women bring into their pregnancies that put them at risk. There are also
lifestyle choices and cultural factors at play, women choosing certain
behaviors (drug use, drinking, overeating, etc.) that adversely affect their
overall health and contribute to a risky pregnancy. Many other articles that I
looked at refer only obliquely to these issues, if at all. Apparently, they are chary
of being viewed as judgmental or critical. But there are some, including in the
popular press that I have read who are crystal clear about what is going on
here. Everything, the disparity in the statistics and the death rate itself, is
blamed on ‘racism.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A few go on to
define this as ‘institutional racism.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>All of the other articles I looked at bring with them their references
to actual studies to help them make their point. The ones blaming racism and
white bias have a few anecdotal stories, but in terms of demonstrating their
claims, they make the assumption that their charges are self-evident. Please. ‘Racism’
and accusing someone of being a ‘racist’ has become a trope that is
increasingly meaningless. Usually, such charges are leveled against individuals
and organizations by someone who has something to gain. I don’t doubt that
discrimination exists. And it exists between all the ethnic groups in this
country (indeed against all the ethnic groups on the planet). We have a legal
system with laws designed to frustrate the impact of racism, intended to deter racist people from doing racist things (that is what one
can do legally, as one cannot control what another person thinks). But these
anti-racism culture warriors have learned that a pliant media is a much more effective
and immediate stick with which to beat their enemies, usually those who have
the temerity to disagree with them. So without needing to resort to the legal
system to address their grievances, they can slander a person or a group or a
company or an organization. And with a pliant and sympathetic media, such
slander (unproven except perhaps anecdotally) can destroy a person and their
reputation, can destroy a company's reputation. They can accuse and convict without due process. And because few individuals and
businesses have the means to take these amoral antiracist ideologues to court,
we are forced to avoid the issue by keeping quiet and saying nothing about
their own brazen racist words and acts usually against the white majority
which, in their eyes, makes it legitimate racism. The hypocrisy is self-evident.
But in the issue of African American maternal morbidity, this is an example of
an issue being hijacked for the sake of an ideology, telling women that it is
not their fault, it is the fault of the white people who are in control. As a
result, they are contributing to the disparity and the morbidity by their
intentional ignorance, by refusing to deal with the actual issues that are
harming African American women. It is a disingenuous, cynical and callous ploy
on the part of anti-racism ideologues that helps no one but themselves.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">The means already exist to help these women. One area that
is too hot to tackle is the destruction of the African American family. That
community and its leaders cannot be helped until they recognize that there is a
terrible problem that has eaten the heart out of their families and has sent
the African American community on a death spiral. And that problem is not
caused by so-called ‘racism.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The issues
are much more complicated, and the solutions will require the capacity and the
desire to make hard changes. Notice that the solution will not necessitate
‘reparations,’ as these will only add gasoline to the dumpster fire of problems
this community faces.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And ‘reparations' will do absolutely nothing to solve the actual issues this community faces. The
necessary changes will mean addressing moral issues and cultural issues that
their leaders have not wanted to touch. The African American communities have
faced devastating problems resulting from their experience of slavery
throughout the Western hemisphere. But in the midst of those terrible
challenges, there are examples of African American families that were able to
be what families are meant to be. We know that it is possible for an African
American woman and an African American man to have a committed, stable
relationship and raise a family.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There
is no inherent incapacity on the part of African Americans to take
responsibility for their lives and change their toxic cultures. They did it in
the face of much greater adversity in the past. And the strength of these family systems go a
long way towards explaining the capacity for this community to survive in the
midst of terrible adversity over hundreds of years. But this is evidence counter to the current narrative, and so it is dismissed as, you guessed it, white people doing black people's history, or, more racism.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">But what is happening today is the destruction of that family
system, not due to racism, but due to the destruction of the coherent moral
system that sustained the families of African Americans for generations. Drugs,
criminality, gangs, lack of responsibility, self-centeredness, alcoholism, lack of
education and ignorance, generational dependence on government assistance. These
are all self-inflicted characteristics of the experiences of too many African
American men and women. And the children who are born to the women caught in
these moral death spirals learn from the people who make up their only points
of reference and thus have little hope of making better choices when their time
comes.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">My point in all this is that if we are allowed to identify
and address the issues <i>as they actually are,</i> we can do something about
them. Presently, we are not allowed to do so. I suspect that there are too many
vested interests on the part of rich, powerful men and women who are
controlling the conversation about culture and race in our country, and those
who amplify their control and ideology in the media. In the meantime, they are
hurting and not helping the very people they claim to champion. Turns out, the
only people they are championing are themselves. This should surprise no one,
as it is the essence of the human condition.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">Something Else We Are Not Supposed to Talk About<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>According to reports
I have read; African American men are incarcerated at a rate five times that of
Caucasian men. In some states, the report goes, the disparity is even greater. Of course, the population of American prisoners remains overwhelmingly white, as
whites constitute a substantial majority of the American population. Other
reports I have read have been crystal clear as to why so many African American
men are in prison. I am sure you will be shocked, just shocked, but the reason
given is racism. Overt racism, institutional racism, however you want to cut
the deck. This racism supposedly creates the conditions that drive Black men to
crime.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so once again, according to the
elite arbiters of our culture, the real problem is white people. Or, according
to the nifty phrase which is subsequently freighted with a full load of
anti-racism blather – whiteness. This is the enemy. White people are the enemy.
Clear. Easy and Simple.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">This is such good news for the African American community! They
don’t have to take responsibility for anything. Because it (whatever ‘it’ is,
you can fill in the blank) isn’t their fault. And so it is somebody else’s
fault. And so they don’t need to change. It is somebody else that needs to do
all the changing. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">The scapegoating of the majority population and the majority
culture of America is so easy to do. And the thing of it is, there are
certainly plenty of white morons who have behaved appallingly towards people
who are different than them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And since
there is a wretched history of slavery and discrimination behind the
experiences of people who have experienced actual racism, this is
understandably painful, and the full force of the law needs to be brought
against those who perpetuate it. The good news is that our society is not so
abjectly racist as to have coopeted the judicial system and law enforcement to
push racist assumptions on the wider culture. It used to be, but it isn’t any
more. And that is because people of all races have worked very hard to put an
end to discrimination. What goes on in people’s minds is not something any
country can legislate against. But if those thoughts turn to words and actions,
they can be stopped. And that is what has been done to an enormous extent. Perfectly?
No. But one needs to be reminded that racism isn’t just something that is
perpetrated by whites onto African Americans. Every ethnic group across the
globe has its version of racism. Even African Americans can be ugly racists as
well (as some of our so-called anti-racists capably demonstrate), toward
Asians, towards Latinos, and yes, even towards Whites. Such racism is even
celebrated and encouraged by some of the ‘Anti Racist’ cheerleaders who have
come up with a faux ideology that says all racism of course is evil. But racism
against whites is ok. These people have lost the capacity to know what evil is,
having banished Christianity from their equation, but that is a story for
another time.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">So sensitive are the antiracists towards any representation
that might reflect badly on their African American community's victimhood (and thus further
racial stereotypes, though without acknowledging that stereotypes often exist
for a reason) that they have pressured media and news outlets, for example, to
ban the provision of racial identities in their coverage of crime. This has
reached the level of abject silliness. I can read a news story about a murder
that happened in Los Angeles, or a teacher being viciously beaten in Florida or three people killed in a drug deal gone bad in DC. The persons responsible may have been apprehended, but we are
not told if he is a white guy or a black guy or a Latino guy or an Asian guy. Actually, if it’s a white guy, it seems to be almost always mentioned. White people doing bad things sells papers or, more accurately today, generates clicks. So, when racial identity isn’t
mentioned in these reports, I can usually guess with about 90% accuracy that it’s some black guy
who murdered another black guy during a robbery. Mass shop lifting in some
California city?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No racial identities
are given of the culprits. But when the mugshots come out, mostly black.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t sit around and hope or wish or assume
that the criminals running around will be black. It just happens.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">The real reason that there are a lot of African American men
in prison is that there are an inordinate percentage of African American men
involved in activities that our society considers criminal. Drugs, theft,
robbery, and murder are usually agreed upon by all to be not good things to do.
I am sure the attempt has been made, but to blame killing someone on whiteness
raises the issue of the accuser’s sanity. All of the things that African
American men do, just like all the things that white men do, are choices that
that individual makes. They may have their reasons, but in our culture, there
is no reason that justifies taking a human life (unless one is an unwanted baby
in one’s mother’s womb). Almost all of the people who are in prison are there
for a reason. I am very glad that forensic science has progressed to the extent
that for some people who were convicted and imprisoned wrongly, exoneration is
possible. But most people who are in prison have broken the laws that our
society says (for good reasons) must be kept, or there will be consequences. It
is not a perfect system. Justice does not always prevail. Injustice is
sometimes perpetrated. But for those who habitually whinge that the American
system is institutionally racist, kindly join me here on the African continent
and put your life in the hands of any one of the judicial systems here. You
have no idea how good you have it in America, imperfect as it is, because in
most other places on this planet, things really are corrupt, and things are
controlled by that country’s version of racism, and it makes these societies a step closer to hell as a result.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">The number of black men in American prisons is a tragedy for
those men and their families. The number of black men running around on the
streets of American cities and towns joining gangs and perpetuating crimes is also
tragedy, but for their victims and their victims' families and for their communities. The
real issue is how are we going to rescue African American men and boys so that
they chose not to pursue the evil that will destroy them (and others), but the
good that will make them a blessing, a positive contributor to their
communities and the wider culture. Blaming everything on white people has never
helped anybody except the blamers who are enriched by their faux rage, and who get plum academic positions (like the serial plagiarist and former president of Harvard Claudine Gay, who retains her cosy $900,000 faculty position teaching students about - surprise! - antiracism. These people and the terrible problems they are enabling and perpetuating through their ruinous ideology are not going anywhere soon, unless or until the people in my country finally have the courage to say, 'Enough!' I wish
one of these so-called spokespeople for the oppressed would do something
actually good, like volunteer in an inner-city Head Start program, or even more
radical, undertake to adopt an African American baby that would otherwise be
sentenced to death by his or her mother (and our progressive culture) through
abortion. Start a school to help African American children experience a
different way than the way of the streets, the way of the gangs, the way of
drugs, the way of prostitution, the way of junk food. If you are so damn
concerned about the African American community, then do something that actually
helps that community. Otherwise, that community is on the slow but sure road
towards self-destruction. Sure, there are many factors that are contributing to
that horrible outcome. But ultimately, everybody is responsible for the choices
that they make.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">So rather than the knee jerk reaction of deflecting
criticism by calling your critics names like ‘racist’ and ‘bigot,’ kindly own
the hypocrite that you are, stop the pathetic ideological pandering, and be
willing to help the community. You can’t do it if you refuse to acknowledge the real issues
plaguing African Americans. Just like you can’t treat malignant melanoma if you
are in denial that the spot on your back might be skin cancer. That spot is actually cancer, and it will
kill you. Just as these issues will destroy the African American community. And
we are already well down that road.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">None of the issues I have raised are easy or pleasant. I
have singled out several issues facing the African American community mainly
because they are so egregious and vexing. There are similar issues facing the
other communities in America as well. And people who look like me have our own
troubles to acknowledge and our own responsibilities to own. I raised the issue
above because so few people are aware, much less talking about it. There is too
much fear of being maliciously identified as a bigot and ‘canceled’ that most
people have shut down. But these people in our towns and cities are too
important to leave to the gangs, the drug dealers, the robbers and thieves, and
the anti-racists. All of the ways adopted by all of the government offices and
churches and antiracists have gotten us precisely here. I think it’s time to
climb out of the box to which we have consigned and condemned ourselves, and help our friends who
so obviously need our help.</span><o:p></o:p></p>Bill Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11939888013962360542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4368898415238503632.post-87012958664324700682024-01-26T15:31:00.000+03:002024-01-26T15:31:44.739+03:00Experiences with Rap and Hip-Hop<p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-size: large; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsN1hMmeP-viym2QoS4MPUVGfRCVFbGv7TAEsPUMBU5tK_TkQtYuckZNoDstl5CzwurQXLSD8X5QKoP3UJeOj4rjuuz2dL6l0I6bzQXNqVHC-SiYlyDqojEuZLEHJDcM8a9q4wF2nYDxu3J__UdXOATt7ZkZS8ASzVx2kmI1v2-PlWF4ZSHIHIpsJs4Nk/s3000/hip%20hop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3000" data-original-width="3000" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsN1hMmeP-viym2QoS4MPUVGfRCVFbGv7TAEsPUMBU5tK_TkQtYuckZNoDstl5CzwurQXLSD8X5QKoP3UJeOj4rjuuz2dL6l0I6bzQXNqVHC-SiYlyDqojEuZLEHJDcM8a9q4wF2nYDxu3J__UdXOATt7ZkZS8ASzVx2kmI1v2-PlWF4ZSHIHIpsJs4Nk/w640-h640/hip%20hop.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">ODB - 'Old Dirty Bastard' Rap Artist from NY who died of a drug overdose at 35 in 2004</div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">It feels like a kind of plague. Only it doesn’t creep person
to person by means of unseen invaders that conspire to throw bodily systems so
out of whack that no recovery is possible. Instead, it’s visceral. I feel it
thumping as it rolls down the street, a bus with the volume so loud I can hear
it though its windows are shut and the windows of my truck are shut, too. I
have made the mistake of unthinkingly hopping on a bus only to realize that the
volume is so loud my hearing apparatus actually hurts. I ride with my hands pressed
over my ears. But it isn’t just the volume that slays me, it’s what’s being
purveyed through these loudspeakers. I’m sure that connoisseurs know all the
shades and gradations. I just know it as ‘hip hop.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m a musician and a writer, and I have
worked really, really hard to try and find the art in this mode of presentation
that has crept in and taken over an enormous patch of what my culture
understands as popular music. There was probably a time when the rage of young
black artists pushed them to explode in the direction of rapping their angry
poems, a movement which later evolved into the hip hop scene today. But
starting back then, and certainly now, the rage is faux, the anger is
manufactured. The artists who have created and driven the genre are now
insanely wealthy. They certainly have more resources than the people the
profess to be enraged at. And the music they produce these days feels
formulaic. It happens in any musical genre. Charles Wesley was very gifted at
writing hymns back in the 18<sup>th</sup> century.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He wrote more than six thousand of them. But
of those thousands, only a tiny handful of them are known or sung today. Some
music is better than others. Some songs better than others. We don’t seek out
1960s rock to listen to (except a few ‘Oldies’ stations), and that’s because we
don’t find that genre compelling anymore. It happens.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">I am forced to listen to an avalanche of hip hop on most
buses I ride. I look around to see if anybody is enjoying what we are being
forced to listen to. It’s a crowd mostly of Kenyan working men and working
women on their way to or from their jobs. The only ones who seem to be
connecting with the music are the small group of somewhat menacing-looking and
disheveled (or maybe that’s the look these sorts of men aspire to these days)
young men who have attitude but not much else, who jump on and off the bus
without paying. I’m not sure what they do. And given that the unemployment rate
in Nairobi among unmarried men is sky high, it would not surprise me in the
least to find out that they are either unemployed or involved in the
underground (read illegal) economy. I have been robbed three times by young men
who get on buses, but that is another story. My point is that these are the
only people who seem engaged with the music, and I doubt that it is because
they understand the lyrics because many of them speak English about as well as
I speak Swahili.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">I have belonged to a gym for the sake of my mental health
for the past several years. It’s one of the few luxuries I have allowed myself
as my resources have dwindled away. But even here, for some reason, one of the
staff who controls the gym’s sound system thinks that everybody must be
subjected to his favorite music, which just happens to be hip hop of the
raunchiest sort, and to enjoy it as loud as the gym speakers can convey it. There
was a several month period of time where it was so loud it was giving me a
headache. My Kenyan co-members seem able to tolerate just about anything
without complaint, and I couldn’t figure out why only I was troubled. It might
be because I have been losing my hearing and have a case of tinnitus and would
prefer to avoid situations where my ears are damaged any further. Maybe I just
really dislike the genre. Anyway, I finally went to the front desk and asked
them to turn the music down. The person manning the computer seemed ok about it
and he reduced the volume to something tolerable. Two days later the volume was
back up and I had to go through the same process again. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">The volume is one thing. But having been exposed to the
genre, I have also been exposed to the lyrics. Some of them are simply
ridiculous, like the song that went on and on today with ‘wookie wookie wookie wookie
wookie wookie wookie wookie wookie,,,’ seemingly forever. Art? Make a case,
somebody, please? It sounded like a long, repetitious rendition of boys making
mouth noises. Boys are excellent at making mouth noises. But to have it passed
off as music or entertainment is another thing entirely. It’s difficult to discern
the artistry in something like that. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">The same with the ‘music’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I will allow that there may have been some creativity involved in
putting together these tracks before the originators started being copied by
people looking to make it big. Based on what I hear, there is often a percussion
track that is computer generated. There is a base line played by someone who
may or may not be aiming for a note that has anything to do with what is being
done. And there is a vocal track. The vocals are essentially someone or a bunch
of people shouting. There is rarely any actual singing involved, and if there
is, it almost always has to do with a repetitive background theme or a chorus. The
vocals are essentially a form of percussion. In fact, the entire piece is
percussive, with rhythm the factor that seems to drive the performance. If one
listens to the instrumentation alone, it is ‘music’ that is not going anywhere.
Its purpose is to frame the words being shouted or rapped. But the music feels
to me like an endless loop. Sometimes it rises to a kind of sing-song nursery
rhyme caliber of presentation. And a lot of shallow appropriation commercial
themes. Even so, with the current crop of Western hip hop artists and their Kenyan
wannabees, there seems to be no artistry, no interest in harmony, in beauty, no
creativity, nothing interesting when it comes to music. It’s essentially banal
and boring.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">The actual words are anything but. And what one does find,
the defining characteristic of so much hip hop, is a tremendous load of anger. [Trigger
warning – don’t go further if you are easily offended by sexually oriented language].
The content of these angry, music-less pieces has a good bit to do with the
underlife of the streets – the drugs, the crime, the guns, the gangs, the killing, the parties. But
overflowing all is the sex. There is a fixation on the female anatomy, with the
ugly language of the streets used to describe butts and breasts and vaginas in
particular. If I had these songs as my guide, it would seem to me that women
are simply things that exist for men’s sexual use. There was one ‘song’ that
came on a couple of months ago when I was trying to do weight machines. The gym
was crowded with Kenyan men and women and a few of us expats. The line that
kept being repeated was ‘I’m going to f*ck you in the c*nt’ again and again and
again. And it was one of those days where the volume had been pushed up beyond
the capacity for a normal person to endure. So I went to the front desk with a
double complaint. Kindly turn the volume down because it is painfully loud. And
then I said, would you please find something else that isn’t obscene for us to
listen to. The guy just looked at me. So I said, can you hear what they are
saying (it was still playing LOUDLY)? They are saying ‘I’m going to f*ck you in
the c*nt’ again and again and again. (If it is possible for a Kenyan man to
blush, he did). We have women who are here working out. What are we saying to
these young women by playing things like that. I have two daughters, and I
would never bring them here if this is the kind of stuff they were going to be
exposed to.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think he was ashamed. He
didn’t say anything, but the volume went down and something marginally less
explicit was played instead.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">I wish this piece was an exception.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I have expanded my range of expletives
just by being present on the buses and at the gym. I remember my junior high
school English teacher, commenting on Junior High boys’ penchant for trying out
their newly learned foul mouth skills at every opportunity, saying, ‘When you
must use words like ‘fuck,’ ‘motherfucker’ and ‘fucking’ in every other
sentence you speak, you simply reveal that you have nothing to say.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Many of these hip-hop pieces are like junior
high boys. They get off on using foul language, as if that makes them something.
But all it does is reveal them as being empty when it comes to creativity and
content. These people have nothing to say. Much much better to find creative
ways to express whatever one is feeling – English is wonderful for that, and
presumably other languages are, too. But to keep pulling the ‘fuck off’ card
demonstrates first that one is lazy, that one has lost the capacity to be genuinely
creative, and or that one is simply stupid. Resorting to such languages reveals
way too much about the content of one’s character, about one’s need to fit into
a particular culture or image, and relatedly, one’s need to show contempt for
whoever or whatever one is angry with. But with respect to the genre, it is a
sign of a bad poem. And a poem is what hip hop on its good days is aspiring to
be.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">People rushing to defend hip hop will play the race card (I
must be racist), or the class card, or the ‘you just can’t appreciate art from
the hood’ card. The first charge is specious because I am doing something that
none of the zealous defenders of the American version (at least) would ever
think of doing themselves – I have lived in an East African country since 2000
where I am often a minority of one. Get your own house in order before you fling
around accusations like that! The second defense is also specious. None of the
people making this music belongs to an underclass. I will never have what they
have. I have made other choices to do other things with my life, and those
choices have not involved making money. The third, the lack of appreciation for
where this music comes from – It is possible to find beauty in the inner city. Just
as it is possible to find beauty here in the Kenyan slum where I live. Granted
that beauty is often found in the people that live here, as there is a lot of
ugliness in the context as well. And sometimes the ugliness seems poised to
overcome the beauty. But my question is this, is what is being created by this
genre contributing to the beauty of this world, or adding to its ugliness? And
if it is the latter, then why? Why write songs about ladies' butts, about
fucking bitches, about getting high, about shooting cops? The answer that this
is one’s reality is a cop out. What it is is one’s desired reality. This talks
about the performer, not the statement he claims his hip hop is making. What is
created is a world just as racist, just as sexist, just as exploitative as the
one these people claim to be railing against. It becomes a symptom of the
problems. It becomes a part of the problems.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>What it isn’t is any kind of solution.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">I will continue to learn more about hip hop, because I have
no other choice. When I ride the bus to town, I will get to hear it (and even
watch the sexualized party scene videos that go with it on the screens that
some of our buses have). I will get to hear it when I go to the gym, because
the guy who loves this stuff is on the job every time I go. Maybe I will hear
something that changes my mind, that softens my perspective. Maybe someone will
make an argument that I haven’t heard before that makes sense. I’m willing to
be persuaded. But in my observation, there is a lot of darkness there, and to
get someone to willingly move out of the darkness into the light takes a
miracle.</span><o:p></o:p></p>Bill Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11939888013962360542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4368898415238503632.post-87479553132640761252024-01-21T15:22:00.004+03:002024-01-21T17:56:27.546+03:00Identity Antidote<p><span style="background: white; font-family: "Segoe UI", sans-serif;"><b style="font-size: large;"> </b></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-size: large; font-weight: bold; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6OxK1HOH50tUlFGAtxlWbBPOuD3ArhBT8lLiv2oM6xcsl129sKLPHyVipgWv_l_Dvxfaq1HhpFNrSqUXftRkVvhUMkRYCGHCa0P9OhSo8vSc9YHxWnAOVM1935IBmVTSqsjxgGNmw4DdoHEsmoXVMzb_YssAyFioSzh4fLUaVoI208S81GR84zmXWduI/s1600/Sanofi-blames-manufacturing-costs-for-end-of-snake-bite-cure.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6OxK1HOH50tUlFGAtxlWbBPOuD3ArhBT8lLiv2oM6xcsl129sKLPHyVipgWv_l_Dvxfaq1HhpFNrSqUXftRkVvhUMkRYCGHCa0P9OhSo8vSc9YHxWnAOVM1935IBmVTSqsjxgGNmw4DdoHEsmoXVMzb_YssAyFioSzh4fLUaVoI208S81GR84zmXWduI/w640-h426/Sanofi-blames-manufacturing-costs-for-end-of-snake-bite-cure.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Making an antidote for an otherwise fatal black mamba bite</div><b style="font-size: large;"> </b><b style="font-size: large;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "Segoe UI", sans-serif;"> </span></b><p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><span style="color: #cd0009; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-ligatures: none;">Prokeimenon. Mode Plagal 4<br />
Psalm 75.11,1</span></b><span style="color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-ligatures: none;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #cd0009; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-ligatures: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Make your vows to the
Lord our God and perform them.<br />
Verse: God is known in Judah; his name is great in Israel.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: medium;">The reading is from <b>St. Paul's Letter to the</b> <b>Colossians
3:4-11</b><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Brethren, when Christ who is our life appears, then
you also will appear with him in glory. Put to death therefore what is earthly
in you: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is
idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of
disobedience. In these you once walked, when you lived in them. But now put
them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and foul talk from your mouth. Do
not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old nature </i>[man]<i>
with its practices and have put on the new nature, which is being renewed in
knowledge after the image of its creator. Here there cannot be Greek and Jew,
circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free man, but Christ
is all, and in all.</i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">The Gospel according to St. Luke 17:12-19<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><i><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background: white; color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">At that time, as Jesus entered a village, he was met by ten
lepers, who stood at a distance and lifted up their voices and said:
"Jesus, Master, have mercy on us." When he saw them he said to them,
"Go and show yourselves to the priests." And as they went they were
cleansed. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back,
praising God with a loud voice; and he fell on his face at Jesus's feet, giving
him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan. Then said Jesus: "Were not ten
cleansed? Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God
except this foreigner?" And he said to him: "Rise and go your way;
your faith has made you well."</span></span></i></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><i><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background: white; color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><br /></span></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background: white; color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background: white; color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">As a young Presbyterian minister, I used to be intimidated by
all of the older men in the church where I served. They were all highly
educated, qualified, successful businessmen and lawyers and doctors and
university professors. They made a lot of money. They lived in big houses and
drove fancy cars. They sat on the church board and on various committees. They
sat in the same pew week after week on Sunday mornings with their beautiful
wives and their perfect children. And they were impeccably dressed in very nice
suits and perfectly matching shirts and silk ties and they wore expensive
leather shoes. And when I looked out on the congregation and saw these men, I
thought they were perfect. And I was ashamed of all the struggles that I had.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background: white; color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">But what I didn’t know is that it was all a front, it was all
a façade. Back in the 1990s, a renewal movement began spreading among men in
the churches across my country called ‘Promise Keepers.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A big stadium event was scheduled for
Washington, DC, about a three hour drive from where we lived. The organizers
anticipated that 50,000 men would attend. But even more showed up. Because
Promise Keepers was helping men deal with issues like faithfulness to one’s
wife, being a good father to one’s children, integrity in one’s work and
business affairs, purity in one’s sexual life, reconciling broken relationships
in one’s family, I wanted to go. And as I shared with different men in our
church my plans for going, I started hearing from different men that they
wanted to go, too. In the end, we had twenty-six men commit to going to the
two-day Promise Keepers event in DC.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We
had to rent a bus. I couldn’t touch base with everyone during our time there –
I was busy working through my own issues. But evidently it was transformational
for many of the men who went. When we got back home, during the next week, I
had a series of men come by my office wanting to talk. They said things like,
‘I’ve had an affair with another woman but I want to recommit myself to my wife
and my family.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or, ‘I have struggled
with pornography ever since I was a teenager and I want to be free.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or ‘I have made an idol out of work and
making money. I am very successful, but it has destroyed my family. I want to
commit my life again to Christ and live for him and his priorities.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These were the very same men who looked so
perfect sitting in the congregation. And I realized anew that I wasn’t the only
one who had issues, who struggled, who found living the Christian life to be a
challenge. All of those men had a story. All of those men had issues. Just like
I am looking out at you right now. I am tempted to think that I am the only one
who struggles in my Christian life, I’m the only one who is struggling to be
faithful to Christ. But I am wrong, aren’t I? Each one of you has a story. Each
one of you is struggling with this issue or that sin. Every single one of us
needs a Saviour this morning. And those of us who are able to be honest with
ourselves and with the Lord will admit that we are like those ten lepers in our
Gospel passage. Our lives are being destroyed by our sin. And like them, we can
only cry out from a distance, ‘Lord, have mercy!’</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background: white; color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">The world we live in is pathologically concerned about
identity. I learned this not by being a pastor in Pennsylvania; I learned this
just by living in this world. We project who we want to be. Rich. Powerful. Successful.
Beautiful. Sexy. Who are you this morning? I mean, really. Who are you? And is
the person you project yourself to be or who you want to be different from the
one you actually are? Are we here pretending to be something we are not,
putting on a show? Like the men in my church who worked so hard to project an
identity of success, of being rich, of being powerful, of being a Somebody. Or
is there anything real, anything actually <i>Christian</i> happening in our
hearts this morning?</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background: white;">But recently, these identity games that people have been playing
all along are now joining together with an unprecedented (for us in the West)
rejection of traditional values and a redefining of everything we thought our
societies were all about. There is a transformation going on in the West today,
in the US, the UK, in Europe, and it is not for the good. Christian assumptions
about right and wrong, about what life is about, have been thrown out because
they are allegedly bigoted and discriminatory. Christianity is being displaced
by a new ideology based on identity. Whatever you want to be, whatever you
choose to do, all of this <i style="color: black;">must</i> be affirmed. Not just tolerated, but
affirmed. Whatever Christians condemned in the past as being perverse and sin,
this is what people are lining up to be and to do. And anyone standing in the
way is declared to be homophobic or transphobic or racist or a bigot and they
are summarily chased from their job, from their school, from their community. And
so almost everybody goes along because they are afraid of being canceled. So you
were born a male but you want to be a woman instead? The whole culture will
stand behind you and cheer as you submit to have your body mutilated and your
hormones changed, wear makeup and put on a dress. Or if you are a woman and you
want to be a man? They can make that happen, too. And if you are a child, then
it is perfectly legal for teachers or doctors to secretly take that child and
begin the process that will suppress puberty and change their sexual identity
and mutilate their bodies so that that child can be what they think they want
to be. And if you are straight and want to be gay, then why not? And if you are
a man and want to marry a man, then why not? You can find communities online that are into whatever you want to do. So go for it. We used to say this was
make-believe. But these people are perfectly serious. And countless lives are
being drawn into their vortex and are being destroyed. And here’s the thing - There
is nobody that matters any more to say it’s wrong. Only right-wing extremist
bigots think that way, and of course, nobody wants to be like <i style="color: black;">them</i>.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background: white; color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">This is going on right now, today, in my country the United
States of America. This is going on right now in the UK, and across Europe. And
don’t think this will never happen here in Kenya. Thirty years ago, we American
conservative Christians were saying the same thing. Homosexuality legalized? Same
sex marriage legalized? Acceptance of transgender transitions legally mandated?
It will never happen here! we said. But now today in 2024, conservative
Christians in the US are being banished to the margins and even persecuted,
we’re being fired from our jobs and in some cases even put in prison because we
believe what the Bible teaches us about human beings being created in the image
of God but who also are desperately in need of a Savior. We never thought we
would see the day when our country, a country that was so religious that people
called it a Christian nation, would ever see days like today. And I hate to say
it, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it is only a matter of time for
Kenya and for Kenya’s Christians. Most people claim to be Christians here, but
they are not serious about their faith. The same thing happened in my country. They
wanted the <i>identity</i> of a Christian, but not the cross, and the death to
self that comes with it. For too many people here, even Christians, access to money
is the most important thing. And what do you think is going to happen when
Western governments and aid organizations start tying aid and development money
to changing laws that currently discriminate against LGBTQ… people? Do you
think powerful Kenyan people who want to get access to that money will say no
on the basis of their so-called Christian convictions? I can’t answer that
question because this is not my country. But I think <i>you</i> know the answer.
And it is already happening.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background: white; color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">The Apostle Paul dealt with the
identity issue two thousand years ago. But even in our passage today from
Colossians we cannot escape the long reach of the identity politics that are
overtaking the world around us, and where to use gendered language is
considered to be sexist and therefore prejudiced. If you have your Bible, open
to Colossians 3:9 and you can see for yourself. Paul says, ‘Do not lie to each
other, but put off’- and here the English Standard Version that I like says,
‘but put off the <b>old nature.</b>’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
NIV says, ‘but put off the <b>old self.</b>’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The NRSV says, ‘Don’t lie to each other, seeing as you have stripped off
the <b>old self</b>.’ And so far as I can tell, the Kiswahili translation that
I looked at does the same thing<i>:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i></span><sup><a href="https://biblehub.com/multi/colossians/3-9.htm"><b><i><span style="background: white; color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-color-alt: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">9</span></i></b></a></sup><i><span style="background: white; color: #001320; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";">Msiambiane
uongo, kwani ninyi mmekwisha vua ule utu wa kale pamoja na matendo yake yote, </span></i><sup><a href="https://biblehub.com/multi/colossians/3-10.htm"><b><i><span style="background: white; color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-color-alt: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">10</span></i></b></a></sup><i><span style="background: white; color: #001320; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";">mkavaa
utu mpya…</span></i><span style="background: white; color: #001320; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"> <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>-take off the <b>old
personality</b> and put on the <b>new self</b>.</span><span style="background: white; color: #001320;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background: white; color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">But none of these translations does Paul justice. The word
Paul uses is </span><b><span style="background: white; color: #001320; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif;">ἄ</span></b><b><span style="background: white; color: #001320; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif;">νθρωπον</span></b><span style="background: white; color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">, and when there isn’t a foreign
ideology getting in the way, </span><b><span style="background: white; color: #001320; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif;">ἄ</span></b><b><span style="background: white; color: #001320; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif;">νθρωπον</span></b><span style="background: white; color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"> is normally translated ‘man.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Orthodox Study Bible gets this right, as
does the New King James translation. And people of good will acknowledge that
while the Greek word </span><b><span style="background: white; color: #001320; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif;">ἄ</span></b><b><span style="background: white; color: #001320; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif;">νθρωπος</span></b><span style="background: white; color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"> can mean man as opposed to a woman,
it can also have a generic meaning. The same way the English ‘man’ and ‘men’ were
used as a way of saying a human being or human beings for hundreds of years
until ideologues said that using a word like ‘man’ to refer to women as well is
sexist. And even more so today when using the word ‘man’ to mean what everybody
at all times has always understood the word ‘man’ to mean, one is warned to
avoid it as it might just trigger some poor soul who might look like a man but
who identifies as a woman, and visa versa. This is nuts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is a complete and unnecessarily and
ideologically driven hijacking of our language. When Paul uses</span><b><span style="background: white; color: #001320; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif;"> ἄ</span></b><b><span style="background: white; color: #001320; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif;">νθρωπον</span></b><span style="background: white; color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"> here, he isn’t intending
any gender orientation at all. Paul means our essential identity as <i>human
beings</i>. Or rather, what our essential identity has become as a result of
our rebellion against God, as a result of our sin. It is a serious mistake to
read back into what Paul is saying the current </span>drama over sexism and
identity politics. Those were not the issues of the first century Roman world,
and it is self-centered and ignorant ethnocentrism and anachronistic to try and
convict Paul of 20<sup>th</sup> century Western identity crimes that were not
crimes in his day.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: medium;">But Paul is saying something powerful about identity. And
he is providing an antidote to our own identity crises. But we are in grave
danger of ignoring it. If you are a Christian, says Paul, then it wasn’t just
Jesus who died on the cross. <i>You died with him</i>. That part of you, that
essence of who you are in rebellion against God, that old man and that old
woman that was like Adam and Eve was put to death, your sin was executed with
Jesus on the cross. That is the underlying foundation of our life as a
Christian. And now Paul wants you and me to understand what this means. If our
rebellion, if our sin has been put to death, then who we are and what we do
needs to conform to that reality. Our identity needs to match who we are. What
we do needs to match our identity. Our behavior needs to reflect our hearts. And
so, Paul says, <i>‘Put to death everything in you that reflects your old
earthly life that has been in rebellion against God.’</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You can’t put it any stronger than that. Whatever
is not of Christ, <i>Kill it</i>, says Paul. This includes fornication (which
means all sex outside of marriage), uncleanness, passion, evil desire and
covetousness, which is idolatry. And Paul is deadly serious. He says, if you
insist on doing these things, then God’s wrath is coming <i>for you</i>! But he
doesn’t stop there. He changes metaphors and says that if you are still <i>wearing</i>
anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, bad language, if you are someone who lies to
other people – if you are still dressed in these things, then take off those
dirty clothes. Christians who look like that, who smell like that, who behave
like that are no different that the people of the world. And that is the
identity that you are reflecting, that you are living when you choose to do
these things. That’s the life of those who are of the world, those who are
controlled by the old man that is still in rebellion against God. Take all of
that off, says God. You declare to everyone with eyes to see who you really are,
if you are still dressed with these sorts of ugly clothes, if you are still
behaving in these ways.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Your pious
pretense may fool your neighbors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It
doesn’t fool God.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: medium;">Instead, says Paul, put on Christ. Put on the new man,
the new creation. Paul says, become what you were created to be, created in the
image of God and now restored in Christ to be that image, to be like Christ. Because
when we put on Christ, when we become the new man, the new creation, the way we
live conforms to the new reality. We see ourselves as Christ sees us. We see
our neighbor as Christ sees him and her. We see our money and property and
things as Christ views them and we choose to use what God has given us for <i>his</i>
purposes and for <i>his</i> glory. And when one is in Christ, when one by the
Holy Spirit is transformed into what we were created to be, then all human
differences fall away. The only identity that matters is Christ. There is no
longer any Greek or Jew, no barbarian, no unclean, no slave or free, no male or
female, but everywhere we look we see Christ. And everywhere we look, we can
only love as we have been loved.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: medium;">The current identity and anti racism ideologies are
working very hard to rebuild walls between people based on identity and based
on race. Human beings are prone to tribalism, and tribalism has ruinous effects
wherever it gets the upper hand. These people are desperate for acceptance, and
they want everybody to validate their choices with respect to identity or
behavior, however perverse those choices may be. And they are successfully
dismantling the morality that has governed the West since Roman times, just so
they can justify themselves and their choices to do what they want to do. But
they are building a moral house, an ideological house without foundations. This
new ideology with its sexual identity – based morality will be swept away as
quickly as it appeared, as there is nothing but intimidation keeping it in
place. And these people will be exposed as the cultural frauds they are, and
even worse, as having led innocent and vulnerable children to destroy their
lives, not to mention having destroyed the lives of men and women who had the
courage to stand against them and their pernicious ideology.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: medium;">In the meantime, it gives you and me the opportunity to
discover what really motivates us, to discover what our identity really
is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And that means making choices.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We will all be making choices right now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And understand, to do nothing is to make a
choice, as well. Have you been crucified with Christ? Are you putting off the
old man with its desires and behaviors? Are you putting on the new man,
becoming the new creation, becoming like Christ? That, really, is the issue for
you and me today.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: medium;">Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy
Spirit. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: medium;">A sermon preached on Sunday, January 21, 2024, at Sts.
Cosmas and Damianos Orthodox Cathedral in Nairobi, Kenya.</span><o:p></o:p></p>Bill Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11939888013962360542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4368898415238503632.post-16661881583087387582024-01-05T20:07:00.018+03:002024-01-13T21:04:24.272+03:00It's Not My Damn Fault!<p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh03p_IXq2VrObT3_VCvV7zmNfTpo1sOhcj3faX3wMXo2vhhiGc5TlVXvNKNiUpIIcuD7y1lTBKnl8JY3fZCCVQdOioQqOxWe6LVoQ6d1J9YGxbp1NRyrNYAlulTqg52NfKnFdPpuYA_vFqqk593t31l21w8md4aR91_YOSyUmwOKOsk0zdnJffjhsL8Uk/s1280/expulsion-adam-eve-from-garden-icon-008389__47156.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="893" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh03p_IXq2VrObT3_VCvV7zmNfTpo1sOhcj3faX3wMXo2vhhiGc5TlVXvNKNiUpIIcuD7y1lTBKnl8JY3fZCCVQdOioQqOxWe6LVoQ6d1J9YGxbp1NRyrNYAlulTqg52NfKnFdPpuYA_vFqqk593t31l21w8md4aR91_YOSyUmwOKOsk0zdnJffjhsL8Uk/w446-h640/expulsion-adam-eve-from-garden-icon-008389__47156.jpg" width="446" /></a></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise</span></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">It’s always been around, this pathology, this inability to
take responsibility for what one has done or said. Our first parents in Eden’s
Garden could not bear to look God in the eye when asked where they were and who
told them they were naked? Adam blamed Eve. Eve blamed the serpent. And so it
has gone. Their children learned the lesson well. ‘Where is your brother?’ God asks
Cain. The answer is a dodge. ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not my issue. Not my concern. But it was,
according to the One who brought both boys, both men into being.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">For centuries, Christianity, in those places where it was
dominant, constructed a moral wall around behavior, both individual and
corporate. It was a boundary different than that of the Judaism that preceded
it, and unique among the Gentile cultures of the world. People understood what
was right and what was wrong, and why. There were plenty of hypocrites, plenty
of examples of individuals and cultures making terrible choices. But the
measuring stick remained – people knew that they had chosen the wrong and not
the right, however they might wish to damn the consequences.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">In the old construct, both right and wrong choices carried
consequences, some moral, some legal, some both. Some consequences were immediate, others took root deep in a
person’s heart (or a culture’s psyche), only to emerge later as character or of
a will bent towards evil/wrong choices/addiction/prejudice/anger. But since
everyone made choices to lay to the side God’s will and choose one’s own, there
was felt a profound, universal need for escape from the consequences of one’s
choice, to escape the quicksand of the soul-destroying consequences of our
cumulative preferences for evil. Christianity provided that salvation – a savior
who as a human being demonstrated a human life rightly lived and as God
Incarnate made a way for sins to be forgiven, for reconciliation to take place
between a person and God, and a person and his/her neighbor. The Savior
revealed our true vocation (which is what salvation is), which is to become
like God, and enabled it to become a reality. And all of this is predicated on
you and me acknowledging what we have done to ourselves, to our neighbor, to
God, and turning away from the destructive choices and ‘putting on Christ’ and
His ways instead. In a word, repentance.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">There is a lot of dust thrown in the air about Christianity (and always has been by its cultured critics),
questions about the historicity of Jesus, questions about the impossibility of
the Virgin Birth, of miracles, of a crucifixion being salvific, of the possibility
of a resurrection from the dead, about the Trinity, etc., etc. There have
always been answers for these questions for those who were genuine in seeking
them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I suspect the real offense of Christianity,
however, is the requirement that those who turn to God do so in repentance. This
means acknowledging my fault, my need, my wrong doing, the hurt and destruction
I have caused in my relationships. God cannot forgive those who have no need of
forgiveness. There will be no holy, sinless people in the New Jerusalem; the
only ones there will be forgiven sinners. By this I mean only sinners who have
owned their sin, cried out for a Savior, and found reconciliation and forgiveness
in Christ. It will be these who will be forgiven, who will be set free from their
bondage to self-centeredness and passions, who will be made holy, made like
Christ by the work of the Holy Spirit.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">But it must be part of our makeup as fallen men and women
that there are so few people willing to acknowledge their need, to take steps
of owning their wrongdoing, so seek to undo the damage they caused by going to
the one or the ones they have hurt or offended and owning their behavior and
asking forgiveness and seeking to be reconciled. Evidently this is one of the hardest
things for a human being to attempt. And especially in churches. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">In too many churches there is a pernicious doctrine, either
taught by the leadership or assumed by the members, that once you have been ‘saved,’
that there is really no need for any other repentance. Part of it has to do
with the fact that a recognition of ongoing wrongdoing in a person’s life puts
the lie to the chirpy claim that ‘I have been saved.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Saved people don’t sin, evidently. The
problem is that these people, and that would be almost all of them filling so
many churches today, continue to be moral trainwrecks in how they are treating
other people, in how they carefully cultivate their acceptable idols of prosperity,
blessing and self-centered experience. At some point, reality must intrude and
give the lie to the soteriology so blithely and mistakenly professed by the
great majority of so-called Christians. The resulting hypocrisy makes a mockery
of these Christians and their churches – are they the only ones who are blind
to the discrepancy between what they claim and who they are? Others hold on to
cherished postures of anger or enmity against another and cover it up by a
blizzard of Christian virtue signals, so that no one would ever suspect the
black core of their hearts. The result is the same, a hypocrisy that threatens
to sear the hearts of those attempting this double-speak so that they can no
longer hear or understand what God’s love means. In all of these cases, the core
issue is an inability to take responsibility for one’s own behavior, for one’s
own words. And if you listen carefully to the rhetoric, you will discover that
it is always someone else’s fault. Always. They thought of being outed for what
we are just slays us.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">This may be a grave problem in our present Christian
sub-cultures, but in the wider world in which we find ourselves, we see all
around us the reality and the consequences of the moral free fall that occurs
when lives and cultures are untethered from Christian constraints. In just the
events of this past week, the now former president of Harvard, a ‘Dr.’ Claudine
Gay , was revealed to have committed plagiarism on an industrial scale on nearly
half of her published work, including her Ph.D. thesis </span><span style="font-size: medium;">(I put Dr. in quotes because had I plagiarized any part of my PhD thesis at Cambridge, I would have been dismissed from both my viva and my program without being awarded a PhD).</span><span style="font-size: medium;"> This was on top of her
very public (at a Congressional hearing) prevarication as to whether demands
for the extermination of Jews during student-led demonstrations on Harvard’s
campus constituted a breach of Harvard’s disciplinary policy. Her answer, ‘It depends
on the context’ should be a wakeup call to anybody who until now has resisted
acknowledging the serious trouble our culture is in in its present
post-Christian, identity ideologies-driven expression. After a drumbeat of revelations of both academic
mediocrity and scholarly offenses, Dr. Gay resigned. But in her ‘resignation
letter’ and in several published defenses both by her and members of the
Harvard board and other luminaries among the so-called ‘anti-racism’ crowd, has
Dr. Gay or her supporters acknowledged any wrongdoing? Have there been any
apologies to Harvard’s Jewish community? Instead, she has been at pains to
downplay any ‘misattribution of sources.’ she may have inadvertently done.</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span>And instead she has, without producing any evidence, blamed the whole
affair on racism. In other words, she is the victim, and she has wrapped
herself in the cloak of victimhood and martyrdom. Conservative white people are the villains. Please.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">I am a professor who has taught theology, history and
biblical studies at several East African graduate schools and universities. I helped establish the PhD program at St. Paul's University in Kenya. My
colleagues and I have worked hard to maintain academic standards, even here in
far-away East Africa. Even so, many of our students are constantly looking for
shortcuts, trying to get around doing assignments or writing papers. They want
the credentials without having done the hard work to earn them. As a result, we
have a terrible time with students who insist on turning in written assignments
that are not their work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead, they
download from the internet sentences, paragraphs and even entire articles and
presented them as if this is their work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This is what plagiarism is. And the reason it is wrong is two-fold. First,
one is stealing work that someone else has worked hard to produce without giving credit to that
person in the recognized and appropriate manner (i.e., footnotes and bibliography). All scholarly writing makes use of other people’s work. But the way to do
so legitimately is to give credit to the author from whom one is borrowing, be it either their words or their ideas. This is what all scholars do. To take another’s work without
proper attribution is to steal another’s work; it makes one a thief. That is
the first reason plagiarism is wrong. The second reason plagiarism is wrong is
because when I take someone’s work without properly citing them as the source
of the words or ideas, I am then presenting those words and ideas as if they
are my own. This is lying. They are not my words. I am misleading the reader
into thinking I am something that I am not. This is why plagiarism is so
serious in the academic community. At the university where my daughters attended,
all students had to sign an ‘Honor Code,’ part of which was a pledge not to
engage in plagiarism. And the consequence of being caught plagiarizing one’s
work was <i>expulsion</i> from the university. It is that serious. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">So now, listening
to Dr. Gay’s supporters say either that ‘misattribution’ is not really that
serious, or that the issue can’t be so piddly as plagiarism, there must be some nefarious ‘conservative,’
‘racist’ plot ‘to overturn the settled pillars of our society,’ these people
simply reveal that they are blindly driven by ideological commitments and not by
reality. They cannot see (or cannot acknowledge) that they themselves have
replaced with their own half-cocked, self-serving anti-racism and identity
ideologies the actual ‘settled pillars of Western society,’ i.e., Christian morality and theological assumptions that ruled our society for centuries. But really, it reveals that Dr. Gay and
her crew on the Harvard Board and the constellation of woke supporters simply
cannot take responsibility for their actions, for their behavior. <i>They cannot
be wrong.</i> <i>It must be someone else’s fault. </i>And the current whipping boy (to use a
slavery metaphor intentionally) are all those ‘far right conservatives,’ those ‘right
wing extremists’ who are ignorantly resisting their program of social change (diversity, equity, inclusion), social 'justice' and control.
In other words, anybody who disagrees with her/them. It is a convenient way of
looking at reality. One never needs to take responsibility for anything one
does. One can always blame one’s enemies. Which means one never has to change.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">The self-righteousness of these people is insufferable. There is no one to hold them to account. They have displaced anyone who disagrees with the anti-racism and identity agendas with 'yes men' who look, think and talk like themselves. Absence of accountability is also a consequence of an ongoing cultural coup that has seen control of Western culture's means of controlling discourse - i.e. the media, entertainment, education, the military, and government - transformed into mere echo chambers and cheerleaders for the new regime, mindlessly approving whatever identity diktats these people thunder from their self-constructed Mount Olympus. I have scanned the media in vain for any balanced critique of
the real issues facing academia. It doesn't exist, with the rarest of exceptions. And those that dare affront the movement are immediately excoriated, dogpiled and canceled. In the case of Harvard's leadership fiasco, the media have almost all lined up to
scapegoat ‘conservatives’ as responsible for the mess, as if it is a conservative’s fault that Dr. Gay said
what she said before the Congressional committee. As if it is a conservative’s
fault that Dr. Gay is a serial plagiarist (i.e., an academic thief and liar)
who reached her exalted position not because she earned it but because she was
seen as a virtue-signaling choice by the woke board of Harvard. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">But Dr. Gay has
done the very same thing that many of my students here in Kenya and Ethiopia choose to do – she plagiarized
her work. Plagiarism doesn't just happen. Someone doesn't do plagiarism to you. She chose to do it. Repeatedly. She has brought all of this on her own head. Evidently the grandees of Harvard have ceased caring about issues such as academic integrity and actual inclusion and diversity (is there anybody remaining on Harvard's faculty who dares not bow the knee to the recently erected antiracism and identity idols?) But real academics (and we still exist) are appalled at what has been revealed, as it gives a bad reputation to actual scholarship and allows people who do not deserve advancement because of the absence of merit (or the absence of good character) to attain positions unjustly and without deserving. My
students who get caught committing plagiarizing fail their assignment, fail
their course or fail their dissertation. Dr. Gay, the former president of
Harvard, who has made a practice of academic plagiarism, gets to keep her $900,000/year Harvard faculty position, and is applauded for standing in the face of adversity. If Dr. Gay is a martyr, it is to her own hubris. She and her crowd have stuck with their ruinous ideology. But there is no glory for believing a lie, however sincerely. My
plagiarizing East African students are not stupid. They will all want to go to
Harvard where no one like me will hold them to account and where they too can be
richly rewarded for their trouble. Can nobody else see how sick this is? It
will not go well for her, the entrenched plagiarizer Dr. Gay, for the board, for American academia if they continue
to run from reality and play these sorts of games.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">I mean to use Dr. Gay as an example of the wider culture’s
inability to take responsibility for their own words, their own actions. She is merely a symptom, an example, of the rampant pride that has plagued humanity from the
beginning. Thinking that I know best, deflecting blame, resisting
responsibility, thinking that cutting corners is allowed if it's in the service of the ideology, enthroning self in the kingdom of what I can control,
worshipping the idol of ideology rather than the living God. There are other
factors surely at play, but this is one of, if not the primary source for all
the drama we see being played out in our lives, in our world, in our
culture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One would think with all the
object lessons of disaster walking around that we would learn our lesson and want
something different. But alas, we are revealed to be not very smart.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">But students and scholars still choose to plagiarize. Wives
still choose not to love their husbands. Husbands still choose to disrespect their
wives. Brothers still choose to murder their sibling. Thieves still choose to
steal what is not theirs. Police still insist on taking bribes. Alcoholics
continue to drink. Liars continue to lie. And everybody finds a way to make it
someone else’s fault.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">The God of Christianity can work with someone who is willing
to own their responsibility, to acknowledge their need for a savior. But
nothing can be done if you don’t want to change.</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPQOJ2tHFkZS22mQLBV3ReaFpIbhfv3Aq_SWmHzbAOvfd9ZQlDz6WAd5e3Ist-WXcT4r1WSpw1hyqYIrwOPbR2ggy2iIMPKBq4XlMOjFZjVtHCLpxVf3IRNdwFLoWJe0ay_ZqL1vS5LCGXwoIf0noqLHthsnvGnA9cU9hSZ_kzdKDo11LULAZKWyJ0Eo8/s1306/Christ%20rescuing%20Adam%20and%20Eve.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1306" data-original-width="832" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPQOJ2tHFkZS22mQLBV3ReaFpIbhfv3Aq_SWmHzbAOvfd9ZQlDz6WAd5e3Ist-WXcT4r1WSpw1hyqYIrwOPbR2ggy2iIMPKBq4XlMOjFZjVtHCLpxVf3IRNdwFLoWJe0ay_ZqL1vS5LCGXwoIf0noqLHthsnvGnA9cU9hSZ_kzdKDo11LULAZKWyJ0Eo8/w408-h640/Christ%20rescuing%20Adam%20and%20Eve.jpg" width="408" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Christ rescuing Adam and Eve from Hades/Sheol</div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>Bill Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11939888013962360542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4368898415238503632.post-61125382082664705702024-01-01T18:57:00.001+03:002024-01-01T18:58:50.428+03:00The Tide Comes In, the Tide Goes Out<p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjovFDzUOk4Ir3-Szirz1UBCUv98e9D_dw0WCPlr8cSI4EOLwAEIt-_liabUlbXq3mRnTdY7GBYnVLrdspX-K8plu1BREBGCrOwhQvZNO5u5DGmLiOskhLrkVIL5I00FN-2nYlPJKSIEsBX9w9Q_2yZFWFRSpyQ6HIpHd4cqBziuXyCTQCEWA-dY_58vYk/s2560/HHI%20beach.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1920" data-original-width="2560" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjovFDzUOk4Ir3-Szirz1UBCUv98e9D_dw0WCPlr8cSI4EOLwAEIt-_liabUlbXq3mRnTdY7GBYnVLrdspX-K8plu1BREBGCrOwhQvZNO5u5DGmLiOskhLrkVIL5I00FN-2nYlPJKSIEsBX9w9Q_2yZFWFRSpyQ6HIpHd4cqBziuXyCTQCEWA-dY_58vYk/w640-h480/HHI%20beach.jpg" width="640" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">Living on an Atlantic Ocean beach at different times in my
life has been instructive. There is a subtle beauty that snapshots cannot
convey. The water is never the same, sometimes rippled, sometimes disturbed,
sometimes gentle sometimes ferocious. And its colors take their cue from the
sky, sometimes the sun reflecting in ten thousand twinkles, or the brooding
grey green under thick cloud, or the sunrise happening beneath your feet, or the moving dapples of a broken sky.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">But the sand has my attention right now. In all my many journeys
back to the same stretch of coast where I first played as a boy 60 years ago,
it looks the same, as if it has never changed. But look again, <i>nothing</i>
is the same, <i>everything</i> has changed. And this is not just over the
passing years, just today, it changes, and changes again. The moon pulls the
water up like a blanket and then pulls it back down again, again and again.
Immense amounts of sand gets moved around. Pushed in, drawn out. It is only my
champion capacity for inattention that keeps this motion, this constant change
this unceasing revision hidden. It becomes obvious when I undertake to create
one of my sand castles with its imposing ramparts, with drip towers like Gaudi’s
Basilica de la Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. But my creation is not a monument
for the ages. It won’t even last the afternoon. It is only a function of
ever-rushing time before the waves creep up the beach, lay siege to my walls,
until a big one breaches the defenses and crashes over and around. One by one
the towers crumble, sand to sand, the earth reclaims its own without comment. The
massive keep puts up a stout resistance, but the incoming force, reinforced by
an entire ocean of water mindlessly heeding gravity’s call, will soon level the
entire complex. When I return in the morning, its simply gone. I made history
right there, and there is no trace that anything stood in this place other than
an expanse of sand.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">Our arbitrary measure of time decrees that a new year has
clicked into reality. And I look up and down this part of time’s beach and it
seems like nothing has changed. And I participate in the same delusion as
everyone else that what is will always be, and that I will carry on forever. But
when has this ever been the case, for our times, for our lives? Everything – <i>everything</i>
is constantly changing. What was safe and secure yesterday is suddenly upended
today. It just takes one accident, one illness, one fall, one mistake, one
enemy, and our looking glass of delusion is shattered. I pour my life into
teaching young men and women, but will anybody remember, much less care forty
years from now, or even ten years from now? I write articles and books and
poems (and blog posts) but all that effort and time leaves no trace on any life
and will be forgotten.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The castle of my
life – my vocation, my reputation, my positions, my salaries, my pension, the
things I thought important – the time is fast approaching when I will no longer
be around to manage my carefully cultivated, projected image. You will look for
me, and I will not be here anymore. And everyone who remains will be too busy with
their own images to care. Cemeteries are very lonely places.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">I speak from the perspective of having endured loss. It is a
privilege to be able to take account of one’s life now, to wrestle with ones
shortcomings and sins now, to endure the enmity and hatred of enemies now, to
experience what the world considers to be consequences now. I am not saying that
any of this is good, or that it is something that I sought out, or that I would
recommend that you experience as well. But I have been forced to have the
castle of my life, and everything that was important to me – my marriage, my
career, my reputation – rolled over by an incoming tide. And there was nothing
I could do to stop it. And as a new year starts, I look around for anything
familiar, and it’s gone. It’s all gone. Everything I was proud of, gone.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">So why does God allow such loss? Why does He sanction such
pain? I had easy answers once. The answers given smoothly by one who has never
lived, who has never been hated, who has never been a sinner. I no longer know.
I am left with crying that God’s will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">In the delusion of the moment I join with everybody in
thinking that as things are, so shall the be. But in the face of the evidence,
this is to choose insanity. Not only will things change in the coming days, and
weeks, and months, <i>everything</i> will change. Circumstances will alter,
relationships will be broken or healed, health will deteriorate or be restored,
new lives will enter the stage, while other lives will make their exit.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">And it doesn’t seem fair. We learned from our first parents
to find someone else to blame. And when has that game ever solved anything? The
fact is that after I have managed to shift the load blame on this person, that
person, and that other person, I am still myself and nothing <i>in me</i> will
have changed. The benefit of losing everything is that the luxury of blaming someone
else has been taken away as well. I am left with me. And as always, it is what
I do next that is the most important thing.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">I wish that the ‘next’ was clearer than it seems. I just
know that I have today. I have my context in which I have been set, my circle
of relationships and obligations, the few things and resources I have to manage.
This is what life is for me right now. And having gone through what I have
experienced in recent years, I know that a rogue wave could roll up the beach
and smash into even these small things.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">There is deep wisdom in the Law and the Prophets, and in
Jesus’ affirmation of their essence – what is the most important commandment? What
is the most important thing? <i>To love the Lord my God with all my heart, all
my soul, all my mind and all my strength. And to love my neighbor as myself.</i>
I know the waves will rise and crash. But if I give myself to doing these two
things, then at least when the tide rolls in and all is lost and gone, I will
have given myself to doing something important. </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlIXsQbZ6EuphyEvKvp-eAn0bg61lSC3r8rVJsYHYdLRL4f00mTIATATgmZuCzefNCObeIH03XjQG-unRVrgUvqC8LDapQ3dUrMqYWrH_j90F6W_9USBbEeB6BMau90TBAgN0-KkjqsylOYAbp4V2r2TazQTQNUVGNnRDDmIHkX58qwZC1SU6X52ZPaZ0/s1140/HHI%20beach%202.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="641" data-original-width="1140" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlIXsQbZ6EuphyEvKvp-eAn0bg61lSC3r8rVJsYHYdLRL4f00mTIATATgmZuCzefNCObeIH03XjQG-unRVrgUvqC8LDapQ3dUrMqYWrH_j90F6W_9USBbEeB6BMau90TBAgN0-KkjqsylOYAbp4V2r2TazQTQNUVGNnRDDmIHkX58qwZC1SU6X52ZPaZ0/w640-h360/HHI%20beach%202.jpeg" width="640" /></a></div><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><span style="font-size: medium;">Both pictures are taken from online and are of the beach on Hilton Head Island, SC, USA.</span><br /><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>Bill Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11939888013962360542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4368898415238503632.post-72181096223150886292023-12-23T08:50:00.001+03:002023-12-23T08:51:46.845+03:00The Hands of God<p> </p><p align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-weight: bold; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOUq3o_53QY9s66rWUgKEMJVBtbINRVEOhyOkFll1u3HcQiSbDnlv1PfwUsOtEnTrlBPL8U5TnD7oYfewq2SDxJxSpNQIhQYeyIIyvvHTKh5b0mCxQRHqb7guK3w0xRRVgc876lj7SJxCS3wkGekUzmHSgZ8I1iIgj1M5gZZ5Bq_SEozfjbIQBzdo7da8/s2048/baby.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="2048" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOUq3o_53QY9s66rWUgKEMJVBtbINRVEOhyOkFll1u3HcQiSbDnlv1PfwUsOtEnTrlBPL8U5TnD7oYfewq2SDxJxSpNQIhQYeyIIyvvHTKh5b0mCxQRHqb7guK3w0xRRVgc876lj7SJxCS3wkGekUzmHSgZ8I1iIgj1M5gZZ5Bq_SEozfjbIQBzdo7da8/w640-h400/baby.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">I wrote this a year ago. Still seems relevant today.</div><span style="font-size: 14pt; font-weight: bold;"><br /></span><p></p><p align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">The Hands of God<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;"><br /></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;">It does rather say
a lot that the best place,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;">The only place,
actually,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;">That God’s people
could come up with<o:p></o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;">When hosting God<o:p></o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;">Was the cave out
back<o:p></o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;">With the animals.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;">He’s sleeping now,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;">As his universe
expands at the speed of light.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;">His mother, just a
teenage girl, is exhausted.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;">Her betrothed,
trying to be useful, is looking for clean water.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;">In the light of
one oil lamp (provided by the establishment)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;">She sees her son,
and wonders.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;">How is it that the
One who comprehends reality now looks through infant eyes.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;">Quick tiny breaths
tie His little life to our planet.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;">This is not the
Storm of Noah, or the Brimstone of Lot,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;">Not the Fear of
Isaac, the Blast and Earthquake of Sinai, the Fury of the Maccabbees.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;">If we were made in
the image of God, now God has been made in ours.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;">How can this
be?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This baby, this wedge of God back
into His world?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;">What plan, what
saving necessitates this?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;">It’s too much, too
high.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We still don’t see.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;">Her eyes are drawn
to his five tiny fingers on each hand,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;">Clenched tight as
if holding on to heaven.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;">Hands that will
touch and heal a leper,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;">That will banish
demons from a son, raise a dead girl<o:p></o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;">And give her back
to her parents.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;">But tonight, this
human life is like every other,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;">Starting like me
and you.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;">He cannot speak,
he cannot walk,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;">He cannot feed
himself or keep himself clean.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;">Cast upon his
mother’s breast,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;">Dependent upon her
for his life.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;">But his little
pinched face, his tousled newborn hair.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;">And his
hands.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those hands.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;">Who knew the hands
of God were so small?<o:p></o:p></p>Bill Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11939888013962360542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4368898415238503632.post-83621289154820909352023-12-21T08:13:00.005+03:002023-12-21T17:26:41.044+03:00The MInor Key of Christmas<p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiz3Us33yzyIqSgSshl4seCrN5dpOyAxwXcDFJMZa9gpub5pOabSBS5cqxx6NciX260VXjG2vCKGYT_8SRbkX-5-1szIy2s5ePeUDR67LPJAtJBraqKdzQ0ACo_hv-rk95DkyquEPPRWY9niDgjXHz7hhOAqbpwSiFgPtQnfGtIeXrGPgTwsZoK-wPpDjA/s1292/Christmas%20Concerto.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1292" data-original-width="1000" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiz3Us33yzyIqSgSshl4seCrN5dpOyAxwXcDFJMZa9gpub5pOabSBS5cqxx6NciX260VXjG2vCKGYT_8SRbkX-5-1szIy2s5ePeUDR67LPJAtJBraqKdzQ0ACo_hv-rk95DkyquEPPRWY9niDgjXHz7hhOAqbpwSiFgPtQnfGtIeXrGPgTwsZoK-wPpDjA/w495-h640/Christmas%20Concerto.png" width="495" /></a></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br />
</span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">The froth, the piped-in bouncy, jingly music, the rush by
celebrities to cover Christmas favorites, the endless parties, the special
Christmas extravaganzas put on by mega churches and their wanabees, the
over-the-top efforts by merchants to see who can put up the best holiday
displays and string the most lights in the intense effort to put me in the mood to spend more money. This, evidently, is what most people, even most
Christians, seem to think Christmas is – it’s a season, it’s festivities, it's an excuse for excess, it’s
something about good will and cheer.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPY5Q1Ycwaqrt7BPNTT7B8iM9poPdW3K53FFrsrHeY_SWQYcB0ByhCtbQP6rrtnLAqDlKJf_LwAOPcsMfcCxda4ZCA0soAtKuHcGnDfWgH9yCUHE_jXG6QFCwWPvAo8_0uwLXxrz50BS7DWDN5NBMq4kGMwflXUZyjl9Ts_TwQCqNVrg59QZb52Vyyqpo/s933/Kuala%20Lumpur%20mall.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="711" data-original-width="933" height="488" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPY5Q1Ycwaqrt7BPNTT7B8iM9poPdW3K53FFrsrHeY_SWQYcB0ByhCtbQP6rrtnLAqDlKJf_LwAOPcsMfcCxda4ZCA0soAtKuHcGnDfWgH9yCUHE_jXG6QFCwWPvAo8_0uwLXxrz50BS7DWDN5NBMq4kGMwflXUZyjl9Ts_TwQCqNVrg59QZb52Vyyqpo/w640-h488/Kuala%20Lumpur%20mall.png" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">From a shopping mall in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (a predominantly Muslim nation, btw)</div><span style="font-size: medium;"><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">The Western churches still maintain the stripped-down vestiges of Advent, with Roman Catholics marking the period before Christmas as a time of preparation, and mostly liberal Protestant churches lighting an 'Advent candle' and singing a carol as their nod to Western tradition. But in the Orthodox Churches, Advent is still a major fast of the church year, second only to Lent. Forty days of a vegan fast along with an increasing number of mentions in Matins, Divine Liturgy and Vespers, all work to point the Faithful towards preparing for the coming of Emmanuel, God with us.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">Even so, much has been lost, especially in the West, where attention to revving up the 'Christmas spirit' is given priority over just about everything else. Since Halloween, shoppers have been regaled with 'Dancing Around the Christmas Tree' and other Christmas 'classics' ad nauseum. Most of them are chirpy, mindless, meant-to-evoke nostalgia blather, as if Christmas is about recreating a feeling out of our past. But music for Christmas has not always been this, how shall I say it, secular.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">If you listen to how earlier ages approached Christmas in the West, or ‘The
Nativity of Christ’ as we Orthodox call this day, there is something striking,
something disorienting (to a modern perspective) going on. And perhaps the
biggest clue that they and we are reading from different pages is the music. The
triumphalism is gone, the cringy, mawkish Victorian lyrics are gone, the rapturous join-with-the-angels
celebration is gone. Instead, the music, much of it at least, is in a minor key.
I could point to Gregorian chants from the Western tradition and to Byzantine
chants in the Eastern tradition. But even more recently, what comes to my mind is some music composed by the Italian Baroque composer Archangelo Corelli (1643-1713). Corelli composed a piece for chamber
orchestra called<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9WE4NQpb6U"> Concerto Grosso in G minor, Opus 6, Number 8, which became known as the Christmas Concerto </a>(due to the inscription ‘made for the night of
Christmas’ when it was published as part of a greater collection of concerti in
1714 after Corelli’s death). I have had the great privilege of performing this piece
with several small ensembles over the years (viola), the first time back in 1975 when
Mr. Donovan, our high school orchestra instructor and a superb cellist, left me
astonished at the exquisite beauty of Corelli’s running cello part in the allegro movement following the opening adagio. Corelli’s Concerto has been one of my favorite pieces since then.
And it is in G-minor. There is resolution, but it is not a happy song. Rather,
if you allow it, Corelli takes you by hand and leads you into a mediation on
who we as human beings are and what we as human beings have done. It is a piece
of musical theology that begins to explain why we need a Savior, and why ‘Christmas,’
‘Nativity’ was, is necessary.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">A second example is the Catholic hymn, now appropriated in
Protestant churches, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xtpJ4Q_Q-4">‘O Come, O Come Emmanuel.’</a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In the pantheon of Christian Christmas hymns or carols, this stands out,
again because it is in a resoundingly minor key (actually, it is an Advent hymn, but since most Protestants don't do Advent because of its Catholic associations, it has elided into being a Christmas carol). And the first stanza gives the
reason why and sets the theme for the rest of the piece – <i>‘O come, O come
Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel, that mourns in lowly exile here, until the
Son of God appears.’ </i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maybe one needs
to have been a captive to enter into the pathos of these words. But for the
unknown 12th-century author of this chant, it’s only after a necessary engagement with our
status as prisoners, as slaves, as captives that we can begin to see and
appreciate what God is doing by sending Emmanuel, who is God with us in the
midst of our darkness, our lostness, our death. The minor key helps to press
home this point.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">The frothy Christmas that so characterizes celebrations
around the world is not sustainable. For the simple reason that it has been
stripped of its <i>Christian</i> context and its <i>Christian</i> meaning. Furthermore,
the West, including the United States, is moving very much into a
post-Christian era, which is turning, in many places, into an anti-Christian
era. People seem to still want the celebrations, the good will and cheer, just not
the reason we might need a Savior, much less the Savior Himself. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">Christians for centuries have recognized that while Christmas is a time for tempered joy because of the good news that the Savior has come, the fact that you and I need a savior, the fact that this world desperately needs saving, is what has always added sorrow to our joy. Our world is a place where people do terrible things to each other. Our world is a place where we have done terrible things to others, and others have done terrible things to us. It is for this reason that Advent, in the Western churches, was a time of repentance in preparation for the coming of the one who would save his people from their sins. And in the Eastern Church, it still is a time of repentance. And I don't know about you, but I repent, I go to confession, I come back to God, in a minor key.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">If western Christians become a despised minority (like they are in northern Nigeria or central India, for example), then the minor key
of Christmas will make more sense. We will begin to reclaim our heritage of
being witnesses in a hostile culture, of being lights shining in actual
darkness, of experiencing what it meant in Jesus’ day to deny oneself, to pick
up one’s cross and follow Him, of being men and women and children noted for
their willingness to suffer for the sake of Christ, of joining the many, many
who have gone before us, who have lost all, including their lives, for the sake
of gaining the Kingdom.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to
listen, actually <i>listen</i> to Christmas music and see if there are any in a
minor key. And when you find one, see what the words are. I am willing to wager
that it is there that you will come closest to finding the true meaning of Christmas.</span><o:p></o:p></p>Bill Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11939888013962360542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4368898415238503632.post-53606001379966581512023-12-10T16:32:00.002+03:002023-12-10T16:32:55.775+03:00'That You May Be Able To Stand'<p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh96UyJ_O00s_ltcMyz9nTA-xLrd1JXhB4k_xWtSuCSZSdq7D2N7vBGEVdxTH8Rj4kR6YZ5ngr7LYrmoinmCAajaMSmGcBDPeE1uiY0Hij348aSgxs9Sfac9szZ5xvKH0MefAWLhIhtRnDn2w-sl883KvwBbEPK_5HD9ZnO9WEYH8BdXuoSa3jxRW44-tI/s736/War%20in%20the%20Pacific.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="579" data-original-width="736" height="504" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh96UyJ_O00s_ltcMyz9nTA-xLrd1JXhB4k_xWtSuCSZSdq7D2N7vBGEVdxTH8Rj4kR6YZ5ngr7LYrmoinmCAajaMSmGcBDPeE1uiY0Hij348aSgxs9Sfac9szZ5xvKH0MefAWLhIhtRnDn2w-sl883KvwBbEPK_5HD9ZnO9WEYH8BdXuoSa3jxRW44-tI/w640-h504/War%20in%20the%20Pacific.jpg" width="640" /></a></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;">War is Terrible - Americans attempting to take an island from the Japanese in WW2</span></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #131516; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-ligatures: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #131516; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-ligatures: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The reading is from St. Paul's Letter to the <b>Ephesians
6:10-17</b><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><span style="color: #131516; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-ligatures: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of
his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against
the wiles of the devil. For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but
against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of
this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the
heavenly places. Therefore take the whole armor of God, that you may be able to
withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand, therefore,
having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of
righteousness, and having shod your feet with the equipment of the gospel of
peace; besides all these, taking the shield of faith, with which you can quench
all the flaming darts of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation, and
the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><span style="color: #131516; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-ligatures: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: white; color: #131516; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="font-size: medium;">When I first came to Kenya back in
June of 1980, I observed many wonderful things about the country I was
visiting. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I saw one thing in
particular here, there and everywhere that was so very different from where I
come from that I was shocked – what do you think it was?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was the walls.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Almost everybody has walls around their house
in Kenya.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rich people have fancy walls
around their house, and even many poorer people have <i>mabati</i> walls around their
house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And since then, I have watched
these walls in Kenya evolve.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Back in
1980, the main technology used was broken glass embedded in concrete along the
top of the wall.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And then, people
started adding barbed wire to the top.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And then people replaced the barbed wire with coils of razor wire.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And now, in wealthy neighborhoods you know
what they are using?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On top of the wall
is an electric fence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: white; color: #131516; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="font-size: medium;">Where I come from, we don’t do
walls.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You can walk straight from the
street across a lawn right up to front door of the house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so since you my Kenyan friends have a
long history of building walls, I thought that you might be in a position to
tell me why Kenyans put walls around the places where they live?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So why so many walls?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course because people would just come and
take our stuff.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I lived in Kisumu,
I stayed in a house that had walls but no glass, no razor wire, no electric
fence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And even though there was a wall,
someone still climbed over it and stole my garden tools.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A fierce dog might help, but I didn’t have
one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I thought about putting a sign on
my gate that said <i>‘Kuku Kali!’</i>, but I have a feeling that no one would take me
seriously. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: white; color: #131516; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="font-size: medium;">So would you say that we have walls
because we need them?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because we would
be vulnerable to people who prey upon the defenseless?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My point with this is, look at what we do
when we feel threatened or vulnerable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We do something about it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So that
someone doesn’t take advantage of us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So
that something bad doesn’t happen to us.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: white; color: #131516; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="font-size: medium;">When we come to the end of Paul’s
letter to the church in Ephesus, Paul brings his message to the Christians
there to a climax by describing a time of war.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There is an enemy out there, and that enemy intends to do terrible
things to you if he is allowed to win and take over.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So what are you going to do?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Pretend that nothing is going on?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Carry on with your life and your affairs as
if only other people are affected but not you?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>No, you are going to defend your town, your home, your family.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You are going to do whatever you can to stop
the enemy from defeating you, from destroying you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You are going to take up arms and fight with
everything you have.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because look at
what happens when we let the enemy take over.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: white; color: #131516; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="font-size: medium;">Paul is using the most serious, the
scariest metaphor he can to wake us up to our peril as a church and as a
Christian in this world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A Roman soldier
was the most feared weapon that existed in the Mediterranean world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And when a thousand of them fought as a
legion, nothing could stop them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They
conquered everything from Hadrian’s Wall in Yorkshire to Babylon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you saw a legion of Roman soldiers
marching over the hill, your best advice was to run in the opposite direction,
because if they caught you it would not end well.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: white; color: #131516; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQsa8iq3vpNYMFGcbDajNJ881XBvgRu2EchIr0umvXsJTmj3O8OqJj0fNBtwc_k0tkrZGi-vOMoXtZRg5QbjMOYWnPVgJcTHtnhq5_LDv0mAOVb5SmptOE0DzzHMKr8aY709Yz5ECiVPuNfbw0qKllJRmYqxMoCXYn7YgDiMnllujkFnJZ4YVEdQkEdfM/s841/Armor%20of%20God.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="841" data-original-width="736" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQsa8iq3vpNYMFGcbDajNJ881XBvgRu2EchIr0umvXsJTmj3O8OqJj0fNBtwc_k0tkrZGi-vOMoXtZRg5QbjMOYWnPVgJcTHtnhq5_LDv0mAOVb5SmptOE0DzzHMKr8aY709Yz5ECiVPuNfbw0qKllJRmYqxMoCXYn7YgDiMnllujkFnJZ4YVEdQkEdfM/w560-h640/Armor%20of%20God.jpg" width="560" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background: white; color: #131516; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><br /></span></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background: white; color: #131516; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";">C</span></span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #131516; font-size: large;">ontrast this with the many lessons
children are taught in Sunday School or Vacation Bible School about putting on
the full armor of God. There are
pictures of friendly-looking Roman soldiers to cut out and color, or you can
take up a lot of time making toy swords or helmets, or going into detail
talking about breastplates of righteousness and gospel shoes. Don’t misunderstand me, these things are not</span><span style="font-size: large;">
wrong <i>per se</i>, but they miss the point of what Paul is trying to
say. They miss his urgency. They give the impression that spiritual
warfare is something kind and gentle, that you can perhaps discuss with a bunch
of emojis. Paul is not telling us to
play dress up. Instead, we are in the
middle of a war. And war is terrible.
There is great danger, there are awful casualties. The enemy is a real enemy. And our enemy’s strategy has already been
used successfully to undermine and overthrow many. And now that enemy is coming for you and
coming for me. And he doesn’t play games
and he doesn’t play nice.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">All you and I need to do is
look around us this morning and you will see the truth of what Paul is trying
to say.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some of us have been overwhelmed
by the battle and we have been badly wounded.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Some of us have had our marriages destroyed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maybe a wife did not keep her vow to love her
husband.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maybe a husband was abusive
towards his wife.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some of us trusted a
friend or a colleague and had them break that trust in a terrible and painful
way by gossip and slander.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maybe a
friend asked for a loan, and we gave even though we ourselves didn’t have much,
and then that so-called friend took our money and never paid it back.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some of us have been falsely accused and we
have lost our reputations and our jobs and been forced to defend ourselves in
court.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some of us have been abandoned by
friends and family.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And as bad as these
things can be, sometimes the enemy uses the church to do his worst work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">Before I became Orthodox, I
was the senior pastor of a mega church in Addis Ababa.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of the elders didn’t like me, and he
persuaded the rest of the leaders that I needed to go.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He whispered lies about me and made all sorts
of accusations, none of which bore any resemblance to reality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once I realized that I could no longer lead
our leadership team, I resigned.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
then the elder who had orchestrated all this <i>erased</i> me from the church,
as if I had never been there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was
there doing what I always did one Sunday, preaching and leading worship, and
then the next week I was gone, and nobody said anything.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was months before anybody from the church
came and asked, ‘What happened to you?’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>When I told them, they couldn’t believe it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And they did nothing about it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I felt abandoned, betrayed, hurt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And these were men and women that I thought
were my brothers and sisters in Christ.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I thought we were on the same page, on the same side in this mission for
the Kingdom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But when the enemy starts working
on the inside of a church to destroy that church’s mission and integrity, it’s
the one who gets thrown away that suffers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But in the power of manipulative leaders the people suffer, too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the suffering can be great.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">So what are we supposed to
do?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hurt those who hurt us?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Get revenge and get even?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If we do that, then we simply demonstrate
that we ourselves are no longer on the Lord’s side.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We have adopted the strategies and tactics of
the world, of the enemy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We start doing
the devil’s work, and the devil will happily use us to cause even more damage
and mayhem, and then when he is done using you he will just throw you away like
so much garbage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because his goal is to
blind you to the reality of who Christ is and what Christ is doing, the devil’s
goal is to destroy you, and to cut you off from God.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">If you look at modern armies
today, you will notice that nobody goes into battle with cannons shooting
cannonballs at the enemy like they did 160 years ago, or with muskets loaded
with ball and powder.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead, weapons
have evolved and so defenses have had to evolve.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of the reasons that the American Civil
War in the 1860s was so bloody is that both sides were using an offensive
attack strategy that had been inherited from the British and used for the past
100 years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But advances in rifles meant
a soldier no longer had to wait two minutes after firing a shot while he
reloaded for the next shot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He could
fire repeated rounds without pausing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This is also when the Gatling gun appeared, the precursor to the machine
gun.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And as a result, entrenched
soldiers defending a position and armed with these new weapons just slaughtered
attackers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not surprisingly, there were
often thousands of casualties after each battle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sometimes as many as ten thousand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sometimes twenty thousand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>War is terrible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And for those fighting it, it is kill or be
killed, it is bloody madness.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">We are used to hearing about
truth and faith and righteousness, about the gospel and salvation and the Holy
Spirit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But here in our passage, Paul
weaponizes these truths, these realities, and applies them to the fight that
each one of us is facing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And he
translates them into the warfare of his day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Armor is meant to protect the parts of us that are vulnerable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And Paul says let the truth protect your
vulnerable parts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Every man here knows
that if you get hit below the belt, that’s it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Your done.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s nothing more
you can do even if you wanted to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so
we wear the protective gear of truth so that the lies of the enemy don’t knock
us down.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">If you want to kill somebody,
one of the quickest ways is to send an arrow into his heart.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so Paul urges us to put on the
breastplate of righteousness to protect our hearts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The only problem is, none of us is
righteous.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So whose righteousness is he
talking about?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s talking about <i>Jesus’</i>
righteousness, and it is a righteousness that Jesus gives to each of us when we
turn to him in repentance and faith.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We
are given right-standing in our relationship with God because of Jesus’ death
on the cross for us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And because it is
Jesus’ righteousness, none of the enemy’s weapons can pierce it.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">And if you are fighting on a
battlefield, you need to be able to maneuver.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>If you are barefoot, that’s going to be a problem, because battlefields
are full of debris and stones and thorny plants. There's blood and broken bodies everywhere.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ever stub your toe?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ever step on a thorn?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ever twist your ankle?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We need something on our feet, and Paul’s
solution is the gospel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When we know the
gospel, when we know what God is doing in this world and with our lives, it’s
like having a pair of sturdy boots that enable us to concentrate not on our
feet or the ground in front of us but to see the bigger strategy that God is
using to defeat the enemy, and that strategy is the good news about Jesus.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">But Paul also knew that a
Roman battle is not fought at a distance, but close up, hand to hand, with
swords and spears and daggers and clubs and axes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And if we run to face an enemy armed to the
teeth with these weapons, we will last as long as it takes for one thrust of a
sword to do its work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And just like
soldiers need protection and carried shields into battle, so Paul says we too
need to carry a shield into our battle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And that shield, says Paul, is faith.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And by faith, Paul means that we trust that God is who he says he is,
that God is saving us by means of Christ and the gospel, and that God’s truth
will prevail and he will accomplish his will and will win the battle and the
war.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If this is what you believe, then
nothing will push you off balance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>None
of the enemy’s weapons will find their mark.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">There’s another piece that you
need if you are going to fight this battle, says Paul.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You need a helmet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And that helmet for us is our salvation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For us Orthodox, salvation is not a
transaction, it is a relationship.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
Christ has reconciled us to God and to each other through his cross.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And Christ has risen from the dead, defeating
what Paul says is the final enemy, death itself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so we are now in the process of becoming
what God created us to be and what God is calling us to be in Christ.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These relationships of love with God and with
our neighbor, this is what our lives are about now, this is what we are growing
into more and more, this is what salvation is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And no one can take these relationships, this salvation from us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you have this, then you will prevail.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because salvation is God’s work, and what God
has begun in your life he will see to completion.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">The last piece of equipment
that Paul says we must receive from the Lord is the sword of the Spirit which
is the Word of God.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you know God’s Word,
then you can face the enemy in battle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>If you are ignorant of the Word, if you don’t read the Word, or listen
when it is preached, then you have robbed yourself of the one sufficient
powerful weapon that God has provided for you as you go into battle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am teaching courses in how to read and
interpret the Bible at the Seminary.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
asked my students if anyone had ever read the Bible all the way through.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>None of them had. I asked them if anyone had
ever read a gospel all the way through.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>None of them had.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These are the
future leaders of our church, and unless they make some changes, they are going
into a life of ministry ignorant of God’s word.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This does not inspire confidence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And what about you?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Has anybody
every read the Bible all the way through?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Has anybody every read a gospel all the way through?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You are in the midst of the battle that will
define your life, and if you don’t know the Word, you might as well cut off
your right leg and your right arm and gouge out your right eye.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How can you expect anything but slaughter if you
are ignorant of God and his ways?</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">Paul is not talking to people
he didn’t know.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He lived in Ephesus for
several years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He founded the church
there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so he knows all of the
individuals and families by face and by name.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And he knows that we are in a war.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And that war is terrible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so
he says: </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><span style="color: #131516; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-ligatures: none;">Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to
stand against the wiles of the devil. For we are not contending against flesh
and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the
world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of
wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take the whole armor of God, that
you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. </span></i><span style="color: #131516; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-ligatures: none;">(Ephesians 6:11-13)<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #131516; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-ligatures: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Look around us, and look at<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>your own heart and your own life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It doesn’t take a prophet to observe that the
enemy is having his way with so many of us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And I need to tell you with as much love and urgency that I have:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>Wake up!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>For God’s sake, for your sake, Wake Up!</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We are at war.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the battle is raging.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And we are in the middle of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the enemy is evil and will do whatever he
can to take you down and destroy you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Paul is telling us to <i>fight</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>To take everything that God is giving us and to stand against the enemy.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #131516; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-ligatures: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">So my last question is, how is the battle going?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How can we as a church mobilize to help our
casualties?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What of the armor that God
is giving you do you need to reach out and receive from His hand and put to use
today?</span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #131516; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-ligatures: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #131516; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-ligatures: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">A sermon preached this morning, December 10, 2023, at Sts. Cosmas and Damian Orthodox Cathedral in Nairobi.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #131516; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-ligatures: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #131516; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-ligatures: none;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhq5K48VbJV6OFh1P4nCInsLuJFpJTaTW6lzPVFbtQj2AQzjzZGIbpQ05knyq9Nj1GzLFAnyqI-rVnvKEkWieoNdycflcoCiEthK2APjLvJqSXtHkI2KbatGy5SQg7UN1EG4qG4G90fH2o728HHBTJ1yKh-Ahrza-pYjdRPARctrWmkIC56LUCbICMGObw/s4608/12-10-2023%20Preaching%201.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3456" data-original-width="4608" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhq5K48VbJV6OFh1P4nCInsLuJFpJTaTW6lzPVFbtQj2AQzjzZGIbpQ05knyq9Nj1GzLFAnyqI-rVnvKEkWieoNdycflcoCiEthK2APjLvJqSXtHkI2KbatGy5SQg7UN1EG4qG4G90fH2o728HHBTJ1yKh-Ahrza-pYjdRPARctrWmkIC56LUCbICMGObw/w400-h300/12-10-2023%20Preaching%201.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>Bill Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11939888013962360542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4368898415238503632.post-71029172135982676422023-12-08T13:29:00.003+03:002023-12-08T13:29:47.988+03:00There's a New Chemist/Drug Store in the Village!<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDaas8tY4K99rEQpc-6dYMVJP9aDivMFH_b9SlXth-ZU1fq-e7AunF_0QG2JOS5e4qS32OokQ5g1EBRm04TBy_GT386COd74J1smbqBktwoXs4ukbT3NGPcmKj3BL-inBfNvxast7SZ983Hrmj4u5jvnibt51RJrSzmBO3tKdCvhAYshupjmCe2AIBieQ/s800/1bc13fa6fc96a1e1c50a46d50aaa8c2a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="467" data-original-width="800" height="374" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDaas8tY4K99rEQpc-6dYMVJP9aDivMFH_b9SlXth-ZU1fq-e7AunF_0QG2JOS5e4qS32OokQ5g1EBRm04TBy_GT386COd74J1smbqBktwoXs4ukbT3NGPcmKj3BL-inBfNvxast7SZ983Hrmj4u5jvnibt51RJrSzmBO3tKdCvhAYshupjmCe2AIBieQ/w640-h374/1bc13fa6fc96a1e1c50a46d50aaa8c2a.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Early customer 'Socrates drinking the Hemlock' by Antonio Zucchi in 1767 </div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Seen just now as I was walking to Lavington, one of the Nairobi suburbs: a brand new chemist/drugstore in a brand new building. And it had a shiny, brand new sign which read:</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #38761d; font-size: large;"><b>Hemlock Pharmacy</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I don't know about you, but my mind is ravished by possibilities. I half expected to see an explanatory sign in neon underneath that read:</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #cc0000; font-size: large;"><i><b>First and Last Stop for that Annoying Philosopher in Your Life</b></i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I decided not to raise the issue of the Athens city fathers and Socrates, as one must charitably assume they had already thought of that. So I just kept walking.</span></p>Bill Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11939888013962360542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4368898415238503632.post-52793997645904719192023-11-27T19:00:00.001+03:002023-11-28T07:53:05.822+03:00Broken People Who Will Not Admit that They Are Broken<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxzgDyqVjw-0YiP_8nThQH-Y6-fEZnwvYzJ1MfvPaEsC4XgegmoOCrsBpGw4Tt2KNYaRXTdKFGJNG4oO5gDrgli3CnINNebBI5rEayIYH4FGbqeJhoTUkNLq5TlJWM436i8bP_F8PzpHyQP1Wq4sdkDQrOoCwKcBMKsCQoDOpW00MVk3CjMLy5OQG_U08/s640/redundant%20church.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="525" data-original-width="640" height="526" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxzgDyqVjw-0YiP_8nThQH-Y6-fEZnwvYzJ1MfvPaEsC4XgegmoOCrsBpGw4Tt2KNYaRXTdKFGJNG4oO5gDrgli3CnINNebBI5rEayIYH4FGbqeJhoTUkNLq5TlJWM436i8bP_F8PzpHyQP1Wq4sdkDQrOoCwKcBMKsCQoDOpW00MVk3CjMLy5OQG_U08/w640-h526/redundant%20church.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Gate to the redundant (closed) church of St. Saviour near Leicester, UK</div><p></p><p><br /></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">What a world this is. Where so many people refuse to see
that the slaughter of 1200 children, women and men is a just provocation for a
war to take out the organization that did it and who along with their allies
continues to celebrate their murders as something glorious. Instead, they want
to argue that such slaughter of innocent people is justified because of their
association with political policies they feel have disadvantaged Palestinians. In
other words, we hate them and we hate their policies, and so killing them is ok. It's what they deserve, isn't it?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">What a world this is. Where protesters across Europe and
North America gleefully summon the demons of Nazi Germany and demand that Jews
be consigned to the gas chambers. They do so from the comfort of their home in
societies where they have the freedom to protest and live as they wish to live.
One wonders how long these people would survive in Stalin’s Soviet Union or Hitler’s
Germany, or Putin’s Russia for that matter. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">What a world this is. Where abortion rights activists howl
at the ‘injustice’ of a pregnant woman having to carry a baby to term while
refusing to concede that the baby being knit together in that woman’s womb is a
person just like everybody else, and that we all of us were just like that
little baby at one time in our own lives. Homicide (the killing of a human person)
is much easier if the one who is being ‘terminated’ is not really human like
the rest of us, be they Jewish, or Tutsi or the not-yet-born, or Christians in
Nigeria or India or Burma or China. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">What a world this is. I read an article by a gay man who
admitted that he was an alcoholic but who couldn’t understand why and was
bitterly complaining that, after at least 15 years of stereotypically
promiscuous behavior he was still single. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">What a world this is. I read another report of a faculty
member of a British Bible School who had been <i>fired</i> because of a <i>discussion</i>
he had with another on social media setting out the traditional orthodox
Christian teaching regarding homosexuality. He had not been targeting anybody
or any institution; rather, he was simply stating what Christians had taught
without controversy for nearly two thousand years. And evidently this Bible
School (Methodist) thought that for doing so their faculty member had brought
disrepute on their institution (!) and deserved the death penalty (figuratively
speaking) and they sacked him. Then, in justification, they stated with utmost
piety that their school was committed to making everybody feel welcome and safe.
Everybody except, evidently, actual Christians teaching orthodox Christian
doctrines. Such institutions are ‘Methodist’ in name only, perhaps ‘Christian’
in name only. Based on their concern for the ‘safety’ and ‘comfort’ of anybody
that might want to walk through their doors, I am almost certain that they
would have never let John Wesley or his brother Charles speak at their chapel,
much less offer a teaching position to them. John Wesley never shied away from
calling a sin ‘sin’ and would have accounted such discomfort felt by his
hearers in response to his preaching as a work of the Holy Spirit necessary for
their repentance unto newness of life. But for these Methodists, evidently
things have changed. And not necessarily for the better. We Modern Methodists
don’t do repentance anymore, at least from those sins the Bible identifies as
sins. I wonder if this doesn’t mean we don’t do new life anymore, either.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">Our world, by which I mean a world defined by orthodox
Christian perspectives, no longer exists. It’s a world that I, as an American
from a southern state, grew up in and spent the majority of my career as a Christian
pastor and missionary with such religious and cultural assumptions as my
backdrop. God knows we Christians messed things up a lot. But the culture held
together. There was in general a common understanding of what was right and
what was wrong. There was a general concern for the common good, a respect for
institutions, whether those of government, of judicial, of business, of
religious institutions. The rule of law meant something, and its enforcement
was viewed as exemplary. Businesses did business, schools did education,
universities did research, government departments pursued their mandates – none
of these aspects of our society saw themselves as drivers of a new ideology,
none of them saw themselves as displacing what went before and replacing it
with an entirely new morality or identity-based politics. What a world we have
lost, and what a world we have become. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">With respect to the Christian world view that dominated the perspective,
not just of the United States, but of North America and Europe, there may still
be a lot of Christians attending worship on Sundays, though this is declining
in the US and has evaporated in Europe and Canada. But those remaining seem to
have checked out of the cultural conversation entirely, or been cowed into
silence by the threats to shame by name-calling, to out to employers with the implied
threat to both employer and employee that failure to conform will carry
consequences, or out and out litigation against those who have made the mistake
of resisting. Because legal resistance is very expensive, the new culture
bullies usually have their way with punters like me. And though for the most
part these revolutionaries hate Christianity and hate genuine Christians, they
have managed to worm themselves and their alien theology into many Christian
denominations, making what was once anathema to be the very touchstone of the
new ‘orthodoxy.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We don’t actually do
theology anymore in many so-called Christian churches; instead, we do politics,
identity politics, anti-racism politics. With the result that the new powers
that control the new religion have become persecutors of actual Christians, who
have the temerity to stand against the anti-Christian ideology that has taken
over the so-called Christian churches of the West <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just think of where we have come from and
where we are now. What was once considered sin is now claimed as a right. Pride
parades display all manner of behaviors for which one would have been arrested
not so long ago. Today the ones being arrested are those who are attempting to
preach the gospel at such events. What God considers love (bringing the words
of salvation and hope to lost sinners) is now redefined as ‘hate speech’ by the
new high priests of what was once Christianity and their legal and governmental
enablers. And if that were not gobsmacking enough, in some places one cannot
even pray in public, I guess because of the hatred prayer expresses. In the UK,
for example, one cannot pray, one cannot even pray <i>silently</i>, one cannot
even look like one is praying in front of abortion clinics without being
arrested. As with our Methodist theologian friend above, one cannot preach in
public places if one identifies certain sexual behaviors as not reflecting
God’s purposes for human beings without being charged with incitement or a hate
crime. It is evidently ok for gay or trans people to harass Christians because Christians
won’t compromise their beliefs. But if the harassment were reversed, the levers
of law, government and economics would be and are deployed to punish the
malefactors. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">What a world we live in. I read another article this past
week where so-called LGBTQ… activists are demanding the right to indoctrinate
children with their ideology and their agenda, and that banning books that
explicitly describe non-heterosexual behavior as normal are destructive to
their communities and hurtful to their chosen identities. Not only that, those
people who are trying to protect their <i>children</i> from an LGBTQ agenda
with respect to homosexuality or trans identity ideology are portrayed as
cretins, far-right extremists of the worst sort, who are trying to force
everybody to swallow their morality. And they say this without a hint of irony.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">What is difficult to grasp is that with all of this, our
current governments at both the national, state and local levels are in full
agreement (with exceptions) and are, in fact, enabling the overrunning of the
previous moral consensus. They seem to think that jettisoning Christian morality
is a good thing. I suppose the proof is in the pudding.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">And similar things are happening with respect to the various
races in America. The perceived racism of the white majority is being used as
an excuse for all manner of anti-social behavior, and individuals, schools,
universities, media, businesses, corporations, and government departments are
terrified of calling a spade a spade (calling out immoral or illegal behavior)
lest they be labeled a racist or a bigot or be seen as out of step with the
march of history. Evidently one cannot admit in the media that a particular
crime was committed by a black person, even though an informal survey by yours
truly of crime stories indicated that almost every time a crime was described
but not the perpetrator, that crime was committed by a person of color. This is
not a racist assumption on my part, just a report of what I discovered. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">And what are we to do with the masses of people who now
think it is ok to go into a business and take whatever one wants to take and
not pay for it? In the old morality, this was called ‘stealing.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And if we were a Muslim society under Muslim
Sharia law, such thieves would be punished by having the offending hand cut off.
We should book one-way tickets for all our thieving brothers and sisters to
Riyahd and see how they get on there. Many societies across the globe think
that this is antisocial behavior that threatens the cohesion of society. In
Kenya, a thief, if he is caught, will be set upon by a mob and beaten to death
or doused with petrol and burned alive. But in America, we excuse our thieves and
blame society, or even better, blame ‘whiteness’ for driving people to steal
what they want to steal. Please. Nobody is forcing any of these people to
behave badly. This is simply classic self-centered behavior concerned only
about satisfying one’s wants and the expense of another, and then attempting to
avoid responsibility for one’s choices by blaming someone else. This is what
five-year-olds do. Happens all the time. But in the new ideology, personal
responsibility has been erased. It is always someone else’s fault. Or to put it
another way, there is no longer any such thing as sin. And because there is no
sin, there is no longer any need for a savior. It is all about getting what you
can right now, securing my rights, finding others to blame. What a world we
live in.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">The people who have taken over and enforced their
anti-Christian ideology on our society demonstrate by their utter lack of
humility a completely absence of historical knowledge or perspective. We have
seen, in the past one hundred years, a series of attempts to displace Christianity
with alternative ideologies. The effort to overturn entire societies usually
requires the dehumanization of the population. What is most important is the
implementation of the ideology. People are expendable in the effort. We have
seen this horror unfold in Lenin’s Russia, and then seen it in spades in Stalin’s
Russia. Anybody perceived as a threat to the ideology was simply eliminated. Multiply ‘anybody’ by millions and one begins
to enter the scale of the bloodshed, all for the sake of liquidating the
enemies of the ideology. Nazi Germany saw the same dynamic, although it was
driven by a different ideology. In both instances, people were dehumanized. And
as we have seen with the current abortion debate, if one can avoid thinking
that this baby is a baby, a human person, it is much easier to get a doctor to
butcher it, because it is an ‘it,’ not a ‘him’ or a ‘her,’ not a ‘son’ or a ‘daughter,’
not a ‘grandson’ or a ‘granddaughter.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">Our culture warriors give the impression either that they
are oblivious to history, or that history doesn’t apply to them. Either way
spells disaster for the countries of the West, including the United States. These
people, bless their hearts, think this is simply a matter of getting the right
to have sex with whoever or whatever they want to, or of getting the right to
be whatever identity, sexually speaking, they want to. But in doing so, they
have kicked the chair out from under our common life together, obliterating the
moral underpinnings, not just of our country, but of Western culture. The
culture is hanging on, but only by muscle memory. And even this will be gone
soon and there will be nothing left to hold the culture and the various
national societies together except the newly canonized selfishness of our identity
ideologies. And because there is nothing actual or real other than
self-interest holding even these ideologies together, they will not be here for
long but will be displaced by something promising ‘stability.’ But whether
their replacement is by something good or evil remains to be seen. Though history tells us that such counterrevolutions almost never end up being a good thing. Think of all the recent coups and counter-coups in Africa, for example.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">What a world we live in. Broken people who will not admit
that they are broken inflicting their brokenness on the rest of us. And we are
broken, too.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">What a world we live in. Where are the people who are
thinking deeply about what’s going on, who are willing to stand up and resist
the evil that’s engulfing us, who are willing to suffer for Christ? Because
that is where we are. It will not get better. Electing Trump will not stem the
tide (and he is a poor and utterly inadequate excuse for a savior). Trying to
reimpose Christian values or Christian laws on the population will not work. We
are beyond that now. The only thing that will have influence (and of necessity
on a micro level) is what we should have been doing from the beginning; that
is, for us who know and love Christ to live as Christ’s and love our neighbor
in his name. We are in this mess largely because we have not done this. And ‘repentance’
that doesn’t address our lack and change our behavior simply is not repentance.<o:p></o:p></span></p><br /><p></p>Bill Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11939888013962360542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4368898415238503632.post-75322410577110387522023-11-24T18:50:00.003+03:002023-11-24T18:52:56.371+03:00I Gave My Students This Assignment. How would you do?<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqU-XZD9TWEuKqTKxbn6zT7SSPC1CTuiphaaJWPPeLGQaHANwv-PziJ-aeSRopMsWJdpK9BaaQ564k_xMhvnQjkoaMKSmE2m0gbTlLssx5gj-54xPFEgIy0Zu61Dfppo1mnWwhwyPjCS8aX88fsRHK8r261WSuPodeAoa7kBoUpiMIfTTjQsh9IQcjVrs/s640/African%20Student%20In%20Examination%20Seated.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="640" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqU-XZD9TWEuKqTKxbn6zT7SSPC1CTuiphaaJWPPeLGQaHANwv-PziJ-aeSRopMsWJdpK9BaaQ564k_xMhvnQjkoaMKSmE2m0gbTlLssx5gj-54xPFEgIy0Zu61Dfppo1mnWwhwyPjCS8aX88fsRHK8r261WSuPodeAoa7kBoUpiMIfTTjQsh9IQcjVrs/w640-h360/African%20Student%20In%20Examination%20Seated.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">So I spent my Thanksgiving eating sweet potato casserole (my family recipe). There was drama trying to find the ingredients (including the American sweet potatoes!), but perseverance led to success. I also helped to prepare and eat a Thanksgiving dinner prepared with some visiting American friends for a group of Cypriot, Greek, Tanzanian and Kenyan friends and us Americans. It was wonderful. I even led us in the old standby Thanksgiving hymn, 'We Gather Together.' And as Thursday was an ordinary workday for me and the rest of this continent, I taught two classes and I also marked papers. Lots of papers. I am teaching Exegesis and Hermeneutics to all three classes of our students. And I have been giving it my best shot trying to help my students understand what a parable is, what it means and how it applies to us today. To that end, I gave the following assignment to all three classes of seminary students. Have a look at it and see how you do!</span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Exegesis and Hermeneutics Praxis Year 3<span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span>Dr.
Bill Black<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Class 5 </span><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span> <span style="font-size: medium;"> November 22, 2023</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><b><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></b></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Luke 16:1-9 <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><i><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: black;">16 He also said to the
disciples, “There was a rich man who had a steward, and charges were
brought to him that this man was wasting his possessions. <sup>2</sup>And
he called him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Turn in the
account of your management, for you can no longer be steward.’ <sup>3</sup>And
the manager said to himself, ‘What shall I do, since my master is taking the stewardship
away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. <sup>4</sup>I
have decided what to do, so that when I am removed from being a steward, people
may receive me into their houses.’ <sup>5</sup>So, summoning his
master's debtors one by one, he said to the first, ‘How much do you owe my
master?’ <sup>6</sup>He said, ‘A hundred measures</span><span style="color: black;"> of
oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write
fifty.’ <sup>7</sup>Then he said to another, ‘And how much do you
owe?’ He said, ‘A hundred measures</span><span style="color: black;"> of
wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, and write eighty.’ <sup>8</sup>The
master commended the dishonest steward for his shrewdness. For the
sons of this world</span><span style="color: black;"> are more
shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light. <sup>9</sup>And
I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous
wealth,</span><span style="color: black;"> so
that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.</span></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><b><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></b></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">[Remember, always ask What does it say?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What did it mean?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What does it mean for us today?]<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Write your answers to these questions on the
back of this page.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: 3pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;">1. This is a parable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A parable is a story (or saying) with an
unexpected ending.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What is<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the story here?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: 21pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span>What is a steward?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Look
it up with reference to the New Testament if you need to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And what is a steward supposed to do?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: 21pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span dir="LTR"></span>What does this steward do instead?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: 21pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">4.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span dir="LTR"></span>What is the surprise or unexpected ending of the parable?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: 21pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">5.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span dir="LTR"></span>What do you think this parable means, or What is the point Jesus is making with this story/parable?</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: 21pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">6.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span dir="LTR"></span>What, according to Jesus, is the issue for our lives today?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What are we meant to do?</span><o:p></o:p></p>Bill Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11939888013962360542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4368898415238503632.post-91555556445331924662023-11-19T14:58:00.001+03:002023-11-19T15:01:46.385+03:00So You Want to be Rich?<p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvzLxDh5VxU3ycCcipSN0-OEK7HPXp-f4l8yUElWjZvAOwm3hoR7oHwNNJyWTiOwFg7wu5LdsDakIBLdHSbFsxDok1hCwcxpJMnQOFbUjjHt4S2d6oQXNx2G2DQbormamTFSmwJ3pyw5fIeKn_BYnhfyZQGKqlu0w1bDtVO4uIxlmRKsMhJwt8dy_eJog/s1500/Monopoly%20board%200.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1064" data-original-width="1500" height="454" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvzLxDh5VxU3ycCcipSN0-OEK7HPXp-f4l8yUElWjZvAOwm3hoR7oHwNNJyWTiOwFg7wu5LdsDakIBLdHSbFsxDok1hCwcxpJMnQOFbUjjHt4S2d6oQXNx2G2DQbormamTFSmwJ3pyw5fIeKn_BYnhfyZQGKqlu0w1bDtVO4uIxlmRKsMhJwt8dy_eJog/w640-h454/Monopoly%20board%200.jpg" width="640" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><b><span style="color: #131516; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-ligatures: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Luke 12:16-21</span></span></b><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="background: white; color: #131516; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="font-size: medium;">The Lord said this parable: "The land of a rich man
brought forth plentifully; and he thought to himself, 'What shall I do, for I
have nowhere to store my crops?' And he said, 'I will do this: I will pull down
my barns, and build larger ones; and there I will store all my grain and my
goods. And I will say to my soul, 'Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many
years; take your ease, eat, drink, be merry.' But God said to him, 'Fool! This
night your soul is required of you; and the things you have prepared, whose
will they be?' So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward
God." As he said these things, he cried out: "He who has ears to
hear, let him hear."<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="font-size: medium;">There’s a
famous board game that almost all American children are taught to play.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s called Monopoly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The goal of the game is to make as much money
as you possibly can.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And you make money
by using what you have to buy property and then building houses and finally
putting up hotels and charging everybody who lands on your property a lot of
money.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Eventually the other players will
run out of money paying you rent, and all of their money goes into your bank
account, and then you win!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a great
game. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And it teaches us young Americans
that life is all about making money and that being successful and winning is
the most important thing.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="font-size: medium;">So I thought
it would be fun if we played a similar kind of game this morning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’ll call it Kenopoly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the goal is very straight forward.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whoever has the most land, the most money, the
biggest house, the most cars, the most shopping trips to Dubai, the most
vacations to the Coast, or to Europe, or to the United States– that person
wins!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And unlike the board game Monopoly
which has a lot of rules, this game has only one rule, and that one rule is: <i>Don’t
Get Caught!</i></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGcBhkS1tesihjBj8C2db4rJMxQoS7qekC0MoN307DzArytlwEeevmSzVEMuskMHkT1YetWRnrn5wQd33CMLbuL69ztCBnJOjbAJ8GA1D8-qnnTu-ELZ7GKhCrwZLY_iQiVsTLt5XC1nH8HjLEE7oR4rBgt39xubC0cihQSBHkhUxZQg4I9Hv4xypapJI/s2560/monopoly%20board%20%60.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1707" data-original-width="2560" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGcBhkS1tesihjBj8C2db4rJMxQoS7qekC0MoN307DzArytlwEeevmSzVEMuskMHkT1YetWRnrn5wQd33CMLbuL69ztCBnJOjbAJ8GA1D8-qnnTu-ELZ7GKhCrwZLY_iQiVsTLt5XC1nH8HjLEE7oR4rBgt39xubC0cihQSBHkhUxZQg4I9Hv4xypapJI/w640-h426/monopoly%20board%20%60.jpg" width="640" /></a></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="font-size: medium;">Already there
are a lot of people playing this game.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And you can look around and see a lot of different strategies that
people are using to try to win.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some
people are using rather straight-forward means to get money.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They have gotten an education.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then they have gotten a good, well-paying
job.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are saving money.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are investing their money and making
more money.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They get a better job making
more money.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And slowly slowy they
accumulate enough money to buy a car, to buy a house, to buy land, so that when
they are ready to retire, they can quit and move to the shamba and live happily
every after.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="font-size: medium;">Other people
don’t want to wait. They want to be rich.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They want to be rich <i>now</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>All the people they admire online and in the media have beautiful
clothes, and jewelry and expensive cars and live lives of decadence and
luxury.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And they want it all now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But how does one get it now if one doesn’t
want to go the slow road of hard work?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Well, as I have been told many times, this is Kenya.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are ways to get access to money.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And since there are no rules except ‘Don’t
get caught’, you can come up with all sorts of schemes to make the money that
is sitting in this account disappear and then magically reappear in your
account.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or, just think of all the so
called real estate agents who will happily sell you an expensive piece of land
in an exclusive Nairobi neighborhood so you can build your dream house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Only to discover that you just paid a lot of
money to a fraudster who has disappeared, meanwhile the title deed he gave you
is a fake one and the real owner is now taking you to court.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Selling land that actually belongs to someone
else must be a very successful way for these kinds of people to make money,
because a lot of people are doing it.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="font-size: medium;">Other people
sit in offices, maybe government offices, maybe business offices, and have a
lot of time to think about all that money in this account and that account, and
how they might get access to it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maybe
it means filling out false expense reports.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Maybe it means going into cahoots with the IT guy and diverting the
money and splitting the proceeds 50/50.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Maybe you are in a position to handle the enormous aid and development
grant that’s coming in from the EU or Japan, and you make sure all of that money
disappears into your anonymous overseas account, while you concoct a fictional
accounting record of how that money was spent according to the purpose of the
grant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These are all fantastic ways to
become rich.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="font-size: medium;">But even if
you don’t have access to a good education, or a high-paying job, or are working
in the government bureaucracy, and maybe you are not very smart, there are
still ways you can play the game and achieve the goal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Christian pastors are excellent examples of
people who have learned how to convince their members to give them enormous
amounts of money simply by telling them that God will make them rich if they
have enough faith.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And you can
demonstrate your faith by giving money to me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They are lying, of course, but enough people believe the lie to make
these preachers and bishops and prophets and apostles very wealthy men and
women.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="font-size: medium;">And don’t
think that just because one lives in a slum that there aren’t people there who
are playing this game.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The love of money
and the desire to get rich motivates just about everybody.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>People will do <i>anything</i> to get access
to money.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some people are busy selling
drugs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some men and women are busy
selling their bodies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you stop at the
traffic light at Junction Mall today you will be accosted by well-dressed,
well-fed children insisting that you give them money.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And if none of that works, then there are
plenty of people who will just take it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The other side of Kabiria Road from where I live is notorious for
muggings and robberies, assaults and murders.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Why?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because the robbers and
muggers want your money so they can have their chance at achieving what the
whole culture is saying this life is all about.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I have been robbed four times over the past 10 years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And that is simply because people look at me
and see an opportunity, an opportunity to get access to what they think I
have.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And just read the papers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Almost every account of whatever terrible and
scandalous thing is going on around us has to do ultimately with people wanting
to get access to money and win the Kenopoly game, and if you or I or anybody
gets in their way, too bad.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgO2BuIu3pEiKZXX8El_vrxxrby29qFhAwpwxriKN6Z19Oriji1v8Pax1qoXFT7HfcvkZn87acQwR0KdoKVrf2xwKRsrG65j-CttK0gnjUN7Qtr2X4ziKgoGY5qzKH8pbzjkh9Xz94ncC1F2O7dhwCdltu-v8xLlfuQ5O90auKnh26qzoSatk82_PGL1I/s1656/Monopoly%20board%202.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1242" data-original-width="1656" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgO2BuIu3pEiKZXX8El_vrxxrby29qFhAwpwxriKN6Z19Oriji1v8Pax1qoXFT7HfcvkZn87acQwR0KdoKVrf2xwKRsrG65j-CttK0gnjUN7Qtr2X4ziKgoGY5qzKH8pbzjkh9Xz94ncC1F2O7dhwCdltu-v8xLlfuQ5O90auKnh26qzoSatk82_PGL1I/w640-h480/Monopoly%20board%202.webp" width="640" /></a></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="font-size: medium;">And we’re not
just talking about my country or your country.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>First century Palestine was full of people who understood that getting
rich was the whole purpose of living, that money is what it’s all about.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jesus is accosted by a man who is distressed
because his brother is cheating him of his share of an inheritance, and this is
keeping him from achieving his goal of getting rich.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jesus refuses to get drawn into the family
conflict.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But he does tell a story.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s one of his parables.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A parable is a story that has an unexpected
ending.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jesus is a master at telling
parables.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He tells a story that draws
you in, and then he catches you with the unexpected way it ends.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s like a fishhook with tasty bait that we
gobble down only to realize too late that there was a hook along with the bait.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And this story is a perfect example of a
parable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s about a man who has been
totally successful in his business.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So
much so that his current storehouses are too small.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So he builds bigger ones.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And he is so successful that now he can just
retire and go about living the good life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We Americans think that this is what life is all about.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Getting enough so that you can live in luxury
however you want to for the rest of your life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This is what life is all about, in my country at least.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And my observation is that this is what life
is all about for a lot of people here, too.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="font-size: medium;">But here’s the
unexpected ending.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The man in Jesus’
story does not live happily ever after the way all of us want to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He has accumulated all this wealth and all
these riches and he has all these plans for how he’s going to live.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But then God comes to him and says, ‘You
fool!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Tonight your life is required of
you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And all your wealth and riches and
plans, they are about to come to nothing.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>May I humbly suggest to you that the last thing you want to hear God say
to you when you come to the end of your life is, ‘You fool!’<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="font-size: medium;">And then Jesus
says to the man concerned about his inheritance, and to the crowd listening,
and to us, ‘The issue is not becoming rich in the way the world counts being
rich.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The issue is, are you rich towards
God?<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="font-size: medium;">Notice that
Jesus doesn’t say wealth is bad.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rather
it is thinking that wealth is meant to be spent on my desires and wasted on my
passions, it is thinking that getting rich is what life is all about – this is
what makes one a fool.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And by the
reckoning of this parable, my country is awash in fools this morning, and yours
is, too.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="font-size: medium;">In another
story that Jesus tells after our passage this morning (Luke 16:1-9), a steward
is about to be fired by his master.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So
this steward, he goes around to all the people indebted to his master and he
reduces what his master’s debtors owe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It really is quite outrageous.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Since he is about to be fired, the steward is trying to win friends so
that when he is let go, he will have someplace to go. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">And here’s the unexpected ending in this parable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead of arresting his steward and sending
him to prison, the master <i>commends</i> him and calls him shrewd in the way
he is dealing with his master’s money.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And then Jesus says: <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span class="text"><b><i><sup><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"></span></sup></i></b></span></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-size: medium;"><span class="text"><i><sup><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";">8</span></sup></i></span><span class="woj"><i><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";">So the master commended the
unjust steward because he had dealt shrewdly. For the sons of this world are
more shrewd in their generation than</span></i></span><span class="text"><i><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"> </span></i></span><span class="woj"><i><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";">the sons
of light.</span></i></span><i><span style="color: black;"> </span></i><span class="text"><i><sup><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";">9</span></sup></i></span><span class="woj"><i><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";">“And I
say to you,</span></i></span><span class="text"><i><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"> </span></i></span><span class="woj"><i><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";">make friends for yourselves
by dishonest wealth, that when</span></i></span><span class="text"><i><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"> </span></i></span><span class="woj"><i><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";">you
fail, they may receive you into an everlasting home.</span></i></span><span class="text"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";">
(Luke 16:8-9)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></span></blockquote><span style="font-size: medium;"><span class="text"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span><o:p></o:p></span></span></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span class="text"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";">I believe the proper response to this is, <i>‘Say what?’</i></span><i><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span class="text"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="font-size: medium;">Do you see what’s going on here in this parable?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Do you see what Jesus is actually saying?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A steward is someone who is a slave, brought
on to manage the master’s property and money.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This steward didn’t own anything; he was a slave.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everything he had belonged to his
master.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And he used what belonged to his
master to make sure that when he no longer had his position, he would have a
place to go.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span class="text"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="font-size: medium;">And here’s the point that Jesus is making. You and I are <i>stewards</i>.
That guy in this parable is us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That
means that <i>you</i> are a slave; <i>I</i> am a slave.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>Nothing that you and I have</i> belongs to
us, it has been given to us – our time, our abilities, our opportunities, our
money, our things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All of it belongs to
the Master, not to us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everybody around
us, even most of us, we are living as if what we have belongs to us and we can
do whatever we want with it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it
isn’t ours.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It belongs to the
Master.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We are slaves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So the issue is <i>how are you using what has
been given to you</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Your stewardship
will come to an end.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In other words, the
end of your life and my life is approaching.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And Jesus says here, use what you have been given in such a way that
when your stewardship comes to an end, when <i>your life</i> comes to an end,
you will be welcomed into the kingdom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In other words, what you have been given has been intended for you to
use to love your neighbor, to give to the poor, to assist those who don’t have
or who are suffering.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When we spend what
we have on these things, we become rich toward God.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span class="text"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="font-size: medium;">When I was living in Ethiopia, I was driving towards Bahir Dar in
the north of the country on Lake Tana.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And the road was winding down a steep hill towards a bridge to cross the
Blue Nile River.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What I didn’t know was
the bridge had collapsed, and the government was building a new one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There might have been a sign saying
‘Warning!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bridge out!’, but I never saw
it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was saved because I saw as we came
around the final turn that there were some barricades up with no bridge behind
them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most Americans and Most Kenyans
are speeding down the road today assuming that getting money is what the game
is all about.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are assuming that
they are on the way to their desired destination.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But they are ignorant of the fact that the
bridge is out, and that unless they stop and change directions, their journey
will end in disaster.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>God will call them
a fool.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And again, trust me, that is the
last thing you want to hear when your journey, when your stewardship, when your
life comes to an end.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="text"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="text"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpUSEca26uYkrUjTviA7PvWlYsmLch1e3kb68ay-foDV3FVNroYttYEKyspto6fs4QLjhd9P2bhCXwYMdLaNvI2QR3LoSRIW2IozYqvT_StAwgQ-SNJIQbFqxgSC0Xlotbe0LQzfff7J2ovqIyls3juP64B-3Pp8hgcwuvRJDK1YWzjKWCziWLvDl3pck/s634/Monopoly%20Win.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="468" data-original-width="634" height="472" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpUSEca26uYkrUjTviA7PvWlYsmLch1e3kb68ay-foDV3FVNroYttYEKyspto6fs4QLjhd9P2bhCXwYMdLaNvI2QR3LoSRIW2IozYqvT_StAwgQ-SNJIQbFqxgSC0Xlotbe0LQzfff7J2ovqIyls3juP64B-3Pp8hgcwuvRJDK1YWzjKWCziWLvDl3pck/w640-h472/Monopoly%20Win.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span class="text"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";">What about you?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Are you
mindlessly playing the Kenopoly game this morning, maybe because you really
think that getting rich and accumulating stuff is what your life is about?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maybe because everybody else you know is
playing the game, too?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Do you not know
that <i>Everything</i> you have has been given to you by God.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How are you using what you have been given?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Are you perhaps trying to have it both
ways?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Come to church but also chase
after money and more money as madly as everybody else around us?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or are you using what has been given you to,
as Jesus says, make friends with unrighteous mammon so that you might be rich
towards God?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To make friends for the
Kingdom for when your stewardship, your life is done?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Are you going to be like the rich man in
Jesus’ parable who realized too late that he had completely missed the point of
what his life was meant to be about?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or
will you be like the unjust steward who used his master’s money through helping
the poor and assisting the church, to secure a place for himself when his
stewardship is over?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because what you
have isn’t yours.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s your master’s
money, and time, and possessions, and abilities, and opportunities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And what this life is about is how will these
things be used?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So how will you use
them?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Starting now!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The words we use for this are stewardship and
discipleship.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or to put it another way,
this is how Jesus describes what it means to be a Christian.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A real Christian.</span></span><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>A sermon preached at Sts. Cosmas and Damianos Orthodox Cathedral, Nairobi, Kenya on Sunday, November 19, 2023.</i></span></p>Bill Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11939888013962360542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4368898415238503632.post-25155670984582600692023-11-08T13:12:00.003+03:002023-11-08T13:25:09.889+03:00Sarah Vine in the UK Nails It<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0D6uTbREcy5KAgoXyfZvkCBnf4Z0l8MvDVDDL7INV4jGssK8cl-2B3MXLn34mqp8n68pHPor_3Py_OjBskka00eEHiy-R5OFm4cgP-kfGx1OFukC92GyLX6DGB1K5vuH1wIMea_kJ6lwiw6vxIjAYhlFsk8T4iP6MRJSnlqQPOcIuZK2phNp2bOMEFRo/s1050/ANTISEMITISM-master1050.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="701" data-original-width="1050" height="428" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0D6uTbREcy5KAgoXyfZvkCBnf4Z0l8MvDVDDL7INV4jGssK8cl-2B3MXLn34mqp8n68pHPor_3Py_OjBskka00eEHiy-R5OFm4cgP-kfGx1OFukC92GyLX6DGB1K5vuH1wIMea_kJ6lwiw6vxIjAYhlFsk8T4iP6MRJSnlqQPOcIuZK2phNp2bOMEFRo/w640-h428/ANTISEMITISM-master1050.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Pro-Palestinian protests in Europe. I recall it did not go well the last time we saw symbols like this. NYTimes photo</div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">It beggars belief that anybody actually has to say these things. But this is where we are today. The merging of the woke automatons of the West with the so-called Free Palestine (i.e. support Hamas and f*ck Israel) multitudes among the immigrant communities of the West and the Arab populations of the Middle East and Africa is taking on a life of its own, and without reference either to history or to truth. And anybody who deigns to disagree with their murderous premise is ignored as irrelevant, or set upon by 'social justice' thugs. Where are the people who will stand up for what is right (not the manufactured ideological right of the illiberal left)? Where are those who know what has happened in the past and are instructed thereby? Where are those who still possess the decency to treat their neighbor as created in the image of God and worthy of respect and love? </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Do any of these people have a clue what life under the Islamists of Hamas or Hezbollah or Iranians (or al-Qaida or ISIS, or al Shabab or Boko Haram for that matter) would be like for their cherished chosen identities and lifestyles? They should acquaint themselves with even a bare outline of Islamic history and understand where the Pro-Palestinian train is coming from and where it is going. And for that matter, if you don't have a clue about the history of Jews throughout the Middle East and Europe from the time of the destruction of Jerusalem in the First Century to today, then you would do your activism a favor by understanding the terrible events of the past two millennium that instruct Jews today and their political leaders in Israel. You are being dishonest with reality if you think this is just about Gaza. But I don't know if this sort of actual thinking outside the tiny box of their ideology is even possible any more. They seem lost in delusions of their own making.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Sarah Vine is a columnist for the <i>Daily Mail</i>, a British newspaper/tabloid, who I read with profit. Her column today says what needs to be said, especially in light of the UK's solemn Remembrance Day coming this weekend, which woke activist, consumed by their own self-righteousness and caring not a whit about anything else, threaten to 'desecrate'. <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-12722413/sarah-vine-remembrance-day-israel-hamas-war.html">This is what Sarah Vine writes today:</a></span></p>Bill Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11939888013962360542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4368898415238503632.post-41081257639433379852023-11-07T09:57:00.001+03:002023-11-07T10:00:31.698+03:00Happy 70th Birthday Sts. Cosmas and Damianos Orthodox Cathedral in Nairobi! Also known as my home parish😊.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_Mcuk3KPDpNX_LnmpChGBREvoB6Qt8ZIDFiRTV9DvT13GmzmIZMTDJFy_Y7jzucwvphouKoBmDWFT5Vu_WL02FgQ1PqvWdXOZKdnFjYlrLfa2mZYOzDvGSBsKdzBLoEfd1-OYJvm7DhrGbFn7WKpvG5B4a4I9P4mgJ4bLL_rdRUcYBa5LDTOV6A8G444/s640/st.Cosmas-and-Damian.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="453" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_Mcuk3KPDpNX_LnmpChGBREvoB6Qt8ZIDFiRTV9DvT13GmzmIZMTDJFy_Y7jzucwvphouKoBmDWFT5Vu_WL02FgQ1PqvWdXOZKdnFjYlrLfa2mZYOzDvGSBsKdzBLoEfd1-OYJvm7DhrGbFn7WKpvG5B4a4I9P4mgJ4bLL_rdRUcYBa5LDTOV6A8G444/w454-h640/st.Cosmas-and-Damian.jpg" width="454" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Cosmas and Damianos, twin brothers who were Christians and who were physicians and were known for their generosity.</div><div><div style="text-align: center;"> 'Freely you have received, freely give.'</div><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">This past Sunday, my home parish in Nairobi, Sts Cosmas and Damianos Orthodox Cathedral, celebrated its 70th birthday. The Liturgy was presided over by His Eminence Makarios, the Archbishop of Nairobi. He was assisted by a number of clergy, many of whom are personal friends of mine. The parishioners came together in a wonderful way to make sure that the services and celebrations were uplifting and God-glorifying. It was a good day for everyone who was there. <a href="https://orthodoxtimes.com/the-archbishop-of-nairobi-at-sts-anargyroi-valley-road/">Here is a link to a news story which also has a lot of pictures</a>. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Sts. Cosmas and Damianos are also known as Sts. Anargyroi - the silverless - because they refused to charge for their medical labors.</span></p></div>Bill Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11939888013962360542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4368898415238503632.post-70112825607653201862023-10-28T20:27:00.002+03:002023-10-29T20:18:26.746+03:00Solzhenitzyn Speaks to Western Insistence on Making Wrong Right, and Right Wrong<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSe7DoNTafaKdHaAdEeIOp2PAHX6FrsozqQoijbrTHbmGXzpzhECqaJdT44QQMomrhczQOHbr_ERXK4X0C4vYxqO05sydEpjxlI7iC1jhcDDuKHxt-eBNimLcAg78BmajvwUsnZuKvuqO_cym6Cgzyw-KJCSBRS_8LIq_cUklax0g23raZhyKhRfWthaA/s694/Alexandr%20Solzhenitzyn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="528" data-original-width="694" height="486" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSe7DoNTafaKdHaAdEeIOp2PAHX6FrsozqQoijbrTHbmGXzpzhECqaJdT44QQMomrhczQOHbr_ERXK4X0C4vYxqO05sydEpjxlI7iC1jhcDDuKHxt-eBNimLcAg78BmajvwUsnZuKvuqO_cym6Cgzyw-KJCSBRS_8LIq_cUklax0g23raZhyKhRfWthaA/w640-h486/Alexandr%20Solzhenitzyn.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, Prisoner in the Soviet Gulag</div><p></p><p style="background: white; line-height: 19.5pt; margin-bottom: 15.0pt; margin-left: 15.0pt; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: #404040; font-family: "Segoe UI",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="background: white; line-height: 19.5pt; margin-bottom: 15.0pt; margin-left: 15.0pt; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #404040; font-family: Segoe UI, sans-serif;">As so many Western verities melt like wax before a candle flame,
we find ourselves plunging into perspectives and experiences, once considered
nightmares, now becoming our daylight reality.</span><span style="color: #404040; font-family: "Segoe UI", sans-serif;">
</span><span style="color: #404040; font-family: Segoe UI, sans-serif;">Reverting to tribalism, be it racial, identity, economic, the banishment
of God from the equation of our lives leaves a vacuum filled by our worst impulses.</span><span style="color: #404040; font-family: "Segoe UI", sans-serif;"> </span><span style="color: #404040; font-family: Segoe UI, sans-serif;">Having redefined ‘good’ as evil and promoted
evil as good, our new masters impose their slavery in the name of
decolonialism, in the name of sexual freedom.</span><span style="color: #404040; font-family: "Segoe UI", sans-serif;">
</span><span style="color: #404040; font-family: Segoe UI, sans-serif;">The ‘Christianity’ of so many Christians has been exposed as performance
religion, a cultural phenomenon, with no substance, no root to hold in the
flood.</span><span style="color: #404040; font-family: "Segoe UI", sans-serif;"> </span><span style="color: #404040; font-family: Segoe UI, sans-serif;">‘Numbers’ and ‘popularity’ were
substituted for evidence of conversion, of sanctification, of Christlikeness.</span><span style="color: #404040; font-family: "Segoe UI", sans-serif;"> </span><span style="color: #404040; font-family: Segoe UI, sans-serif;">No wonder Christianity is despised by so
many.</span><span style="color: #404040; font-family: "Segoe UI", sans-serif;"> </span><span style="color: #404040; font-family: Segoe UI, sans-serif;">If this is what Christianity has
become, it should be.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 19.5pt; margin-bottom: 15.0pt; margin-left: 15.0pt; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #404040; font-family: Segoe UI, sans-serif;">I came across this quote from Alexandr Solzhenitsyn’s <i>The Gulag Archipelago</i>.</span><span style="color: #404040; font-family: "Segoe UI", sans-serif;"> </span><span style="color: #404040; font-family: Segoe UI, sans-serif;">We have lost what he
discovered in the midst of such suffering.</span><span style="color: #404040; font-family: "Segoe UI", sans-serif;"> </span><span style="color: #404040; font-family: Segoe UI, sans-serif;">We are fast returning to a world that could create a Gulag.</span><span style="color: #404040; font-family: "Segoe UI", sans-serif;"> </span><span style="color: #404040; font-family: Segoe UI, sans-serif;">And
senselessly, selfishly, ignorantly, too many of us cheer.</span><span style="color: #404040; font-family: "Segoe UI", sans-serif;"> </span><span style="color: #404040; font-family: Segoe UI, sans-serif;">Here
is what he says.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 19.5pt; margin-bottom: 15.0pt; margin-left: 15.0pt; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: #404040; font-family: "Segoe UI",sans-serif;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 19.5pt; margin-bottom: 15.0pt; margin-left: .2in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><i><span style="color: #404040; font-family: "Segoe UI",sans-serif;"></span></i></p><blockquote><p style="background: white; line-height: 19.5pt; margin-bottom: 15.0pt; margin-left: .2in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><span style="color: #404040; font-family: "Segoe UI",sans-serif;"></span></i></span></p></blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><p style="background: white; line-height: 19.5pt; margin-bottom: 15.0pt; margin-left: .2in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><span style="color: #404040; font-family: "Segoe UI",sans-serif;">It was granted me to carry away from my prison years on my bent
back, which nearly broke beneath its load, this essential experience: </span></i><em><span style="color: #404040; font-family: "Segoe UI",sans-serif; font-style: normal;">how </span></em><i><span style="color: #404040; font-family: "Segoe UI",sans-serif;">a human being becomes
evil and </span></i><em><span style="color: #404040; font-family: "Segoe UI",sans-serif; font-style: normal;">how </span></em><i><span style="color: #404040; font-family: "Segoe UI",sans-serif;">good.<o:p></o:p></span></i></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background: white; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: 19.5pt; margin-bottom: 15.0pt; margin-left: .2in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><i><span style="color: #404040; font-family: "Segoe UI",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In
the intoxication of youthful successes I had felt myself to be infallible, and
I was therefore cruel. In the surfeit of power I was a murderer, and an
oppressor. In my most evil moments I was convinced that I was doing good, and I
was well supplied with systematic arguments. And it was only when I lay there
on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of
good.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background: white; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: 19.5pt; margin-bottom: 15.0pt; margin-left: .2in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><i><span style="color: #404040; font-family: "Segoe UI",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Gradually
it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not
through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but
right through every human heart—and through all human hearts. This line shifts.
Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by
evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all
hearts, there remains … an un-uprooted small corner of evil.</span></span></i></p></blockquote><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background: white; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: 19.5pt; margin-bottom: 15.0pt; margin-left: .2in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><i><span style="color: #404040; font-family: "Segoe UI",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> And from another place:</span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="background: white; color: #636363;"><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></span></i></p><blockquote><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><span style="background: white; color: #636363;"></span></i><blockquote><i><span style="background: white; color: #636363;">Since then I
have come to understand the truth of all the religions of the world: They
struggle with the </span></i><em style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="background: white; color: #636363; font-family: "Segoe UI",sans-serif; font-style: normal;">evil inside a human being </span></em><i><span style="background: white; color: #636363;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">(inside every human being). It is impossible to
expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it
within each person.</span></span></i></blockquote></span></blockquote><p></p></blockquote><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/70561.The_Gulag_Archipelago_1918_1956"><b><span style="background: white; color: #333333;"><i></i></span></b></a></p><blockquote><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/70561.The_Gulag_Archipelago_1918_1956"><b><span style="background: white; color: #333333;"><i>The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956</i></span></b></a><span style="background: white; color: #181818;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"> </span></span><span class="by"><span style="background: white; color: black;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">by</span></span></span><span style="background: white; color: #181818;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"> </span></span><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/19771050.Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="background: white; color: #333333;">Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn</span></a></blockquote><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/19771050.Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="background: white; color: #333333;"></span></a><o:p></o:p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">It's not 'them'. It's me.</span></p>Bill Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11939888013962360542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4368898415238503632.post-74024255157795934962023-10-25T15:08:00.003+03:002023-10-25T15:08:55.056+03:00What’s Happening in Israel and Gaza: The Secular Pious Fiction of the ‘Rules of War’<p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2dfyKgeiZp5AH9sXN9GedauDdPbiAxsKNpZ67cjvy0ghmDIsgPDHDVFU7l3EgnxUZ5qf7dkVSScb1ypyLxby5s5yEgRLjf3DgdF25eUP2bdhp15IdODP2mdLmDYwoPeOvH6DJdmKCSN32psZyf7XFzymDPWVEvVUhayyhiVvpabwXdyTlKG2ggSo9d8k/s1200/israeli-bombing-in-gaza-20231023115124.webp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="1200" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2dfyKgeiZp5AH9sXN9GedauDdPbiAxsKNpZ67cjvy0ghmDIsgPDHDVFU7l3EgnxUZ5qf7dkVSScb1ypyLxby5s5yEgRLjf3DgdF25eUP2bdhp15IdODP2mdLmDYwoPeOvH6DJdmKCSN32psZyf7XFzymDPWVEvVUhayyhiVvpabwXdyTlKG2ggSo9d8k/w640-h360/israeli-bombing-in-gaza-20231023115124.webp" width="640" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">When one side in a conflict feels aggrieved, they will do
whatever they feel they must do in order to put an end to the offense or threat
against them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have now lived a long
time, and I cannot remember a single conflict that was fought according to the
‘rules of war’, namely the guidelines published in 1949 in the aftermath of the
Second World War known as the Geneva Convention.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These sought to define the rights of
noncombatants in military conflicts, and to agree upon the rights afforded to
civilians.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It also offered agreed on
rights and protections for prisoners of war, and for those combatants who are
wounded or sick.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Given the horrors of
the first and second world wars, this was seen as a major advance in helping
humanity better manage its conflict.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>196
nations agreed to sign the Geneva Conventions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And more have been added as the number of countries has grown.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">But think with me of all the conflicts that have convulsed
the continents since then.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Has any
nation or armed group opened up their copy of the Geneva Conventions and based
their strategy, their insurrection, their defense on a reading of what the
world supposedly has agreed to do?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Has
the Geneva Convention stopped the torture or even execution of prisoners of
war?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Probably not a question one should
ask of the Sudanese, the Ethiopians, the Congolese, the Rwandans, the military
of Myanmar, the Serbians, the Turks, the Azeris, and a host of insurgent groups
from Columbia to the jihadis of West Africa, Somalia, Mozambique and Madagascar.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Oh, and Russia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The one thing that seems to mitigate the rush
to ignore civilians and anything else in the way of operational imperatives is
the press shining a light on what is actually going on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And one will note that as a result
(presumably), there is a high level of death among journalists where there is
ongoing conflict.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In otherwards, nobody
seems to care about the Geneva Convention except for members of the press and
those governments that can use the infractions of others to back foot or shame
them on the world stage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But even this
doesn’t change behavior.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">War is terrible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
it is always the civilians, the non combatants who bear the brunt of suffering
caused by war and its aftermath.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Choose
the conflict and see for yourself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To
watch the collective handwringing and gasps of outrage on the part of Western
media today as they report on the Gaza war, one might think these people had
never witnessed a war in their lives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
am not saying this to justify anything; this is just the way things are.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Go stand in Khartoum and it’s the same
thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Go visit villages in northern
Myanmar and it is the same thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Go
stand in a church in northern Nigeria and it is the same thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘But the scale is so much bigger,’ they cry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps they do not remember the Korean
war.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps they don’t remember the
Tamil insurrection in Sri Lanka.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps
they don’t remember how the British put down Mau Mau in Kenya.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or the wars that followed the disintegration
of Yugoslavia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or the Americans in
Vietnam, or Iraq, or Afghanistan…<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And we
might even want to call to mind the grinding war of conquest launched by Russia
against Ukraine, which is also ongoing, even if nobody is paying attention to
it today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>War is terrible. Things (i.e.
targets) get blown up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Civilians (aka
men, women and children) get caught in the cross fire.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Civilians are intentionally targeted <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Pick any of the conflicts mentioned above and
see for yourself.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">The other thing that clever militaries have learned is that
they can protect themselves and make things difficult for the other side by
embedding their personnel and hardware where civilians live.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Meaning if the enemy wants to take out this
tank or that artillery piece or missile launch site, they will take out
civilians as well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whose fault is
this?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is the embedders’ fault for
putting their own people in harm’s way and using them essentially as hostages?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>And,</i> it is the attackers’ fault for
caring more about degrading their enemy’s capacity than they do about who might
be in the way when they do it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
seems to be the reality on all sides.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It
also seems to be the reality that no one cares, except the civilians who are
terrorized by both, and media who makes use of this in support of its preferred
narrative.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">And so in the current war there is one side shrieking about
the so-called disproportionate response of their enemy and the resulting
casualties among the civilian population.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Daily death tolls are published as an easy statistic to ‘prove’ how
terrible their enemy is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is utterly
disingenuous.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And there are legions of
credulous media people who will take this as THE story and serve as Hamas’
publicity and propaganda wing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not that
publishing or broadcasting a fair account seems to mean anything anymore, as
people will believe what their side is telling them, damn the evidence to the
contrary. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this sort of ‘reporting’,
no mention is given by the outraged of the tactical decision taken by Hamas to
launch their missiles and attacks while surrounded by civilians.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are reasons why they have chosen this
method of self-defense.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>First, they know
that it looks bad to be seen as killing civilians.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so they would rather the Israelis look
bad than take steps to protect their own people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But notice the additional strategy to
localize the discussion away from Hamas’ deliberate provocation, and to focus solely
on the terrible suffering in Gaza.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hamas
is cynically wagering that outrage will grow to the point where Israel will be
forced to stop and Hamas will live to fight another day, but they are wagering
with the lives of their own people..<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This is a clear case of the ideology being more important than people,
to the extent that people are being intentionally sacrificed for the
furtherance of an Islamist ideology.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">In the case of the current Gaza war, where one starts the
story will determine who should be celebrated and who should win, and on the
other side, who should be cursed and slaughtered, both in rhetoric and
actuality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Disagreement about where to
begin the story between Israel and Palestine, or if that story should be pushed
back further to that of Jews and Germans, or even further to Jews in Medieval
Europe…<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Palestinians have their own
narrative.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And these conflicting
narratives are informing and driving the current conflict.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">My reason for writing is to draw attention to the ludicrous
attempts by some/many to force Israel to abide by the ‘rules of war’, and to
hit Israel with the big stick of public disapproval for violating the Geneva
Conventions as it continues to pound Gaza.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And it seems that the loudest calls for a cease fire are by people who
don’t have to live with ‘neighbors’ like Hamas or Hezbollah or al Qaida, or
Islamic State (and the countries that support them).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The hypocrisy of these so-called diplomats
and politicians, or their ignorance of or blindness to recent history beggars
belief.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">Hamas (and others) feel aggrieved because they have felt
oppressed by Israeli restrictions against Palestinians and the gradual takeover
of Palestinian land that began when the nation of Israel was first
declared.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This state of aggravation is
being used by Hamas and their many vocal supporters as justification for any
form of ‘resistance’, even the massacring of men, women and children, which
they have intentionally inflicted on Israeli citizens as a means to provoke
Israel into a wider war that Hamas, evidently, feels it will win.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That there are actually people who agree with
this in countries all over the world says something about the degenerate state
of identity politics we are experiencing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Evidently people do not matter, the ideology matters, the narrative
matters, the cause matters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This has
happened from time to time in the past century or so, and I cannot think of one
instance when it didn’t bring about the intended revolution but an unintended
(perhaps) catastrophe for the people supposedly being liberated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And when people no longer matter, we are in
serious, serious trouble.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">Israel has from its inception felt existentially threatened
by its neighbors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The threat has been
born out by a series of wars, each one motivated by a desire to remove Israel
from the map.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Israeli national identity
and policy has been shaped by this history, by these threats, which have
evolved from states to organizations formed to work for the destruction of the
Jewish state.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>More Jewish civilians died
in the Hamas attack on Israel last month than at any time in Israel’s
history.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Israelis continue to feel under
existential threat, as its enemies have vowed its destruction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What we are seeing in Gaza is Israel’s
response to the actual attack in which so many died, and Israel’s response to
the existential threat to its existence that Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran actually
represent.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">When it comes to the Islamists of Gaza (and Hezbollah and
Iran and Islamic State) and the state of Israel (and it is not just a function
of the current government),<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I suggest that
we are witnessing the collision of two totalitarian world views that are
diametrically opposed to each other on fundamental points. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is much much bigger than the Hamas
incursion, than the Israeli bombardment and threatened invasion. There will not
be an agreement between the two, because there cannot be an agreement between
the two.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There might be an accommodation
that lets the dust settle for a while.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But these people really hate each other, and there are big-idea reasons
behind the hatred on both sides.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One
side wants to kill all the Jews, and the other side wants to rid their
neighborhood of threats to its right to live in peace.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whose side should we be on?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">The West has historically sided with Israel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A rampant Islamist vanguard that has always
been present in the Middle East but is also now present in Europe and the US
because of the enormous number of Muslims that have immigrated in the past
generation is threatening to erode support for Israel from inside the West.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The more cynical might say that this is part
of an intentional strategy of the Muslim movement.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Intentional or not, it is having an impact.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I never would have dreamed that I would see demonstrations
in my country calling for the eradication of Jews.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is Medieval pogrom stuff, 1930s National
Socialism stuff.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This, combined with the
astonishing, appalling support of the Hamas murders on the part of so-called
liberal academics (and others) has created a dynamic that the West has not had
to deal with in a long time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After the
attempted genocide of European Jews in the Second World War, the West united
behind the cry of surviving Jews of ‘Never again.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What is terrifying, at least to this
historian, is that people are making the conscious decision to ignore history,
or to reinterpret it, all in the service of an ideology.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Choosing to look at history through the lens
of colonial oppression and resistance may have value as an academic discipline,
but the way it is being expressed on the streets is to elevate the conflict to
that of ideology without reference to actual people, actual lives, actual
communities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s the same sort of thing
the Marxists did in the USSR and in China, in Cambodia and North Korea, and we
know how well that went.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Plus these
liberal Westerns seem clueless as to the real ideology that is driving this
conflict, which is the Islamist one that is pushing for the triumph of an
Islamist world order.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Islamists are
happy for the liberals to make their noise, but I suspect these liberals and
the ideology they have been pushing these past several decades have nothing to
stop what the Islamists see as the ongoing, unstoppable march of Islam, not
only against Israel, but against the former Christian West as well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘Naïve’ is the word that comes to mind as I
watch all of these Western college students, academics, celebrities, and media
people wave their Palestinian flags, tear down flyers of the kidnapped Israelis
and denounce the oppressive Jewish state.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It really is an amazing thing to watch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And they have no idea what they are a part of.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">War is terrible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It
has always been terrible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And people
suffer, innocent people suffer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the
calls for Israel to ‘play by the rules of war’ seem to be disconnected from the
reality of modern warfare, as well as the dynamics of survival at play on the
Israeli side, and the dynamics of Islamist provocation of the Hamas/Hezbollah
side.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Have there been any calls for
Hamas to ‘play by the rules of war’?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
there won’t be, because Israeli ‘aggression’ will be seen as so crushing that
the Islamist side will use that as pretext for whatever atrocity they feel
motivated to inflict.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is the same
argument, essentially, used to justify the atrocities committed by Al Qaida in
Dar es Salaam, Nairobi, New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Did anybody raise the issue of ‘rules of war’
with them before they undertook to murder thousands of civilians in the name of
their cause?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">I don’t think any of this will end well for anybody.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the least we can hope for is that people
in the West, indeed people all over the world will understand what is really
going on and not be led astray by narratives that serve as propaganda on one
side or another.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hamas wants to destroy
Israel, and Israel wants to defend itself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Israel has also been trying, by war or stealth, to take Palestinian
land.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the immediate context, that
seems to be what this is about.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And all
of these things will need to be dealt with in a way that feels just and right
to all of the parties.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Which is why this
is not going to end soon or without a lot more violence.</span><o:p></o:p></p>Bill Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11939888013962360542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4368898415238503632.post-32929201983030209332023-10-22T16:22:00.000+03:002023-10-22T16:22:39.677+03:00Demons, Pigs and Jesus – Pictures of Mercy, Grace and Gratitude<p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz0ZWfWpVwwC6ngAm97b3GTuOv_LAk6-5fe23GsrhWv9jxUOLERcMjzn1ixYGZaCNaBblxPojaKXaqkoj-ZGUy0mA71K4dgc02IYJzV0-sbwnVb5c8AP7XVX4f4NRUMZ2pZoQJHVtdVP2rXL921AJ9c1a4Jx8N66yHOTHtxfV8nSre1leAfFV7CtMoGuo/s4000/Hogs.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2256" data-original-width="4000" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz0ZWfWpVwwC6ngAm97b3GTuOv_LAk6-5fe23GsrhWv9jxUOLERcMjzn1ixYGZaCNaBblxPojaKXaqkoj-ZGUy0mA71K4dgc02IYJzV0-sbwnVb5c8AP7XVX4f4NRUMZ2pZoQJHVtdVP2rXL921AJ9c1a4Jx8N66yHOTHtxfV8nSre1leAfFV7CtMoGuo/w640-h360/Hogs.jpeg" width="640" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; vertical-align: baseline;"><b><span style="color: #131516; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-ligatures: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Luke 8:26-39 <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="background: white; color: #131516; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="font-size: medium;">At that time, as Jesus arrived at the country of the Gadarenes,
there met him a man from the city who had demons; for a long time he had worn
no clothes and he lived not in a house but among the tombs. When he saw Jesus,
he cried out and fell down before him, and said with a loud voice, "What
have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beseech you, do not
torment me." For he had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the
man. (For many a time it had seized him; he was kept under guard, and bound
with chains and fetters, but he broke the bonds and was driven by the demon
into the desert.) Jesus then asked him, "What is your name?" And he
said, "Legion"; for many demons had entered him. And they begged him
not to command them to depart into the abyss. Now a large herd of swine was
feeding there on the hillside; and they begged him to let them enter these. So
he gave them leave. Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine,
and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and were drowned. When
the herdsmen saw what happened, they fled, and told it in the city and in the
country. Then people went out to see what had happened, and they came to Jesus,
and found the man from whom the demons had gone, sitting at the feet of Jesus,
clothed and in his right mind; and they were afraid. And those who had seen it
told them how he who had been possessed with demons was healed. Then all the
people of the surrounding country of the Gadarenes asked him to depart from
them; for they were seized with great fear; so he got into the boat and returned.
The man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him; but he
sent him away, saying, "Return to your home, and declare how much God has
done for you." And he went away, proclaiming throughout the whole city how
much Jesus had done for him.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #131516; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="background: white; color: #131516; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="font-size: medium;">One of
the quirks of our Orthodox lectionary is that we cover the same gospel passages
on Sundays year after year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I might wish
for all of our sakes that the Church would mix things up a bit, because we
leave most of the gospels undealt with, on Sundays at least.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And because you and I are not in a monastery,
where a much better job is done covering the rest of the Bible, we get these
same stories again and again, year after year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>God must have his reasons for this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But since my conversion, I have been asked to preach on this passage
four, maybe five times.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I might be able
to get away with giving you the same sermon I gave the last time I preached
about the Gadarene demoniac, because I would be surprised if anyone remembered
what I said.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But instead, I want to
focus on one of the main characters in this story and see if we can better
understand what is going on by experiencing things from this person’s
perspective.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="background: white; color: #131516; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="font-size: medium;">If you
were picking someone’s story to tell from this passage, who would you
choose?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are several we can choose
from.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We could, of course, choose
Jesus.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This event comes at a crucial
time, and this is his first interaction with Gentiles, and it causes a big
splash, so to speak.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or we could choose
the townspeople.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Gadara was one of the
ten cities of significance on the edge of Roman Galilee that were known as the Decapolis,
and they had an unexpected reaction to what Jesus did.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We could talk about the disciples.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are pretty much along for the ride, but
this event comes as a climax to a whole series of unnerving things that
happened with Jesus at the center.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We
could even tell it from the perspective of the pigs, but that, of course, is a
story that doesn’t have a happy ending.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>What I propose to do is talk about the man with the demons.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Matthew tells us that there were actually two
demonized men.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The interaction here in
Luke is with one of them, evidently the leader or the spokesman of the two.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I will mostly follow Luke and talk about the
one with whom Jesus interacts.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="background: white; color: #131516; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="font-size: medium;">We are
not told how this man ended up in the state in which Jesus finds him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Luke says he was naked, and that he hadn’t
worn clothes in a long time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Luke also
says that he didn’t live in a house, but in the tombs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In other words, he had worn out his welcome
in the town of Gadara and been chased away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We have other accounts in history of people living in tombs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A tomb offered certain advantages and
disadvantages. Unlike sleeping rough it at least offered the shelter of a small
cave.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Taking shelter among the remains
of the dead, however, was not an attractive option for anybody.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But a cemetery was also isolated in that
people tended to avoid the places where the dead were buried.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="background: white; color: #131516; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="font-size: medium;">Matthew
says that Jesus, as he was passing that way after crossing the lake with his
disciples, was met by <i>‘two demon-possessed men, coming out of the tombs,
exceedingly fierce, so that none could pass that way.’</i> (Matthew 8:28)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So these possessed guys were violent,
too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A further incentive to avoid having
anything to do with them.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="background: white; color: #131516; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="font-size: medium;">I want
to stop right here and suggest that what we are witnessing first is a picture
of <b><i>mercy</i></b>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Matthew’s
version says, ‘as he was passing that way’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Once Jesus got off the boat there were a number of ways he could have
gone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jesus didn’t tell anybody what his
itinerary was, or what the goal of this visit might be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He <i>chose</i> to pass that way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And he went that way because he knew what he
would find.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He went that way because his
entire purpose for this trip across the lake was to visit a cemetery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And when the demon possessed men who lived in
these tombs saw him they got up and ran to him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I would have been alarmed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jesus
wasn’t.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="background: white; color: #131516; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="font-size: medium;">Let me
give you a definition of mercy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><b>Mercy
is God not giving us what we deserve.</b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We don’t know what this man, these men had done.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We don’t know how they allowed or invited the
demons into their lives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We don’t know
what the demons had driven them to do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Demons deserve to be driven away from the presence of God.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sinners deserve to be banished from the
presence of God.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But Jesus doesn’t chase
them away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jesus doesn’t shame
them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He doesn’t impose impossible moral
standards on them before he allows them into his presence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He doesn’t make them put on clothes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead look at what Jesus does.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jesus comes to them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jesus comes to where they are.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He comes to the tombs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jesus comes to them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jesus does not give them what they
deserve.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="background: white;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #131516;">Is there
anybody else in this temple besides me who deserves to be chased away?</span><span style="color: #131516;"> </span><span style="color: #131516;">Are there any other sinners who feel far away
from God, who have treated someone badly, who have stolen something, who are
addicted to something?</span><span style="color: #131516;"> </span><span style="color: #131516;">I want to suggest
to you and me that we are in the right place this morning.</span><span style="color: #131516;"> </span><span style="color: #131516;">God is not going to chase you away.</span><span style="color: #131516;"> </span><span style="color: #131516;">In fact, Jesus is coming right here, coming
to see you.</span><span style="color: #131516;"> </span><span style="color: #131516;">You and I are being shown
mercy right now.</span><span style="color: #131516;"> </span><span style="color: #131516;">Jesus is not treating
us as we deserve.</span><span style="color: #131516;"> </span><span style="color: #131516;">We pray nonstop in
our services, ‘Lord, have mercy.’</span><span style="color: #131516;"> </span><span style="color: #131516;">This
is what that is.</span><span style="color: #131516;"> </span><i style="color: #131516;">This is mercy</i><span style="color: #131516;">.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background: white;"><span style="color: #131516;">And what
happens next in this story?</span><span style="color: #131516;"> </span><span style="color: #131516;">Jesus addresses
the demons.</span><span style="color: #131516;"> </span><span style="color: #131516;">He finds out what they call
themselves.</span><span style="color: #131516;"> </span><span style="color: #131516;">He listens to their dissembling about not wanting to be sent to the abyss.</span><span style="color: #131516;">
</span><span style="color: #131516;">He listens to their suggestion about going into the pigs.</span><span style="color: #131516;"> </span><span style="color: #131516;">And so that’s where Jesus sends the demons.</span><span style="color: #131516;"> </span><span style="color: #131516;">They do as they are told.</span><span style="color: #131516;"> </span><span style="color: #131516;">They rush out of the possessed men, into the
pigs, and the whole herd goes mad and rushes until they splash into the lake.
And there they meet their end.</span><span style="color: #131516;"> </span><span style="color: #131516;">Ok,
that’s a lot of drama!</span><span style="color: #131516;"> </span><span style="color: #131516;">And we aren’t the
only ones who are distracted by the demonic negotiations, by the suddenly
squealing pigs, by their</span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";">
headlong rush into the lake and to their death.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The pigherds are terrified and run to the
town.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Imagine what the disciples must be
thinking and feeling.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They’ve just
watched Jesus heal lepers and then heal all the sick people in Capernaum on the
other side of the lake.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They got caught
in a storm while crossing during the night and Jesus told the storm and the
waves to stop and they did.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And now they
have followed him as he deliberately chose the path that went to the cemetery of
Gadara, And now this drama with demons and the pigs.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="font-size: medium;">We might think with everybody else that
the pigs are the main storyline here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But Jesus didn’t come this way to give a lesson on how eating pork is
still a bad idea for Jews.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He came
because of these two demon-possessed men, these two <i>Gentile</i> demon-possessed men.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Gentiles were by Jewish
definition unclean.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They couldn’t
participate in Jewish religion or sacrifices.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They were cut off from any relationship with God.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But to be demon-possessed as well was to be doubly
lost, doubly cursed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The fact they were
cast out of their home, cast out of their city, living in the place of the dead
is a graphic picture of their actual spiritual reality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They were thrown away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They were lost.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They were imprisoned.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And there was nothing they could do to change
any of that.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="font-size: medium;">I have suggested that Jesus, by
choosing to come to these men, gives us a picture of mercy – he does not give
them what they deserve.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But look and see
what Jesus <i>does</i> do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He does what
these demonized, unclean, outcast men could never do for themselves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He speaks to the heart of what has brought
them to this place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He sends the demons away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He sets them free.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He heals and restores their mind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He gives them back their life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And opens the door for them to go back home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>May I suggest to you that what we are seeing
here is a picture of <b>grace</b>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><b><i>Grace
is God giving us what we don’t deserve</i></b>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Did these men deserve to have Jesus come to the tombs today?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Did these men deserve to have Jesus talk with
the demons in them?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Did these men
deserve to have Jesus send the demons away?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Did these men deserve to be set free, delivered, healed, restored?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But this is what grace does.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Grace is God’s gift to the undeserving.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And notice, these guys are not just undeserving, they are incapable of
doing anything to free themselves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They
are in prison and the door is locked and the demons have thrown away the
key.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is what Jesus does.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He comes to the underserving, he comes to the
incapable, he comes to the condemned, to the lost, to the ones who have been
thrown away, and he takes the stone that has crushed their hearts, that blocks
the tomb of their life, that they are powerless to move, that no one can lift,
and he tells that impossibly heavy stone to be gone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The sinner doesn’t deserve to be forgiven. Gentiles
don’t deserve to be included.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
demonized do not deserve to be delivered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The dead do not deserve to be raised.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But this is what we see here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This is what Jesus does.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And this
is what we call grace, receiving from God what we don’t deserve to receive.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="font-size: medium;">But this is not the end of the story.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These men have experienced mercy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They have not been given what they deserve.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They have been transformed by grace.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They have been given what they don’t deserve.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And they simply cannot remain the same.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They have stood before Jesus, still naked as
if they have been born again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A changed
life cannot remain the same.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Luke says,
‘The man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him’. (Luke
8:38)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think that’s understandable,
don’t you?.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But Jesus has a better idea.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jesus redirects this man’s overwhelming sense
of gratitude into a bigger purpose.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>‘Return to your home,’ says Jesus, ‘and declare how much God has done
for you.’ (Luke 8:39a)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And that is
precisely what happens.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘So he went his
way proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him.’ (Luke
8:39b)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We have seen a picture of <b>mercy</b>,
where Jesus is not giving these men what they deserve.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And we have seen a picture of <b>grace</b>,
where Jesus is giving them what they don’t deserve.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And here we are seeing a picture of <b><i>gratitude</i></b>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Gratitude isn’t just words.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Gratitude is what happens when one receives
mercy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Gratitude is what happens when
one is shown grace.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>Gratitude is the
changed life that results</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If we are
grateful, it will change how we think.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It will change what we do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It
will change our priorities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It will
change how we live.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And here, we see
that the change that gratitude makes in this man’s life is that he does what
Jesus tells him to do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He goes and tells
his family, his friends, his neighbors what Jesus has done for him.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="font-size: medium;">Mark’s gospel tells us something interesting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sometime after this event, Mark says that
Jesus ‘returned from the region of Tyre, and went by the way of Sidon towards
the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis.’ (Mark 7:32) He paid a second visit to the area around Gadara.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And this time, an enormous crowd gathers, and
Jesus repeats what he did on the other side of the lake with the 5000 and feeds
what is estimated to be 4000 people. And these people are not Jews.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These are Gentiles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And they have all come to see Jesus.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My question to you is, where did all of these
people come from?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When Jesus was there
the first time, when he delivered the man possessed with demons, remember what
the people there said to him?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They told Jesus
to ‘Go away. We don’t want you here.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But now when he comes back, he is thronged by thousands.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think we just might know why.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jesus told the man, ‘Go back home and declare
what God has done for you.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And then it
says, 'So he went, declaring throughout the city what how much Jesus had done
for him.'<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think the man did what Jesus
told him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think the people in the city
knew his story and were astonished at his testimony.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think when Jesus came back, they wanted to
see Jesus for themselves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>This is what
mercy does.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is what grace
does.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is what gratitude does.</i><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="font-size: medium;">What about you?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Is there
evidence in your life that Jesus has come to you?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Have you experienced mercy?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Have you experienced grace?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Is your life now one characterized by gratitude?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When you have experienced mercy and grace, a
changed life of gratitude will follow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That’s just the way it works.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><span style="font-size: medium;">Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit</span><o:p></o:p></span></p>Bill Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11939888013962360542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4368898415238503632.post-10711769325687525012023-10-20T12:36:00.008+03:002023-10-21T10:01:24.503+03:00An Orthodox Antidote to the Toxin of Western Prosperity<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZGh12aYeGj0KbDxrnuGmjra0gbG7-qA8a8uu97i09dlFWOZ-rciRDq70RgtnLmxA75NSDUd2X4FOum4U59pwiWT9ZzYRxO3zZIiyij8hvKw6j8ojRu8AhlHgKdjK4twVC3VdZPpU0hlcE6oqqwNzCk3JJZOZTT-E5EkknrgnCCha-HcOZ7nR6jT-MEFE/s1600/London-Skyline.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZGh12aYeGj0KbDxrnuGmjra0gbG7-qA8a8uu97i09dlFWOZ-rciRDq70RgtnLmxA75NSDUd2X4FOum4U59pwiWT9ZzYRxO3zZIiyij8hvKw6j8ojRu8AhlHgKdjK4twVC3VdZPpU0hlcE6oqqwNzCk3JJZOZTT-E5EkknrgnCCha-HcOZ7nR6jT-MEFE/w640-h360/London-Skyline.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">London skyline</div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">We from the West have way too much stuff.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even the lifestyle of the so-called poor in
our countries would be a veritable Promised Land for billions of actual poor
who live in abject poverty in the slums of Africa, Asia and Latin America.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course we all have our
justifications.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘I’m not really rich. Not
compared to those people.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘I’m not
rich.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have to drive an economy car.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘I’m not rich.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had to cut down on my entertainment budget.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘I’m not rich. I can’t afford and I-phone/big
TV/bigger house/vacation home, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘I’m
not rich.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We had to cancel our plans to
go to the Caribbean and do a local beach trip instead.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘I’m not rich.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We don’t have a big house but have to live in
a 2-bedroom flat.’ <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2hWMk0gWyOgLkYjyYAiwHnFomG_vCSqKXPPfoIIUJrWqkrlnK_D1HwhwfnnJ-bGZzCj63uSgv7N-lteFWUKXpceC2LKFR17w72-2lWGxgbYOPp-qOqIpCbeyJMddOLEAqdPNwUQBKAX_Ul55XSfzW-uJvhYAejxsGMLtk69YHJGtRSLHE3SGM-HlaoYM/s3865/NY%20skyline.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2576" data-original-width="3865" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2hWMk0gWyOgLkYjyYAiwHnFomG_vCSqKXPPfoIIUJrWqkrlnK_D1HwhwfnnJ-bGZzCj63uSgv7N-lteFWUKXpceC2LKFR17w72-2lWGxgbYOPp-qOqIpCbeyJMddOLEAqdPNwUQBKAX_Ul55XSfzW-uJvhYAejxsGMLtk69YHJGtRSLHE3SGM-HlaoYM/w640-h426/NY%20skyline.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">New York City skyline</div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">For the pockets of poverty that do exist, there are often
reasons for this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lack of education for
whatever reasons means lack of opportunity for higher paying jobs. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Generational poverty, where attitudes towards
school, towards work, towards substance abuse, towards entitlement and enabling
are passed down generation to generation creating a hole that makes it
difficult for the rising generation to climb out of.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Discrimination narrows opportunities, whether
it is discrimination according to age, discrimination according to gender,
discrimination according to ethnicity, discrimination according to religion,
discrimination according to politics- - all of these are alive and well and can
cause genuine hardship in the lives of individuals and families. Participation
in criminal activity is often an indicator of a downward spiral in terms of
access to opportunity and thus participation in legitimately gained prosperity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Substance abuse, be it drugs, alcohol or
gambling, often drags people down and away from participating in the licit
economy, causing them to squander what wealth they may have and driving them to
find illicit ways to support their addiction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Divorce can push one out of a comfortable life economically and into one
that is much more difficult to sustain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There are other aspects of ‘poverty’ in the West, but these are some of
the major ones that cause people to fall out of a way of life that they have
been accustomed to and into circumstances that feel much more threatening.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What is interesting is that all of these
experiences of poverty in the West reflect choices and contexts that the poor,
say, here in Nairobi (where I live), or in Addis Ababa (where I lived before),
or in Dar es Salaam, simply do not have.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There is a bottom floor to poverty here that does not exist in the
West.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>People in the West have so much
more, even poor people in the West, than the vast majority of people here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is not an attempt to cast shade on the
West. It is simply the reality.<o:p></o:p></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBVOKENZgu1Ga-xxN4LMcAFQDMawgucM7oILnRGnq1-sUFx7ltqu3dDt2jIFA6zsosC4Z1zJ5QPjCE73si6VPWAgUyoZL4i0dScmHCDJ7YVRSsBpd65HEvyfEMy34chyphenhyphenAPrNmCpwCYMXA1MXyVg-P_t-GKYTDL7P2q1pI0nvNQAvjEbOj2RUANO2mej2U/s3840/Paris%20Skyline.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2188" data-original-width="3840" height="364" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBVOKENZgu1Ga-xxN4LMcAFQDMawgucM7oILnRGnq1-sUFx7ltqu3dDt2jIFA6zsosC4Z1zJ5QPjCE73si6VPWAgUyoZL4i0dScmHCDJ7YVRSsBpd65HEvyfEMy34chyphenhyphenAPrNmCpwCYMXA1MXyVg-P_t-GKYTDL7P2q1pI0nvNQAvjEbOj2RUANO2mej2U/w640-h364/Paris%20Skyline.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Paris skyline</div><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Generosity with one’s money and one’s stuff is not something
one sees very often.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And when it does
happen, it gets our attention.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We are
raised with a very strong sense of ‘mine’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I am still prone to eat my lunch or dinner with my left arm curled
around my plate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is a defensive
posture I learned in the first grade when I realized that people would steal my
lunch food if I didn’t protect it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even today,
a poor man who works as a gardener here came begging for money. I have helped
him in the past.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But then I discovered
that he was taking what I gave him and drinking himself drunk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And now I have to choose.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Do I continue to give to him, knowing that it
is likely he will use it to support his drunkenness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or do I choose not to give to him so as not
to become an enabler of his addiction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
choose the latter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it makes him
angry with me because I could ‘help’ him, but instead choose to believe his is
lying when he says he needs these various groceries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think I am doing the right thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it doesn’t make me feel any better.<o:p></o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbLCXdbZuLbdWUDNovHgvKY4EKwkOPgiBhI7s6KiHL1Sd7JfCFG7E47azL3yBSfbVtKQCGnO11-yJa_DlbbqifPYgRZO_OZt1fJyUKLDkdUlBBCLUx6nPVtMk4ZcoCKWMEFWJ0c38mlmPL2eWiSTCT2hI0Urcd0LLhlE3xlQOgFphyIYLuajVENEo4bEs/s2000/Berlin%20Skyline.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1380" data-original-width="2000" height="442" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbLCXdbZuLbdWUDNovHgvKY4EKwkOPgiBhI7s6KiHL1Sd7JfCFG7E47azL3yBSfbVtKQCGnO11-yJa_DlbbqifPYgRZO_OZt1fJyUKLDkdUlBBCLUx6nPVtMk4ZcoCKWMEFWJ0c38mlmPL2eWiSTCT2hI0Urcd0LLhlE3xlQOgFphyIYLuajVENEo4bEs/w640-h442/Berlin%20Skyline.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span>Berlin Skyline</span></div><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I have come across a conversation between an Orthodox
Metropolitan and an atheist from 50 years ago which I have found very
challenging.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The conversation is between
Metropolitan Anthony Bloom and Marghanita Laski and it is called ‘The Atheist
and the Archbishop’ and is found in <i>God and Man</i> (Crestwood, NY: St.
Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1971), 14-17.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Let me pick up in the middle of their conversation just as they are
engaging with what we are thinking about here.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Laski is observing, from her perspectives, that Christians,
historically speaking, talk a lot about beliefs, but that these beliefs have
little impact on actual morals.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>Laski:</i> </b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>…In
other words, how do morals follow from belief in God? Why has the Church failed
to make us moral beings?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>Bloom:</i></b> I think quite certainly morals should
follow our belief in God because if we see the world structured around a certain
number of great principles, it should make a difference to our behavior.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>Laski:</i></b> What are the great principles?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>Bloom:</i></b> Love, let us say…love, justice.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>Laski:</i></b> Because you feel love when you
encounter God?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because God seems to be a
creator of love and justice? – I mean where do these virtues come into the
encounter with God?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>Bloom: </i></b>Let me limit myself to the Gospel which
will be easier <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>than to try to embrace a
wider field.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The whole teaching of the Gospel
is really a teaching about loving.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now
the fact that we fall short of it condemns us, but doesn’t make its declaration
less true.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m quite prepared to say
that individually and collectively we have fallen very short of that
ideal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now what I’m more doubtful about,
is what you said about secular thought because my impression Is that west
European secular thought at least, developed from west European culture is
impregnated with the Gospel, for instance the notion of the value of the person
is something which the Gospel has introduced into ancient society which simply
didn’t possess it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And there are so many
things which not have become common ground, universally accepted, which were
novelties in their time and which now work in society as leaven works in dough.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>Laski:</i></b> I would agree with you completely about
this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am only saying that over the
past two hundred years, at least since the middle of the eighteenth century,
these principles which do seem to me to be the glory of western civilization,
have passed effectively into the hands of the seculars and from the hands of
the religious, that insofar as there has been a moral leap forward over this period,
and I think there has been one, it’s not I think, the Churches, the synagogues,
that we have to thank for it.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>Bloom:</i></b> There are two things that strike me –
the one is that the believers have had and still have a most unfortunate
tendency to escape the difficulties and the problems of life into ‘worship’ in
inverted commas.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>Laski:</i></b> Yes, I’m glad you brought that up.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>Bloom:</i></b> That quite certainly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s much easier to retire to one’s room and
say: ‘Oh God, give bread to the hungry,’ than to do something about it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have just been in America and someone was
making discourse about his readiness to give his life for the hungry and needy,
and I asked him why he was a chain smoker and didn’t simply give a packet of
cigarettes for it.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>Laski:</i></b> And I can throw another example at
you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All of us who have children and
meet a lot of young people…meet the people who ask for more love in the world
but find it impossible to give it to the older generation.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>Bloom:</i></b> Yes, that’s true too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So that is quite definite. We have been
escaping into a world of irresponsible prayer, instead of realizing that if I
say to God, ‘Here is a need.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Help,’ I
must be prepared to hear God answer within me, without waiting for a revelation,
‘You have seen that – well go and do it.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>So that is a way in which we have failed, and which is one of the
reasons why we have gone wrong.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>Laski:</i></b> Could I suggest that another<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>reason why I think you and the secular do-gooders
have failed is because of a rejection of the world not just as you say, going
into one’s room and failing to do the good that lies to hand, but a feeling
that the world and particularly the urban world of today, is a hell – a Satanic
mill, a place to be avoided. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s no gaiety
in religion, for instance, there’s no enjoyment of a jolly life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The pleasures that we normally take in
society, even if you like the pleasures of amassing possessions, of sitting in
our little castles with our refrigerators round us and our children playing at
our feet – these to me are healthful pleasures.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But I think that serious people, serious religious people, serious non-religious
people, have always regarded these things that we genuinely enjoy as human
animals, as clogs in the way of the good life.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>Bloom:</i></b> I think they are right up to a
point.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think it takes a great deal of
mastery of self not to forget what is deepest in oneself to the profit of what
is more superficial.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s easier to be
superficial than deep, it’s easier to be on that level than face things that
may be tragic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You see the difficulty is
that we have made it into a false moral attitude, into an attitude that if you
are a Christian you most be stern, almost sinister, never laugh – <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>Laski:</i></b> Or very, very simple, so simple and
innocent that the realities of life seem irrelevant to you.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>Bloom:</i></b> Yes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But if you are really aware of things, of how tragic life is, then there
is restraint in your enjoyment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Joy is
another thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One can possess a great sense
of inner joy and elation, but enjoying the outer aspects of life with the
awareness of so many people suffering and so on, is something which I find
difficult.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I was a professional
man, we made a decision with my mother never to live beyond the minimum which
we need for shelter and food because we thought and I still think, that whatever
you spend above that , it is stolen from someone else who needs it while you
don’t need it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That doesn’t make you
sinister, it gives you a sense of joy in sharing, and in giving and
receiving.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I do feel that as long as
there is one person who is hungry, excess of happiness – excess of amenities –
is a theft. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>Laski:</i></b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And yet each one person is so vulnerable, so prone to tragedy, so likely
to fall into danger that when I see people, for instance on a beach, with
excessive possessions and enjoying themselves excessively, here I think, is
gaiety, a little happiness stored, a moment of gaiety that is not wrong.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>Bloom:</i></b> I wouldn’t say it is wrong.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It think it could be deeper and it could be
more permanent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of the problems of
the modern person is that we have so much that we no longer enjoy little
things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Say, in the years when life was
extremely hard, in my experience, the slightest joy was a miracle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now, my level of miracle has gone up; it
takes more for me to find that things are so miraculous.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>Laski:</i></b> Yes, and yet sometimes people
rediscover simplicity through excess.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m
not morally disagreeing with what you are saying but I am wondering whether
this – to put forward such a moral point as you do – isn’t to impose guilt on
must of us who are not so austere.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
would be a general charge, not against you only.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>Bloom:</i></b> Guilt is always wrong and guilt is a
sickly attitude to life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s
useless.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s destructive and it does
away with the very sense that all things are possible, that one can put things
right.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No, I believe that guilt is
wrong, but I think that it is a challenge of greater joy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If I say, for instance, that I won’t do this
because I can have the joy of sharing, instead of parasitically, in a predatory
way, devouring it for myself, I’m not diminishing my joy and I’m not developing
a sense of guilt.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>Laski:</i></b> The only thing I’d say is that if you
are wrong – guilty – have done wrong, it’s better to bear it your self than to
put it on to other people. It may be necessary to bear your own guilt and work through
it.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>Bloom:</i></b> I think it’s better to leave the word
guilt alone and <i>do</i> something.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKvOZYS64NW74AfZwkk6hD45nMwPhreoip-0LoflFCXLGtXsHuZ8534igFxo3zNy8GWkasnbSNT3gO-AQ7YeBg2y80b777OjuhUIBDyf75YZWK8R8msJZj9AMkfzjKMXxYggS19Whx_nBqVjBap6AfYYpKc6Zg-Ugk5oJ1P9CJM4LGG6u7N3qy41GfqfI/s1600/Washington%20DC%20skyline.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1600" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKvOZYS64NW74AfZwkk6hD45nMwPhreoip-0LoflFCXLGtXsHuZ8534igFxo3zNy8GWkasnbSNT3gO-AQ7YeBg2y80b777OjuhUIBDyf75YZWK8R8msJZj9AMkfzjKMXxYggS19Whx_nBqVjBap6AfYYpKc6Zg-Ugk5oJ1P9CJM4LGG6u7N3qy41GfqfI/w640-h320/Washington%20DC%20skyline.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><span><div style="text-align: center;">Washington, DC skyline</div></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">This conversation goes on for quite some time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I was interested in the example of holding on to excess as being a decision to steal from those who need what I have but do not have it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This echos the 4th/5th century words of St. Basil of Caesarea and St. John Chrysostom, both who viewed excessive and tightly held personal
wealth similarly.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Archbishop Anthony Bloom (1914-2003) was a writer, monk and
bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church, serving as the Metropolitan of Sourozh, the
Moscow Patriarchates diocese of Great Britain and Ireland.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Marghanita Laski (1915-1988) was a journalist, novelist and
contributed more than 250,000 words to the <i>Oxford English Dictionary</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She was an avowed atheist and supported many
liberal political causes.<o:p></o:p></p>Bill Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11939888013962360542noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4368898415238503632.post-47809099125160792372023-10-16T14:40:00.002+03:002023-10-16T14:57:45.111+03:00Beauty Still Comes, Unexpectedly<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPAE80DqUUl9j8mdSo2UveCPmUEJnjYxeI-3pwfeR_mbGYknvY2mWydw_lQGXX7fbdA7OqujRrRSd1PkRBSr7_MF1Ch-qbvacg-ImznWS9qArk_813GvPWf0j22nmk2NXJpl1EbjCPj-MTpjaNKtqeM79Q_B8clON22s_Zb20hAivZEbpQtVpORU3JJws/s1200/Filia%20Sion.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1065" data-original-width="1200" height="568" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPAE80DqUUl9j8mdSo2UveCPmUEJnjYxeI-3pwfeR_mbGYknvY2mWydw_lQGXX7fbdA7OqujRrRSd1PkRBSr7_MF1Ch-qbvacg-ImznWS9qArk_813GvPWf0j22nmk2NXJpl1EbjCPj-MTpjaNKtqeM79Q_B8clON22s_Zb20hAivZEbpQtVpORU3JJws/w640-h568/Filia%20Sion.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Our world is full of so much noise.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Sometimes the noise seems to overshadow any attempts to create something beautiful.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">So much so one can forget that we human beings were created in the image and likeness of God,</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">That we were meant for beauty, capable of reflecting beauty, empowered to create beauty.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The ugliness that characterizes so much of what we produce makes one wonder how beauty even entered our vocabulary, much less our experience.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">We seem to have forgotten our source, wandered from our calling.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">We seem intent on reproducing the chaos and pain in our own hearts.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">And all evidence points to the fact that we are succeeding.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Music is very personal. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">What is moving to one seems banal to another.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">So I hesitate to share a piece like this.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I have a CD that a friend gave me five years ago.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Inexplicably it took until last week to rediscover it and then listen to it.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">It is almost entirely Gregorian Chant.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">But when the last piece came on, I had to stop what I was doing, turn up the volume, and give it my full attention.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Again and again.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">It is not a complicated composition.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">It is a traditional Jewish chant called <i>Ma Navu - How Beautiful -</i> based on a text from Isaiah 52 - 'How beautiful are the feet of him who brings good news...'</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I share it here because I found it not just moving, but beautiful.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I hope it touches the place in your heart that treasures beautiful things.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Because in this world of ours today, we are in desperate need for anything that delivers us from the noise, the trauma, the wreckage, and the ugliness that surrounds us and threatens to overwhelm us.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">But I have come to believe that beauty is part of God's rescue plan. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Click on the link below and take five minutes to listen to 'Ma Navu'.</span></p><p><a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nb2lDvHDi6nuA3PNUG9fERUpYs530tJ7/view?usp=drive_link"><span style="font-size: large;">Ma Navu - How Beautiful</span></a></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">This recording comes from a CD called <i>Filia Sion</i> by <i>Vox Clamantis</i>.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_gP67Xpt7cT_JK3YIUKB4ntsVk9HDsIK_8_yZMK0OBhoXmp8oJwgaeGzxAqqsaXNZ8I4nRP8IkwjTU5O9Jt-lyvSqpJEbxiDtvhBSg-n0z2ruUsokoU_6nQkX_XnSn3W_JmlvFHsp-CNfGD2YdWqXdWpK93q8nKJv6H72HXRBW_IKMmhyMkisrzmX9zQ/s1200/vox%20clamantis.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="674" data-original-width="1200" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_gP67Xpt7cT_JK3YIUKB4ntsVk9HDsIK_8_yZMK0OBhoXmp8oJwgaeGzxAqqsaXNZ8I4nRP8IkwjTU5O9Jt-lyvSqpJEbxiDtvhBSg-n0z2ruUsokoU_6nQkX_XnSn3W_JmlvFHsp-CNfGD2YdWqXdWpK93q8nKJv6H72HXRBW_IKMmhyMkisrzmX9zQ/w640-h360/vox%20clamantis.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>Bill Blackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11939888013962360542noreply@blogger.com0