st. francis original rule of 1209 was evidently lost. the following is taken from his rule of 1221. the rule of 1223 is in more legal language and, i believe, accepted as the formal rule of francis order (the franciscan order). this is believed to be more reflective of francis' actual wording. his original spirit of seeking to imitate Christ was soon lost due to other influences in the church which eroded much of what was practiced originally and possibly led francis to step down from an active role in the order he founded. he died in 1226.
chapter 1 the friars are to live in obedience, without property and in chastity.
the rule and life of the friars is to live in obedience, in chastity and without property, following the teaching and the footsteps of our Lord Jesus Christ who says, if thou wilt be perfect, go, sell what thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and com, follow me (mt. 19.21); and, if anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me (mt. 16.24). elsewhere He says, if anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother and wife and children, and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple (lk. 14,26). and everyone who has left house, or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands for My name's sake, shall receive a 100fold and shall possess life everlasting. (mt. 19.29)
chapter 2 of the reception and clothing of the friars
..give him 2 tunics without a hood, a cord and trousers and a caperon (upper garment) reaching to the cord...the friars who have already made their profession of obedience may have one habit with a hood and, if necessary, another without a hood..all the friars must wear poor clothes and they can patch them with pieces of sackcloth and other material, with God's blessing
chapter 3...fasting
..all the friars without exception must fast from the feast of all saints until christmas, and from epiphany, when our Lord began his fast, until easter. the friars are not bound by the rule to fast at other times, except on friday..
chapter 5 the correction of the friars who have fallen into sin
all the friars, both the ministers (who were over groups of friars) , who are servants and their subjects, should be careful not to be upset or angry when anyone falls into sin of gives bad example; the devil would be only too glad to ensnare many others thru one man's sin. they are bound, on the contrary, to give the sinner spiritual aid, as best they can..
all the friars without exception are forbidden to wield power or authority, particularly over one another...far from doing or speaking evil to one another, the friars should be glad to serve and obey one another in a spirit of charity.
chapter 7 work and the service of others
the friars who are engaged in the service of lay people for whom they work should not be in charge of $ or of the cellar. they are forbidden to accept positions of authority in the houses of their employers..they should be the least and subordinate to everyone in the house..everyone should remain at the trade and in the position in which he was called. in payment thy may accept anything they need, except $. if necessary, they can go for alms like the rest of the friars. they are allowed to have the tools which they need for their trade.
all the friars must work hard doing good, as it has been said, 'always be doing something worthwhile; then the devil will always find you busy' (st. jerome, epistle 125) and 'idleness is the enemy of the soul'. (st. anselm, epistle 49)
chapter 8 the friars are forbidden to take $
our Lord tells us in the Gospel, take heed and guard yourselves from all covetousness (lk. 12.15)..they..are forbidden to take or accept $ in any way or under any form or have it accepted for them, for clothing or books or as wages or in any other necessity, except to provide for the urgent needs of those who are ill. we should have no more use or regard for $ in any of its forms than for dust. those who think it is worth more or who are greedy for it, expose themselves to the danger of being deceived by the devil. we have left everything we had behind us..if ever we find $ somewhere, we should think no more of it than of the dust we trample under our feet..)eccles. 1.2)
if any of the friars collects or keeps $, except for the needs of the sick, the others must regard him as a fraud and a thief and a robber and a traitor..the friars are absolutely for bidden to take $ as alms, or have it accepted for them; so too they cannot ask for it themselves or have others ask for it, for their houses or dwelling places. it is also forbidden to accompany anyone who is collecting $ for their houses.
chapter 9 begging alms
the friars should be delighted to follow the lowliness and poverty of our Lord Jesus Christ, remembering that of the whole world we must own nothing; but having food and sufficient clothing, with these let us be content (I tim. 6.8)..they should be glad to live among social outcasts, among the poor and helpless, the sick and the lepers, and those who beg by the wayside. if they are in want, they should not be ashamed to beg alms, remembering our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the living, all -powerful God set his face like a very hard rock (isa. 50.7) and was not ashamed. he was poor and he had no home of his own and he lived on alms..
if people insult them and refuse to give them alms, they should thank God for it, because they will be honored before the judgement-seat of our Lord Jesus Christ for these insults. the shame will be imputed to those who cause it, not to those who suffer it. alms are an inheritance and a right which is due to the poor because our Lord Jesus Christ acquired this inheritance for us...everything people leave after them in this world is lost, but for their charity and almsgiving they will receive a reward from God.
the friars should have no hesitation about telling one another what they need, so that they can provide for one another. they are bound to love and care for one another as brothers, according to the means god gives them, just as a mother loves and cares for her son...they..can eat ordinary food...
in times of urgent need, the friars may provide for themselves as God gives them the opportunity, because necessity knows no law. (ancient proverb)
chapter 10 the sick
if a friar falls ill, no matter where he is, the others may not leave him, unless someone has been appointed to look after him as they should like to be looked after themselves.
in case of grave necessity, however, they can leave him with some lay person who undertakes to care for his illness.
i beg the friar who is sick to thank God for everything; he should be content to be as God wishes him to be, in sickness or in health, because it is those who were destined for eternal life (acts 13.48) that God instructs by sickness and affliction and the spirit of compunction. He tells us Himself, those whom I love I rebuke and chastise. but if the sick friar lets his illness upset him and becomes angry with God or with the other friars, always looking for medicine in an effort to relieve the body that is soon to die and is the enemy of the soul, it is a result of evil in him and a sign that he is a carnal person; he does not seem to be a real friar, because he cares more for his body than for his soul.
chapter 11 the friars must love one another; detraction or speaking injuriously of one another is forbidden
far from indulging in detraction or disputing in words the friars should do their best to avoid talking, according as God gives them the opportunity. ..they must prove their love by their deeds..they are to speak evil of none (tit. 3.2)they must give no thot even to the slightest faults of others (mt. 7.3; lk. 6.41), but rather count over their own in the bitterness of their soul (isa. 38.15)
chapter 12 evil relations with women must be avoided
no matter where they are or where they go, the friars are bound to avoid the sight or company of women, when it is evil. no one should speak to them alone..
chapter 13 the penalty for incontinence
if a friar is tempted and commits fornication, he must be deprived of the habit. by his wickedness he has lost the right to wear it and so he must lay it aside completely and be dismissed from the order. they he should do penance for his sins.
chapter 14 how the friars are to travel
as they go about the country, the friars are to take nothing with them for their journey, neith staff, nor wallet, nor bread, nor $ (lk.9.3) . when they enter a house, they are to say first of all, peace to this house (lk. 10.5) and they should remain in the same house, eating and drinking what they have (lk. 10.7)
they should not offer resistance to injury; if a man strikes them on the right cheek, they shold turn the other cheek also towards him (mt. 5.39). if a man would take away their cloak, they should not grudge him their coat along with it. they should give to every man who asks and if a man takes what is theirs, they should not ask him to restore it (lk. 6. 29-30)
chapter 15 the friars may not keep animals or ride horseback
..unless they are forced to it by sickness or real necessity.
chapter 16 missionaries among the saracens and other unbelievers
..the friars who are inspired by God to work...must get permission to go from their minister..
..avoid quarrels or disputes and be subject to every human creature for God's sake (I pet. 2.13) so bearing witness to the fact that they are christians...proclaim the word of God openly, when they see that is God's will, calling on their hearers to believe in God almighty, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the Creator of all...that they may be baptized and become Christians, because unless a man be born again of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God (jn. 3.5)
may they tell them all that and more, as God inspires them..no matter where they are, the friars must always remember that they have given themselves up completely and handed over their whole selves to our Lord Jesus Christ and so they should be prepared to expose themselves to every enemy, visible or invisible, for love of Him. (mk.8.35; mt. 5.10; jn 15.20; mt. 10.23; 5.11; lk.6.23; 12.4; mt. 24.6; lk. 21.19; mt. 10.22 then quoted)
chapter 17 preachers
the ministers and preachers must remember that they do not have a right to the office of serving the friars or of preaching and so they must be prepared to lay it aside without objection the moment they are told to do so. in the love which is God (I jn. 4.8) i entreat all my friars, whether they are given to preaching, praying or manual labour, to do their best to humble themselves at every opportunity; not to boast or be self-satisfied or take pride in any good which God says or does or accomplishes in them or by them..
we must be firmly convinced that we have nothing of our own, except our vices and sins. and so we should be glad when we fall into various trials ( james 1.2)..we must all be on our guard against pride and empty boasting and beware of worldly or natural wisdom. a worldly spirit loves to talk a lot but do nothing, striving for the exterior signs of holiness that people can see, with no desire for true piety and interior holiness of spirit...the spirit of God, on the other hand, inspires us to mortify and despise our lower nature and regard it as a source of shame, worthless and of no value..
chapter 19 the friars must be catholic
all the friars are bound to be catholics and live and speak as such...we must regard all other clerics and religious as our superiors in all that concerns the salvation of the soul and is not contrary to the interest of our religious life. we must respect their position and office, together with their ministry.
chapter 22 an exhortation to the friars
remember the words of our Lord, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you (mt.5.44) our Lord Jesus Christ Himself..called the man who betrayed Him His friend and gave Himself up of His own accord to His executioners. therefore, our friends are those who for no reason cause us trouble and suffering, shame or injury, pain or torture, even martyrdom and death. it is these we must love and love very much, because for all they do to us we are given eternal life.
we must hate our lower nature with its vices and sins; by living a worldly life, it would deprive us of the love of our Lord Jesus Christ and of eternal life, dragging us down with it into hell. by our own fault we are corrupt, wretched, strangers to all good, willing and eager only to do evil..
we have left the world now and all we have to do is to be careful to obey God's will and please Him. we must be very careful or we will turn out to be like the earth by the wayside, or the stony or thorn-choked ground..
..and so we friars should leave the dead to bury their won dead (mt. 8.22)...we should beware especially of the malice and wiles of satan; his only desire is to prevent man from raising his mind and heart to his Lord and God. he goes about, longing to steal man's heart away under the pretext of some good or useful interest, and obliterate the words and commandments of God from his memory. by the anxieties and worries of this life he tries to dull man's heart and make a dwelling for himself there (quotes mt. 12.43-5)..and so we must all keep close watch over ourselves or we will be lost and turn our minds and hearts from god, because we think there is something worth having or doing, or that we will gain some advantage.
in that love which is God, i entreat all my friars, ministers and subjects, to put away every attachment, all care and solicitude and serve, love, honor, and adore our Lord and God with a pure heart and mind; this is what He seeks above all else. we should make a dwelling-place within ourselves where He can stay, He who is the Lord God almighty, Father, Son and Holy Spirit...
chapter 23 prayer, praise and thanksgiving
Almighty, most high and supreme God, Father, holy and just, Lord, King of heaven and earth, we give you thanks for Yourself. of Your own holy will you created all things spiritual and physical, made us in Your own image and likeness and gave us a place in paradise, thru Your only Son, in the Holy spirit. and it was thru our own fault that we fell. we give You thanks because, having created us thru Your Son..You decreed that he should be born, true God and true manllwe give You thanks because Your Son is to come a second time in the glory of his majesty and cast the damned, who refused to do penance and acknowledge you, into everlasting fire; while to all those who acknowledged you, adored You, and served You by a life of penance, He will say: Come..
we Friars Minor, servants and worthless as we are, humbly beg and implore everyone to persevere in the true faith and in a life of penance; there is no other way to be saved...
with all our hearts and all our souls, all our minds and all our strength, all our power and all our understanding, with every faculty and every effort, with every affection and all our emotions, with every wish and desire, we should love our Lord and God who has given and gives us everything, body and soul, and all our life; it was He who created and redeemed us and of His mercy alone He will save us; wretched and pitiable as we are, ungrateful and evil, rotten through and through, He has provided us with every good and does not cease to provide for us.
we should wish for nothing else and have no other desire; we should find no pleasure or delight in anything except in our Creator...
nothing, then, must keep us back, nothing separate us from Him, nothing come between us and Him...
in the name of God i entreat the friars to grasp the meaning of all that is written in this rule for the salvation of our souls, and recall it to mind again and again...i beg them all to love, observe, and treasure this rule..i command the friars to follow this rule and no other.
Glory be to the Father..Son..Holy Spirit..world without end. amen.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Friday, August 27, 2010
8.29.10 MAY YOU LIVE FOREVER!
buddhism continued from last week...
75 rules for proper behavior of novices who seek admission in the order
7 ways of settling disputes
227 rules for the male monk
311 for the female
etc.
if you do well enough throughout your lifetimeS, you will achieve nirvana.
my note: imagine having to come back to this living-nightmare of a hell-hole...again...and again...and again... to try and keep a bunch of rules that are impossible to keep!!!, until the sadist who cooked up all this is satisfied. wow. HEAVY!
just in the last several years i was bothered by the fact that i did not practice hospitality...enough (i thot). on further reflection i realized i have rarely in my entire life been hospitable (lit. a lover of strangers...i usually have no contact at all with people who are, technically, strangers...that is, those who are without rights or legal place in the society of which i am a member, what we would call illegal aliens, and have so managed the few contacts with such as to be so 'distant' in nature that i keep from really finding out they are, indeed, strangers here where i live with all my rights and position. i realized that this is not a recommendation or suggestion from God, but it is a command to be kept.
this is ONLY ONE COMMAND out of many, many commands throughout the bible, all of which i am currently miserably failing TO KEEP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! as paul said to the galatian believers, C-U-R-S-E-D IS EVERY ONE WHO DOES NOT ABIDE BY A-L-L THINGS WRITTEN IN THE LAW TO PERFORM THEM (3.10). rules, laws, to do lists never saved one person, but they evidently do wonders to serve as salve for guilty consciences. in fact, they can only condemn. they only serve to show us our TOTAL INABILITY to do what either we or somebody else or God says we must do to make the grade.
one game i have often played in this area is that i perform a clever little mental fantasy that goes like this. if i do x one time, then i can tell myself that I DO X (all the time). no no no no! it doesn't go like that! i must DO X REGULARLY. then i am tortured by the ?, how regular is regular enough?...
another trick is what might be called the GOING-15 (NOT 16!!!)-MILES-PER-HOUR- THROUGH-THE-TOTAL-LENGTH- OF-THE-'SCHOOL-SLOW-ZONE'. if i perform that act, then i have free reign to ride on someone's back bumper, far exceed the speed zone whenever it suits me or i'm late or whatever, use rolling stops, cut corners on turns and whatever else i can get away with if i want to. it's kind of like a catholic indulgence; a' get out of jail free' card in monopoly. i get to choose the little bite-sized 'righteousness'. (ie. something so quick and easy that i can actually do it) this not only grants me the right to do whatever else i please but i grants me total freedom from all prosecution for law-breaking. NOT!
by that hospitality thing, God opened my eyes to the fact that i am totally forgiven, totally given the eternal and perfect righteousness of Christ...because i can NEVER be righteous in any way, shape or form, ON MY OWN. that's about the time i started getting real joy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (i'm not overflowing with joy yet because i so wickedly, perversely, self-deceivedly still think that I am much better than i am.)
..back to buddhism..when a person dies, he is reborn as someone else - not reincarnated in the hindu sense of the word, by reborn. the difference is in the idea of self. a reincarnated person returns as himself in another form; a reborn person returns, but not with any real selfhood. to buddhists self is only an illusion. throughout this life, he will experience the consequences of his former lives. (GREAT!) this is karma, the sum of good and bad deeds in previous existences. karma is like a great wheel - either it will crush you or you will jump clear of its continual spinning thru enlightenment.
buddhism is a peculiar religion in that it does not concern itself with God or gods. even buddha never claimed divinity. progress to enlightenment depends upon you...focusing on self, they also encourage a disregard and forgetfulness of it, saying that there is no ultimate self.
buddhism stresses moralism. Jesus, in their mind, would have been an exemplary buddhist. it is this element that makes it all the more dangerous. moralism, in any form, without Christ, results in condemnation...'even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified'. (galatians 2.16)
c.s.lewis, mere christianity, ...'the death of Christ is just that point in history at which something absolutely unimaginable from outside shows thru into our own world. and if we cannot picture even the atoms of which our own world is built, of course we are not going to be able to picture this. indeed, if we found that we could fully understand it, that very fact would show it was not what it professes to be - the inconceivable, the uncreated, the thing from beyond nature, striking down into nature like lightning. you may ask what good will it be to us if we do not understand it. but that is easily answered. a man can eat his dinner without understanding exactly how food nourished him. a man can accept what Christ has done without knowing how it works: indeed, he certainly would not know how it works until he has accepted it.
we are told that Christ was killed for us, that His death has washed out our sins and that by dying He disabled death itself. that is the formula. that is christianity. that is what has to be believed. any theories we build up as to how Christ's death did all this are, in my view, quite secondary; mere plans or diagrams to be left alone if they do not help us, and , even if they do help us, not to be confused with the thing itself.
we have to take reality as it comes to us: there is no good jabbering about what it ought to be like or what we should have expected it to be like. but though i cannot see why it should be so, i can tell you why i believe it is so.
i have explained why i have to believe that Jesus was (and is) God. and it seems [plain as a matter of history that He taught his followers that the new life was communicated in this way. in other words, i believe it on his authority.
do not be scared by the word authority. believing things on authority only means believing them because you have been told them by someone you think trustworthy. 99% of the things you believe are believed on authority.
i believe there is such a place as new york. i have not seen it myself. i could not prove by abstract reasoning that there must be such a place as new york. i have not seen it myself. i could not prove by abstract reasoning that there must be such a place. i believe it because reliable people have told me so.
the ordinary man believes in the solar system, atoms, evolution and the circulation of the blood on authority - because the scientists say so. EVERY HISTORICAL STATEMENT IN THE WORLD IS BELIEVED ON AUTHORITY. none of us has seen the norman conquest or the defeat of the spanish armada. none of us could prove them by pure logic as you prove a thing in mathematics.
we believe them simply because people who did see them have left writings that tell us about them: in fact, on authority.
a man who jibbed at authority in other things as some people do in religion would have to be content to know nothing all his life.
francis asbury and the methodist circuit riders covered america with spiritual awakening. in 1771 john wesley said 'our brethren in america call aloud for help. who are willing to go over and help them?' francis asbury was among those who responded.
born in 1745, having only a few years of formal education, at 22 confirmed as a lay preacher, asbury left for america never to return.
in 1772 asbury was placed in charge of the methodist congregations and preachers of america. he soon realized that the methodist practice of using traveling preachers would be even more practical in america..american congregations were small and separated by large distances. establishing settled pastors was almost impossible. asbury used circuit riders to reach the people.
a traveling preacher brought news from the outside world, was a welcome break from the depressing daily routine of hard labour. he brought crowds from miles around. he would perform marriages, baptize infants and sere communion. his preaching would remind many that God had not forgotten about them.
in 1780 there were 42 preachers and 8504 methodist members. in 1790 these numbers were 227/58,000 and by 1820, near asbury's death, they were 904/256,881.
much of the drive for the enormous methodist growth came from asbury, who rose every morning at 4, taught himself latin, greek and hebrew and made it his rule to read 100 pages of good literature daily. his travels over rough, trackless and dangerous wilderness were staggering.
beginning in 1798, it was his custom to make a complete circuit of the u.s., reaching from georgia to maine, and inland to indiana.
asbury never expected sacrifices of others that he would not make himself. he taveled constantly throughout his lifetime. he never married and had no home. all that he owned was in the 2 saddlebags on his horse.
it is estimated that in asbury's lifetime he preached well over 16,000 sermons, ordained more than 4,000 preachers, travled on horseback or (when he was too old for that) in carriages 270,000 miles, and wore out 6 faithful horses!
asbury never accepted more salary than an ordinary methodist circuit rider, which in 1800 was only $64 a year - only 15% of what the average congregationalist minister received.
journal entry 'Lord, my soul thirsteth for holiness in myself and others. i found my heart led out in prayer for those i cannot preach to.'
voice of martyrs, aug. 2010...MOHAMMED hegazy is a 27 year old believer who, along with his wife are muslim background believers, converts from islam. after becoming a christian 11 years ago, he was beaten regularly by his father until he moved out..2 years later. in addition, he was tortured several times by egyptian police. they tied a blindfold around his eyes, hung him upside down by ropes, beat him and shocked him with electric batons trying to gather info about other christians.
when he filed a lawsuit in august 2007 to change the religious status on his id card from 'muslim' to 'christian' (the 1st such case in egypt), islamic religious leaders called for his death. his house was burned to the ground and his family is now in hiding.
when asked about his thot on what the apostle paul calls tribulations, he told us 'i think that suffering is a most beautiful part of the christian faith because christianity without pain, without suffering, without hard times is like the ready-made food. there's nothing true in it it's very superficial, very shallow'.
SAMIR, a 30 year old man in alexandria, is another believer who has experience the heat of egypt's iron furnace. after his conversion, police declared him insane and institutionalized him. while in a mental hospital, samir was tortured horrifically, leaving his mind and body permanently damaged.
before he met Jesus..samir was a top biochemistry student at..university..he was so well respected that the university rewarded him with a haj, a pilgrimage to the muslim holy city of mecca..while it hould have been the pinnacle moment of his muslim life, the experience caused him to question his faith.
samir knew that christians worship Jesus.so he decided to test the faith for himself. 'i started thinking, "is Jesus real"?..i'm a biochemist, and in science we don't believe anything we hear about. i had to see things myself'...he used to sneak into churches and listen.
samir's problems began as soon as he started to follow Jesus. first, his parents kicked him out of the house. then 6 months after his conversion, he decided to change the religion of his identity card from 'muslim' to 'christian'. the public safety police told him, 'we're going to arrest you and send you to a mental hospital'.
'they were waiting for me and they gave me punches..they grabbed my clothes and tied me. the doctors all had beards; the beard usually means they are radical muslims..you cannot imagine the drugs they gave me. i paced the floor. they gave me..very strong hallucinogenic drugs. they gave me 10 pills in the morning..10 in the afternoon and 10 at night, every single day. they gave me these drugs very fast and they gave me injections. an injection every day and in a few days i was gone. i was gone; saliva was coming out of my mouth'.
the doctors tried to destroy samir. 'they gave me electric shocks on my genitals..they used to give me an injection first to put me to sleep. i didn't see the machine, but i was 2 hands place the electrodes. they put them on wherever they want to hurt people. they said "it's time for you to get shocked". each course of electric shock therapy lasted 6 days, 6 times every morning'.
samir was released from the hospital after about 6 weeks, but he had nowhere to go and his family was more ashamed of him than ever. he went to a church, but CHURCHES ARE AFRAID TO OPENLY ASSIST NEW CHRISTIANS. 'supporting a new christian convert is a crime..every church, you find at the front door 2,3 or 4 cops related to the public safety police. they are there for the safety of..the congregation..but they are working with the govt..'
since his first visit to the mental hospital about 10 years ago, he has been admitted 5 more times. each time, he was held about 6 weeks. in one stay, he was beaten and had some teeth knocked out. but he was not without hope. curing one visit, he met 2 other christians. 'we used to pry together - 3 guys, together the whole time. we sat on the same bed..taking and reading the bible, a chapter every day, especially the 4 gospels. it gave me hope for when i got out'.
samir was released from his 6th hospital visit just 6 weeks before we interviewed him. his mind appears to be irreversibly damaged and he has continual tremors throughout his body, but his heart is still in God's hands. 'they changed me from a normal person, to a mentally retarded person'..in addition, the public safety police still call him often. 'they want to make sure i'm not talking about christianity anymore..IN THIS COUNTRY IT LOOKS NICE, PEOPLE LOOK NICE, EVERYTHING LOOKS NICE, BUT WHEN IT COMES TO (CHRISTIANITY), EVERYTHING IS CHANGED 360 degrees'.
samir is now being mentored by an..evangelist. 'it's my dream to have a small car and to get on with my life..i would take a few blind people and give them rides..to the church. it would give me the chance to serve the blind and the handicapped people. this is my dream'.
was led to pick up what i thot was a current copy of 'israel my glory' published by the friends of israel gospel ministry located in westville, nj. showing how little i know about what is happening there, i was moved by what i read and then by noting the date of publication, september/october 2006
editorial by bill sutters, executive director of the friends of israel, reporting on a recent field staff meeting...'we gathered under the banner of the foi mission statement: "a worldwide christian misistry communicating biblical truth about israel and the messiah, while fostering solidarity with the jewish people"..reports on the rise of anti-semitism where foi serves were disturbing. news from our workers in england and france was especially troubling. our staff's observations matched those in a june 16 article titled 'jews are under siege: a call to action' by charles jacobs and seth klarman in the new york jewish week: 'no one wants to think that 60 years after the holocaust, a new storm threatens jews everywhere. but reality cannot be avoided or minimized'. (my note: CORRECTION: EVERYONE EVERYWHERE IS THREATENED...ABORTION IS THE FOUNDATION OF THIS THREAT) ..several challanges and opportunities ..came into clear focus. first is the challenge to expose the serious error of replacement theology wherever it is found. this teaching which denies God's promises to israel and the jewish people, can only be sustained by an allegorical, rather than a literal, interpretation of God's prophetic word..historically it was used to marginalize the jewish people and even to subject them to violence...
over a year ago, in a good-faith attempt at conciliation to palestinian and international demands, isrel left the gaza strip. 8 to 10k israeli citizens were expelled from their homes by their own got and the israel defense forces were evacuated.
the move was promoted on the pretext that the palestinians would see the light at the end of the tunnel and that the green fields of statehood would beckon them to the other side. as for the jewish state, many believed disengagement would give israel a drop of tranquility in the vast ocean of arab hostility.
israel's unilateral withdrawal from gaza - for which it received no concessions in return - marked the 1st time in history that the palestinian arabs received independent territory. neither the muslim ottoman turks, who ruled the area for some 4 centuries, not the british, egyptians or jordanians ever allowed the palestinian arabs to govern themselves...
in the minds of many westerners and israelis, this show of good faith would provide a golden opportunity for the jewish state to be rewarded by responsible economic and social progress for the impoverished palestinian people. israel left behind all its agricultural and industrial equipment to facilitate palestinian growth and trade. in other words, the means were there for these arabs to go it alone and become more than slum-dwelling victims of irresponsible and indifferent palestinian leaders.
unfortunately, such was not the case. the next day the first of thousands of kassam rockets and mortar rounds began striking israeli towns. in addition to receiving a steady stream of volatile weapons into the strip, gaza rolled out the welcome mat for some of the world's most vicious terrorist killers. with the election of hamas to power and the acceleration of cross-border attacks, kidnappings and murders, the palestinian hierarchy made its intentions brutally clear; it would not create a peaceful, productive showcase to demonstrated to israel and the international community that palestinians were ready to make the leap into a viable state. western politicians were mystified and israel was rebuffed and left to suffer the consequences...
the goal is to fight until israel and the western democracies are destroyed. therefore, peace would put a serious crimp in their jihad-driven agenda. they want a nation whose people teach their children to strap on homicide belts, rather than one whose people work at good jobs'; receive suitable remuneration for their efforts; live on clean streets and teach their children reading, writing and arithmetic. (note: maybe i should dedicate myself to sharing the good news of Jesus with as many muslim people as possible before i die.)
the recent announcement by the al-aqsa martyrs brigade of the recruitment of 100 female suicide bombers, with more in line to sign up, exposes the heart of the matter. islamists are among the few people on the planet who deliberate defeats as victories..'celebrating martyrs simply means bragging about your own casualties'. this is precisely what people who value life and fight only to achieve a legitimate goal do not understand. for islamists, fighting is not a means to an end; it is an end in itself. (note: proposed theory: since we have gone to war against iraq in the 1990's to preserve our oil-driven prosperity...on a human level it has stirred somewhat sleeping islam...on the divine level, this judgment is meted out to those who have turned their backs on Him.)
..in 2000, arafat refused the offer of a palestinian state and ..opted for a war that would see thousands of new casualties among israelis and his own people. irrational? to us perhaps, but not according to the rules of the 1974 palestine national council in cairo, egypt, which agreed to accept territorial concessions and use them as sanctuaries from which to wage war until all israel is destroyed.
the determination of the stategy was confirmed when a hezbollah terrorist force rec3ently crossed the border into northern israel, killing 8 israeli soldiers and taking 2 others hostage. did hezbollah know israel would retaliate and that the lebanese people would be caught in the crossfire? certainly. but its concern was not for the people of lebanon. its concern was to create an opportunity to fire on israel from its stockpile of weapons that are longer in range and more deadly in accuracy than any it had used previously.
it is difficult to argue with reports that hezbollah terrorists acted as surrogates for the iranians who needed both relief from international pressure and shelter for their frantic attempt to develop weapons of mass destruction. if this was was, in fact, iran's doing, it was successful and will only rain more misery and destruction on the people of the middle east while it gears up to destroy the rest of us..
what has also been put on display for the world to see is that terrorists can successfully create a state-within-a-state situation in a country that becomes politically paralyzed. we now see how they can hold a country hostage and implement an agenda of their own at the expense of the people they victimize.
this was the case in the 1970s when arafat and his..plo used the same tactic in jordan. spurning the authority of king hussein, the plo terror groups staged cross-border attacks into israel. the israelis quickly retaliated, and the jordanian population paid for arafat's malicious adventurism.
but in this case, the archterrorist underestimated his opposition. jordan's late king had the forces and ability to handle the problem - and it wasn't thru vapid diplomatic blather at the un. he sent his troops on a bloody expedition against the plo and ousted them from the country in an episode remembered as black september.
in lebanon, however, the govt has not been in control of national affairs for decades. first, it was besieged by the late syrian president, hafez al-assad, and his occupation for ce. then, when the syrians withdrew in measure, hezbollah moved in to fill the void and carved out a ministate in south lebanon. thus, for the past 6 years, since israel withdrew from the southern security zone it maintained for 20 years, hezbollah moved into the area with its fingers on the trigger, awaiting its opportunity to make war.
article on the temple mount...although the international news media have perpetuated the notion that the current conflict is political (the palestinian people's right to 'their land') or national (the establishment of a palestinian state), the real cause has always been religious.
in 1970 the supreme islamic research council stated, 'the palestine question is not a national issue nor is it a political issue. it is first and foremost an islamic question'. furthermore, article 15 of the hamas covenant states, 'it is necessary to instill in the minds of the muslim generations that the plaestinian problem is a religious problem, and should be dealt with on this basis'.
as mortimer b. zuckerman, editor -in-chief of us news and world report, observed, 'for hamas, nationalism exists only as "part and parcel of the religious faith" '. shortly after hamas took control of the govt, one of its leaders, mahmoud al-zahar, openly declared that sharia law (islamic religious law) will soon rule in the palestinian territories.
hamas's all-controlling islamic agenda especially targets the temple mount. a picture of the islamic dome of the rock, which occupies the site of the jewish temple, is at the center of hamas's logo. surrounding it are the words there is no god but allah and muhummad is his prophet. hamas wants to 'liberate' the masjid al-aqsa, a term that refers to the entire platform containing the site's religious structures.
it intends to remove all jewish elements from the site and estalish islamic religious sovereignty. this goal is also inherint in the name of one of the leading terrorist groups responsible for dozens of shooting attacks and suicide bombings agianst israeli civilians; the al-aqsa martyrs brigades.
the name was chosen because the palestinian authority claims israel plans to destroy the mosques on the temple mount and rebuild the temple. the name symbolizes a resistance effort to defend islam and its holy places. even christian-born arabs, lured by palestinian propaganda and indoctrinated in replacement theology in their churches and schools, have joined this islamic terrorist organization.
because the islamic worldview recognizes the only relevant history of the region as that which began with muhammad, any statement that a jewish temple once occupied the haram (;noble enclosure', an islamic term for the site) is considered 'provocation' to the islamic mind...and is totally denied!...to minds that have been conditioned against critical thinking regarding their religion, no explanation is reasonable or welcome. this fact was made clear to me years ago when, after photographing stones in the retaining wall of the temple mount, an official of the islamic asked what i was doing. when i said i was researching the past history of the site, he intoned, 'you'd do better to forget the past and think about your future!'
consequently, muslims are hostile to israeli archaeological pursuits of the history of the hewish nation. they have rioted over excavations...consequently, you might expect that the israeli govt would cease trying to placate islamic religious sensibilities and exercise administrative control over the temple mount in order to properly excavate the site and prove to the islamic world the jewish claim to the city and the site. but it does not.
people are often perplexed as to why successive israeli administrations fail to deal decisively with the problem..in the past decade the situation has gone from bad to worse, with the palestinian mufti usurping authority from the jordanian mufti, moving his offices to the temple mount, closing the site to jews and destroying countless antiquities while constructing new mosques...why?!..
one factor is israel's precarious relationship with the international community in light of islamic terrorism and threats to the west, for which israel is being blamed. in the past, attempts by jewish groups to pray on the temple mount or hold demonstrations outside the walls of the old city have resulted in violent palestinian protests and brought swift condemnation from the un for acts of 'provocation'. the attempt to resolve the final status of jerusalem at the camp david II summit brought mediated negotiations between israel and the palestinians to an abrupt halt when the issue of sovereignty over the temple mount was raised.
and following a visit to the temple mount in sept. 2000 by ariel sharon, then the leader of the likud party and arab members of the knesset to investigate reports that the islamic waqf destroyed archaeological remains there, the palestinian authority staged a 2nd intifada (uprising) and banned all jews from the temple mount for the next 3 years until the israeli govt ended this unprecedented challenge to the status quo. this ban continues today with respect to the al-aqsa mosque, the dome of the rock and other sensitive areas.
another reason..many israeli authorities have already become resigned to the eventuality of a palestinian state and the accompanying surrender of israeli sovereignty over the temple mount.
..to hamas, this entire land is not only 'palestine' but 'islamic', and jihad must be waged until it is liberated by the annihilation of the jewish state. the hamas covenant mandates this stand:
"the islamic resistance movement believes that the land of palestine is an islamic waqf consecrated for future moslem generations until judgement day. it , or any part of it, should not be given up. neither a single arab country nor all arab countries, neither any king or persident, nor all the kings and presidents, neither any organization nor all of them, be they palestinian or arab possess the right to do that. palestine is an islamic waqf land consecrated for moslem generations until judgement day. this being so who could claim to have the right to represent moslem generations till judgement day?
this is the law governing the land of palestine in the islamic sharia (law) and the same goes for any land the moslems have conquered by force, because during the times of (islamic) conquests, the moslems consecrated these lands to moslem generations till the day of judgement."
interview with brigette gabriel a survivor of islam's jihad against lebanese christians; a former news anchor in jerusalem for middle east television; founder of americancongressforTruth.com; author of 'because they hate: a survivor of islamic terror warns america'
'i was raised in the only christian country in the middle east, lebanon. .there once were 2 non-muslim countries ..one..israel..and the other..lebanon, now under a muslim majority controlling influence.
when lebanon got its independence from france in the '40s, the majority of the population was christian. we didn't have any enemies. we were merchant descendants of the phoenicians, strong in commerce in which we prospered. in no time lebanon became the paris of the middle east, the banking capital of the middle east. we wee the only westernized arabic-speaking country in the region..
even though i was raised in a christian country, it was still an arabic country trying to please its neighbors, the arab muslims. even the christian private school i went to was affected. when we studied the bible, we only studied the new testament. i never saw the old testament or heard anything about it cause it was considered the enemy's bible. all i heard was israel is satan, israel is the devil, israelis are demons and they are the source of the problem in the middle east. i was taught the jews are evil, they are unstoppable and they want to control the world. i heard nothing but hatred toward the jews.
the christians in lebanon always had problems with the muslims, but we never thot our neighbors would turn on us. that situation was aggravated by the influx of the palestinians coming from jordan after king hussein kicked them out in black september. that's what tipped the scale in lebanon. not only had muslims become the majority, but they now also felt empowered by the presence of the palestinians and yasser arafat wanting to attack the christians, take over lebanon, and use it as a base from which to attack israel.
when the muslims and palestinians declared jihad on the christians in 1975, we didn't even know what that word meant. we had taken them into our country, allowed them to study side by side with us in our schools and universities. we gave them jobs, shared with them our way of life. we didn't realize the depth of their hatred toward us as infidels. they looked at us as the enemy, not as neighbors, friends, employers and colleagues. (to be continued?)
i just lost the last 2 hours of typing again. that makes about 6 hours over the last month. the librarian said possibly using what she called a flash drive could get around the problem. she also said that when its a long post, such as this that it might cause problems with acceptance. if any of you guys know anything that might help please let me know. maybe i'll just have to start cutting the posts up into smaller chunks. i'm discouraged right now...maybe God doesn't want me spending my time this way. the drive to is very strong. i need Your guidance Lord.
hope you have a good week. love, dad
75 rules for proper behavior of novices who seek admission in the order
7 ways of settling disputes
227 rules for the male monk
311 for the female
etc.
if you do well enough throughout your lifetimeS, you will achieve nirvana.
my note: imagine having to come back to this living-nightmare of a hell-hole...again...and again...and again... to try and keep a bunch of rules that are impossible to keep!!!, until the sadist who cooked up all this is satisfied. wow. HEAVY!
just in the last several years i was bothered by the fact that i did not practice hospitality...enough (i thot). on further reflection i realized i have rarely in my entire life been hospitable (lit. a lover of strangers...i usually have no contact at all with people who are, technically, strangers...that is, those who are without rights or legal place in the society of which i am a member, what we would call illegal aliens, and have so managed the few contacts with such as to be so 'distant' in nature that i keep from really finding out they are, indeed, strangers here where i live with all my rights and position. i realized that this is not a recommendation or suggestion from God, but it is a command to be kept.
this is ONLY ONE COMMAND out of many, many commands throughout the bible, all of which i am currently miserably failing TO KEEP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! as paul said to the galatian believers, C-U-R-S-E-D IS EVERY ONE WHO DOES NOT ABIDE BY A-L-L THINGS WRITTEN IN THE LAW TO PERFORM THEM (3.10). rules, laws, to do lists never saved one person, but they evidently do wonders to serve as salve for guilty consciences. in fact, they can only condemn. they only serve to show us our TOTAL INABILITY to do what either we or somebody else or God says we must do to make the grade.
one game i have often played in this area is that i perform a clever little mental fantasy that goes like this. if i do x one time, then i can tell myself that I DO X (all the time). no no no no! it doesn't go like that! i must DO X REGULARLY. then i am tortured by the ?, how regular is regular enough?...
another trick is what might be called the GOING-15 (NOT 16!!!)-MILES-PER-HOUR- THROUGH-THE-TOTAL-LENGTH- OF-THE-'SCHOOL-SLOW-ZONE'. if i perform that act, then i have free reign to ride on someone's back bumper, far exceed the speed zone whenever it suits me or i'm late or whatever, use rolling stops, cut corners on turns and whatever else i can get away with if i want to. it's kind of like a catholic indulgence; a' get out of jail free' card in monopoly. i get to choose the little bite-sized 'righteousness'. (ie. something so quick and easy that i can actually do it) this not only grants me the right to do whatever else i please but i grants me total freedom from all prosecution for law-breaking. NOT!
by that hospitality thing, God opened my eyes to the fact that i am totally forgiven, totally given the eternal and perfect righteousness of Christ...because i can NEVER be righteous in any way, shape or form, ON MY OWN. that's about the time i started getting real joy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (i'm not overflowing with joy yet because i so wickedly, perversely, self-deceivedly still think that I am much better than i am.)
..back to buddhism..when a person dies, he is reborn as someone else - not reincarnated in the hindu sense of the word, by reborn. the difference is in the idea of self. a reincarnated person returns as himself in another form; a reborn person returns, but not with any real selfhood. to buddhists self is only an illusion. throughout this life, he will experience the consequences of his former lives. (GREAT!) this is karma, the sum of good and bad deeds in previous existences. karma is like a great wheel - either it will crush you or you will jump clear of its continual spinning thru enlightenment.
buddhism is a peculiar religion in that it does not concern itself with God or gods. even buddha never claimed divinity. progress to enlightenment depends upon you...focusing on self, they also encourage a disregard and forgetfulness of it, saying that there is no ultimate self.
buddhism stresses moralism. Jesus, in their mind, would have been an exemplary buddhist. it is this element that makes it all the more dangerous. moralism, in any form, without Christ, results in condemnation...'even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified'. (galatians 2.16)
c.s.lewis, mere christianity, ...'the death of Christ is just that point in history at which something absolutely unimaginable from outside shows thru into our own world. and if we cannot picture even the atoms of which our own world is built, of course we are not going to be able to picture this. indeed, if we found that we could fully understand it, that very fact would show it was not what it professes to be - the inconceivable, the uncreated, the thing from beyond nature, striking down into nature like lightning. you may ask what good will it be to us if we do not understand it. but that is easily answered. a man can eat his dinner without understanding exactly how food nourished him. a man can accept what Christ has done without knowing how it works: indeed, he certainly would not know how it works until he has accepted it.
we are told that Christ was killed for us, that His death has washed out our sins and that by dying He disabled death itself. that is the formula. that is christianity. that is what has to be believed. any theories we build up as to how Christ's death did all this are, in my view, quite secondary; mere plans or diagrams to be left alone if they do not help us, and , even if they do help us, not to be confused with the thing itself.
we have to take reality as it comes to us: there is no good jabbering about what it ought to be like or what we should have expected it to be like. but though i cannot see why it should be so, i can tell you why i believe it is so.
i have explained why i have to believe that Jesus was (and is) God. and it seems [plain as a matter of history that He taught his followers that the new life was communicated in this way. in other words, i believe it on his authority.
do not be scared by the word authority. believing things on authority only means believing them because you have been told them by someone you think trustworthy. 99% of the things you believe are believed on authority.
i believe there is such a place as new york. i have not seen it myself. i could not prove by abstract reasoning that there must be such a place as new york. i have not seen it myself. i could not prove by abstract reasoning that there must be such a place. i believe it because reliable people have told me so.
the ordinary man believes in the solar system, atoms, evolution and the circulation of the blood on authority - because the scientists say so. EVERY HISTORICAL STATEMENT IN THE WORLD IS BELIEVED ON AUTHORITY. none of us has seen the norman conquest or the defeat of the spanish armada. none of us could prove them by pure logic as you prove a thing in mathematics.
we believe them simply because people who did see them have left writings that tell us about them: in fact, on authority.
a man who jibbed at authority in other things as some people do in religion would have to be content to know nothing all his life.
francis asbury and the methodist circuit riders covered america with spiritual awakening. in 1771 john wesley said 'our brethren in america call aloud for help. who are willing to go over and help them?' francis asbury was among those who responded.
born in 1745, having only a few years of formal education, at 22 confirmed as a lay preacher, asbury left for america never to return.
in 1772 asbury was placed in charge of the methodist congregations and preachers of america. he soon realized that the methodist practice of using traveling preachers would be even more practical in america..american congregations were small and separated by large distances. establishing settled pastors was almost impossible. asbury used circuit riders to reach the people.
a traveling preacher brought news from the outside world, was a welcome break from the depressing daily routine of hard labour. he brought crowds from miles around. he would perform marriages, baptize infants and sere communion. his preaching would remind many that God had not forgotten about them.
in 1780 there were 42 preachers and 8504 methodist members. in 1790 these numbers were 227/58,000 and by 1820, near asbury's death, they were 904/256,881.
much of the drive for the enormous methodist growth came from asbury, who rose every morning at 4, taught himself latin, greek and hebrew and made it his rule to read 100 pages of good literature daily. his travels over rough, trackless and dangerous wilderness were staggering.
beginning in 1798, it was his custom to make a complete circuit of the u.s., reaching from georgia to maine, and inland to indiana.
asbury never expected sacrifices of others that he would not make himself. he taveled constantly throughout his lifetime. he never married and had no home. all that he owned was in the 2 saddlebags on his horse.
it is estimated that in asbury's lifetime he preached well over 16,000 sermons, ordained more than 4,000 preachers, travled on horseback or (when he was too old for that) in carriages 270,000 miles, and wore out 6 faithful horses!
asbury never accepted more salary than an ordinary methodist circuit rider, which in 1800 was only $64 a year - only 15% of what the average congregationalist minister received.
journal entry 'Lord, my soul thirsteth for holiness in myself and others. i found my heart led out in prayer for those i cannot preach to.'
voice of martyrs, aug. 2010...MOHAMMED hegazy is a 27 year old believer who, along with his wife are muslim background believers, converts from islam. after becoming a christian 11 years ago, he was beaten regularly by his father until he moved out..2 years later. in addition, he was tortured several times by egyptian police. they tied a blindfold around his eyes, hung him upside down by ropes, beat him and shocked him with electric batons trying to gather info about other christians.
when he filed a lawsuit in august 2007 to change the religious status on his id card from 'muslim' to 'christian' (the 1st such case in egypt), islamic religious leaders called for his death. his house was burned to the ground and his family is now in hiding.
when asked about his thot on what the apostle paul calls tribulations, he told us 'i think that suffering is a most beautiful part of the christian faith because christianity without pain, without suffering, without hard times is like the ready-made food. there's nothing true in it it's very superficial, very shallow'.
SAMIR, a 30 year old man in alexandria, is another believer who has experience the heat of egypt's iron furnace. after his conversion, police declared him insane and institutionalized him. while in a mental hospital, samir was tortured horrifically, leaving his mind and body permanently damaged.
before he met Jesus..samir was a top biochemistry student at..university..he was so well respected that the university rewarded him with a haj, a pilgrimage to the muslim holy city of mecca..while it hould have been the pinnacle moment of his muslim life, the experience caused him to question his faith.
samir knew that christians worship Jesus.so he decided to test the faith for himself. 'i started thinking, "is Jesus real"?..i'm a biochemist, and in science we don't believe anything we hear about. i had to see things myself'...he used to sneak into churches and listen.
samir's problems began as soon as he started to follow Jesus. first, his parents kicked him out of the house. then 6 months after his conversion, he decided to change the religion of his identity card from 'muslim' to 'christian'. the public safety police told him, 'we're going to arrest you and send you to a mental hospital'.
'they were waiting for me and they gave me punches..they grabbed my clothes and tied me. the doctors all had beards; the beard usually means they are radical muslims..you cannot imagine the drugs they gave me. i paced the floor. they gave me..very strong hallucinogenic drugs. they gave me 10 pills in the morning..10 in the afternoon and 10 at night, every single day. they gave me these drugs very fast and they gave me injections. an injection every day and in a few days i was gone. i was gone; saliva was coming out of my mouth'.
the doctors tried to destroy samir. 'they gave me electric shocks on my genitals..they used to give me an injection first to put me to sleep. i didn't see the machine, but i was 2 hands place the electrodes. they put them on wherever they want to hurt people. they said "it's time for you to get shocked". each course of electric shock therapy lasted 6 days, 6 times every morning'.
samir was released from the hospital after about 6 weeks, but he had nowhere to go and his family was more ashamed of him than ever. he went to a church, but CHURCHES ARE AFRAID TO OPENLY ASSIST NEW CHRISTIANS. 'supporting a new christian convert is a crime..every church, you find at the front door 2,3 or 4 cops related to the public safety police. they are there for the safety of..the congregation..but they are working with the govt..'
since his first visit to the mental hospital about 10 years ago, he has been admitted 5 more times. each time, he was held about 6 weeks. in one stay, he was beaten and had some teeth knocked out. but he was not without hope. curing one visit, he met 2 other christians. 'we used to pry together - 3 guys, together the whole time. we sat on the same bed..taking and reading the bible, a chapter every day, especially the 4 gospels. it gave me hope for when i got out'.
samir was released from his 6th hospital visit just 6 weeks before we interviewed him. his mind appears to be irreversibly damaged and he has continual tremors throughout his body, but his heart is still in God's hands. 'they changed me from a normal person, to a mentally retarded person'..in addition, the public safety police still call him often. 'they want to make sure i'm not talking about christianity anymore..IN THIS COUNTRY IT LOOKS NICE, PEOPLE LOOK NICE, EVERYTHING LOOKS NICE, BUT WHEN IT COMES TO (CHRISTIANITY), EVERYTHING IS CHANGED 360 degrees'.
samir is now being mentored by an..evangelist. 'it's my dream to have a small car and to get on with my life..i would take a few blind people and give them rides..to the church. it would give me the chance to serve the blind and the handicapped people. this is my dream'.
was led to pick up what i thot was a current copy of 'israel my glory' published by the friends of israel gospel ministry located in westville, nj. showing how little i know about what is happening there, i was moved by what i read and then by noting the date of publication, september/october 2006
editorial by bill sutters, executive director of the friends of israel, reporting on a recent field staff meeting...'we gathered under the banner of the foi mission statement: "a worldwide christian misistry communicating biblical truth about israel and the messiah, while fostering solidarity with the jewish people"..reports on the rise of anti-semitism where foi serves were disturbing. news from our workers in england and france was especially troubling. our staff's observations matched those in a june 16 article titled 'jews are under siege: a call to action' by charles jacobs and seth klarman in the new york jewish week: 'no one wants to think that 60 years after the holocaust, a new storm threatens jews everywhere. but reality cannot be avoided or minimized'. (my note: CORRECTION: EVERYONE EVERYWHERE IS THREATENED...ABORTION IS THE FOUNDATION OF THIS THREAT) ..several challanges and opportunities ..came into clear focus. first is the challenge to expose the serious error of replacement theology wherever it is found. this teaching which denies God's promises to israel and the jewish people, can only be sustained by an allegorical, rather than a literal, interpretation of God's prophetic word..historically it was used to marginalize the jewish people and even to subject them to violence...
over a year ago, in a good-faith attempt at conciliation to palestinian and international demands, isrel left the gaza strip. 8 to 10k israeli citizens were expelled from their homes by their own got and the israel defense forces were evacuated.
the move was promoted on the pretext that the palestinians would see the light at the end of the tunnel and that the green fields of statehood would beckon them to the other side. as for the jewish state, many believed disengagement would give israel a drop of tranquility in the vast ocean of arab hostility.
israel's unilateral withdrawal from gaza - for which it received no concessions in return - marked the 1st time in history that the palestinian arabs received independent territory. neither the muslim ottoman turks, who ruled the area for some 4 centuries, not the british, egyptians or jordanians ever allowed the palestinian arabs to govern themselves...
in the minds of many westerners and israelis, this show of good faith would provide a golden opportunity for the jewish state to be rewarded by responsible economic and social progress for the impoverished palestinian people. israel left behind all its agricultural and industrial equipment to facilitate palestinian growth and trade. in other words, the means were there for these arabs to go it alone and become more than slum-dwelling victims of irresponsible and indifferent palestinian leaders.
unfortunately, such was not the case. the next day the first of thousands of kassam rockets and mortar rounds began striking israeli towns. in addition to receiving a steady stream of volatile weapons into the strip, gaza rolled out the welcome mat for some of the world's most vicious terrorist killers. with the election of hamas to power and the acceleration of cross-border attacks, kidnappings and murders, the palestinian hierarchy made its intentions brutally clear; it would not create a peaceful, productive showcase to demonstrated to israel and the international community that palestinians were ready to make the leap into a viable state. western politicians were mystified and israel was rebuffed and left to suffer the consequences...
the goal is to fight until israel and the western democracies are destroyed. therefore, peace would put a serious crimp in their jihad-driven agenda. they want a nation whose people teach their children to strap on homicide belts, rather than one whose people work at good jobs'; receive suitable remuneration for their efforts; live on clean streets and teach their children reading, writing and arithmetic. (note: maybe i should dedicate myself to sharing the good news of Jesus with as many muslim people as possible before i die.)
the recent announcement by the al-aqsa martyrs brigade of the recruitment of 100 female suicide bombers, with more in line to sign up, exposes the heart of the matter. islamists are among the few people on the planet who deliberate defeats as victories..'celebrating martyrs simply means bragging about your own casualties'. this is precisely what people who value life and fight only to achieve a legitimate goal do not understand. for islamists, fighting is not a means to an end; it is an end in itself. (note: proposed theory: since we have gone to war against iraq in the 1990's to preserve our oil-driven prosperity...on a human level it has stirred somewhat sleeping islam...on the divine level, this judgment is meted out to those who have turned their backs on Him.)
..in 2000, arafat refused the offer of a palestinian state and ..opted for a war that would see thousands of new casualties among israelis and his own people. irrational? to us perhaps, but not according to the rules of the 1974 palestine national council in cairo, egypt, which agreed to accept territorial concessions and use them as sanctuaries from which to wage war until all israel is destroyed.
the determination of the stategy was confirmed when a hezbollah terrorist force rec3ently crossed the border into northern israel, killing 8 israeli soldiers and taking 2 others hostage. did hezbollah know israel would retaliate and that the lebanese people would be caught in the crossfire? certainly. but its concern was not for the people of lebanon. its concern was to create an opportunity to fire on israel from its stockpile of weapons that are longer in range and more deadly in accuracy than any it had used previously.
it is difficult to argue with reports that hezbollah terrorists acted as surrogates for the iranians who needed both relief from international pressure and shelter for their frantic attempt to develop weapons of mass destruction. if this was was, in fact, iran's doing, it was successful and will only rain more misery and destruction on the people of the middle east while it gears up to destroy the rest of us..
what has also been put on display for the world to see is that terrorists can successfully create a state-within-a-state situation in a country that becomes politically paralyzed. we now see how they can hold a country hostage and implement an agenda of their own at the expense of the people they victimize.
this was the case in the 1970s when arafat and his..plo used the same tactic in jordan. spurning the authority of king hussein, the plo terror groups staged cross-border attacks into israel. the israelis quickly retaliated, and the jordanian population paid for arafat's malicious adventurism.
but in this case, the archterrorist underestimated his opposition. jordan's late king had the forces and ability to handle the problem - and it wasn't thru vapid diplomatic blather at the un. he sent his troops on a bloody expedition against the plo and ousted them from the country in an episode remembered as black september.
in lebanon, however, the govt has not been in control of national affairs for decades. first, it was besieged by the late syrian president, hafez al-assad, and his occupation for ce. then, when the syrians withdrew in measure, hezbollah moved in to fill the void and carved out a ministate in south lebanon. thus, for the past 6 years, since israel withdrew from the southern security zone it maintained for 20 years, hezbollah moved into the area with its fingers on the trigger, awaiting its opportunity to make war.
article on the temple mount...although the international news media have perpetuated the notion that the current conflict is political (the palestinian people's right to 'their land') or national (the establishment of a palestinian state), the real cause has always been religious.
in 1970 the supreme islamic research council stated, 'the palestine question is not a national issue nor is it a political issue. it is first and foremost an islamic question'. furthermore, article 15 of the hamas covenant states, 'it is necessary to instill in the minds of the muslim generations that the plaestinian problem is a religious problem, and should be dealt with on this basis'.
as mortimer b. zuckerman, editor -in-chief of us news and world report, observed, 'for hamas, nationalism exists only as "part and parcel of the religious faith" '. shortly after hamas took control of the govt, one of its leaders, mahmoud al-zahar, openly declared that sharia law (islamic religious law) will soon rule in the palestinian territories.
hamas's all-controlling islamic agenda especially targets the temple mount. a picture of the islamic dome of the rock, which occupies the site of the jewish temple, is at the center of hamas's logo. surrounding it are the words there is no god but allah and muhummad is his prophet. hamas wants to 'liberate' the masjid al-aqsa, a term that refers to the entire platform containing the site's religious structures.
it intends to remove all jewish elements from the site and estalish islamic religious sovereignty. this goal is also inherint in the name of one of the leading terrorist groups responsible for dozens of shooting attacks and suicide bombings agianst israeli civilians; the al-aqsa martyrs brigades.
the name was chosen because the palestinian authority claims israel plans to destroy the mosques on the temple mount and rebuild the temple. the name symbolizes a resistance effort to defend islam and its holy places. even christian-born arabs, lured by palestinian propaganda and indoctrinated in replacement theology in their churches and schools, have joined this islamic terrorist organization.
because the islamic worldview recognizes the only relevant history of the region as that which began with muhammad, any statement that a jewish temple once occupied the haram (;noble enclosure', an islamic term for the site) is considered 'provocation' to the islamic mind...and is totally denied!...to minds that have been conditioned against critical thinking regarding their religion, no explanation is reasonable or welcome. this fact was made clear to me years ago when, after photographing stones in the retaining wall of the temple mount, an official of the islamic asked what i was doing. when i said i was researching the past history of the site, he intoned, 'you'd do better to forget the past and think about your future!'
consequently, muslims are hostile to israeli archaeological pursuits of the history of the hewish nation. they have rioted over excavations...consequently, you might expect that the israeli govt would cease trying to placate islamic religious sensibilities and exercise administrative control over the temple mount in order to properly excavate the site and prove to the islamic world the jewish claim to the city and the site. but it does not.
people are often perplexed as to why successive israeli administrations fail to deal decisively with the problem..in the past decade the situation has gone from bad to worse, with the palestinian mufti usurping authority from the jordanian mufti, moving his offices to the temple mount, closing the site to jews and destroying countless antiquities while constructing new mosques...why?!..
one factor is israel's precarious relationship with the international community in light of islamic terrorism and threats to the west, for which israel is being blamed. in the past, attempts by jewish groups to pray on the temple mount or hold demonstrations outside the walls of the old city have resulted in violent palestinian protests and brought swift condemnation from the un for acts of 'provocation'. the attempt to resolve the final status of jerusalem at the camp david II summit brought mediated negotiations between israel and the palestinians to an abrupt halt when the issue of sovereignty over the temple mount was raised.
and following a visit to the temple mount in sept. 2000 by ariel sharon, then the leader of the likud party and arab members of the knesset to investigate reports that the islamic waqf destroyed archaeological remains there, the palestinian authority staged a 2nd intifada (uprising) and banned all jews from the temple mount for the next 3 years until the israeli govt ended this unprecedented challenge to the status quo. this ban continues today with respect to the al-aqsa mosque, the dome of the rock and other sensitive areas.
another reason..many israeli authorities have already become resigned to the eventuality of a palestinian state and the accompanying surrender of israeli sovereignty over the temple mount.
..to hamas, this entire land is not only 'palestine' but 'islamic', and jihad must be waged until it is liberated by the annihilation of the jewish state. the hamas covenant mandates this stand:
"the islamic resistance movement believes that the land of palestine is an islamic waqf consecrated for future moslem generations until judgement day. it , or any part of it, should not be given up. neither a single arab country nor all arab countries, neither any king or persident, nor all the kings and presidents, neither any organization nor all of them, be they palestinian or arab possess the right to do that. palestine is an islamic waqf land consecrated for moslem generations until judgement day. this being so who could claim to have the right to represent moslem generations till judgement day?
this is the law governing the land of palestine in the islamic sharia (law) and the same goes for any land the moslems have conquered by force, because during the times of (islamic) conquests, the moslems consecrated these lands to moslem generations till the day of judgement."
interview with brigette gabriel a survivor of islam's jihad against lebanese christians; a former news anchor in jerusalem for middle east television; founder of americancongressforTruth.com; author of 'because they hate: a survivor of islamic terror warns america'
'i was raised in the only christian country in the middle east, lebanon. .there once were 2 non-muslim countries ..one..israel..and the other..lebanon, now under a muslim majority controlling influence.
when lebanon got its independence from france in the '40s, the majority of the population was christian. we didn't have any enemies. we were merchant descendants of the phoenicians, strong in commerce in which we prospered. in no time lebanon became the paris of the middle east, the banking capital of the middle east. we wee the only westernized arabic-speaking country in the region..
even though i was raised in a christian country, it was still an arabic country trying to please its neighbors, the arab muslims. even the christian private school i went to was affected. when we studied the bible, we only studied the new testament. i never saw the old testament or heard anything about it cause it was considered the enemy's bible. all i heard was israel is satan, israel is the devil, israelis are demons and they are the source of the problem in the middle east. i was taught the jews are evil, they are unstoppable and they want to control the world. i heard nothing but hatred toward the jews.
the christians in lebanon always had problems with the muslims, but we never thot our neighbors would turn on us. that situation was aggravated by the influx of the palestinians coming from jordan after king hussein kicked them out in black september. that's what tipped the scale in lebanon. not only had muslims become the majority, but they now also felt empowered by the presence of the palestinians and yasser arafat wanting to attack the christians, take over lebanon, and use it as a base from which to attack israel.
when the muslims and palestinians declared jihad on the christians in 1975, we didn't even know what that word meant. we had taken them into our country, allowed them to study side by side with us in our schools and universities. we gave them jobs, shared with them our way of life. we didn't realize the depth of their hatred toward us as infidels. they looked at us as the enemy, not as neighbors, friends, employers and colleagues. (to be continued?)
i just lost the last 2 hours of typing again. that makes about 6 hours over the last month. the librarian said possibly using what she called a flash drive could get around the problem. she also said that when its a long post, such as this that it might cause problems with acceptance. if any of you guys know anything that might help please let me know. maybe i'll just have to start cutting the posts up into smaller chunks. i'm discouraged right now...maybe God doesn't want me spending my time this way. the drive to is very strong. i need Your guidance Lord.
hope you have a good week. love, dad
Friday, August 20, 2010
8.22.10 MAY YOU LIVE FOREVER!
greetings! recently read/skimmed thru the lincoln anthology ed. harold holzer. if this is all i get to share with you (think of these things like you are a kid again and i am reading to you snippets of what are meaningful things to me) from one entry by donggill kim 'lincoln and confucian virtues'. it comes the closest of anything i've read about lincoln to catching the essence of his beauty.
'confucius was born in the small state of lu in the year 551 b.c. what his ancestry was we cannot know, but it is probable that there were aristocrats among his forebears...as a young man he had to make his own living at tasks that were more or less menial..at the age of 17 he was made an inspector of the corn-marts and distinguished himself by his industry and energy in repressing fraud and in introducing order and integrity into the whole business. he also had considerable difficulties with his wife. the following words of his own give us some clue..women and people of low birth are very hard to deal with. if you are friendly with them, they get out of hand and if you keep your distance, they resent it. (one of my dad's words were to be careful not to be too friendly or too unfriendly with women...maybe he read confucius)
he was next appointed inspector-general of pastures and flocks and the result of his judicious measures, we are told was a general improvement in the cultivation of the country and the condition of the people. the death of his mother, which happened in his 23rd year, brought him to a turning point. he shut himself up in his house to pass in solitude the 3 yrs of mourning for his mother. ..lincoln's .mother died when he was 9. he did not mourn..but all his life he cherished and adored the image of his mother. for him, she was a noble, affectionate, good, and kind mother..lincoln said..'all that i am, or hope to be, i woe to my angel mother'..on the morning of the funeral of willie, the 3rd son of ..lincoln..he confided..'i had a good christian mother and her prayers have followed me thus far thru life'.
confucius returned to his home state..but an unworthy change of magistrates made him unhappy and restless. he then proceeded to chen, where he was not much appreciated;..afterwards to tzec where he became one of the king's ministers. he was dismissed after a short time thru the intrigue of cunning courtiers. he began to wander again, but state after state refused his efforts at reform. he was misunderstood and in some instances persecuted. once he was imprisoned and nearly starved; and finally, seeing no hope of securing the favorable attention of his countrymen while he was alive, he returned in extreme poverty to his native state and spent his last years in the composition of literary works, by which posterity at least might be instructed.
lincoln's wanderings came to an end at relatively an early stage of his life. his life pattern in reality, however, remarkably coincides with what conf. suffested as ideal. evidently in his old age the sage said:
at 15 i set my heart upon learning
at 30, i had planted my feet firm upon the ground
at40, i no longer suffered from perplexities
at 50, i know what were the biddings of heaven
at 60, i heard them with docile ear
at 70, i could follow the dictates of my own heart; for what i desired no longer overstepped the boundaries of right.
even though linc did not reach 60..it may not be presumptuous to say that he had the potential to hear 'the biddings of heaven..with a docile ear..and able to follow the dictates of his own heart' without transgressing the standards of right. linc constantly sought the 'divine will' during the difficult war days. even earlier, when leaving springfield..'with a task..greater than that which rested upon washington', linc said 'without the assistance of that divine being,who ever attended him, i cannot succeed. with that assistance i cannot fail. trusting in Him, who can go with me and remain with you and be everywhere for good, let me confidently hope that all will yet be well'. in his last public address on apr. 11, 1865..'we meet this evening, not in sorrow, but in gladness of heart. the evacuation of petersburg and richmond, and the surrender of the principal insurgent army, give hope of a righteous and speedy peace whose joyous expression can not be restrained. in the midst of this, however, He, from whom all blessings flow, must not be forgotten. a call for a national thanksgiving is being prepared and will be duly promulagated'.
..in light of confucian teachings, it can be reasonably asserted that linc was the type of leader that confucius was so anxious to give to the world as an ideal human being, chun-tzu..the word..originally meant a son of a ruler...he is a gentleman to be bound by a particular code of morals and manners. therefore superiority of birth alone is inadequate; chun-tzu must possess superiority of character and behavior..and what is the way of the gentleman..at home in his naive village his manner is simple and unassuming, as though he did not trust himself to speak. at court when conversing..his attitude is friendly and affable...
robert ingersoll reminiscing about..linc..'linc was an immense personality - firm but not obstinate. obstinacy is egotism - firmness, heroism. he influenced others without effort, unconsciously; and they submitted to him as men submit to nature, unconsciously. he was severe with himself and for that reason lenient with others. he appeared to apologize for being kinder than his fellows. he did merciful things as stealthily as others committed crimes. almost ashamed of tenderness, he said and did the noblest words and deeds with that charming confusion - that awkwardness - that is the perfect grace of modesty..a great man stooping, not wishing to make his fellows feel that they were small or mean'..
moderation in conduct and opinion is a well-known hallmark of the true gentleman. the chun..avoids the absolute, avoids the extreme. mencius tells us that conf..was one who abstained from extremes...when linc said his policy was to have no policy, it was an expression of his determination to take a road of moderation even if it was crooked and winding. in fact, he never had a policy he 'simply tried to do what seemed best as each day came'..
but the chun..should be keen and alert all the time.kung said: 'the gentleman has 9 cares. in seeing he is careful to see clearly, in hearing he is careful to hear distinctly, in his looks he is careful to be kindly; in his manner to be respectful, in his words to be loyal, in his work to be diligent. when in doubt he is careful to ask for information; when angry he has a care for the consequences, and when he sees a chance of gain, he thinks carefully whether the pursuit of it would be consonant with the right'...the chun..has to base his character on righteousness while conducting himself according to propriety, expressing himself in modesty, and becoming complete in sincerity..but without courage, how can one remain both moderate and right?..linc..always had the courage to carry out his middle-of-the-road policy.
j.g.randall..describing linc..'his greatness arose from a combination of qualities in a balanced personality. one could never define his conduct as springing from mere automatic reaction. it came rather from informed study and mature reflection. mere slogans and stereotypes did not impress him. he was a simple man - he was unpretentious in manner and straightforward in expression - but he was never extravagant. he combined humanitarianism with practical common sense. he attained a position of lofty eminence and moved among the great without making other men feel small..he could assert himself without becoming a dictator. he had ambition, but without selfishness. if a colleague, a subordinate, or a cabinet member were attacked, he would take the blame upon his own shoulders. sometimes he would write a letter as an outlet for overwrought feeling, think it over, realize that it might wound the recipient and then withhold it'.
master kung (i take it he means confucius) would have been exceedingly happy if he had found one like linc among his disciples! the gentleman CULTIVATES HIMSELF SO AS TO GIVE REST TO THE TROUBLED WORLD. (wow, no wonder i am attracted to linc..i am an exact opposite!) those who have abilities but act arrogantly are no gentlemen because they break the harmony of the world.
in the confucian ethical system poetry, rites and music are important and essential for the training of the chun-tzu. the master said..'let a man be first incited by the songs, then given a firm footing by the study of ritual and finally perfected by music'.
orientals seem to make a distinction between literature that instructs and literature that pleases, or literature that is the vehicle of truth and literature that is the expression of emotions. ..the former is objective and expository, while the latter is subjective and lyrical...conf said, 'why is it that none of you study the songs? for the songs will help you to incite people's emotions, to observe their feelings, to keep company, to express your grievances. they may be used at home in the service of one's father; abroad, in the service of one's prince'...conf loved poems because they expressed joy without being licentious and fierceness without being injurious.
it is an undeniable fact that linc was fond of poetry. in fact his very first extant writing was done in the form of verse:
abraham lincoln
his hand and pen
he will be good but
god knows When
the originality of this is questioned, but linc did write 'my childhood-home i see again' (1846). a man does not write poems at that age unless he has some talent or at least some propensity for verse. jacques barzun, acknowledging linc's 'literary genius' maintains the he had a literary style that was 'clear, forcible, individual and distinguished'. linc stopped composing verses as his public responsibilities grew heavier...
after poetry, rites. li is the chinese character for rites. li is to govern the moral, social and religious activities of a man. etymologically, li is religious in nature and in the course of its evolution, it came to include all forms of rituals and everything in connection with the proper conduct of the chun..the original meaning of li was to sacrifice; it still has this sense in modern chinese. confucius thot, if rulers were gravely serious in sacrificing to their ancestors, why should they not be equally so in attending to the govt of the realm? if ministers treated one another with courtesy, in the daily intercourse of the court, why should they not be equally considerate toward the common people, who were the backbone of the state? thus he said to one of his disciples that, wherever he went in the world, he should treat all those with whom he came in contact with as if he were receiving an important guest. some so-called confucian classics deal with extremely minute matters of etiquete. but conf himself conceived of li quite differently, it was the spirit that counted and he was contemptuaous of those who believed that, by mere ostentatious show of expensive trappings they could excel in li.
linc was a completely unconventional american..he seemed to disregard clothing and in privacy wore as little of it as possible. however..he never failed to dress properly according to his status in life and society...linc was thoughtful and careful even in small matters. he wrote to thurlow weed on mar. 15, 1865 and said: 'everyone likes a compliment. than you for yours on my little inaugural address'. frederick douglass remembered..'i could not have been more than 10' from him when mr. linc saw me; his countenance lighted up and he said in a voice which was heard all around, "here comes my friend douglass" '. linc gave him a cordial handshake and even asked for his opinion about the inaugural address. linc had, in his own words a 'peculiar' ambition in life. he said in 1832 '..i have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem'. linc practiced li all his life.
finally, music. after an exhaustive study on linc and the music of the civil war, kenneth a. bernard concludes: '..linc was one of our most 'unmusical' presidents. he never studied music, never had any training in it and knew nothing of its technical aspects; he could not play any instrument (except possibly the harmonica), could not read music, nor could he really sing. linc..was, in short, no musician. yet 2 significant facts are clearly evident when one thinks of linc and music. he was extremely fond of music and , as president, he heard more music than any other occupant of the white house.
in view of all those confucian virtues that linc possessed so abundantly, it is appropriate to call him a real chun-tzu, a perfect gentleman in the eyes of educated orientals.
john dos passos...'linc spoke at trenton of his anxiety 'that this union, the constitution, and the liberties of the people shall be perpetuated in accordance with the original idea for which that struggle was made'. this idea was based on belief in individual liberty and individual responsibility. it depended upon the belief that there was a divine spirit in man which ever strove for the good. the truth of this conviction cannot be tested by logic or proved by scientific experiment, but the contrary cannot be proved either. inevitably the moment comes when we have to take the leap of faith..by faith i mean whatever conviction produced A FEELING OF PARTICIPATION IN A COMMON ENTERPRISE (me: opposite the rampant individualism we all are now laden with) .a civilization is a common enterprise. when faith is lost, civilizations coast along on their momentum for a while, but soon they start to rot and disintegrate. much more than on material well-being or on technological successes their survival depends on an inner imperative which causes men to reach for what is good for them instead of what is bad for them. self-governing institutions particularly depend on individual responsibility for the choice between what is right and what is wrong.
if americans cease to be dedicated to 'that something more than common' that linc spoke of, the republic he gave his life for has no more reason for being. the continuing process that faces the generations alive today is the adjustment of the methods of self-govt and of the aspirations of individual men for a full life to the changing shape of mass-production society. there is nothing easy about such an assignment. the alternative is the soggy despotism that pervades 2/3rds of the globe. even partial success will call for the rebirth of some sort of central faith as strong as linc's was. only then may we continue to entertain the hope that this 'government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish form the earth'.
reinhold niebuhr 'the religion of abraham lincoln'
a belief in providence..'the Almighty has His own purposes. "woe unto the world because of offenses! for it must needs be that offenses come' but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh". if we shall suppose that american slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued thru His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that he gives to both north and south this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living god always ascribe to Him?'..linc's faith is closely akin to that of the hebrew prophets, who first conceived the idea of a meaningful history...the chief evidence of the purity and profundity of linc's sense of providence is the fact that he was able to resist the natural temptation to do what all political leaders, indeed all men, have done thru the ages: identify providence with the cause to which he was committed.
alone among statesmen of the ancient and modern periods, linc had a sense of historical meaning so high as to cast doubt on the intentions of both sides, to put the enemy into the same category of ambiguity as the nation to which his life was committed..2nd inaugural address.."neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has now attained. neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. both read the same bible; and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other..it may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces..but let us judge not, that we be not judged. the prayers of both could not be answered - that of neither have been answered fully"...linc's achievement to embrace a paradox which lies at the center of the spirituality of all western culture: affirmation of a meaningful history along with religious reservation about the pariality and bias which human actors and agents betray in their definition of that meaning...he had a lack of fanatacism, a spirit of magnanimity..
a conscientious politician is compelled to relate all the moral aspirations and all the moral hesitancies of the social forces of a free society to the primary goal, the survival of the community. in the political order, the value of justice takes an uneasy 2nd place behind that of internal order...he finally acted for the whole nation in the emancipation of slaves..a moral imperative.may be significant that the moral ambiguities in the idealism (acting primarily for the continuance of the nation, a nation made of people of all stripes of belief about slavery) of this man proved themselves religiously superior in the end...
well all i have is 55 minutes until the library closes. this library is kind of like a church to me. i have a number of people here who act like the really like me and enjoy my company. i don't meet that anywhere else. so it is my desire to make other places like this as best i can. at mision i have started to get up and go around and greet others and i have noticed that instead of the norm, which is kind of like sanctified ignoring of others rather than enthusiazing with them, that some others are starting to do the same thing. maybe they say, hey, if the gringo can do that so can we...i don't know. but i'm asking God to use me to start 1st a warm glow and then out of that a raging fire where from that place love will burst out in neighborhoods and families and spread and run around the world. first, i've got to abide in Jesus constantly so the warmth of His enthusiazing over me can catch..
there's an article on the front desk, 'are libraries unnecessary?', which talks about how libraries are being defunded and closed. my favorite line, a sign from the gilpin county public library in colorado , beckons with 'free coffee, internet, notary, phone, smiles, restrooms, and ideas'! reminds me of the spirit here...my best home away from the dark, silent house on chestnut st. though mision is growing a little...maybe God will give me some family there too one day.
c.s.lewis..'christians, then, believe that an evil power has made himself for the present the prince of this world. and, of course, that raises problems. is this state of affairs in accordance with God's will or not? if it is, He is a stange God, you will say: and if it is not, how can anything happen contrary to the will of a being with absolute power?...
God created things which had free will. that means creatures which can go either wrong or right. some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong; i cannot. if a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad..
of course God knew what would happen if they used their freedom the wrong way: apparently He thot it worth the risk. perhaps we feel inclined to dis agree with Him. but there is a difficulty about disagreeing with God. He is the source from which all your reasoning power comes: you could not be right and He wrong any more than a stream can rise higher than its own source. when you are arguing against Him you are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all: it is like cutting off the branch you are sitting on.
if God thinks this state of war in the universe a price worth paying for free will - that is, for making a live world in which creatures can do real good or harm and somthing of real importance can happen, instead of a toy world which only moves when He pulls the strings - then we may take it it is worth paying.
this week worked 52 hours or so...so if i am actually paid rate for them that would bring me somewhat close to even for an avg. of 10 hr. per week for the year so far. this year has been a war zone in some regards,a paradise of walking with God at times. my 7 daily (*) habits have taken quite a hit. but maybe if they didn't i would be moved back into some sick form of self-righteousness. who knows what God is doing ...o, i know one thing. He is answering in the affirmative my growing prayer: 1. make things so difficult for me that i have to constantly look to You for guidance, help, encouragement, strength, etc. 2. make things so difficult for me that what i do will start to take on the shape of a miracle, will move others to glorify You (don't see this near happening anytime soon that's for sure...but my desire that He not me be seen) 3. make everything so difficult that i am more and more filled with gratitute and thanksgiving to You for everything.
the Church at mision has been a real blessing in this area. they are providing the scaffolding for God to build me into a growing house of praise to Him..make me a house of prayer too Lord!!!!
God gave me a snippet of music after so long a silence in this area. 2 days ago i was singing 'just a closer walk with Thee' with such ...i can't describe it in words..as i haven't had before Him in spirit for so long. i can't wait for heaven. oh Lord, to think i get to walk and commune with You which this whole day has been one long spell of (since i made the decision not to keep trying to catch up on the endless 'to do' list early this a.m.!!!) oh how good You are...
there is a famine in the land. a famine of hearing the words of the Lord. raise up truth speakers!
since 1985 more than 210,000 people have been killed and more than 4.5 million have been uprooted in columbia.
bulletin insert on buddhism.
siddhartha gautama was born around 563 b.c. in southern nepal..at 16 he won himself a bride..by performing many feats of mental and physical prowess. but, even with his wealth and lofty situation he was continually troubled by scenes of human suffering and pain..on his 29th birthday, he left his wife and children on a search for truth. for 6 yrs he wandered the world, experimenting with yoga, asceticism, and even starvation. then, on the 6th anniversary ..he spent a night under the pipal tree. and for the rest of his life, he traveled, spreading his dhamma (teachings) about the way of enlightenment.
enlightenment or nirvana is a tate of mind free from desire (from which all suffering stems)..therefore if you rid yourself from all desire, all suffering will cease..it is ironic that at the heart of buddhism is the desire to be free from desire.
one can attain this state of nirvana by following the 8fold path. its steps are
right views
right resolve
right speech
right conduct
right livelihood
right effort
right mindfulness
right concentration
in fact, this religion has-
4 sets of rules for 4 great offenses
13 rules required for formal participation in the brotherhool
30 rules
'confucius was born in the small state of lu in the year 551 b.c. what his ancestry was we cannot know, but it is probable that there were aristocrats among his forebears...as a young man he had to make his own living at tasks that were more or less menial..at the age of 17 he was made an inspector of the corn-marts and distinguished himself by his industry and energy in repressing fraud and in introducing order and integrity into the whole business. he also had considerable difficulties with his wife. the following words of his own give us some clue..women and people of low birth are very hard to deal with. if you are friendly with them, they get out of hand and if you keep your distance, they resent it. (one of my dad's words were to be careful not to be too friendly or too unfriendly with women...maybe he read confucius)
he was next appointed inspector-general of pastures and flocks and the result of his judicious measures, we are told was a general improvement in the cultivation of the country and the condition of the people. the death of his mother, which happened in his 23rd year, brought him to a turning point. he shut himself up in his house to pass in solitude the 3 yrs of mourning for his mother. ..lincoln's .mother died when he was 9. he did not mourn..but all his life he cherished and adored the image of his mother. for him, she was a noble, affectionate, good, and kind mother..lincoln said..'all that i am, or hope to be, i woe to my angel mother'..on the morning of the funeral of willie, the 3rd son of ..lincoln..he confided..'i had a good christian mother and her prayers have followed me thus far thru life'.
confucius returned to his home state..but an unworthy change of magistrates made him unhappy and restless. he then proceeded to chen, where he was not much appreciated;..afterwards to tzec where he became one of the king's ministers. he was dismissed after a short time thru the intrigue of cunning courtiers. he began to wander again, but state after state refused his efforts at reform. he was misunderstood and in some instances persecuted. once he was imprisoned and nearly starved; and finally, seeing no hope of securing the favorable attention of his countrymen while he was alive, he returned in extreme poverty to his native state and spent his last years in the composition of literary works, by which posterity at least might be instructed.
lincoln's wanderings came to an end at relatively an early stage of his life. his life pattern in reality, however, remarkably coincides with what conf. suffested as ideal. evidently in his old age the sage said:
at 15 i set my heart upon learning
at 30, i had planted my feet firm upon the ground
at40, i no longer suffered from perplexities
at 50, i know what were the biddings of heaven
at 60, i heard them with docile ear
at 70, i could follow the dictates of my own heart; for what i desired no longer overstepped the boundaries of right.
even though linc did not reach 60..it may not be presumptuous to say that he had the potential to hear 'the biddings of heaven..with a docile ear..and able to follow the dictates of his own heart' without transgressing the standards of right. linc constantly sought the 'divine will' during the difficult war days. even earlier, when leaving springfield..'with a task..greater than that which rested upon washington', linc said 'without the assistance of that divine being,who ever attended him, i cannot succeed. with that assistance i cannot fail. trusting in Him, who can go with me and remain with you and be everywhere for good, let me confidently hope that all will yet be well'. in his last public address on apr. 11, 1865..'we meet this evening, not in sorrow, but in gladness of heart. the evacuation of petersburg and richmond, and the surrender of the principal insurgent army, give hope of a righteous and speedy peace whose joyous expression can not be restrained. in the midst of this, however, He, from whom all blessings flow, must not be forgotten. a call for a national thanksgiving is being prepared and will be duly promulagated'.
..in light of confucian teachings, it can be reasonably asserted that linc was the type of leader that confucius was so anxious to give to the world as an ideal human being, chun-tzu..the word..originally meant a son of a ruler...he is a gentleman to be bound by a particular code of morals and manners. therefore superiority of birth alone is inadequate; chun-tzu must possess superiority of character and behavior..and what is the way of the gentleman..at home in his naive village his manner is simple and unassuming, as though he did not trust himself to speak. at court when conversing..his attitude is friendly and affable...
robert ingersoll reminiscing about..linc..'linc was an immense personality - firm but not obstinate. obstinacy is egotism - firmness, heroism. he influenced others without effort, unconsciously; and they submitted to him as men submit to nature, unconsciously. he was severe with himself and for that reason lenient with others. he appeared to apologize for being kinder than his fellows. he did merciful things as stealthily as others committed crimes. almost ashamed of tenderness, he said and did the noblest words and deeds with that charming confusion - that awkwardness - that is the perfect grace of modesty..a great man stooping, not wishing to make his fellows feel that they were small or mean'..
moderation in conduct and opinion is a well-known hallmark of the true gentleman. the chun..avoids the absolute, avoids the extreme. mencius tells us that conf..was one who abstained from extremes...when linc said his policy was to have no policy, it was an expression of his determination to take a road of moderation even if it was crooked and winding. in fact, he never had a policy he 'simply tried to do what seemed best as each day came'..
but the chun..should be keen and alert all the time.kung said: 'the gentleman has 9 cares. in seeing he is careful to see clearly, in hearing he is careful to hear distinctly, in his looks he is careful to be kindly; in his manner to be respectful, in his words to be loyal, in his work to be diligent. when in doubt he is careful to ask for information; when angry he has a care for the consequences, and when he sees a chance of gain, he thinks carefully whether the pursuit of it would be consonant with the right'...the chun..has to base his character on righteousness while conducting himself according to propriety, expressing himself in modesty, and becoming complete in sincerity..but without courage, how can one remain both moderate and right?..linc..always had the courage to carry out his middle-of-the-road policy.
j.g.randall..describing linc..'his greatness arose from a combination of qualities in a balanced personality. one could never define his conduct as springing from mere automatic reaction. it came rather from informed study and mature reflection. mere slogans and stereotypes did not impress him. he was a simple man - he was unpretentious in manner and straightforward in expression - but he was never extravagant. he combined humanitarianism with practical common sense. he attained a position of lofty eminence and moved among the great without making other men feel small..he could assert himself without becoming a dictator. he had ambition, but without selfishness. if a colleague, a subordinate, or a cabinet member were attacked, he would take the blame upon his own shoulders. sometimes he would write a letter as an outlet for overwrought feeling, think it over, realize that it might wound the recipient and then withhold it'.
master kung (i take it he means confucius) would have been exceedingly happy if he had found one like linc among his disciples! the gentleman CULTIVATES HIMSELF SO AS TO GIVE REST TO THE TROUBLED WORLD. (wow, no wonder i am attracted to linc..i am an exact opposite!) those who have abilities but act arrogantly are no gentlemen because they break the harmony of the world.
in the confucian ethical system poetry, rites and music are important and essential for the training of the chun-tzu. the master said..'let a man be first incited by the songs, then given a firm footing by the study of ritual and finally perfected by music'.
orientals seem to make a distinction between literature that instructs and literature that pleases, or literature that is the vehicle of truth and literature that is the expression of emotions. ..the former is objective and expository, while the latter is subjective and lyrical...conf said, 'why is it that none of you study the songs? for the songs will help you to incite people's emotions, to observe their feelings, to keep company, to express your grievances. they may be used at home in the service of one's father; abroad, in the service of one's prince'...conf loved poems because they expressed joy without being licentious and fierceness without being injurious.
it is an undeniable fact that linc was fond of poetry. in fact his very first extant writing was done in the form of verse:
abraham lincoln
his hand and pen
he will be good but
god knows When
the originality of this is questioned, but linc did write 'my childhood-home i see again' (1846). a man does not write poems at that age unless he has some talent or at least some propensity for verse. jacques barzun, acknowledging linc's 'literary genius' maintains the he had a literary style that was 'clear, forcible, individual and distinguished'. linc stopped composing verses as his public responsibilities grew heavier...
after poetry, rites. li is the chinese character for rites. li is to govern the moral, social and religious activities of a man. etymologically, li is religious in nature and in the course of its evolution, it came to include all forms of rituals and everything in connection with the proper conduct of the chun..the original meaning of li was to sacrifice; it still has this sense in modern chinese. confucius thot, if rulers were gravely serious in sacrificing to their ancestors, why should they not be equally so in attending to the govt of the realm? if ministers treated one another with courtesy, in the daily intercourse of the court, why should they not be equally considerate toward the common people, who were the backbone of the state? thus he said to one of his disciples that, wherever he went in the world, he should treat all those with whom he came in contact with as if he were receiving an important guest. some so-called confucian classics deal with extremely minute matters of etiquete. but conf himself conceived of li quite differently, it was the spirit that counted and he was contemptuaous of those who believed that, by mere ostentatious show of expensive trappings they could excel in li.
linc was a completely unconventional american..he seemed to disregard clothing and in privacy wore as little of it as possible. however..he never failed to dress properly according to his status in life and society...linc was thoughtful and careful even in small matters. he wrote to thurlow weed on mar. 15, 1865 and said: 'everyone likes a compliment. than you for yours on my little inaugural address'. frederick douglass remembered..'i could not have been more than 10' from him when mr. linc saw me; his countenance lighted up and he said in a voice which was heard all around, "here comes my friend douglass" '. linc gave him a cordial handshake and even asked for his opinion about the inaugural address. linc had, in his own words a 'peculiar' ambition in life. he said in 1832 '..i have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem'. linc practiced li all his life.
finally, music. after an exhaustive study on linc and the music of the civil war, kenneth a. bernard concludes: '..linc was one of our most 'unmusical' presidents. he never studied music, never had any training in it and knew nothing of its technical aspects; he could not play any instrument (except possibly the harmonica), could not read music, nor could he really sing. linc..was, in short, no musician. yet 2 significant facts are clearly evident when one thinks of linc and music. he was extremely fond of music and , as president, he heard more music than any other occupant of the white house.
in view of all those confucian virtues that linc possessed so abundantly, it is appropriate to call him a real chun-tzu, a perfect gentleman in the eyes of educated orientals.
john dos passos...'linc spoke at trenton of his anxiety 'that this union, the constitution, and the liberties of the people shall be perpetuated in accordance with the original idea for which that struggle was made'. this idea was based on belief in individual liberty and individual responsibility. it depended upon the belief that there was a divine spirit in man which ever strove for the good. the truth of this conviction cannot be tested by logic or proved by scientific experiment, but the contrary cannot be proved either. inevitably the moment comes when we have to take the leap of faith..by faith i mean whatever conviction produced A FEELING OF PARTICIPATION IN A COMMON ENTERPRISE (me: opposite the rampant individualism we all are now laden with) .a civilization is a common enterprise. when faith is lost, civilizations coast along on their momentum for a while, but soon they start to rot and disintegrate. much more than on material well-being or on technological successes their survival depends on an inner imperative which causes men to reach for what is good for them instead of what is bad for them. self-governing institutions particularly depend on individual responsibility for the choice between what is right and what is wrong.
if americans cease to be dedicated to 'that something more than common' that linc spoke of, the republic he gave his life for has no more reason for being. the continuing process that faces the generations alive today is the adjustment of the methods of self-govt and of the aspirations of individual men for a full life to the changing shape of mass-production society. there is nothing easy about such an assignment. the alternative is the soggy despotism that pervades 2/3rds of the globe. even partial success will call for the rebirth of some sort of central faith as strong as linc's was. only then may we continue to entertain the hope that this 'government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish form the earth'.
reinhold niebuhr 'the religion of abraham lincoln'
a belief in providence..'the Almighty has His own purposes. "woe unto the world because of offenses! for it must needs be that offenses come' but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh". if we shall suppose that american slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued thru His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that he gives to both north and south this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living god always ascribe to Him?'..linc's faith is closely akin to that of the hebrew prophets, who first conceived the idea of a meaningful history...the chief evidence of the purity and profundity of linc's sense of providence is the fact that he was able to resist the natural temptation to do what all political leaders, indeed all men, have done thru the ages: identify providence with the cause to which he was committed.
alone among statesmen of the ancient and modern periods, linc had a sense of historical meaning so high as to cast doubt on the intentions of both sides, to put the enemy into the same category of ambiguity as the nation to which his life was committed..2nd inaugural address.."neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has now attained. neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. both read the same bible; and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other..it may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces..but let us judge not, that we be not judged. the prayers of both could not be answered - that of neither have been answered fully"...linc's achievement to embrace a paradox which lies at the center of the spirituality of all western culture: affirmation of a meaningful history along with religious reservation about the pariality and bias which human actors and agents betray in their definition of that meaning...he had a lack of fanatacism, a spirit of magnanimity..
a conscientious politician is compelled to relate all the moral aspirations and all the moral hesitancies of the social forces of a free society to the primary goal, the survival of the community. in the political order, the value of justice takes an uneasy 2nd place behind that of internal order...he finally acted for the whole nation in the emancipation of slaves..a moral imperative.may be significant that the moral ambiguities in the idealism (acting primarily for the continuance of the nation, a nation made of people of all stripes of belief about slavery) of this man proved themselves religiously superior in the end...
well all i have is 55 minutes until the library closes. this library is kind of like a church to me. i have a number of people here who act like the really like me and enjoy my company. i don't meet that anywhere else. so it is my desire to make other places like this as best i can. at mision i have started to get up and go around and greet others and i have noticed that instead of the norm, which is kind of like sanctified ignoring of others rather than enthusiazing with them, that some others are starting to do the same thing. maybe they say, hey, if the gringo can do that so can we...i don't know. but i'm asking God to use me to start 1st a warm glow and then out of that a raging fire where from that place love will burst out in neighborhoods and families and spread and run around the world. first, i've got to abide in Jesus constantly so the warmth of His enthusiazing over me can catch..
there's an article on the front desk, 'are libraries unnecessary?', which talks about how libraries are being defunded and closed. my favorite line, a sign from the gilpin county public library in colorado , beckons with 'free coffee, internet, notary, phone, smiles, restrooms, and ideas'! reminds me of the spirit here...my best home away from the dark, silent house on chestnut st. though mision is growing a little...maybe God will give me some family there too one day.
c.s.lewis..'christians, then, believe that an evil power has made himself for the present the prince of this world. and, of course, that raises problems. is this state of affairs in accordance with God's will or not? if it is, He is a stange God, you will say: and if it is not, how can anything happen contrary to the will of a being with absolute power?...
God created things which had free will. that means creatures which can go either wrong or right. some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong; i cannot. if a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad..
of course God knew what would happen if they used their freedom the wrong way: apparently He thot it worth the risk. perhaps we feel inclined to dis agree with Him. but there is a difficulty about disagreeing with God. He is the source from which all your reasoning power comes: you could not be right and He wrong any more than a stream can rise higher than its own source. when you are arguing against Him you are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all: it is like cutting off the branch you are sitting on.
if God thinks this state of war in the universe a price worth paying for free will - that is, for making a live world in which creatures can do real good or harm and somthing of real importance can happen, instead of a toy world which only moves when He pulls the strings - then we may take it it is worth paying.
this week worked 52 hours or so...so if i am actually paid rate for them that would bring me somewhat close to even for an avg. of 10 hr. per week for the year so far. this year has been a war zone in some regards,a paradise of walking with God at times. my 7 daily (*) habits have taken quite a hit. but maybe if they didn't i would be moved back into some sick form of self-righteousness. who knows what God is doing ...o, i know one thing. He is answering in the affirmative my growing prayer: 1. make things so difficult for me that i have to constantly look to You for guidance, help, encouragement, strength, etc. 2. make things so difficult for me that what i do will start to take on the shape of a miracle, will move others to glorify You (don't see this near happening anytime soon that's for sure...but my desire that He not me be seen) 3. make everything so difficult that i am more and more filled with gratitute and thanksgiving to You for everything.
the Church at mision has been a real blessing in this area. they are providing the scaffolding for God to build me into a growing house of praise to Him..make me a house of prayer too Lord!!!!
God gave me a snippet of music after so long a silence in this area. 2 days ago i was singing 'just a closer walk with Thee' with such ...i can't describe it in words..as i haven't had before Him in spirit for so long. i can't wait for heaven. oh Lord, to think i get to walk and commune with You which this whole day has been one long spell of (since i made the decision not to keep trying to catch up on the endless 'to do' list early this a.m.!!!) oh how good You are...
there is a famine in the land. a famine of hearing the words of the Lord. raise up truth speakers!
since 1985 more than 210,000 people have been killed and more than 4.5 million have been uprooted in columbia.
bulletin insert on buddhism.
siddhartha gautama was born around 563 b.c. in southern nepal..at 16 he won himself a bride..by performing many feats of mental and physical prowess. but, even with his wealth and lofty situation he was continually troubled by scenes of human suffering and pain..on his 29th birthday, he left his wife and children on a search for truth. for 6 yrs he wandered the world, experimenting with yoga, asceticism, and even starvation. then, on the 6th anniversary ..he spent a night under the pipal tree. and for the rest of his life, he traveled, spreading his dhamma (teachings) about the way of enlightenment.
enlightenment or nirvana is a tate of mind free from desire (from which all suffering stems)..therefore if you rid yourself from all desire, all suffering will cease..it is ironic that at the heart of buddhism is the desire to be free from desire.
one can attain this state of nirvana by following the 8fold path. its steps are
right views
right resolve
right speech
right conduct
right livelihood
right effort
right mindfulness
right concentration
in fact, this religion has-
4 sets of rules for 4 great offenses
13 rules required for formal participation in the brotherhool
30 rules
Sunday, August 15, 2010
8.15.10 MAY YOU LIVE FOREVER!
greetings in the precious name of Jesus! as of today i am going to start a new practice. every 15 minutes of typing i am going to press the 'publish post' button and then, after 'published' i will get back in and edit and go on for another 15 minutes and do the same thing...thus limping thru my weekly communication to you 15 minutes at a time.
the reason for this is that yesterday in the last minute of a 2 hour post for this week a weird kind of page replaced my writing with a few seconds left. i could do nothing to try to save what i had typed and so time elapsed. i gave this whole thing much to God in prayer. at the core, my greatest concern was for God to take away my anger and frustration and questioning and replace it with His peace...that i would let that 2 hours go and just receive it as from the Lord. right now i think of the story of , i believe, william carey in india who at one point lost year of work on various indian languages in a fire. who can know the mind and will of the Lord. be not weary in well doing for in due season you will reap if you faint not. so by the time i got here today i was not 100% at peace but possibly near. when i came on i found that indeed nothing had (miraculously) been retained. may You be praised.
so over the last two weeks i have lost about 4 hours total due to 3 or 4 glitches, each of a different and very strange nature. may God guide me that i may not put one word down that He does not want to appear.
ct, aug. 10, p15..fewer than 30% of the world's 2.5 billion people in 1950 lived in cities. by 2050, almost 70% ..one advocate of 'glocal' ministry says, 'the heart of the spread of the gospel has always been in cities...since the days of jerusalem and antioch..cities are essential'..
bumper sticker..Jesus is coming. look busy.
p38 by rob moll a ct editor at large who came back to Jesus thru the reading of albert camus', a french existentialist in the 1940s on..and an atheist. in camus' the plague, when the city of oran is struck by disease, officials quarantine the city. the main character, the physician rieux, chooses to stay, throwing himself into caring for the sick. this is how one creates meaning amid the meaning lessness of the sudden outbreak..and life is no different, camus believed. we are to work against wrongs and injustice, with humility, trying to aid others in small ways. it is no lofty idealism. rieux describes how he first came to his philosophy in his campaign against the death penalty. in order to outlaw capital punishment, he realized, his party was on occasion forced to murder. shocked by an execution, rieux refects his activism. he realized that 'i, anyhow, had had plague thru all those long years in which , paradoxically enough, i'd believed..i was fighting it'. not only that: ' i have realized that we all have plague'.
it was this scene that struck me most forcefully. camus was right, i knew, and i, too, had plague. i was sick and in need of a Physician. camus' willingness to accept the truth that human beings are fallen allowed me to do the same. camus (Jesus?) held a mirror to my face - in a way that no pastor, preacher, or professor had - and i knew i need salvation.
the church's inability to answer the problem of suffering is still atheists' most common complaint against god and it teaches us how we may be setting people up for spiritual disappointment and failure. maybe the modern church puts too much emphasis on better living thru God. or perhaps we don't adequately eexplain that GOD SUFFERS WITH US and redeems our suffering without eliminating it. whatever the cause, atheism remains an attractive world view for those who hav witnessed suffering or been in pain and can't reconcile the idea of a good and powerful God with the reality of life on earth.
another flaw of the faith revealed by..the New Atheists, is the frequency with which christianity or any religion appears oppressive. it was no coincidence that the New Atheism exploded during the second half of the bush administration, when christians were widely perceived (correctly or not) to be using their political power to influence public policy. when some christian leaders were found to be violating their professed beliefs, whether in sexual behavior or other ethical lapses, it cast all attempts to bring christian moral arguments into the political process as hypocritical manipulations for power. (my note: the OT prophets were speakers of truth who made no attempt to protect themselves or act as power brokers in the political sphere)
most of my wandering friends..seem to have returned to Christ. but i've found athat a surprising number who had fully accepted the faith have now left it. each tended to have had some experience in which christian leaders acted as hypocritical, power hungry, judgmental, or arrogant elites. for some, the church's inability to shepherd during a painful period led directly to rejecting God. 'if god isn't there when i need him..i don't need Him'.
at heart, refection of God seems not to be a purely logical choice against the possibility or desirability of god. rather, it is often a rejection of God's people. (atheists')..deepest arguments against belief are the people they're arguing with.
reader response..this to an article on denominations..'i agree with (stetzer) that doing missionary work outside a denomination is difficult; i've lost individual support, gone into debt and at times worked while on furlough in the states. but had i gone thro a denomination i likely would not have been sent out at age 19 and wouldn't have been free to serve where God led.
although denom..missionaries have retirement plans, savings and insurance, many are deeply frustrated by the centralized control of how and where they serve. in my experience, the enom missionaries accomplish much less than the 'i hope i hav enough $ this month' nondenoms..
my note: over the past several years a longtime ideal has been metamorphizing toward something that is starting to shape the way i am living and hope to live. in matthew 6.33 Jesus makes the clear command to His disciples to 'seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things (in the context, the things that are essential to life - food and raiment) shall be added to you'.
to my understanding western missions does not follow this model but rather promotes a type of 'business model' of 'seeking prayer and $ support. i have, to this point, had the courage to speak to two missionaries about this and to challenge them to abandon the western model and follow Jesus' command. they have both rejected the counsel.
why is this? i think this is a natural consequence of the greed that is epidemic in the western church greed (lit. the desire for just a little more) moves away from Jesus clear commandment by degrees until the lives of hypocritically named 'christians' (followers of Jesus!) look no different from those in the world around them.
how has this come to be? 'christians' are no longer transformed by the regular, daily, momentary presenting of their bodies as a living sacrifice to the Lord and thus are daily being conformed (pressed into the shape of) the world system around them. who has control of this system? satan what is the dominant characteristic of it? it may appear on a continuum from appearing very good and beautiful to appearing very ugly and violently oppressive but it always excludes God while giving various impressions to the contrary. one can appear godly, but one must never obey Jesus' commands.
how is this allowed to continued? because those who take the name of pastors are hirelings and not true shepherds. true shepherds do not protect themselves. they speak truth to the flock unflinchingly and unremittingly. luther said something to the effect that no matter how much true dogma is 'believed' and espoused, if one does not speak directly to actual sins they are not true minsters of God. how true!
why do pastors (and the rest of us join them) hesitate to tell others the truth about themselves? the price is too high to pay. truth is toxic to one's 'health and welfare' in this world system. to the degree any one of us speaks truth, to that degree we are heading for personal demise, and if we persist, painful persecution and death. imagine Jesus doing all the good he did and being put to death! there is only one reason. He persisted in telling them the truth and, more fatally, the truth about themselves! i have never met, in myself, the likes of Jesus. we all seek after our own interests not those of Christ Jesus.
colson, the lost art of communication, p49 ..among today's young adults, the unwillingness to commit is alarming, clearly one result of the philosophies of the 1960s and 70s coming to full floin 1979, sociaologist robert bellah conducted extensive interviews to understand what 'habits of the heart' defined average americans. many had no sense of community or social obligation. they saw the world as a fragmented place of choice and freedom that yielded little meaning or comfort. they even seemed to have lost the language to express commitment to anything besides themselves. bellah called this 'ontological individualism' (note: not ontological suicide?) , the belief that the individual is the only source of meaning. bellah saw how this attitude would in time, unravel the church and larger society. since then, we've seen an almost uninterrupted march toward self-focus, affecting all of our institutions but especially crippling work, marriage and family...i first learned (commitment) by watching my parents care for my dying grandparents in our home. this is a custom long forgotten today, when such care is subcontracted out...
church around the world, july10..about 3 out of every 5 unchurched people in america are self'described christians, according to ..barna group survey..68% believe that God is the all-knowing, all-powerful creator of the universe and that He still rules the universe today...35% believe the bible is totally accurate in all the principles it teaches..based on past studies..37% of unchurched americans avoid attending church services because of painful past experiences with the church or people in the church..18% claim to be bornagain christians..who ..have'made a personal commitment to Jesus..that is still important in their life today' and believe they will have eternal life with God only thru confessing their sins and acknowledging Jesus..as savior (not Lord?!)..
intercessors for america, aug. 10...why i don't pray?..I DON'T SEE IMMEDIATE RESULTS. in fact, i've prayed for so many specific things that i never saw results for at all. now i just throw out generic requests so i won't be disappointed anymore. when it comes down to it, God probably does answer my prayers. i guess i just don't like the answers of 'no' and 'not now'. i impatiently demand that god microwave my prayers. every day, the world reinforces my desire for immediate results. the kids need to get somewhere right now; i have to make payroll in 4 days; i haven't eaten all day so i am pulling into the drive-thru. waiting for answers can be excruciating. if i were honest with myself, though, i can't even count the times that i've looked back and said, 'the Lord's timing on that was perfect'. IT DOESN'T FEEL LIKE ANYONE IS LISTENING. i remember when i used to keep a prayer journal and write down requests and answers. every so often, i would look back and see how god answered my prayers. i guess he was listening. i should start doing that again. i asked god to show me answers to my prayers and it was amazing how, in the middle of my busy life, i became aware of his answers.
pro life union of southeastern pa, aug. 10..between 2002 and 9 the federal govt doled out over one billion $ to abortion groups. international PP -93.8 million; PP federation of america 657.1 million; population council - $284 million SIECUS 1.6 million; guttmacher -12.7 million; advocates for youth -8.7 milion. since obama struck down the mexico city policy 646 million went to foreign abortion organizations
planned parenthood of southeastern pa received 1.165 million of our federal taxes and 152,000 of our state taxes.
it's tuesday evening so out this goes to you. was glad to hear you had a good time at spruce lake and that at least two of you are extending vacation into this week. i hope you have a good week. love, dad
the reason for this is that yesterday in the last minute of a 2 hour post for this week a weird kind of page replaced my writing with a few seconds left. i could do nothing to try to save what i had typed and so time elapsed. i gave this whole thing much to God in prayer. at the core, my greatest concern was for God to take away my anger and frustration and questioning and replace it with His peace...that i would let that 2 hours go and just receive it as from the Lord. right now i think of the story of , i believe, william carey in india who at one point lost year of work on various indian languages in a fire. who can know the mind and will of the Lord. be not weary in well doing for in due season you will reap if you faint not. so by the time i got here today i was not 100% at peace but possibly near. when i came on i found that indeed nothing had (miraculously) been retained. may You be praised.
so over the last two weeks i have lost about 4 hours total due to 3 or 4 glitches, each of a different and very strange nature. may God guide me that i may not put one word down that He does not want to appear.
ct, aug. 10, p15..fewer than 30% of the world's 2.5 billion people in 1950 lived in cities. by 2050, almost 70% ..one advocate of 'glocal' ministry says, 'the heart of the spread of the gospel has always been in cities...since the days of jerusalem and antioch..cities are essential'..
bumper sticker..Jesus is coming. look busy.
p38 by rob moll a ct editor at large who came back to Jesus thru the reading of albert camus', a french existentialist in the 1940s on..and an atheist. in camus' the plague, when the city of oran is struck by disease, officials quarantine the city. the main character, the physician rieux, chooses to stay, throwing himself into caring for the sick. this is how one creates meaning amid the meaning lessness of the sudden outbreak..and life is no different, camus believed. we are to work against wrongs and injustice, with humility, trying to aid others in small ways. it is no lofty idealism. rieux describes how he first came to his philosophy in his campaign against the death penalty. in order to outlaw capital punishment, he realized, his party was on occasion forced to murder. shocked by an execution, rieux refects his activism. he realized that 'i, anyhow, had had plague thru all those long years in which , paradoxically enough, i'd believed..i was fighting it'. not only that: ' i have realized that we all have plague'.
it was this scene that struck me most forcefully. camus was right, i knew, and i, too, had plague. i was sick and in need of a Physician. camus' willingness to accept the truth that human beings are fallen allowed me to do the same. camus (Jesus?) held a mirror to my face - in a way that no pastor, preacher, or professor had - and i knew i need salvation.
the church's inability to answer the problem of suffering is still atheists' most common complaint against god and it teaches us how we may be setting people up for spiritual disappointment and failure. maybe the modern church puts too much emphasis on better living thru God. or perhaps we don't adequately eexplain that GOD SUFFERS WITH US and redeems our suffering without eliminating it. whatever the cause, atheism remains an attractive world view for those who hav witnessed suffering or been in pain and can't reconcile the idea of a good and powerful God with the reality of life on earth.
another flaw of the faith revealed by..the New Atheists, is the frequency with which christianity or any religion appears oppressive. it was no coincidence that the New Atheism exploded during the second half of the bush administration, when christians were widely perceived (correctly or not) to be using their political power to influence public policy. when some christian leaders were found to be violating their professed beliefs, whether in sexual behavior or other ethical lapses, it cast all attempts to bring christian moral arguments into the political process as hypocritical manipulations for power. (my note: the OT prophets were speakers of truth who made no attempt to protect themselves or act as power brokers in the political sphere)
most of my wandering friends..seem to have returned to Christ. but i've found athat a surprising number who had fully accepted the faith have now left it. each tended to have had some experience in which christian leaders acted as hypocritical, power hungry, judgmental, or arrogant elites. for some, the church's inability to shepherd during a painful period led directly to rejecting God. 'if god isn't there when i need him..i don't need Him'.
at heart, refection of God seems not to be a purely logical choice against the possibility or desirability of god. rather, it is often a rejection of God's people. (atheists')..deepest arguments against belief are the people they're arguing with.
reader response..this to an article on denominations..'i agree with (stetzer) that doing missionary work outside a denomination is difficult; i've lost individual support, gone into debt and at times worked while on furlough in the states. but had i gone thro a denomination i likely would not have been sent out at age 19 and wouldn't have been free to serve where God led.
although denom..missionaries have retirement plans, savings and insurance, many are deeply frustrated by the centralized control of how and where they serve. in my experience, the enom missionaries accomplish much less than the 'i hope i hav enough $ this month' nondenoms..
my note: over the past several years a longtime ideal has been metamorphizing toward something that is starting to shape the way i am living and hope to live. in matthew 6.33 Jesus makes the clear command to His disciples to 'seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things (in the context, the things that are essential to life - food and raiment) shall be added to you'.
to my understanding western missions does not follow this model but rather promotes a type of 'business model' of 'seeking prayer and $ support. i have, to this point, had the courage to speak to two missionaries about this and to challenge them to abandon the western model and follow Jesus' command. they have both rejected the counsel.
why is this? i think this is a natural consequence of the greed that is epidemic in the western church greed (lit. the desire for just a little more) moves away from Jesus clear commandment by degrees until the lives of hypocritically named 'christians' (followers of Jesus!) look no different from those in the world around them.
how has this come to be? 'christians' are no longer transformed by the regular, daily, momentary presenting of their bodies as a living sacrifice to the Lord and thus are daily being conformed (pressed into the shape of) the world system around them. who has control of this system? satan what is the dominant characteristic of it? it may appear on a continuum from appearing very good and beautiful to appearing very ugly and violently oppressive but it always excludes God while giving various impressions to the contrary. one can appear godly, but one must never obey Jesus' commands.
how is this allowed to continued? because those who take the name of pastors are hirelings and not true shepherds. true shepherds do not protect themselves. they speak truth to the flock unflinchingly and unremittingly. luther said something to the effect that no matter how much true dogma is 'believed' and espoused, if one does not speak directly to actual sins they are not true minsters of God. how true!
why do pastors (and the rest of us join them) hesitate to tell others the truth about themselves? the price is too high to pay. truth is toxic to one's 'health and welfare' in this world system. to the degree any one of us speaks truth, to that degree we are heading for personal demise, and if we persist, painful persecution and death. imagine Jesus doing all the good he did and being put to death! there is only one reason. He persisted in telling them the truth and, more fatally, the truth about themselves! i have never met, in myself, the likes of Jesus. we all seek after our own interests not those of Christ Jesus.
colson, the lost art of communication, p49 ..among today's young adults, the unwillingness to commit is alarming, clearly one result of the philosophies of the 1960s and 70s coming to full floin 1979, sociaologist robert bellah conducted extensive interviews to understand what 'habits of the heart' defined average americans. many had no sense of community or social obligation. they saw the world as a fragmented place of choice and freedom that yielded little meaning or comfort. they even seemed to have lost the language to express commitment to anything besides themselves. bellah called this 'ontological individualism' (note: not ontological suicide?) , the belief that the individual is the only source of meaning. bellah saw how this attitude would in time, unravel the church and larger society. since then, we've seen an almost uninterrupted march toward self-focus, affecting all of our institutions but especially crippling work, marriage and family...i first learned (commitment) by watching my parents care for my dying grandparents in our home. this is a custom long forgotten today, when such care is subcontracted out...
church around the world, july10..about 3 out of every 5 unchurched people in america are self'described christians, according to ..barna group survey..68% believe that God is the all-knowing, all-powerful creator of the universe and that He still rules the universe today...35% believe the bible is totally accurate in all the principles it teaches..based on past studies..37% of unchurched americans avoid attending church services because of painful past experiences with the church or people in the church..18% claim to be bornagain christians..who ..have'made a personal commitment to Jesus..that is still important in their life today' and believe they will have eternal life with God only thru confessing their sins and acknowledging Jesus..as savior (not Lord?!)..
intercessors for america, aug. 10...why i don't pray?..I DON'T SEE IMMEDIATE RESULTS. in fact, i've prayed for so many specific things that i never saw results for at all. now i just throw out generic requests so i won't be disappointed anymore. when it comes down to it, God probably does answer my prayers. i guess i just don't like the answers of 'no' and 'not now'. i impatiently demand that god microwave my prayers. every day, the world reinforces my desire for immediate results. the kids need to get somewhere right now; i have to make payroll in 4 days; i haven't eaten all day so i am pulling into the drive-thru. waiting for answers can be excruciating. if i were honest with myself, though, i can't even count the times that i've looked back and said, 'the Lord's timing on that was perfect'. IT DOESN'T FEEL LIKE ANYONE IS LISTENING. i remember when i used to keep a prayer journal and write down requests and answers. every so often, i would look back and see how god answered my prayers. i guess he was listening. i should start doing that again. i asked god to show me answers to my prayers and it was amazing how, in the middle of my busy life, i became aware of his answers.
pro life union of southeastern pa, aug. 10..between 2002 and 9 the federal govt doled out over one billion $ to abortion groups. international PP -93.8 million; PP federation of america 657.1 million; population council - $284 million SIECUS 1.6 million; guttmacher -12.7 million; advocates for youth -8.7 milion. since obama struck down the mexico city policy 646 million went to foreign abortion organizations
planned parenthood of southeastern pa received 1.165 million of our federal taxes and 152,000 of our state taxes.
it's tuesday evening so out this goes to you. was glad to hear you had a good time at spruce lake and that at least two of you are extending vacation into this week. i hope you have a good week. love, dad
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