Archive for the ‘Religion’ Category
Whose conversion is this?
Here’s a story of a Christian conversion. Can you guess who’s talking?
So one Sunday, I put on one of the few clean jackets I had, and went over to [a church]. And I heard [a pastor] deliver a sermon … And during the course of that sermon, he introduced me to someone named Jesus Christ. I learned that my sins could be redeemed. I learned that those things I was too weak to accomplish myself, He would accomplish with me if I placed my trust in Him. And in time, I came to see faith as more than just a comfort to the weary or a hedge against death, but rather as an active, palpable agent in the world and in my own life.
It was because of these newfound understandings that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of [this church] one day and affirm my Christian faith. It came about as a choice, and not an epiphany. I didn’t fall out in church, as folks sometimes do. The questions I had didn’t magically disappear. The skeptical bent of my mind didn’t suddenly vanish. But kneeling beneath that cross [at the church], I felt I heard God’s spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth and carrying out His works […]
Answer after the break. Read the rest of this entry »
Responding to Concerned Nazarenes
For my Nazarene friends, here’s an index to some thoughts about the “Concerned Nazarenes” DVD that was distributed at General Assembly. CN is a fundamentalist group with strong ideas about the emergent church phenomenon and its relationship to the Church of the Nazarene. Their DVD is reviewed by a fellow named Jeffrey at A Considered Response to the Concerned Nazarenes. The comments seem thoughtful and respectfull.
Index to the Review of the Concerned Nazarene’s DVD
Gov. Huckabee Decides God No Longer Omnipresent
with 4 comments
Poor little god!
Gov. Huckabee says God has been “systematically . . . removed from our schools.” (You know, as in: “should we be surprised that our schools become places of carnage?”)
I have seen people removed from schools. A police officer – usually large – escorts away a scrawny 7th grader who’d done something along the lines of smoking dope in the bathroom. The kid vanishes, last seen as a pair of small eyes barely elevated enough to peer solemnly out the cruiser’s back door window. Removed.
Apparently, something similar happened to Gov. Huckabee’s god.
Too bad. Some kind of law enforcer that must’ve been, stronger than god and all. Some pathetic little god that was, too, that heavies could just toss him into the back seat and whisk him away.
I wonder what god it was. Does it sound like the same one who spoke to Job:
“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?
Tell me, if you understand.
Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
Who stretched a measuring line across it?
On what were its footings set,
or who laid its cornerstone—
while the morning stars sang together
and all the angelsshouted for joy?”
And
“Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades?
Can you loosen Orion’s belt?
32 Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons[c]
or lead out the Bearwith its cubs?
33 Do you know the laws of the heavens?
Can you set up God’s dominion over the earth?
Has that God ever been small enough to be “systematically removed” from any place in the cosmos?
See, I know students and teachers and administrators and bus drivers and secretaries and custodians and para-professionals who pray their way through every day of their public school careers. They’re pretty convinced that “the LORD our God is near us whenever we pray to him . . . ” Right there. In school. They don’t pray “on street corners” “to be seen by others,” (as Matthew describes – and that kind, when commanded by staff people, is illegal, thank God.) They pray, instead, secretly, to a God who is unseen, believing that he hears and responds.
That kind of prayer in school is protected by every court in America.
Wouldn’t that kind of God have to be present now, right now, everywhere, no matter what people do? And, as far as that God being “systematically removed,” well, LOL.
Written by Monte
December 15, 2012 at 9:06 pm
Posted in 2. News/comment, Politics, Religion
Tagged with constitution and prayer, God in schools, Huckabee, Newtown, Politics, Prayer, public school prayer, Religion, Religion and Spirituality, school prayer, separation of church and state