Monday, December 25, 2006

What makes us happy?

Life is about happy moments, like the gentlemen in the picture are having waiting for their Nintendo Wii to go on sale.

When I asked them for permission to take the picture, I could see apprehension in their eyes about me taking the picture. No one wants to be embarrassed, ever. I assured them that I was basically on their side in the excitement that they felt about their impending purchase.

Even in their happy moment lay a potential for embarrassment and negativity. It is possible to have good moments turn bad very quickly in this life, but not in the next. They will never go badly in heaven. There will be no embarrassment. No fear, when perfect love will cast out all fear outside of us and not just inside our hearts.

No fear. Like these guys are experiencing for a brief moment, and like we can access every moment through the holy spirit in us.

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

You Are Our Last Hope!!!

Galaxy Quest starring Tim Allen a while back has a great scene when the drunken erstwhile space hero is trying to find his pants. After a brief explanation by the head of the aliens about their need of him to command their real space ship, the alien leader calmly by firmly tells the former outer space TV commander that he is "their last hope."

Commander Taggart (Tim Allen) and the rest of his original TV crew are transported up to the aliens' space ship and do actually help the group with their immediate problem.

I think that I view God as this sort of assistant. More often than not , I try to work things out for myself and only when all hope is nearly lost does a nod toward heaven cross my mind. So far so good. No heresy yet. This is well-worn Christian territory: "Now if we all just submit to God's authority from the beginning of the problem, things would be that much better."

Would my life actually be better if I were to submit and turn things over to God earlier? Well, what is our standing with God?

We are as Holy as God could ever make us from the moment of our salvation onward. There is nothing I can DO to change my standing with God: that is something only God does (did). And He has made our standing in Him quite clear: "there is now no condemnation for those who love God..." . If this sounds conditional, it isn't. Think you don't love God all the time? Wrong. (Perfect... but still wrong.... weird). God's love flows from Him through you via the Holy Spirit living in you and back to God all the time.

Why are we a part of the equation? This question has a two part answer and a point of clarification. Clarification: we don't exist just to add imperfection to God, that can't be done. Answer 1- God makes the rules, not us. So acceptance of some mystery will make for a lot fewer questions. The rationalists may not like that , but remember that even rationality is extremely limited and isn't up to the task of positing everything about something infinite like God. Answer 2- We are in a unique (unlike Angels) position to have experienced imperfection as well as perfection.

That is our place, for now. We experience God's perfection (in very personal ways) as if looking through a very old pane of glass that is barely translucent. Imagine that kind of glass covering the Mona Lisa, or a sunset, or a bride and groom at the moment of first kiss as newlyweds. It would be possible to know that something amazing were on the other side of the glass even though it wouldn't be possible (in our still imperfect bodies and world) to fully realize it.

So, our last hope? God. In. Us. Now and forever. We know hope now. We won't even need hope in heaven. We will have that which we hoped for, AND we will have bodies and a physical (?) environment that doesn't cloud our view of God's love for us.

Monday, July 10, 2006

Students in my classes seem interested in learning at the beginning, and many lose heart as the course progresses.

Why? Possible reasons:
1. Reasons are personal and vary.
2. The students find it easy at the beginning and as it gets hard more and more surrender.
3. It gets difficult because it is counter-intuitive, both structurally and in content being learned.

Perhaps the wide student needs simply can't be met in one room even with academic freedom.
Perhaps students, young students, are not realistic about how little can be gained without effort.

Can schools, can my class, meet the needs of those that enter on August 10th?


Monday, June 19, 2006

No harm, really.


147_4781
Originally uploaded by mimizhusband.
One of the mind changes that occur with proper teaching is inner peace. Correct instruction about God teaches that we have nothing to fear. So why do we fear?

1. We forget the truth.
2. We don't believe that a situation that seems so new and threatening to us is actually so day-to-day for God.
3. We assume that inner peace comes from outer happiness of circumstance.

So, while we might think in a moment of terror on the ferris wheel that all is lost, actually, peace need not be threatened. But the nice thing is that God knows we will panic on a daily basis, and he isn't kicking us from his right hand. Ever. Since, for us to leave his 100% favor, Christ would have to leave it too.

Saturday, June 17, 2006

Who's in charge?


Soccer match
Originally uploaded by di.anne_n.
I played soccer in my youth.
Considering that I REALLY needed glasses during almost the entire time, I was pretty good. I have, in fact, wondered if I could have done more with soccer as a player if I had discovered my vision drawbacks earlier.

But I try to only go down that road a little bit because it is too easy in such musing to assume that everything else would have been the same, except that I could see clearly, so, of course I would have been a better player, maybe good enough to do more with soccer than the few years I played.

In reality, glasses may or MAY NOT have improved me as a player, and would have changed countless other things that I would have had to deal with.

God was quite aware of my vision drawbacks and was not interested in them. He was interested in a relationship, a friendship, a mutual understanding (as mutual as it can be with GOD). Could I, as a 20 year old aspirant to the American dream see that God loves us not by giving earthly happiness (though oddly enough he does that at times) ?

And now at age 42, God is presenting the same question: can you Arnie, get though the broken dreams of what you think your life could have been and see that the life you have is exactly the life that can best show you who God is?

These are the complex thoughts feelings and thoughts that I had as I watched the US tie Italy in World Cup group play here in 2006 Germany. A soccer match became much more, for me. Not because it really was much more, but because God wanted it to be more for me today.

Either all things (here, semi-blindness in the past) work together for good in my life, or they don't. And though it may take a lifetime to see how and why, they do work together to good.

Monday, May 29, 2006

photo test

Photo link testing in progress, move along, nothing to see here.

ak

Have you fallen from Grace?


The Bible is accused of being the source of many things. Here is one that doesn't come from the Bible: we can turn our backs on God.

False readings with legalistic biases assume that a passage like the prodigal son are about a Christian turning from God and then turning back to Him. While this is commonly understood it is as wrong as saying the moon is made of swiss cheese.

The Bible is non-contradictory. One teaching can't logically oppose another and have both be true at the same time for the same people. God just doesn't operate like that since he made us and knows that that would make it even more difficult than it is to understand Him.

The Prodigal Son story explains how gentiles first came to Christ. So the story is actually more about the anger "other son" that doesn't like the newcomer. At the beginning of the story, both sons were living at home. That was , in the metaphor of the story, the time early in the world when there really weren't other people than Noah's family. Then, one son leaves, and thus the gentiles are born. Under Christ there is no gentile, but perhaps even more importantly, there IS NO JEW. There is just one family of God. Ethnically there are of course Jews, but not spiritually any different from the gentiles, since Christ's gift of salvation is the same for all.

Once the Prodigal Son returns, does he ever leave again? No
Once you are in Christ is it even possible to leave? No
Can one "fall from Grace"? No

So, as the picture indicates, you are safe and the world is one big Gorazde.

AK

Symbols of ungodliness



I was raised to view certain things as inherently suspicious and probably ungodly in some way. Some of these influences were directly taught at home or in school, others were things I picked up from adult facial reactions (or lack of normal reactions) to their presence in our environment:

  • drinking alcohol
  • attending movies in a commercial cinema (TV was always fine)
  • fat people
  • people that talked too much
  • artists
  • Catholics (the message here was basically "yes, other religious teachings are way worse, but these folks actually think they're going to heaven the same say we are. Be careful.")
  • playing games with regular cards
  • much pop music
  • inter-racial romance
  • anti-environmentalists
  • the rich (or any evidence thereof: overly nice cars, getting your nails done in salon, though somehow a really nice house was just a "wise investment")
Much of this was only something I picked up because of the time period in which I was raised. Other things would probably still be taught to me if I were a child in my parent's home today.

My only response to the above list now (decades later) is that it is not possible to be corrupted by such externalities ("Man is not condemned but what he takes in, but by every word that flows out of him.) The reception aspect is not where the sin might occur, rather in the personal response to that stimuli, and of course no stimuli is needed to sin, so worrying about them is a waste of time.

And that is how it was possible for Christ to live a holy and sinless life. He walked all around in the muck of this world but only allowed God the Father to respond for Him. That is the model for our own behavior, and by model I mean current operating procedure for his children.