Tag Archives: Bible

A Modest Proposal

29 Monday Jan 2018

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A friend pointed me towards an article concerning modesty. It shifted my thinking and I want to recommend it as a must read, particularly for Christians.

Here are some highlights but please click the link and read the whole thing:

“No one really knows what “immodest” means. It puts the responsibility for a man’s lust and fantasies squarely on the shoulders of women.” 

“Many conferences and books have even gone so far as to name women the “gatekeepers” of sexuality. He will go as far as you let him, the narrative goes. Wow! This a staggeringly unhealthy narrative to promote to our children about the way sexuality works, and plays directly into the hands of a rape culture such as the one in which we live: if you are a female and ever get catcalled, abused, molested, raped, or any number of other sexual advances, you are probably at least partially to blame. What were you wearing? What did you say to him? Did you bend over to pick something up? Was your perfume too sensual?”

Putting modesty/immodesty on women and saying they are gatekeepers of men’s behaviour “…grants men and boys amnesty from the responsibility of their own sexual choices.

“Not only does Jesus say nothing about female culpability in a man’s fantasies, he absolutely destroys any excuses a man might make about his inability to control his own urges. No, Jesus says, a man’s culpability begins and ends with his own dang eyes and right hand.”

Wow. Check it out and let me know what you think.

The Love Letter

05 Wednesday Jul 2017

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Rules are hard to follow. Sure the ones we directly benefit from are easier to keep but generally we try to bend them here and there. I mean, have you seen what people do at stop signs? Have you noticed that the best motivation is love?

One of the most beautiful parts of the Bible is God’s testimony*, a revelation of his character, what most people call the ten commandments or in other words, rules. People struggle to keep these rules – even those that believe they’re valid. Others, thinking they are hard rules, ignore or undermine them. What we miss is that they’re not rules. This testimony is beautiful because it’s an invitation into a loving relationship. My friend José Sánchez recently shared God’s testimony this way:

Today, my personal love letter to Jesus based on Exodus 20 says:

Jesus, as I meditate on what you did at the cross for me, my heart overwhelms with joy
and love.
1. I can’t imagine living without you!
2. Nothing can replace you!
3. I’ll never take you for granted.
4. I’m looking forward to spending quality time with you.
5. I’ll treat my parents as you treat your Father.
6. I’ll love others as you love me.
7. I’ll love my spouse as you love your church.
8. I’ll be content with the blessings you provide for me.
9. I’ll be just to others as you are with me.
10. I’ll rejoice when I see how you’ve blessed my friends.
Thank you for your love, Jesus. I love you, too.

Isn’t that beautiful?

*Over and over the Bible refers to what we call the ten commandments as God’s testimony. Even the box they were held in was called the ark of the testimony. 

 

Blame Casting

16 Friday Jun 2017

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I’m a fan of Ty Gibson. He has an amazing way to talk about the things that really matter.  Recently, I came across one of his short article’s and my mind was blown.

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Here’s an excerpt. You may have to read it twice, I did.

“The dark mental enterprise is encapsulated in God’s penetrating diagnostic question to Job: “Would you condemn Me that you may be justified?” (Job 40:8).

Here God puts His finger on our most sensitive nerve. We blame God as a self-justification maneuver. The guilty conscience possesses an impulse to fabricate an image of God that resembles ourselves in order to evade the shame His perfect goodness would thrust upon us if we were to allow ourselves to be confronted by it in one quantum leap of consciousness. “If God is like me,” we subconsciously reason, “then I need not be any different than I am, and I need not feel guilty for the way I am.” My actions and attitudes are justified by attributing them to God.”

Check out the whole article at http://reknew.org/2017/06/psychology-theology-meet/.

For Sale Cheap

15 Wednesday Mar 2017

Posted by in Observations, Spirituality

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When I was a child, our family regularly travelled to “the big city” to visit relatives. The signal to me that we were nearing the city (are we there yet??) was a large grain elevator right beside the highway on the outskirts of the city. What’s a grain elevator?  They used to look like this:

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On the side of the grain elevator, in huge letters, was written Mark 8:36:

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Now I didn’t grow up with any kind of faith practice. I had never read the Bible or even  attended a church. Even so, Mark 8:36 really impacted me and I would think on it often, both when we drove by it and throughout the year.

Now the word soul here doesn’t mean a disembodied ghostly thing that exists beyond your body – what some call an immortal soul. That whole concept is foreign to the Bible. Soul is an old timey way of talking about ourselves – our personhood or being. Even though I had no clue about that as a young person, that’s how I internalized the message: who I am is worth more than the whole world so don’t sell out; don’t compromise the truth of who I am for short term or even large gain. You could say, it’s one of my core values.
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But I have to confess, I have sometimes sold out. Seeking for love and belonging in places that never satisfied, holding back from fear, overcome by doubt… I have tried to gain “the world.” This isn’t a woe is me, wallowing in regret kind of post. I’m just being honest. I am happy to report that over time, as I have grown more into myself, I sell out less and less.

Have you ever sold out? Have you ever attempted to gain the world – whatever that means to you – only discover you were losing yourself in the process? How did you correct your course? Have you found yourself selling out less? What’s made the difference in your life?

Great Value

22 Tuesday Nov 2016

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Have you heard about the parables of the hidden treasure and the pearl of great value? When Matthew wrote his perspective on the Good News about Jesus Christ, he gathered a bunch of Jesus’ parables in Matthew 13. This is how they go…

“The Kingdom of Heaven is like a treasure that a man discovered hidden in a field. In his excitement, he hid it again and sold everything he owned to get enough money to buy the field. “Again, the Kingdom of Heaven is like a merchant on the lookout for choice pearls. When he discovered a pearl of great value, he sold everything he owned and bought it!”

The typical approach to these parables that I have heard is: Be that guy! Sell everything, be willing to give up everything, so you can gain the kingdom.

Truly, the kingdom is worth everything and anything we give up pales in comparison to it. Truly, we don’t want anything between us and God, for those people and things are idols.

But there are two problems with the typical approach. First, that’s not what the text is saying which is huge but the bigger problem is even worse. When we take that approach, we push ourselves towards legalism; it’s about earning the kingdom which is a gift from God. The good news becomes good advice.

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So what’s it saying?

Right before these parable, Jesus says, “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a farmer who planted good seed in his field.” Then he talks about an enemy who sows weeds in the field.  Eventually, both wheat and weeds are harvested and then sorted. Right after these parables, Jesus says, “…the Kingdom of Heaven is like a fishing net that was thrown into the water and caught fish of every kind.” The fisherman pulls the fish onto the shore and sorts the catch into good fish and bad fish.

In both these parables, as in all scripture, we see two groups: There are those who have embraced God’s acceptance and love and are resting in his grace, and there are those who have persistently remained indifferent, resisted, or outright rejected God’s acceptance and love. The second group are eventually given over to their heart’s desires.

What all this means is that the hidden treasure and the pearl of great value are not things you are supposed to strive for and sacrifice for!

They are you!

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They are you and me and the one who buys the field and the pearls so he can have the what he values above all else is… Jesus.  Under the shadow of the cross he couldn’t see beyond the portal of the tomb. He thought it was a one way trip. And yet, he stayed the course; fought the battle, gave up everything, and ransomed you from the enemy of life. These parables tell us that we are infinite worth and value to God.

Yes, we’re broken and hurting and angry and stubborn but we have love and belonging with God because he treasurers us; gave everything to rescue us.

Here’s the great big idea I want you to take away from this. When you’re in pain, overwhelmed, thinking you’ve run out of options, people will probably say: remember that your friends love you, your family loves you, God loves you. ALL TRUE.

But I don’t think that’s going to get you through.

Instead you need to see your infinite worth and value in God and… Love yourself.

You need to love yourself enough to ask for help.
You need to love yourself enough to hold on to hope.
You need to love yourself enough to seek healing.

You need to love yourself enough hold on one more day… after all, it’s always just one day at a time.

 

there is no god

21 Monday Nov 2016

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“Likewise, the god whose moods alternate between graciousness and fierce anger, the god who is tender when we are good and relentlessly punishing when we are bad, the god who exacts the last drop of blood from his Son so that his just anger, evoked by sin, may be appeased, is not the God revealed by and in Jesus Christ. And if he is not the God of Jesus, he does not exist.” (Above All, 2003, p. 58-59)Brennan Manning

Lacking Direction

15 Monday Aug 2016

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Do you feel like your life lacks direction? Don’t know which way to turn?

There is a conversation in the Bible that might help.  In the book of Joshua chapter 5, Joshua has led the Hebrew people to the edge of the promised land. They have been waiting for this moment for decades. At this point, Joshua encounters Commander of the Army of the Lord, that’s the Bible’s way to talk about God. The reason God is meeting with Joshua is so that he can outline how they are going to get past the city of Jericho. That’s usually where people focus but there’s something important that happens first. Here’s how their conversation begins:

13 And it came to pass, when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted his eyes and looked, and behold, a Man stood opposite him with His sword drawn in His hand. And Joshua went to Him and said to Him, “Are You for us or for our adversaries?”
14 So He said, “No, but as Commander of the army of the Lord I have now come.”
And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshiped, and said to Him, “What does my Lord say to His servant?”

Did you catch it?

“Are You for us or for our adversaries?”

What’s the answer?

“No.”

God answer suggests that Joshua was asking the wrong question. I suspect that most of us ask the same wrong questions.God, “Whose side are you on?”

For those of us not in battle mode, what we usually are asking is, “What’s your will for my life?”

God’s response points us in the right direction and it’s Joshua’s response that confirms it.

The real question is, “Whose is Joshua for?”

How often do we tend to tell God what we want and what he should do? How often do we determine in our minds who should be blessed and who should be “corrected?” We just assume that God is for us.

We would have a greater sense of direction and be more in harmony with God if we took Joshua’s attitude and said his words:

“What does my Lord say to His servant?”

 

Accept

07 Tuesday Jun 2016

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Many times, I have conversations on the topic of salvation. My focus is always on God’s incredible love and grace that he demonstrated definitively at the cross.

At some point, someone will say, “God’s grace provided salvation but in order to be saved, we need to accept it.”A variation on this is when someone says, “You have to trust in Jesus to be saved.” Or “We are saved by faith and not works.”

To me, what I see the bible saying over and over, is that there is an infinitely important distinction between salvation by grace and any other statement made about having faith, trust, or belief.

To illustrate what I mean, please  consider the following two sentences and ask yourself which one brings you the greatest level of peace:

I have salvation because I have accepted God’s love and grace.

God has saved me because of his love and grace and I accept that.

Body Positivity Week???

13 Friday May 2016

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Wow! This is an awesome post. Well worth the time. 
Well, in case you didn’t know, it’s “Body Positivity Week.” Yep, thanks to BuzzFeed, we’re being bombarded with full-frontal content about Forget-You-I-Love-My-Curves, and NGAFudge-ing about what anyone thinks about our cellulite, and Dag-Nabit I’m wearing a bikini if I want to, and how dare you body shame me. It’s actually kind of ironic how it’s […]

http://beautybeyondbones.com/2016/05/12/body-positivity-week/

Benefits of Shacking Up

10 Tuesday Mar 2015

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Shacking up has taken a lot of hits lately. First, there was all the data that shows married couples tend to be healthier, live longer, and report being more happier and contented than shacking up couples. Then it has been revealed couples who live together before engagement have higher divorce rates than those who wait.

However, I believe that all these studies overlook the most important benefit of shacking up. You see, when a couple decides to make a life long commitment to each other, in public, before family and friends, there is accountability. Public declarations put our character and integrity on the line. Marriage reveals whether we are truly a person who keeps promises; who is trustworthy and reliable.

Shacking up lets us avoid all that nonsense, especially when the break up comes. Shacking up gives us the benefit of being able to say, “We wanted to see if we were compatible and we’ve decided to go our separate ways.” We can say it’s not big deal because it’s not like we were married, we were just shacking up. Sure, if we shack up and then split it’s still a little death, still just damaging if kids are involved, still a huge hit financially but we don’t have to acknowledge before family and friends the pain and shame of divorce. We never have to face the reality that one or both partners focused on self gratification rather than surrendered, unconditional love.

Shacking up means never have to put your character on the line; with no accountability there’s not challenge to our integrity.