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.

photo test #2

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.