A Soul Horizon

going to church now.

:)

In a 1631 edition of the King James Bible, in Exodus 20 verse 14, the word "not" was left out. This changed the 7th commandment to read, "Thou shalt commit adultery." Most of the copies were recalled immediately and destroyed on the orders of Charles I. But there are 11 copies still remaining. They are known as the "Wicked Bible"

That's an error. But when I read about all the "errors" other people see in the Bible I am amazed. For instance, people see two different genealogies for Jesus and they assume it is an error. But It's illogical to define the two genealogies included in the Bible as errors in the text. Errors are corrected. The two differing genealogies were not corrected. They were intentionally placed together in the same collection of writings concerning Jesus.

Why? There any any number of books and web sites that offer up reasons. The genealogies come from different parents; that genealogies only listed people pertinent to the audience; all ancient genealogies were made up to establish credibility. I've read all of these, and I don't know which if any is correct.

But it is silly to say it was an error.

I have the most beautiful family.

I'm blessed.

Horizon had a baptism party last night. It was great to hear everyone explain why they were being baptized...what it meant to them.

I really liked what melissa had to say. She was baptized as a baby, but she lived her parents faith. The reason she wanted to baptized as an adult was to own her faith. To make it hers.

I hope she finds a church in Tampa to walk along side her in her faith. I hope she doesn't let go of this faith she owns.

"Love the person and hate the sin" seemed so trite to me, until I read CS Lewis talk about it. He stated that it was impossible for him to separate the two until he realized he did it all the time...when it was applied to himself. We hate some of the things we do, yet we don't hate ourselves.

In the same way, we can despise an activity by another person and still love them as much as we love ourselves.

From "Streams of Living Water" by Richard Foster:

In his message and person Jesus was, in effect, announcing a perpetual year of Jubilee in the Spirit. The social ramifications of this were profound indeed: the land was to be healed, debts were to be forgiven, those in bondage were to be set free, capitol was to be redistributed. With these words Jesus delivered a war cry for social revolution. No wonder his friends and neighbors—who understood perfectly well what he was saying—were ‘filled with rage’ and tried to “hurl him off the cliff” (Luke 4:28-30).
Jesus’ shorthand for the perpetual jubilee life is the cryptic message, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. 3:2). And Jesus full intends that this “kingdom of heaven” will constantly confront and pull down the kingdoms of this world. His is an alternative social vision—a vision of an all-inclusive people, gathered in the power of God, filled with the love of God, and empowered to do the works of God. It is a vision of Jubilee sharing, Jubilee caring, and Jubilee compassion for all who are crushed and broken by social and economic structures.

"Your Kingdom come, on earth as in Heaven."

In western Christianity, we've talked about our "personal salvation." Saved from what? From separation. We're saved from the things we do that separate us from God and others...its a community issue. God's Kingdom is marked by right relationships.

Nothing personal about that.

Excerpt from "A History of God" by Karen Armstrong

"Israelite belief in God was deeply pragmatic. Abraham and Jacob both put their faith in El because he worked...they did not sit down and prove that he existed; El was not a philosophical abstraction... Throughout the Bible, Abraham is called a man of 'faith.' Today we tend to define faith as an intellectual assent to a creed, but, as we have seen, the biblical writers did not view faith in God as an abstract or metaphysical belief. When they praise the 'faith' of Abraham, they are not commending his orthodoxy...but his trust...he trusts that God would make good his promises."

I guess if I had never experienced love I wouldn't miss it.

I would be highly ticked if others gloated about having love but I knew I couldn't have it.

I would be even less happy if, once experiencing it to some degree, I wasn't able to experience it ever again.

Sounds exactly like hell to me.

Church happens between the meetings.

Randy Millwood taught me that church isn't just about the church meetings, it's every encounter with another person...God in our midst. Everything about living my faith has changed.

I've always been a big believer in community (I've seen the body of Christ repair too many broken pieces to ignore it) but I think I defined that community in terms that were too concrete. "We had people show up for something" kind of community. Things changed when my understanding of church changed.

Today I went to breakfast with a friend and we talked about our lives and what God was telling us. Church. I got together with 5 church planters for lunch. Church. I got home and I played with my daughter. Church. I'm going to hang out with about 10 people (all at very different places with God) and we're going to pray, read the Bible, share our lives. Church. Then I'm going to go to bed with my wife. Church.

I'm not sure about the specifics, but I'm pretty sure we're suposed to live like church happens between the meetings.

Some Characteristics of Celtic Christianity I've found...

-love of nature and a passion for the wild and elemental as a reminder of God's gift.

-love and respect for art and poetry.

-love and respect for the great stories and "higher learning".

-sense of God and the saints as a continuing, personal, helpful presence.

-theologically orthodox, yet with heavy emphasis on the Trinity, and a love and respect for Mary, the Incarnation of Christ, and Liturgy.

-religious practice characterized by a love for tough penitential acts, vigils, self-exile, pilgrimages, and resorting to holy wells, mountains, caves, ancient monastic sites, and other sacred locations.

-no boundaries between the sacred and the secular

-unique Church structure:

-there were originally no towns, just nomadic settlements, hence the church was more monastic rather than diocesan, resulting in quite independent rules and liturgies.

-also, Ireland was very isolated and it was hard to impose outside central Roman authority.

-influenced much by middle-eastern and coptic monasticism.

-they celebrated Easter and Lent according to the ancient calendar system.

-Irish tonsure shaved the front of the head (like the druids).

-abbots had more power than the bishops.

-monasteries often huge theocratic villages often associated with a clan with the same kinship ties, along with their slaves, freemen, with celibate monks, married clergy, professed lay people, men and women living side by side.

-women had more equal footing in ancient Irish law, thus had more equal say in church government. (Did St. Bridget receive Holy Orders and act as an Abbot?)

-developed the idea of having a "soul friend" (anmchara) to help in spiritual direction.

-invented personal confession.

-many pagan practices were "Baptized" such as St.Stephen's Day, and the resorting to holy wells, and many monasteries were built on pagan sacred site (as evident in the names Derry, and Durrow).

The following is an excerpt from The House Church: A Missiological Model by Del Birkey

http://www.hccentral.com/birkey1/mismod1.html

The house churches provided a fertile seedbed for the most revolutionary equalization of racial, class, and sexual distinctions brought about by the Christ event.

The most revolutionary change the New Testament house churches enjoyed was the radical equalization of the sexes in the community of faith. Although the cross eradicated racial and class distinctions of "Jew and Gentile, slave and free," it triumphed most critically in the "male nor female" demolition in Christ, where it reached the depths of the human dilemma (Gal. 3:28 ). The liberating edict for the new community in Christ eliminated all sinful and debilitating social categories. No longer, said Paul, can categories remain in Christ. Not only must the Jew forthrightly stop considering the Gentile a second-class citizen, and not only must the master step down to the same level as the slave, but most radically of all, the male must now realize that there is no distinction based on gender. The texts of that revolutionary gospel and the co-ministry and role of women in the New Testament house churches can be summarized around nine theses.

Women, alongside men, were full-membered participants in the house-churched Christian communities.

Women, side by side with men, were partners in leadership and ministry in the early house churches.

Women, along with men, led in public prayer.

Women, alongside men, prophesied in church.

Women, with and in the presence of men, had authority in the church body.

Women, in particular, were encouraged to learn the scriptures.

Women, even as men, had gifts for edifying the body.

Wives, as well as their husbands, were partners in mutual submission, arising out of their mutual love.

Women's sexual roles were not dichotomized or considered at variance with men's roles in Christ.

Over the centuries the church at large has routinely restricted the role of women to secondary positions in ministry, both at home and in mission abroad. This reality causes Virginia Patterson to ask, "Is fulfillment of the Great Commission hindered because women are not equal co-workers in all levels of decision-making and mission activity?" Her answer is unequivocally "yes" for historical, theological, and psycho-social reasons.

In their extensive treatment of ministering women, Tucker and Liefeld show that history has demonstrated the powerful force women are in world evangelism. They warn, however, that "the future growth of the Christianity in the Third World depends to a large extent on how women are incorporated into the total life and ministry of the church. Furthermore, because women have suffered formidable neglect in mission histories, Frances Hiebert asserts that Western mission agencies need "to repent and look for some ashcloth if they are not going to lose their credibility vis-à-vis the church in the Two Thirds World".

In a way I quite understand why some people are put off by Theology. I remember once when I had been given a talk to the R.A.F., an old, hard-bitten officer got up and said, “I’ve no use for all that stuff. But, mind you, I’m a religious man too. I know there’s a God. I’ve felt Him; out alone in the desert at night: the tremendous mystery. And that’s just why I don’t believe all your meat little dogmas and formulas about him. To anyone who’s met the real thing they all seem so petty and pedantic and unreal!”

Now in a sense I quite agree with that man. I think he probably had a real experience of God in the desert. And when he turned from that experience to the Christian creeds, I think he really was turning from something real to something less real. In the same way, if a man had once looked at the Atlantic from the beach, and then goes and looks at a map of the Atlantic, he also will be turning from something real to something less real: turning from real waves to a bit of colored paper. But here comes the point. The map is admittedly only colored paper, but there are two things you have to remember about it. In the first place, it is based on what hundreds and thousands of people have found out by sailing the real Atlantic. In that way it has behind it masses of experience just as real as the one you could have from the beach; only, while yours would be a single isolated glimpse, the map fits all those different experiences together. In the second place, if you want to go anywhere, the map is absolutely necessary. As long as you are content with the walks on the beach, your own glimpses are far more fun than looking at a map. But the map is going to be more use than walks on the beach if you want to get [across the ocean].

Now, theology is like the map. Merely learning and thinking about the Christian doctrines, of you stop there, is less real and less exciting than the sort of thing my friend got in the desert. Doctrines are not God; they are only a kind of map. But that map is based on the experience of hundreds of people who really were in touch with God—experiences compared with which and thrills or pious feelings you and I are likely to get on our own are very elementary and very confused. And secondly, if you want to get any further, you must use the map. You see, what happened to that man in the desert may have been real, and was certainly exciting, but nothing comes of it. It leads nowhere. There is nothing to do about it. In fact, that is just why a vague religion—all about feeling God in nature, and so on—is so attractive. It is all thrills and no work; like watching the waves from the beach. But you will not go to Newfoundland by studying the Atlantic that way, and you will not get eternal life by simply feeling the presence of God in flowers and music. Neither will you get anywhere by looking at maps without going to sea. Nor will you be very safe if you go to sea without a map.

In other words, Theology is practical: especially now. In the old days, when there was less education and discussion, perhaps it was possible to get on with a very few simple ideas about God. But it is not now so. Everyone reads, everyone hears things discussed. Consequently, if you do not listen to Theology, that will not mean that you have no ideas about God. It will mean that you have a lot of wrong ones.

C.S. Lewis
Mere Christianity
Introduction to the fourth book.

In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis talks about the relationship between theology and a person's testimony. It is through the collection of all our stories that we get a full picture of the work and person of God.

I'll post the passage when I can...

Defining my faith by the center rather than the boarders.

I'm not sure about the end result yet, and I'm not sure what the results will be for others. But so far I've found much more simplicity and confidence in the center as compared to the boundaries. Less maintaining the separation and more building the relationships. More desire to hear people's stories and less need to hunt for heresies.

The focus of my faith is steady but, at its best, the practices of my faith evolve with the cultures it interacts with.