Brennan Manning - Furious Longing of God - Quote

Jesus Christ has irreparably changed the world...His sentences stand like quivering swords of flame because he did not come to bring peace but a revolution. The gospel is not a children's fairytale. But rather a cutting edge, rolling thunder, convulsive earthquake against the world of the human spirit.

This is not the God of the philosophers who speak of a supreme being. A supreme being would never allow spit on his face. It is jarring indeed to learn, that what he (Christ) went through in his passion and death is meant for us too; that the invitation he extends is, “Don’t weep for me, join me.”

The life he has for Christian’s is a life much like he lived. He was not poor, so I could be made rich. He was not mocked that we might be honored. He was not laughed at so we would be lauded. On the contrary he paints a picture that includes you and me.

Now That's What I Call Nutritous

Over the past eight years I have been through periods of intense health consciousness, and periods of slack dietary habits where I consumed the Standard American Diet. I have read and listened to the work of a number of health food practitioners including Dr. Joel Robbins, Rev George Malkus, Dr. Joel Fuhrman, Dr Gerson and Dr. Mercola. I do believe their research which proves that we are in the best health when we eat a diet of raw plant based materials. Although I agree with this, the invitation to the wonderful tempation of Portillos, and the convience of processed foods has often seduced me back to the S.A.D. so easily available around me.

Over the next several weeks, my wife and I have committed to participating in a juicing fast, to provide our bodies not only with an intense burst of nutrition and healing, but to once again help propell us into a lifestyle of better health choices. This is not a total fast, in the fact that we will eat a cooked starch based evening meal. This fast is not like a "wilderness fast" where we are being devoid of calories and nutrition, but instead has a strict regimine of ultra-nutritious freshly made vegetables juices.

Here is my "consumption schedule" for each weekday during this period of nurtitional revitalization.

8:00 - Wake Up! - Consume nothing first hour awake.
9:00 - Vegetable Juice - Today I started with a carrott - beet juice to get some sugar in my system.
10:00 - Barley Max - A manufactured version of a wheatgrass like beverage.
11:00 - Vegetable Juice
12:00 - Barley Max
1:00 - Vegetable Juice
2:00 - Barley Max
3:00 - Vegetable Juice
5:00 - Barley Max
6:00- Vegetable Juice
7:00 - 1 Large Baked Potato or 1 Cup Brown Rice

This in addition to all the water we want to drink, is our total consumption for the five workdays each week of the fast.

On weekends we still won't consume anything the first hour we are awake and we will use the Barley Max only twice each day for those two days. Our food on the weekends will still be all plant based, but it will involve more traditional cooked foods, rather than just the juices.

Personally, I feel there is more than just the benefit of the healing power of great nutrition. We live in a society of on demand pleasure. If my tummy rumbles, I fill it. If my sweet tooth suggest, I comply. If I smell it, then I taste it. Although this is not "evil" per say. For me, it steals an awareness to the needs of others around me. Since I quickly and thoughtlessly meet every perceived need as I experience it, I am blinded to the needs those surrounding me can not meet. It is my prayer during this exercise in nutritional fasting, that God will use the pangs in my tummy, or the neglect of my sweet tooth to give me his vision into the pangs and neglect of needs that I would normally walk past.

Holy Week Thursday: Dirty Feet

"For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night in which he was betrayed took off his outer robe and bent down to serve, washing his disciples feet he said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” - 1 Cor 11:13 (with liberties)

John tells the story of Jesus washing the disciples' feet, in about the same place in the storyline where the others tell about the institution of the Lord's supper. I find it interesting that John doesn't mention the actual passover meal at all, and yet details a good portion of the dialouge in much greater detail than the other writers. By conclusion I figure the feet washing affected him more profoundly than it did Matthew, who by profession we know was a wealthy educated Jew. Matthew was caught up by the now realized fulfillment of the Passover meal. The son of thunder was caught up by the master choosing to be the slave.

John has come a long way in his life from the "son of thunder" we meet at the beginning of his life with Jesus, to the aged saint and elder of the church who writes 1 John, the epistle of love. I wonder how profoundly this act has much to do with that.

I have read authors point out that the feet washing instruction Jesus gives is about service within the family God. This is not to say that Jesus did not want the church to serve those outside the "church", since he makes that clear in many other place. However this act, this is about how the people of God treat each other.

I get the idea when John writes, "whoever has stuff and sees his brother in need without caring, how can he call himself a lover of God" (1 John 3:17 paraphrased) he is thinking back to this example Jesus set.

For John, in the entirety of his writing, we see that love for one another actualized through service to one another, is a sacramental act. For John, having his feet washed was a saving moment.

Holy Week Prayer: Lord Father, remind me constantly that loving my brother, through actual sacrificial service on my part, is an act of sacrament in your Kingdom.

An Observation on John 13:1-17

Holy Week Wednesday: Busy

Busy! It's a painful word today. I broke my Holy Week fast because I was too busy to fast. Let me explain before you take me for a total wash up. This morning was my third day without eating and as I was attempting to work I could not form a cognitive thought. So at lunch time I decided to go ahead and resume eating as normal. I figured that a one week fast would be great for people able to sit in a cabin and commune with God, but I needed to work.

Then when it came time for my reading today, I read the parable Jesus tells of the Wedding Banquet. The one where everyone is too BUSY to come to the kings banquet. Immediately I was convicted by the decision I had made. I had chosen the common, my oxen and my farm, over the feat of the Spirit. It is true a man needs is farm and his business, but he needs to dine with his King more. It is true I am in a place in life where I have responsibilities at work, but still I need to nourishment of God's provision more!

Please understand, I am not beating myself up, and I am not dwelling in regret, but more to the point I am reminded that it is SOOOOO easy to feel our need for the physical, but yet it is the Spirit, when we feast on him, that gives us all good gifts.

HOLY WEEK PRAYER: Lord God, may I live my life knowing it is your Spirit I need to empower my mind. I desire to feast on you, and believe in your provision of all good things.

Holy Week Tuesday: Obsession

Fasting is an intriguing practice to me. It is not a particularly "sacred" practice. When I am doing it, I do not feel more holy, more in touch with the Spirit, more apt to touch the fingers of God. I can not remember ever having a great Spiritual epiphany while fasting. On one level I approach fasting as a discipline to be practiced, with bewilderment about whether I am missing something that everyone else gets.

Then there is another side of fasting. No, I am not negating the things I said in the first paragraph. The other side of fasting is the battle it creates in me. When I fast I have my obsession for pleasure exposed in open awareness. Like I said above, this is not a particularly "spiritual" exposure. It is a physical reality. As I pass the candy jar on other's desks in my office, I realize how mindlessly I stop and pick a little piece out of each bowl. As I walk into the kitchen to refill my water bottle, I see the nicely prepared fruit trays where each day I take a plate of wonderful sweet nutritious fruit, purchased by my employer and prepared by a few coworkers. I receive the pleasure of great flavor and nutrition at no cost and no effort to me. At home, I smell the wonderful aroma of my children's dinner. I think, "just a small taste of that marinara won't hurt, I'll still be hungry."

Fasting has little to do with hunger pangs for me. Perhaps it is the fact that a "long" fast in my book is a week, so I never really get to the point of real hunger. No, it is about obsession, it is my taste buds that long to be appeased with something tempting. In the moments before I sat down to write this post, I had picked up a bottle of habanero sauce that was sitting on my desk, I removed it's lid, breathed in the scent of it's peppers, and thought, just a dab on my tongue to pacify my pallette.

My reading today took me through the seven woes. I read them in this strange setting I find my mind in. I am torn between an obsession by my senses for salt or sugar and an equally constant obsessive thought process about a friend who I believe is self destructing. It is here where the Spirit speaks to me in these seven woes.

Heavy loads, swallowed camels, white washed tombs, Gehenna's judgement; the terms reorient me to my own frailty and brokenness, as my own addictions for self indulgence beg me for anything sweet.

I do not fast to enter a sacred space with God, except for the space made sacred as I acknowledge we are fellow travelers, and I would be selfish, and self indulgent to not bend over, and help my friend carry his load.

HOLY WEEK PRAYER: Lord God, Expose to me every lie and addiction I harbor so I am free to be fully consumed by you. Let me be active in that consuming obsession by seeing through faith the need to lift not judge my brothers burden. Your Kingdom come, on earth AS IT IS in heaven!

A personal reflection on Matthew 23:1-36

Holy Week Monday - Cigarettes & Sacraments

I Found God on the corner of 1st & Amistad.
Where the west was all but won.
All alone, smoking his last cigarette.
I said, "Where you been?"
-The Fray

I found God in the flames of a camp fire when I was 8 years old. He spoke to me from that fire and told me we had plans together he and I.

I found God in the hand of friend as I held a fork intended as a weapon in my own strung out hand. He spoke to me from the friends hand and told me we had plans together he and I.

I found God on a tennis court 2 days before my 18th birthday. He spoke to me in a 45 minute experience of perfect communion and told me we had plans together he and I.

I found God in the backyard my apartment complex while a cigarette hung from my lips and obscenities we shouted at the heavens. He spoke to me through my own tears and told me we had plans together he and I.

I found God in the message of a book I picked up on the $5 rack at the Family Christian Store. He spoke to me through those words and told me we had plans together he and I.

I found God in the broken body of small girl dying of AIDS on my wife's lap. He spoke to me through her frailty and told me we had plans together he and I.

I found God speaking, freeing, changing, leading my wife from the grips of abuse addictions. He spoke to me through the bandages he placed over her wounds and told me we had plans together he and I.

I found God on a sand bar in Georgia, alone and protesting the emotional toll of this Breakthrough weekend. He spoke to me in healing prose and told me we had plans together he and I.

I found God in a conversation with my friend working on his GED at 45 struggling that math is hard. He spoke to me through these simple equations and told me we had plans together he and I.

I found God yesterday as I took a bite of stale communion bread. He spoke to me though the gross cardboard I was chewing and told me we had plans together he and I.

I found God last night smoking a Marlboro all alone. He spoke to me in the stillness of my patio and told me we had plans together he and I.

HOLY WEEK PRAYER: Lord God, may I have the grace and faith to find you and participate in your plans together for you and I.

An Avant Garde Commentary on Matthew 21:28-32

Holy Week Sunday - Hosanna

Behold, your King is coming to you; He is just and having salvation, Lowly and riding on a donkey - Zech 9:9

As the crowds surround this radical rabbi Jesus, waving palm branches, shouting Hosannas, proclaiming this to be the hour their messiah, their deliverer, begins his conquest against the occupation of Rome's empire, he sits on a donkey. Other kings entering the capital city to launch a coup against a great military power would enter riding on the majesty of a Horse, but this king, he is not like the others, so the revolution begins on a donkey's foal.

He rides through the streets of the city to the gate of the temple. It is the time for a national festival, and the merchants and vendors have set up shop to sell their wares to the pilgrims here to celebrate the Passover, this year in Jerusalem. Scholars tell us the market place was in the court of the Gentiles. The outer most court of the temple, a place God has ordained as a location where race, creed, and gender do not hinder - a place where all can come and worship God. Those accompanying him in the parade expect him to cross through this outer court, to proceed immediately into the inner courts where the men of Israel are gathered. The revolutionaries gathered around him, expect him to muster an army. The chorus of Hosanna is a war chant.

Jesus however does not pass through. He does not proceed through to the court of men to gather his troops. Jesus stops, and offers the enigmatic words, "My house will be a house of prayer!" Jesus does not move through the rabble of merchants, women, Gentiles, children and outsiders. Jesus stops! Jesus looks at this court meant as sacred space for the entire world, and will not stand to have it marginalized into a public marketplace. In this space, in this abuse of God's temple Jesus goes postal.

As this street preacher who only moments before was the assumed Messiah begins to overturn table, free captive animals, drive out the merchants, and desolate the marktplace, the people scatter. It's an everyone for themselves free for all to get out. Soon the mayhem is over, and the outer court is a post riot disorder with only Jesus and those who could not do themselves to get out!

Jesus Stops, empties the place of his definition of the rabble till all that is left is the lame who could not run for themselves, the blind who could not see to make a break, and the children left abandoned in the mayhem. In this audience, the King who rides into the coup against the empire on a donkey's foal heals their lameness and heals their blindness as these little children chant the war cry of "Hosanna."

Hosanna, The empire will fall!

Holy Week Prayer - Lord God let me be in the place in where you are healing, the place where the children sing Hosanna.

Story Adapted From Matthew 21:1-17

Not Better, Just Better Off

Hugh Hollowell from Loves Wins a ministry to the homeless in NC had this post a few days ago. I think it communicates a message that we all need to hear most effectively.

Why did I grow up in a house with parents who loved me, who passed on a work ethic and taught me how to dream, how to set goals, how to love? I had nothing to do with it – it just happened. I was in the right place at the right time.

Why did my friend Jimmy* grow up in a house where his mamma’s boyfriend beat him with a fan belt, where mom had to sell her body to survive after Daddy went to jail and where the only male role model in his life was the local pimp? He did not pick that life. He was in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

If you are going to work with broken people, the first thing you have to realize is that you are not better than the people you will be working with- you are not smarter, you are not more in God’s favor, you are not morally superior. You are not better, you are just better off.

How would your life have turned out if you had to steal food in order for your little sister to eat? If you had to go to school three days in a row in the same clothes? If you had to sit on the porch in the cold while your momma is ‘entertaining’ men for money so you can eat tonight? How would you have turned out if your momma had a crack addiction, or if the only time you saw your daddy was on visiting day at the prison, or if you were raped regularly from the ages of 7 to 16?

If you are going to work with broken people, you have to understand that there are all kind of reasons that people are broken, and it often has nothing to do with their salvation, or their walk with God, or their eternal destiny after their death or whether they said some prayer.

Some of you are resisting… Hugh, Do you mean that the relative wealth I enjoy (and if you live on more than $2.50 a day, you are wealthier than half of the planet) is not God’s gift to me, but luck, or circumstance or the result of my race and culture inheriting the wealth produced by enslaved people on stolen land? Yup. That is what I mean. You were born into the right place, at the right time.

You are not better – just better off.

Read more from his blog

Chicago City Government Finds New Ways to Exploit The Poor

I really feel strongly that the people who sit in government office, lack a key skill for governing. It's called common sense. The alderman for the city of Chicago are being wood by Insurenet to use their existing network of surveillance and red light cameras to catch prey on uninsured motorist as a revenue stream.

I wanted to bring just a small pinch of common sense to counter the wild claims of millions of dollars in revenue being preached by Insurenet all for the small cost of their 30%. Insurenet projects Chicago earnings as much as $350 Million annually. Though the alderman all already misty eyed with the combined emotional surge that only greed and pork barrel spending can bring, I hope they might consider these realities.

1. People who drive unisured vehicles do so because they can not afford the insurance.
2. Many of these people once fined will lack the resources to pay their fines as demonstrated by their lack of resources to carry auto insurance.
3. In order to deal strictly and swiftly with those who feel that not paying the fine is their only financial recourse the city will have to incarcerate those parties that are unable to meet the camera levied fines.
4. Each incarcerated citizen will further cost the city money, rather than accomplishing the stated goal of raising revenue for the city.

(Dooms Day Scenario Following)

5. In the end the network will cost the city $200 million per year to pay Insurenet their expected 30% for identifying the unisured motorist and the remainder in the increase costs in the penal system to incarcerate basically law abiding citizens for their offense of being poor and marginalized.

This is the kind of justice that passes as "good government" in America today. Personally I am quite glad my citizenship is in another kingdom.

Validation

Sometimes we WAY over "churchize" what it means to just be Jesus in the world. This is not a commentary on anything other than that this cute little comedy reminded me that being Jesus on the earth, starts as small as a Smile.

Validation - TJ Thyne


Thanks to Erin for posting the video on her FB profile!

Did You Ever Know That You're My Hero

We all have people in our life who inspire us to keep moving forward. For no reason other than that I respect and admire these people, I decided to honor 5 of them today. My goal is to do this more regularly. That made it much easier to condense to my list to 5 people. The rules of this first round, is they must all live in Chicagoland area, and I must have at least marginally regular contact.

#1 - My Wife Christi
In addition to being the love of my life, she is my hero! I have never seen a person become so alive in a year. My first nine years of marriage, were always great because she is my best friend. They are a dim comparison to this last year. God has come alive and lives nearby to a person who always kept him so distant. That transformation inspires me to pursue looking more like the Jesus who is her first love. She really is my better half.

#2 - My Mentor Chuck Miller
I have a great father, and in another one of these post I will most certainly honor him. However next to my dad, no man has had a greater leadership role in my life than Chuck. Although I have sat through some of the most painful conversations of my life with him, as he exposed the darkness I attempt to keep well contained, each of these has left me stronger and wiser. I would never have matured into the man I am without his shepherding these many years.

#3 - My Co-Worker Dan Blume
One of my favorite places at work is over in the room where Dan works. He is a hero to me because he makes being nice to people look so easy. Dan always has an encouraging word for everyone. We have had some unlovable people work here over the years, and even they knew friendship and kindness from Dan. Dan is the living expression of indiscriminate love, and we could all use that modeled in front of us a lot more often.

#4 - My Friend Stephen Lamb
I like to talk a lot about the gospel for the least of these. I like to lecture, and soap box about what it means to live like Jesus. I can debate the best of you on the real meaning of taking up your cross daily. Stephen though lives it out. He is an intelligent, dynamic personality that could be working for about any church he wanted to, living any life he desired. Instead he works in an integrated church with an attendance just about 100, and he lives in a place where he stands out like a giant white q-tip. (He is Tall) Stephen doesn't talk about the least of these, he lives among them.

#5 My Friend Linnea Lang
Adversity is a word most people, myself included, cringe at. Linnea lives it every day. Though confined to a wheelchair, she towers above a crowd of people eeking out a life half lived. I am always inspired by the depth to which she seeks to be a part of God's work in the world. It would be easy to live a life of defeat while permanently seated in a chair, and yet she will have nothing of the sort. She is seeking to bring the Kingdom of God on earth as is it is in heaven, with the the best of them. I am reminded by her, that nothing separates from the redemptive work of Jesus in the earth.

So there it is! Round 1 - 5 Chicagoan people I am proud to call my heroes!

Discipleship Is Hard - Texting Is Easy

He said to them, “Go into all the stadiums & conventions centers of America and preach the gospel to every teenager. The one who believes and sends a text message to 38714 will be receive a ethereal fire insurance policy." - Mark 16:15-16 (TNT) - Tony Nolan Translation

So thanks to Internet Monk, I am in a cynical sour mood this morning. I guess technically he is not to blame, since he is only the bearer of the bad news. However, I was fine until I read his post from a few days ago, where he lambasted Tony Nolan and the Winterjam tour team for reducing the saving work of Christ Jesus to sending a text message that pledged your acceptance. Although I agree with his indictments, I think I would have rather remained ignorant to this new low for what passes a evangelism.

Honestly, as a person who strives to have genuine discipling relationships in my life, I am not about to pretend that it is a smooth road filled with rolling hills and soft meadows. Entering into life with people is hard. Being open enough to hear to the reality of people's dark underbelly, and being honest enough to reveal your own dark underbelly is no task that completed with out great personal cost. Participation in a community of support, to a person who is broken, and has no sense of their dignity and humanity can not be squeezed into a 25 minute time slot on the weekend. It can not be accomplished in any amount of time by a person who is not aware and repentant of the brokenness in their own life.

Reducing the gospel of Christ to anything less than choosing the way of the cross lived out in front of a world of watchers so that they see it is in the surrender of my rights and my life, that I have a deeper, more profound, more abundant life than the life of their selfish pursuits has brought them.

I read recently where the author stated "Jesus did not come to prepare us for death, he came to teach us to live." I think this is the true mark of discipleship. Evangelism is telling a story meant to cause an emotional feeling followed by a physical response. This outward response is made easier and easier, as the message is more and more watered down from it's roots in a grace meant for the living. Making disciples however, is a participation in the radical inclusive love of Jesus invested meaningfully into the life another, nurturing that love in them as it reveals their true identity as sons and daughters of the King of King.

Words like investment are difficult to hear in a culture obsessed with instant credit and promiscuous consumerism. Nurture is a foreign concept to a people who think food comes wrapped in plastic and sitting on a shelf. Inclusive love is an anathema to the heterogeneous comfort of the monoethnic monoclass monotheology character of the church on every street corner. So the difficulty that results for suffering with God, and participation in the divine life of Christ on earth, is replaced a trickle of truth that cheapens the gospel to a bait and switch comedy routine followed by the simple response of texting for Jesus! This is the real curse.


- Lee Shelton IV

A Bride, A House, & A Body

Have you ever read one of those books that articulated everything you already knew into far better words than you could articulate them? Have you devoured a book because it gave reason and explanation for truths that you merely feel? Have you ever known that this book you are giving your time and thought to, is to become a field guide for the journey you are already on? Have you ever finished a book with the words, "I need to buy a copy of that for everyone I know?"

I have had that happen twice in my life. The first time was several years ago when I read Tom Davis' "Fields of the Fatherless". Then the second was last night as I finished Frank Viola's "From Eternity to Here." This book rocked my world not because it introduced a new idea, but because it quilted together the very truth of God, and his passionate needs, desire, and longing for community with his creation.

The book is divided into three sections. The first section lays out the Biblical narrative in such a way that it emphasizes the church as the bride as an eternal passion of God from before the beginning of time. Perfectly connecting the heroes of the Old Testament, with the wonder and mystery of John's gospel and apocalypse, Viola illustrates that the church as the bride is not a metaphor to help us better understand the authority structure of the Christian home, but instead it is the deep mystery of God hidden in Christ before the foundation of the world.

In the second section, Viola repeats his wonderful ability to beautifully connect the Biblical narrative together to elevate in our minds the importance of God's search for a dwelling place. From the foreign land where he sent Abraham, to the tabernacle of Moses and the tabernacle of David, to Solomon's Temple, through the incarnate life of life Jesus, and ultimately into his church which is the House of God, the Lord's resting place.

Finally in his third section, Viola switches from story teller to scholar to reveal the depth of meaning in the gospels and in the Pauline writings about the church as the body of Christ. This section does not read with the majestic eloquence of the first two, and yet it's content resonates deeper, and more meaningfully than any other in the book. Once again Viola slaughters theologians desire to reduce the the realities of God's Kingdom into a metaphor, this time it is the body of Christ. Viola notes with meticulous detail how the church is the REAL physical incarnation of Christ on earth now. He reinforces our dependence on Christ and gives us truth to use as a weapon against Satan's attack on our worth and righteousness. As Christ is the head and mind of the church, we are it's body, and we are therefore in a mutual need of eachother for the life giving dependence of a physical body. He ties all the thoughts together, to note how if we are the "seed of heaven" then as a new species on earth we live not intertwined into the affairs of the old species, but as colonist of the new Kingdom which is fulfilled at the reconciliation of all things.

This book is Viola's magnus opus! I have read his other three books, and they are each great teaching. However, this work is not a book to be studied, it is a very window into the passionate erotic love of God for his creation, and for his desperate need to extend the community of the triune God among them. I say without reservation, this book will change the way you see God. It will set you free from the limited metaphor of systematic theologies. It will release you from the minimized boxed God of a religionist allegorical reinterpretation of the narrative of God. It will welcome you as participants into God's eternal purpose.

Erasmus famously quipped, "when I have a little extra money I buy books, if there is any left over I buy food." Reading this book is more important than any meal you will eat this week. If you must go hungry, and get a hold of the book. "From Eternity to Here" will feed you from a source that this world knows nothing about.

God, Worry & Enjoyment

This slogan has been found on the placards of the British public transportation system since October of last year. It has naturally caught the attention and protest of many Christian groups, from those working to refute it's message, to those attempting to censor it's message.

Let me go on record here to say that speaking for myself I endorse the ad campaign and the wonderful conversation it brings to the dinner table, to the coffee shop, and to the pub (that's my English reference... I'd say bar if it were an American campaign... but this is cultural awareness at work)

Naturally, to any of you who know me, I am not saying I AGREE that there is no God. If you do not know me take a quick perusal through the content of my previous posts and you will see I am radically convinced of God's existence and equally celebratory of his incarnational entrance into the story of man.

I am most impressed with the wording of their ad as well, because if we allow it to it brings not one but three important questions to the forefront for our discussion. First, and most obviously the ad's question is the existence of God. Rather than getting baited by the first question, let's look at the other two questions.

The second question I see is, "Does the Biblical narrative encourage fear and worry the way the modern church does? The story of God is that HE came to be a part of the story of man, and the reason for that coming was his desire to end the fear and worry. Jesus tell Nicodemus that he did not come to condemn the world. Jesus repeats this idea when he tells the adulterous woman that he does not condemn. Jesus' life and ministry had an abundance of condemnation for the morally superior and religiously self righteous, yet never did one hear any words of reproof against the broken, rejected, smoldering reeds of his culture. Those who wish to use the power of religion for the own control repeat the same sins of the religious elite of Jesus' day when they paint God as an angry and loathsome, and themselves as the brokers of mediation with him. Jesus' own words are meant to tell the world, to stop worrying because they are already alright with God. In order to prove his words, he as God himself took on the entirety of sin in his own selfless life surrendering action, so that no man or woman ever need worry again about where they stand with God.

This of course leads us to the third question posed by the ad, "Do you enjoy your life?" So much of the Christian world's rhetoric seems to have a deep seated hatred of what it means to be human. Humanity is God's creation! God loves mankind! Yes, he is troubled by the destructive nature of many pursuits that mankind has endeavored to pursue. This is not because he rejects man, but instead because he embraces us the crown of his creativity. I remember being taught in my late teen years that God must hate humanist, then later realizing that God himself is the ultimate humanist. God's humanism goes so far he has perpetually engaged with man, to help him discover the fullness of what he created to be. I am reminded of the scene in Little Mermaid when the seagull uses a fork as a comb. I love this because a fork makes and effective comb, but not nearly as effectively as it makes a fork. Mankind can find enjoyment, but the nature of God is that He desires his creation to have abundant life, and that takes knowing the only power in the universe that can direct you to knowing what it means to be a fork that functions as a fork, rather than as a comb.

This post does not begin to do these ideas justice. I feel like everything I have written is painfully incomplete to express myself to either side. I post it anyway, not because I think I have definitive answers which will change to humanist to believers, and propel believers into God's better plan where Love drives out fear. I post it because I think the conversation is important. I post it because I think we need to be present in diverse communities where we can wrestle with these, and many other ideas about what it means to be human, and to be that to the fullest. I post it because I hope some people who are not yet part of the conversation might see that dialog is better than debate, and be inspired to think about these issues.

On a final note, to the people at Atheist Bus I say great job, way to facilitate a dialog. When you're ready to bring the campaign to America, I'm definitely on board for the ride!

Simple Things With Great Love

The Simple Way has made popular the Mother Theresa quote, "Do no great things, just simple things with great love." I was sent a video clip that illustrated that so wonderfully. I am not a fan of football, but the simple decision of this Texas coach will inspire you.