This from Netscape’s website concerning the jobs that are experiencing the fast growth:
Two Considerations
Happy New Year!
There are two considerations I keep coming back to whenever I try to deal with all this acrimony and divisiveness within the Christian community, and particularly in the “orthodoxy-wars†going on within Anglicanism right now. By the way, I think we see in the problems overwhelming world Anglicanism a foretaste of what is coming for global Christianity – the fulfillment of Philip Jenkins’ forecast in his book, “The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity.” Perhaps…
Anyway, these battles between “conservative” and “liberal” camps (groups defy labeling, really) concerning morals, sexual issues, Biblical authority, interpretation, and application, and polity are truly prompting realignment within global Christianity. We will only know in hindsight who will be right, although in my opinion none of us are “right.”
Of course, the issue that has prompted all the acrimony and division within world Anglicanism is homosexuality, which then bleeds into greater issues of Biblical authority and application, our interface with contemporary culture, discipline, accountability, and the catholic nature of our Church – polity. This issue of what is and what can be accommodated concerning homosexuality and same-sex relationships is dividing all Christian groups, despite the certain claims from denominations or churches and their leaders that the issue is settled against homosexuals in THEIR churches, jurisdictions, or domains. Whether we like it or not, our ecclesial politics mirror our cultural politics – the wars wage on to the detriment of the call of and purpose of the Way of Christ.
What makes one a Christian? Who has the right to judge and determine how Christians should live – what God calls us to? Who is right and who is wrong? The endless debates and proclamations will continue forever. Yet, how should we live regardless of what others may say about us, be we conservative/liberal, gay/straight, Modernist/Post-Modernist, male/female, et.al.?
In my mind, at this particular time, there are two primary criteria/points we need to heed (I need to heed!) – for me these have become primary as my foundation for living out the Way of Christ.
1.) We know little, despite over 3,000 years of trying to know!
“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” 1 Corinthians 13:11-13 (New International Version)
Since we know in part, we must be very careful to make too strong of a pronouncement concerning who is right and who is wrong. At any particular point in time, all of us can and will think or believe heretically, even in the midst of thinking we are right and think we can “prove” it. We grow, we mature, we experience life, and as we do we change our opinions and understandings. If any of us act and believe exactly the same way and thing as we did ten years ago, we are babes still suckling on spiritual milk rather than moving onto the meat, and we all know what Paul wrote about that!
We know in part, and we must come to a place of absolute humility!
2.) Jesus gave us the greatest commandment, a new commandment, which is really the summation of all the Law and the Prophets, but is not the Law.
“One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: ‘Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?’ Jesus replied: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Matthew 22:35-40
“One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, ‘Of all the commandments, which is the most important?’ ‘The most important one,’ answered Jesus, ‘is this: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.’
“‘Well said, teacher,’ the man replied. ‘You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.'” Mark 12:25-33
Consider, also:
The commandments, “Do not commit adultery,” “Do not murder,” “Do not steal,” “Do not covet,” and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Romans 13:9
(Romans 13:8-10 in Context)
The entire law is summed up in a single command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Galatians 5:14
(Galatians 5:13-15 in Context)
“If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself,’ you are doing right.” James 2:8
(James 2:7-9 in Context)
“‘Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.”
Leviticus 19:18
Well, we can debate until the cows come home whether Jesus meant to bring into the New Covenant the Moral Law of Moses or not (I don’t see how anyone could read Galatians or Hebrews and think that any of the laws of the Levitical Code are to be specifically obeyed by Christians under Grace as they were by Jews). Regardless, we are called to love God with all our being and to love our neighbor as ourselves – by and in faith. The rub comes when some believe that they must define and categorize how the demonstration of these two objects of our love is to be expressed or experienced. New demands are instituted as proof of whether we truly, honestly, and completely love God or not, and often we seem to forget about loving our neighbor. Like the Pharisees of Jesus’ day, we make new laws to prove to others our devotion to God.
So many of us cannot deal with ambiguity and cannot trust our neighbor that he or she is doing the best s/he can to honor God and neighbor. Some of us have to demand compliance and conformity to a particularly defined standard, and we then develop organizations to institutionalize these demands.
Live this way: I am to love God; I am to love neighbor; I must know in humility that at any moment I could be completely wrong because I see in part and will not know fully until I see Him face-to-face. If I can keep these two considerations in the forefront of my mind and intentions, I think I just might make it.
Stop apologising
Even though Christmas has passed, this opinian piece entitled “Stop Apologising for Being Christian” by Simon Heffer in the Daily Telegraph (British newspaper) dealing with the politically-correct de-Christianization of Christmas is well written, especially since he is an athiest.
Here is the link to the piece. You can also read his opinion here.
Diversity
Cultural diversity does not mean that the vast majority of people should not or cannot celebrate their holiday. It means, in my humble opinion, that the smaller minority of people can celebrate fully their holidays.
There you go – solution!
Brokeback Mountain – 4
Yes, yes, I know, enough already. Ashton got me the book as a stocking stuffer for Christmas. Since I’m heading home to Ohio today, we opened our gifts on Monday.
I finished the book – really a short story – by Annie Proulx.
I must give credit to the screenplay writers for their expansion of the story. They did a wonderful job. The book is a little more graphic and the realities of limited education, a hard life, and aging are more realistic in the book. The book is just as heart wrenching, and the use of the written page rather than visual images become more poetic in many places. The screenplay is faithful, sometimes to the very words, to the book.
Strike! Strike! Strike!
Well, today is the first day of the New York Transit workers’ strike. Leaving West Orange, NJ on the NJ Transit train this morning wasn’t so bad. I suspect a lot of people just stayed home today. The train actually had two less cars than they normally run, which did make the train a bit crowded. No delays getting into Penn Station in Manhattan.
The station at 8:00 am didn’t seem much more crowded than a normal Tuesday, although there were more people. As I came up the stairs into the lower level from the platform, the crowds did pick up. Approaching the 7th Ave. & 34th St. exit, which also happens to be the entrance for the 1,2,3 subway lines, I was a bit dumbfounded to see the crowds. It took me 10 minutes to walk the single city block to reach the exit stairs – wall-to-wall people. I’ve never seen anything like it! I must say, it was kind of fun. That is one thing about New Yorkers – in a situation like this people are generally very polite and simply do what has to be done, which is to wait and shuffle.
I figured the streets would be very crowded and there were more people than normal, but not nearly as packed as I expected. This may be because many people decided not to come into the city, maybe it was just a Mid-town thing, who knows. We shall see how things go as the strike continues.
If people attempt to drive into Manhattan below 96th street, they must have at least 4 people in the car. From my perspective, Mid-town at around 8:00 am, the traffic wasn’t all that bad. I don’t know what it was like in other parts of the city.
Au Bon Pain was very crowded, but their workers seemed to have gotten to work. The fruit venders were not out this morning, but the coffee and donute carts were on the street corners.
I tell ya, I think the transit workers have made a big mistake striking this close to Christmas. They will win no sympathy from the average New Yorker, particularly because they are demanding pay increases of 8% every year for the next three years. The City’s proposed contract would require all new hires to contribute 1% to their own health-care with all current employees continuing to receive absolutely free health-care, but the union will not abide by such a thing. I just don’t think people are going to be clamoring to the City to give the transit workers what they want.
Luckily, I’m leaving for D.C. and then Ohio tomorrow for Christmas week. It’s kind of fun to be in the midst of the first strike in 25 years. Honestly, I’m not that inconvenienced at this point (except for the fact that I cannot meet with a friend for lunch today, and his Christmas present will have to wait until after Christmas – Brooklyn is too far to walk!
Brokeback Mountain – 3
I saw the movie for a second time. It is better the second time around – you pick up on small things that were easily missed the first time around.
I knew this movie would affect me, and it has. It is hard thinking of lost opportunities and struggles. There has not been a day in my adult life that I have not struggled with this whole issue. What could life have been like? If I had made a single different decision, how could my life have been different? Better? Perhaps not. Who knows? If that first person, of whom I am reminded poignantly by this movie and Ennis in particular, and I could have continued… Most of my angst is written in my paper-n-pen journal – thank God for that!
I’ve been reading newspaper articles about the movie, particularly from mid-western, western, and southern papers. It seems that only the Religious Right organizations are down on the movie, which is expected. The review from JoBlow.com seems to sum up the attitude of many people not residing in the largest metropolitan areas.
Easy?
It is not always easy holding onto what I profess to believe. We all change over time. If we don’t, we stop living, we stop being human, we stop experiencing the world around us, we descend into… who knows what.
The process of giving up to the ether our beliefs, ideas, understandings can be a wearying endeavor. If we seek Truth – honest, real, legitimate Truth – we have to be willing to give up on preconceived ideas even if those ideas bring us great comfort. To grow is to move on, to move forward, to push through the shim that clouds our vision of things before us.
The process is disquieting. If I profess to believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob… if I profess to believe in Jesus as the Christ… if I profess to believe that the Good News is truly good and available for all of us, then I can do nothing less than allow all that I perceive of myself to be stripped away in order to understand… in order to be discover the “me” that I am meant to be.
“Consider it pure joys, my brothers, when ever you face trails of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking in anything. If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.”
I’ve come back to this verse so many times. I believe it to be true.
Then, of course, there is this quote from Ann Rice:
“Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world. Few really ask. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds — justification, confirmation, forms of consolation without which they can’t go on. To really ask is to open the door to a whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner.”
See, it isn’t easy! We fail all the time. Mercy. Grace.
Brokeback Mountain – 2
A good, sad, tragic, poinent movie. I have my own story, as do we all. It was interesting hearing the perceptions of the others in the group of four with whom I saw the movie. The straight guy didn’t like it. The gay guy who never had a problem admitting to or being in a relationship with another guy said he just could not connect with the characters – “we all can make choices.” The other gay guy was on an emotional rollercoaster. And me. Unless you are caught in the situation where all your choices seem to be wrong – all seem to hurt other people – you cannot understand the tragic situations presented in the characters of this movie.
I can understand.
Brokeback Mountain
I’m just about to leave to see Brokeback Mountain. I’ve been reading the personal stories people have written on the website – so many of them are heartbraking.
So many of us have our own stories that are so similiar to Ennis and Jack’s (I think that is their names). I have my own story. They never leave you.
I’m actually a bit nervous. I know that it will be a difficult movie to watch – a flood of memories, feelings, thoughts, lost possibilities, questions, and who knows what else. Yet, these are the experiences that life is made of. They cannot be denied, they cannot be ignored. To try to avoid such things is to avoid living.