God is not a babysitter

WARNING: This may be disturbing to some readers. This article includes news of sexual brutality toward a child.

Monday evening I turned on the television in a hotel room in Gatlinburg, TN to hear something that made my blood boil… toward God. I was so disturbed by what I had heard that I found myself having difficulty sleeping. There were even moments when I wanted to scream out and cry for the misery that had been given to an innocent toddler who had no one to turn to… not even God.

You may have heard the news about someone who had videotaped the rape of a three-year-old girl. I have a three-year-old girl, a fact that caused this horrific news to hit so close to my heart that I have not been the same since the moment I turned on that television. I struggled with anger and frustration over my own helplessness. My mind was so troubled by this story that I woke up to the sound of a screaming girl crying “Mama!” in my sleep Monday night.

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Foot Stomping

Momentum at the G20 in London

Yesterday, here in London, UK, 40,000 people to took the streets to send a message to world leaders meeting at the G20 summit here next week.
The day was planned by churches and charities and despite the hail and wind, the day was a short term success. I say short term, because:

• lots of people attended (including a grand bunch from the Salvation Army)
• it seemed that the people who attended were inspired to envision a new world order.

The next few weeks will reveal whether this action will be a long term success. Mass mobilisation has a huge potential to shape political agendas, history has proved this, but whether it has this time, only the Summit’s minutes will reveal.

What is the potential of the G20 meetings this week? There is great hope that these leaders will turn the recession into an opportunity for a fairer, greener economy. Read this article to find out what local campaigners are wanting out of the summit.

How can you contribute to making these hopes reality? Micah Challenge are calling all Christians to pray throughout the next few days and you can join this movement and get the resources here. If you are in the UK you can also participate in some of the action aiming to influence the decision makers. While the biggest demo happened yesterday, there is lots of stuff going on that you may want to get involved with.

Lucy AR

Thinkaloud | who is responsible?

What are you doing with your life?

There has never been a time when adults did not think that the younger generation was on a fast track to hell. Ancient writers on the failures and foibles of the young seem uncannily up-to-date, which has led some pundits to say that things are no worse now than in earlier times.

I believe, to the contrary, that things indeed are worse than they ever have been. In fact, I think young people today are living in, and are affected by, an environment of unprecedented moral and spiritual danger. There are elements in today’s precarious world that sucks so many - young and older - into oblivion.

Foremost among these forces is the loss of moral sense. The difference between right and wrong is now blurred. Concepts such as justice, fair play, truth, honour and helping the weak are in short supply. For hundreds of years there have been concerted attacks on the Christian faith by those who have discarded Christian values. We are reaping the results of such abandonment.

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Salvation + ism = The Right Balance

More on “isms” from Joe Noland

This post is in response to the responses - see last post: The last thing I want is for my column to discourage anyone from TSA because that’s not the intent. Were it not for the Army and its God-given mission, who knows where I might be today. It wouldn’t be pretty, of this I’m confident.

It’s just that I so desperately want the Army mission to stay relevant and inclusive. It breaks my heart to see our young adults leaving the Army for other mission fields, and there are many doing so. As part of my own personal ministry, I speak with them every chance I get trying to ascertain the reasons why.

This whole ‘Ism” thing keeps surfacing in my conversations simply because, with the passing of generations, we (mostly from the top down) have come to define it wrongly: Statically, traditionally, exclusively. This, in turn, dilutes the original intent and meaning of Salvationism.

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Deeper shade of grey | Faith House 10

Street-level resurrection

Chris never stays long - just long enough.

I saw him leaving on the closed circuit TV monitor as I was putting my bag in the office. I had arrived late - as usual! - to the drop-in at Faith House. As I slipped the rucksack off my back I saw him look vaguely in the direction of the security camera and then disappear in the evening streets of Kings Cross. Chris never stays long - just long enough for us all to see and acknowledge his life.

It was good to see him. Chris had not been seen at FH for most of the summer and we were getting worried. Phone calls had been made to hospitals, fearing the worst; the next stage was to make contact with the morgues. Chris is clearly very ill, it doesn’t take much imagination to think that he is HIV+, for weeks we had seen him deteriorate. So his complete disappearance was a concern for us all.

I came up into the kitchen “heh … was that Chris I just saw leaving…?”

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The Concise Oxford | huh?

Luke 17:20-37

Every once in a while I stumble across a passage in scripture that really confuses me. And if I’m busy (which is too often the case) I make an empty promise to myself that I’ll go back to the passage later and try to figure out what is being really being said.

Other times I will read a passage and feel that it doesn’t quite line up with my own theology of grace, forgiveness and redemption. When this happens I usually convince myself that I must be misreading what Jesus is saying. Surely He couldn’t possibly be putting around such judgemental ideas? So I quietly forget that passage and go back to making my composite picture of who I want Jesus to be.

Well, Luke 17:20-37 is one of those passages. I’ve been working through Luke as part of my Lent discipline this year, and when I read this section I had no idea what in the world was going on. The only concrete thing I could initially grab onto was that faith continues to be a mystery for us. However, as I made a commitment as part of my Lenten discipline, I have continued to read this book and take the time to dig a little deeper and try to figure it out.

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From Russia with blogs | anger & faith

Alcohol | Vadim Hurin says it’s like useful pornography

I don’t consider myself an angry person, but there are some things that really get me mad. I’m talking about that uncontrollable anger that makes me want to break something. There aren’t many things that will get me that upset. One thing that does, however, is alcohol and its effects on people.

I’m very familiar with this, unfortunately. For generations, people in my family were heavy drinkers and encountered a lot of problems as a result of this alcoholism, even death in some cases. My anger, however, is not at the alcohol itself. I understand that alcohol, similar to a lot of other things on this planet, was quite harmless until people began to consume it in large quantities. What happens after is what really drives me mad, when people lose themselves in the alcohol. Horrendous crimes take place when people have drunk way too much.

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40 days to save the world

Phil Wall ponders the nurturing of giants

“Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity — myself especially — are in a state of shocked disbelief… The failure of self-interest to provide self-regulation is a flaw in the model that I perceived as the critical functioning structure that defines how the world works.”
Alan Greenspan (The New Yorker, February 2009)

Acouple of weeks ago, two events occurred that at first glance have little to do with each other. With deeper reflection, their links could be profound.

First we witnessed the ignominy of the UK’s financial services regulators being held to account for their lack of diligence during the economic meltdown of recent days. Whilst the prophets like Warren Buffet screamed warnings about the mythological nature of “exotics trades,” the “watchdogs,” entrusted with safe-guarding us all, ignored him and refused to bark loudly and do what they were appointed to do.

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Let freedom ring | Isms!

… kills by hugging it to death

Merriam Webster Online Dictionary defines the word, “ism,” in two parts:

1 : a distinctive doctrine, cause, or theory
2 : an oppressive and especially discriminatory attitude or belief <we all have got to come to grips with our isms - Jocelyn Elders>

Peter Viereck cites the following example: “Formalism, by being an ‘ism,’ kills form by hugging it to death.” Another word for “hug” in this context is “smother.” Dogma is defined as “a set of beliefs.” Following this line of thinking: Dogmatism, by being an ‘ism,’ kills belief by smothering it to death.

“…ism” on the tail end of anything frightens me to death, be it conservatism, liberalism, capitalism, socialism, dogmatism, pragmatism, atheism, spiritualism, whatever, it always leads to schism. Pinpoint trouble spots in the world today and where there is schism you will generally find a prevailing, trailing “ism.”

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Thinkaloud | God laughs

… they shout, write and advertise to no avail

At times our senses betray us. We live as if only those things or persons we can see, hear and touch really exist. Of course we know intellectually that ideas exist, as do concepts such as truth, justice, beauty and goodness. But on a day-to-day level we seem to need the visible and the tangible. “Seeing is believing” and “the proof of the pudding is in the eating” are but two familiar sayings that attest to such practicalities of life. Ideas, we think, are of little value when the body must be fed and rested.

Such a this-worldly approach to daily living often leads us to ignore the spiritual realities that alone make life worthwhile. “Because God cannot be seen, then He doesn’t exist” is the crude mantra of such militant atheists as Richard Dawkins, who live only on an earthly level. Living by and captive to their senses, such unreflective people are often shaken by questions that, for them, have no answers. They prefer not to think about the meaning of life but simply want to live as long as possible with as much energy as they can muster.

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