Otter Limits

I just finished reading another great article by Mr Keith Giles over at his website and wanted to share it with you.

It is titled Are We Really Practicing Christianity.

Really interesting article that talks about some of the difference between the Church today and the way Christianity was practiced in the New Testament.

It is interesting how the first Christians were these low-life, uneducated fishermen and how well they spread the message of Christ and how today you basically have to have 3 degrees in order to get a job preaching the gospel.

Anyway, give it a read. It is a great article.

Why does God allow bad things to happen?

This is a question that get asks by countless non-believers to those that are faithful. Sadly, this question leaves most of us dead in our tracks.

Sadly, a lot of us don’t know how to answer this. I have to admit that it is a very difficult question to tackle. At least to a point to where the person asking the question is satisfied.

Here is a good article about that question over at The Ooze written by the illustrious Keith Giles.

In the article, he poses the ‘Why does God allow bad things to happen’ question I respond with another question: Do you want God to take complete control over all reality?

To me, that goes against what and who God is. God created us with free will. To take control over everything that happens in this world would take away that free will that he gave to us.

It’s not that God can’t prevent car crashes or can’t keep thousands from getting killed in a war that nobody wants, it is just that at certain times in humankind’s lifetime, He does not intervene.

The fact is that, even in the Scriptures, divine intervention was the exception, not the rule.

He points out the fact that God allows things, all things, good and bad, to happen so that he can reveal Himself through the pain, tragedy, and happiness to bring about redemption and reconciliation to Him.

So here is a hard one to swallow. As Christians, we supposed to actually BE Jesus Christ on this earth while his human form is not here. In essence, we are supposed to BE God to the rest of humankind.

And here comes the hard part. The question is not why does God allow bad things to happen. The question becomes why do WE allow bad things to happen?

I was reading an article about the torture debate at the Relevant Magazine website.

The article itself was titled The Torture Question.

It is a piece written about how there is growing debate over the torture issue in the Christian community.

What really struck me about what I was reading and what prompted me to write about it was a comment posted on the website.

It was written by a person with the “screen name” skevin. He writes:

“…i don’t believe you can say that a person necessarily ’supports’ a position if they merely see certain instances where they can accept that the position may be effective. I think using the term ‘accept’ would be much more truthful and less divisive, especially as we discuss this with our brothers and sister in Christ.”

He has said in this few sentences something I have tried over and over to say in several blogs. The point is simple, I can ‘accept’ something (in this case torture, or for another example, the War in Iraq) but not necessarily ’support’ that something.

Way to go skevin, Whoever you are.

By the way, for those of you that are interested, Relevant Magazine is a magazine that discusses the combination of faith and pop culture into our daily lives.

TITLE: Beyond Left & Right: Helping Christians Make Sense of American Politics.

Just in case there is any doubt, I am not one.

I do not support the use of military action against another country.

I do not think that war is compatible with Christianity. Let me rephrase, I do not think war is compatible with the teachings of Jesus.

I don’t think Jesus would condone the idea of war.

There are many out there that are “war mongers” and can somehow rationalize it. I say good for you. But leave me out of it. I can’t rationalize it.

On second thought, don’t leave me out of it. I would actually like to know how it can be rationalized.

But please don’t use the Crusades as an example. I don’t think Jesus approves of that one either. That was no “religious” war. That was a war for power and property and nothing more.

As most wars have been in the past few hundred years. They are either fought over power (so that one group of people can gain power over another group of people) or property (someone wants a piece of land to add to their piece of land so they fight over it) or money.

War is a business.

There are those in society that seem to think the current war that American is engaged in is being fought for something as noble as the liberation of a people. I disagree. Some say it is a war to protect democracy. I disagree. Some say it is a war to defend our country. I really disagree. It is a war for both power and money.

Sure, the power that was taken away was taken away from a dictator and that country is probably better off without him but it was fought for power nonetheless. Personally though, I think that the war for power in this case was but a means to an end to the real war. The war for money.

It is being fought over money. Or more specifically, a war over oil, which equals money. That part of the world controls quite a bit of oil and this war is being fought to protect our country’s oil investments. Money.

But I am getting off track here. The point I am trying to make is that I don’t think Jesus condones war of any kind. If you think differently, please respond to this post with your rationalizations.

This is a quote from Keith Giles, commenting on Red S Tater’s blog

“The solution to society’s problems will not ever be found in politics. If we hope to change the hearts of men and women by laws and policies then we are both mistaken and misguided.

Jesus commands us to pledge allegiance to the Kingdom of God, not to a flag or a nation. I’m not saying it’s a sin to love your country or to vote, but I am saying that once we blur the lines between what Jesus is all about and our national pride we might have a problem.”

Amen Keith.

This post is actually a kind of conglomeration of several different posts I have done recently here on this blog so a lot of this is repetitive and for that I apologize but I am trying to make a point here.

I thought I would kind of “sum things up” to try and get the message across better by putting it all together, so to speak.

These writings were sparked by an article I read at The Ooze website entitled Another Law?

It was written by a preacher by the name of Keith Giles. He is the preacher of a “house church.” He takes no salary and donates 100% of his church’s offering to the poor. Very commendable. The idea behind stating this fact is not where does he get his money? The idea is that the offering of his church does not go toward upkeep of his congregation. The fact is, he has no building to upkeep. The important part to take away from this message is that he is taking money from the offering and putting it where it needs to go, toward caring for the poor like Jesus taught us to do.

Anyway, the part of the article that sat with me was this quote:

“Nothing underscores the failure of the American Church to overcome evil with good by commitment to the teachings of Jesus than this: We have abandoned social change by way of the Gospel and embraced social change by way of the courts, and politics, and law.”

It seems to me that there are many Christians whose focus is more on politics than is is on the message of Jesus and how that focus on politics has clouded their vision as to what Jesus wanted us to do. For instance, as Mr. Giles is doing, which is caring for the poor and oppressed.

I am not saying (and I don’t think Mr. Giles is saying) that Christians should not vote. Nor am I saying that they should not be a part of the political process. I just think that Jesus was not a politician and did not teach politics to his apostles. He taught love for God and love for mankind. These are concepts that I think, in the world of politics, have been severely lacking.

I do think that it is important to vote.

Christians in my opinion should vote. They should vote based on their own beliefs and what they believe to be morally and ethically right.

Christians should be aware of the current state of affairs in their environment. But I believe that it is unhealthy for a person’s spiritual growth to become so involved in politics that it becomes like a 2nd religion to them. I myself am guilty of this all too often myself.

This seems to be the case in the Christian right and the Christian left as well. It seems like the leaders of these movements are so consumed with their political agenda that they have lost sight of their Christian agenda. In the majority of their cases that is.

In another article by Mr. Giles on his own website entitled Undercover Christian he talks about a non-Christian who went “undercover” at a well-known Christian university to try and gain a better understanding of the Christian perspective.

The point of the article was that many Christians today have gotten to a point where they can no longer relate to the rest of the human race and that is just sad. One of his quotes in the article is “[the Christian subculture] puts us on an island away from people who are commanded to love and serve.”

One of Mr. Giles goals is to do away with this Christian subculture and get people out into the world to try and relate with the rest of humanity again. It seems to me that this should be one of the goals of the “missional” church. In fact, I am pretty sure that it is one of the goals of the “missional” church.

So what was my point with posting this here? I guess, as the title suggests, is that we as Christians should remain focused less on politics and more on the ideas of social justice and that we should try to break down the walls of this Christian subculture that some of us have gotten attached to and strive to “insert” yourself into society so that you can gain a greater understanding of where society is going and society can gain a greater understanding of where you are coming from. Be in the world and not of it so to speak.

Take what you want from this post. You can think what you want about Keith Giles. You can think what you want of me for that matter. You can call both of us whatever name in the book you have. I really don’t care. I have spoken my peace on the matter.

Recently, a conservative blogger is on some sort of “crusade” against the Christian Left for some reason.

He has called them hypocrites because some of them proclaim that the Christian Right needs to stay out of politics while getting involved in politics themselves. Okay, that is kind of hypocritical but it is a generalization. Not everyone in the Christian Left is going around conservative bashing.

He has claimed a particular member of the Christian Left is condemning other Christians for focusing too much on politics and less of the message of Christ. The Christian in question is a preacher by the name of Keith Giles. As I have stated in my previous posts (there are too many to bother listing, just see if you can muddle through them all at this site) I agree with Mr. Giles. I think many Christians are entirely too focused on politics to an extent where they preach them from the pulpit. That is wrong in my opinion. I don’t think it is the job of a preacher to stand in front of his congregation and talk about his own political views. He has a job to do and that is not it.

I think it is wrong when the Christian right does it. And I think it is equally wrong when the Christian left does it.

But what is this thing called the Christian left?

I thought I would lay out some really basic stuff about the Christian left. You can discern amongst this stuff and determine if you think what they have to say is in line with Jesus’ teachings or not. You can read more in detail about the Christian left at Wiki here.

The Christian left is a term used to describe left-wing Christians that are largely concerned with social justice. Hey, I like social justice. I guess that makes me Christian left.

Let me get more specific. What is social justice? Social justice refers to things like caring for the poor (oh the nerve!).

The Christian left is not as well organized as the Christian right however. In my opinion, I think they like it that way.

Even so, there one group that is worthy of noting. The Center for Progressive Christianity.

Here is a quote from the official website of the The Center for Progressive Christianity:

“We promote an understanding of Christian practice and teaching that leads to a greater concern for the way people treat each other than for the way people express their beliefs..”

Well, those communist swine! How dare they promote greater concern for people. They should all be taken out and shot! @@

Members of the Christian left consider it their Christian duty to act on what they believe to be at the core of their belief and that is social justice.

The Christian left, however, does NOT think that socialism is the be all end all solution to the problems related to social justice. Not all of them that is.

Another term I found interesting that is related is Christian communism.

This is the idea that the teachings of Jesus support communism as the ideal social system. They assert that the first Christians created small commune-type societies. They do not all agree with Marxism (which as I have said multiple times isn’t really pure communism anyway). Most Marxist are atheists.

Here is one of the verses from the New Testament that they cite as evidence:

“And they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in break of bread and in prayers. And all that believed were together and had all things in common. And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.” — Acts 2:42,-45

Well! Those leftist pink scumbags. Giving away all their stuff so that everyone has equal shares. How dare they! Oh wait, uhm….these were the first Christians. Hmm….seems like something we might want to emulate, don’t you think?

Here is another quote:

“All the believers were united in heard and mind. And they felt that what they owned was not their own, so they shared everything they had……..There were no needy people among them, because those who owned land or houses would sell them and bring the money to the apostles to give to those in need….” — Acts 4:32-35

Wow. I should be ashamed of myself for wanting social justice. The early Christians would have never thought of helping out the poor. No! That might be something Christ might have done! @@

So you see, all this bashing the Christian left and yelling “Communist!” or “leftist!” anytime someone brings up the idea of social justice makes them the biggest hypocrites of all.

This post is a response of sorts to Red’s Pulpit Pundits Seek to Destroy…

That post itself I believe is an elongated response to the discussions we have had on my posts Abandoning Social Change, Sequel to Abandoning Social Change, and Destroying Christian Subculture.

While I honestly think Red is quite sincere in his viewpoints, I think perhaps he might be just a tad misguided in regards to some of his thinking.

Personally, the idea that is is Christ-like to show a support for war befuddles me. I seriously doubt that Christ Himself would ever approve of us human beings fighting against each other for any reason. It just does not fit the pattern in my opinion.

In his post, Mr Red quite eloquently spends time bashing a certain preacher, Keith Giles. Mr. Giles, however, does not have “contempt for the traditional Christian church” as Red puts it. He simply thinks, as I do, that there are many churches out there that are not preaching the message of Jesus and have spent far too much time preaching their political agenda.

As I said in one of those previous posts, Jesus was not a politician. It is okay for Christians to discuss politics, but preaching them from the pulpit is unnecessary.

Mr Giles does have a few opinions that I disagree with, particularly on the abortion issue, it is not the goal of Mr Giles to demoralize “the Christian world” however. I have no idea where that idea came from.

The bulk of Red’s post seems to be a comparison between the views of Giles and communism.

I think that there are people in our society that are so blinded in their capitalist viewpoints that they can not realize that the teachings of Jesus and the THEORY of PURE communism are almost identical.

I will explain by posing a question.

Do you think that capitalism exists in heaven?

I don’t think it does.

In fact, I think that if there IS any sort of economic system in heaven, it would be comprised of a system where the means of production and distribution are owned and controlled by everyone and not just a select few. This is what PURE communism is about. This is not however what Obama is trying to push on our society. He wants the government to control everything. That is not communism in its purest form. That is Stalinism.

I really can not fathom the idea that in heaven we will all be divided into groups of haves and have nots. Personally, that sounds more like hell to me. LOL!

There is probably more that I have to say about this but perhaps I will do it in a sequel.

Here is another article that I found on Keith Giles’ website.

It is titled Undercover Christian.

In it he talks about an article he read about a non-Christian that went undercover as a Christian university and discovered that he could not communicate with the conservative Christian culture there.

The point he is trying to make in the article is to question how Christians have gotten to a point where they can no longer relate with the rest of the human race.

Here is one of the quotes from the post:

[the Christian subculture] puts us on an island away from people we are commanded to love and serve.”

Brilliant words in my opinion.

By the way, the title of this post comes from part of another quote in the post.