Friday, June 2, 2023

HANDLING ACCURATELY THE WORD OF TRUTH

 

HANDLING ACCURATELY THE WORD OF TRUTH

 

 

rightly dividing the word of truth This picture aptly illustrates the issue at hand: can every cowherd and every milkmaid correctly understand and interpret the Scriptures? Or does the King James Version's wording give us a hint of what can happen? "Dividing" can mean causing division: many illustrations I looked at showed a vertical sword stabbed into a Bible and one picture actually showed the mathematical symbol for division! Staking one's own position on a mistaken interpretation can cause division. What does the Bible really say about this, why have we come to the point where many insist that their personal view is the only right one and if you disagree they disown you?

The wording in the above title – "handling accurately the word of truth" – is from the NASB version, a very exact and accurate Evangelical translation. In 2 Timothy 2:15, the Apostle Paul is instructing Timothy how to shepherd the flocks in the region of Ephesus, where Paul had appointed him (1 Tim. 1:3) to ordain leaders in the churches there (1 Tim. 3: 1-10), just as Paul and appointed Titus to do in the churches on the island of Crete (Titus 1:5-7). This illustrates the apostolic oversight over churches to insure that correct doctrine is being accurately taught: Timothy and Titus were both to fulfill this apostolic function.

Paul wrote to the church in Thessalonica to "stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught, whether by word of mouth or by letter from us" (2 Thes. 2:15). And he instructed Timothy to "guard that which is traditioned to you, turning away from the empty chatter and oppositions of falsely so called knowledge; which some professing have erred concerning the faith. Grace be with you. Amen" (1 Tim. 6:20-21). The word "tradition" is "paradosis" in Greek, meaning that which is passed down from one person in authority to another. Also note "by word of mouth" – in the first 15 centuries of the Church, written copies of Scripture were rare and expensive, so much "traditioning" was oral from one generation of apostolic teachers to the next.

When Jesus was tempted right after His baptism, the devil mis-quoted Scripture to challenge Jesus to show off His power – see Mat. 4:5-7. Over and over in the New Testament we are warned to guard against false teachers and teachings. There are hundreds if not thousands of mistaken answers to a problem in higher math, but only one right answer: the same is true of Christian doctrine. Jesus told the Sadducees – "You are mistaken, not understanding the Scriptures, or the power of God" (Mat. 22:29).

The Apostle Peter wrote that "no prophecy of Scripture is of private interpretation, just as no prophecy ever came by the will of man: but holy men of God spoke, being moved by the Holy Spirit" (1 Pet. 1:20-21). Notice the connecting words "just as": in the same way, or just as, holy men of God spoke, so also we need "holy men of God" – saints and Church Fathers, those recognized by the Church – to correctly interpret Scripture. Not "every cowherd and every milkmaid" can do it correctly.

St. Peter also wrote that the wise writings of the Apostle Paul were sometimes hard to understand – "our beloved brother Paul also, according to the wisdom given to him, wrote to you; as also in all of his letters, speaking in them of these things. In those are some things hard to be understood, which the ignorant and unsettled twist, as they also do to the other Scriptures, to their own destruction" (2 Pet. 3:15b-16).

Finally, St. Paul instructs Titus how to train new elders – "holding to the faithful word which is according to the teaching, that he may be able to exhort in the sound doctrine, and to convict those who contradict him. For there are also many unruly men, vain talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision, whose mouths must be stopped; men who overthrow whole houses, teaching things which they ought not, for dishonest gain's sake." (Titus 1:9-11).

There are those whose mistaken ideas contradict sound doctrine: unruly, vain talkers and deceivers who are seeking self-gratification. But there are also those who are able to exhort in the sound doctrine. Let us strive to become the latter, by the example of the Apostles and their successors!

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Thursday, May 18, 2023

PEOPLE DON'T CARE HOW MUCH YOU KNOW...

NOW, OUR VIEWS:
 

 

PEOPLE DON'T CARE HOW MUCH YOU KNOW...
UNTIL THEY KNOW HOW MUCH YOU CARE!

 

 

People don't care how much you know... until they know how much you care! "The Medium is the Message" – an expression made famous by Marshall McLuhan – revolves around the idea of the form that a message is in is the most important part of the message rather than its actual written message. Cramped or sloppy formatting, clumsy wording, or clashing colors can all nullify the message you want to communicate.

So it is with the Gospel: if the preacher is shouting and yelling in a harsh tone, it's hardly Good News to hear. In contrast, the Lord Jesus is "God's love with skin on" – God in the flesh, Who ministered to "the lame, blind, mute, and maimed" (Mat. 15:30). Our job as followers of Jesus the Messiah is to figure out how to put skin on the Gospel message of God's love, to show how much we care, not just how much we know.

Many think that when someone becomes disabled, that person just goes from the hospital to a nursing home, but there's a much wider spectrum of care. Several kinds of caring facilities exist: home care, respite care for family caregivers, independent living, assisted living, nursing homes, rehab facilities, and hospice care. And several aspects of care exist:

  * Hiring a senior caregiver on your own can be cheaper than using an agency – save the overhead of paying an agency's fees
  * 9 Caregiver Support Groups that Help Caregivers in Need – CaringBridge: caring for the caregivers
  * 2023 Guide to Home Care for Seniors... and Get Paid – search for assisted living and memory care for a loved one
  * How To Earn Your Home Health Aide (HHA) Certification – become a certified Home Health Aide
  * How Long Does It Take To Become a CNA? (With Other FAQs): short answer – 4 to 8 weeks, but there's more...
  * How to Become a Certified Nursing Assistant – What Is a CNA and what do they do?

And we must not forget that "The Medium is the Message" – the type of a home's or a healthcare building's architecture greatly affects how and what kind of people can use it. Our son, an architect, included this phrase in his master's thesis: "We shape our buildings, and then they shape us" – a quote by Winston Churchill who was not only a statesman but also an artist and amateur architect.

There are many ways to make homes and commercial buildings accessible for all, or inclusive – for both able-bodied and disabled people: see the article 20 DESIGN TIPS FOR A WHEELCHAIR ACCESSIBLE HOME. We need to rethink how both exterior and interior design, including sloped sidewalks or ramps into buildings for ground floor and second floor, elevators with at least 30-inch-wide doors, 36-inch-wide doorways without thresholds, door handles instead of doorknobs, electrical outlets 24 inches from floor, enough knee space under tables, sinks, and countertops for someone in a wheelchair, and much more!

These are just a few ways we can incarnate Christ's Good News – "God's love with skin on" – God in the flesh, in the Body of Christ!

 

 

A personal note: Buildings can be made "Net Zero" energy-efficient as well as accessible: here are several photos that our "green architect" son took to show how to and how not to leak lots of energy – see this slideshow: Infrared Thermography: Seeing Stunning, Significant Secrets. And click HERE if you'd like to print 6 of these photos on 1 sheet of paper.

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Saturday, May 6, 2023

THE GLORY OF GOD

 

THE GLORY OF GOD

 

 

the glory of God

The majority of the poor living in U.S. inner cities are Afro-Americans, trapped in the bondage of inter-generational poverty. We love to share with them – "For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you hope for your future. You shall call on me, and you shall go and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You shall seek me, and find me, when you shall search for me with all your heart. I will be found of you, says the Lord, and I will return you from captivity" (Jer. 29:11-14). God is good, and wants to share His goodness with us!

We love to tell them that God didn't create them to live in poverty, He created them to share in His glory! This isn't some phony "health and wealth gospel" scam that promises people riches and health if they would tithe just 10% of their meager income to a diamond-studded televangelist. No, the glory of God isn't anything material; in fact, the glory of God is His uncreated Energy that radiates from God's unknowable, unfathomable Essence. This is genuine Good News that can help them Get Their Life On Track!

Some bad habits may be keeping us from experiencing God's glory – "Or don't you know that the unrighteous will not inherit the Kingdom of God? Don't be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor male prostitutes, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor slanderers, nor extortioners, will inherit the Kingdom of God. Such were some of you, but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and in the Spirit of our God" (1 Cor. 6:9-11). "Such were some of you" – put the past behind you! "But" shows a change taking place: being "washed" refers to baptism into Christ, and being "sanctified" refers to receiving the Holy Spirit at chrismation, right after baptism.

We shouldn't set our hearts on becoming super-rich, but it's alright to ask the Lord for enough to live in moderation: "Two things I have asked of you; Don't deny me before I die: Remove far from me falsehood and lies. Give me neither poverty nor riches. Feed me with the food that is needful for me; Lest I be full, deny you, and say, 'Who is the Lord?' Or lest I be poor, and steal, And so dishonor the name of my God" (Prov. 30:7-9). We've seen times in Russia when good people were driven to stealing just to survive, which dishonors God's name.

It takes 6-8 weeks to replace bad habits with good habits, so we show them how they can build the habit of daily prayers using their smartphone or a printed copy on one sheet of paper.

God calls us to true freedom: "For you, brothers, were called for freedom. Only don't use your freedom for gain to the flesh, but through love be servants to one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, in this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' But if you bite and devour one another, be careful that you don't consume one another. But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you won't fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, that you may not do the things that you desire. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law" (Gal. 5:13-18). We can only do this by walking the walk, not just talking the talk.

Here's a whole laundry list of bad habits to replace – "Now the works of the flesh are obvious, which are: adultery, sexual immorality, uncleanness, lustfulness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, strife, jealousies, outbursts of anger, rivalries, divisions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these; of which I forewarn you, even as I also forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the Kingdom of God" (Gal. 5:19-21).

And here's what to replace them with – "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and lusts. If we live by the Spirit, let's also walk by the Spirit" (Gal. 5:22-25). Walking in the Spirit means living in constant contact with the Holy Spirit.

We can do this by committing our whole life – body, soul and spirit – to Christ, refusing to conform to the world around us and its destructive lifestyles – "Therefore I urge you, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service. Don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God" (Rom. 12:1-2). The word "transformed" is the same word that's used for Christ's Transfiguration, when the brightness of His glory was revealed to His disciples. We can share in His glory!

Finally, God promises to liberate us and share His glory with us – "Now the Lord is the Spirit and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord, the Spirit" (2 Cor. 3:17-18). This glory is what God wants to pour out on us. We can experience His uncreated Energy... if we replace those bad habits with good habits, and keep walking in the Spirit.

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Saturday, April 22, 2023

IS RUSSIA SLIPPING INTO TOTALITARIANISM?

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IS RUSSIA SLIPPING INTO TOTALITARIANISM?

 

 

Russia slipping into totalitarianism The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace almost exactly one year ago published the article Putin's War Has Moved Russia From Authoritarianism to Hybrid Totalitarianism by Andrei Kolesnikov. Until now, I have been reluctant to swallow wholesale this notion, having invested much of my adult life dealing with and living in the USSR and Russia. But now it's time to reassess this terrible thought.

We have personal friends with whom we can no longer communicate: their emails and posts on Facebook have disappeared. Contacting them would endanger their lives and liberty. We know two young couples there: both had two little boys when we left Russia 16 years ago who now are young men likely to be drafted or have already been. We ask ourselves: are they even still alive?

The mass slaughtering of civilians along with the soldiers holding out in the huge Azovstal factory a year ago left the city of Mariupol in total ruins. Bakhmut, a beautiful city two years ago, has likewise been reduced to rubble and ashes: compare the first video of Bakhmut in 2021 with the second one of today: destruction beyond comprehension. Russian elite paratroopers there are now using hyperbaric artillery and bombs (air-gas weapons) which create a wave of fire that sears the lungs of victims as it ignites the oxygen in the air, consigning them to a slow, torturous death by suffocation. The largest hyperbaric bombs are equivalent to a small nuclear bomb.

Another article, Putin’s not a fascist, totalitarian or revolutionary – he’s a reactionary tyrant, discounts the idea that Russia is becoming totalitarian, but quashing dissent and imprisoning those who speak out are signs of both totalitarian and reactionary regimes. Raping, pillaging, and destroying infrastructure is called "denazifying" Ukraine. Russia has more than enough Nazis itself – I've seen them in action there, stifling free religious expression.

The Foreign Policy website features a recent article Staring Down the Black Hole of Russia’s Future by a Russian emigree that questions whether "A Ukrainian victory may be the country’s only chance at long-term salvation." and points out that Ukraine will almost inevitably emerge from this war to become a member of NATO and the European Union – just the opposite of what Putin started this war to prevent, while Russia will descend into a black hole of miltary, economic, and social collapse. My wife and I lived through the times of one-million-percent hyperinflation there in the early 1990s and know personally how devastating it was for the Russian people.

Dr. Jade McGlynn, a Russian analyst, rebuts the argument in her article "Do ordinary Russians support Putin’s war?" that most Russians oppose this war: "If you were a Russian mother, would you rather believe that your son gave his life heroically fighting Ukrainian Nazis, or that he died butchering innocent civilians? The former, most likely. It is not easy to admit – to oneself or to others – that you live in a country that has murdered tens of thousands of Ukrainians, or that has pointlessly sacrificed the lives of its own people." The masses of Russian citizens are conditioned to believe that their country is fighting a just war because its very existence is threatened by an encroaching NATO and European Union. It's not the country that is being threatened, though, it is the totalitarian state.

In late February of this year, Prospect Magazine published "A year after it invaded Ukraine, Russia is weakened and humiliated" that explains – "The war has been catastrophic for both sides. But Putin's 'special military operation' has been a strategic disaster." It states – "Already an authoritarian state, it has descended with frightening speed into something approaching totalitarianism, where military training is compulsory for schoolchildren, peaceful protest against the war is punished by 15 years in prison and TV pundits threaten Ukraine-supporting states with nuclear annihilation." I can only hope that Russia will be defeated, will throw off the yoke of totalitarian dictatorship, and somehow emerge again as a free and prosperous country. But will it? Rumors of Putin's failing health are just that – rumors, and hopes that his regime might be replaced by a benign, freedom-loving Jeffersonian republic may be merely wishful thinking.

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Saturday, April 8, 2023

The Ideology of Criticism

 

The Ideology of Criticism

 

 

The Marxification of EducationPer the article "The Dialectical Faith of Leftism" – "It is 175 years since Marx wrote the early drafts of what he originally called The Communist Confession of Faith and published it by the title The Communist Manifesto. Marx laid out an evil theology, and the practice of his religion is a liturgy of death and destruction. To understand the Marxist theology, we have to understand its theological antecedent, which was laid down by the German systematic theologian, speculative idealist, and Hermetic alchemist Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel."

Today we have "higher criticism" attempting to redefine theology, "critical theory" attempting to redefine politics, "critical race theory" attempting to redefine social relationships, and "critical pedagogy" attempting to redefine education. "Critical pedagogy" has morphed traditional education into "a palatable cover for [its] actual objective: raising Marxist political consciousness for the purposes of creating a cultural revolution." You notice the word "critical" in all of these phrases. To a great extent, they've succeeded where old-school Marxism has failed.

What is all this "criticism" and "critical" stuff all about? One of the terms that is frequently used in all of them is "deconstruction" – so what are they getting at? If you remove the "cons" you get at the heart of it: "destruction." The aim of all this criticism is the destruction of our established, traditional value system, our Judeo-Christian worldview. Old-school Marxism attacked the established economic worldviews of serfdom and capitalism, but capitalism parried Marx's thrust by itself morphing into a form of religion, that is, by usurping the Church's role of ministry to "the poor, the maimed, the lame, and the blind."

How has this happened? Ever since the legalization of Christianity in the fourth century, the Church has reached out to these groups of people, offering support, comfort, and healing. The first hospitals, hospices for the poor, orphanages, and aid for widows all sprang up in the fourth-century Christian Byzantine Empire. And up to the mid-twentieth century, these social ministries were mainly provided by churches through voluntary charitable donations. But in the 1960s and 70s, the "Great Society" started up government-funded social services financed through tax dollars. Because the central governments can print money at will, the churches couldn't compete.

This is the same way that a dominant company in a given industry can become a monopoly by undercutting its smaller competitors' prices, forcing them out of business. Over the past 50-60 years, government has expanded to have a near-monopoly on social services, and churches can't compete, they can only have a share in it if they meet the state's requirements. Thus, these social ministries of churches, if any, have been co-opted by government: in effect, the churches have been absorbed by the state and the state has taken on "The Secular Confession of Faith" – a decapitated Christianity – a Christianity without Christ. It is Marxism in disguise.

An excellent example of this is "Liberation Theology" that originated in Brazil and has spread throughout Latin America and the world. The leading proponent of "Critical Pedagogy" was Paulo Friere, but he was not only an educator, he was an anti-colonialist and a Marxist. He was also a religious figure, a devotee to Liberation Theology that has been called "Marxism pretending to be Catholicism," a secular semi-religious ideology. Friere's goal was not to increase literacy or proficiency in mathematics or history, it was to teach children how to think in Marxist terms of "oppression of the poor," "restorative justice," "equity," and "social change."

This ideology has so taken over university schools of education, high schools and primary schools that school children are functionally illiterate and far below grade level in mathematics, but are being taken to state capitols to participate in protests, yelling, screaming, and holding up placards about "oppression," "gender rights," "liberation," and "anti-racism." This is just one example of Herbert Marcuse's "long march into the institutions" – not only into education, but also journalism, entertainment, corporate governance, politics, and the electoral system.

What is the solution? It is to insist on our God-given right of freedom of religious expression, as stated in the First Amendment. This means not only the freedom of worship within the four walls of a church, but also to express our faith in our daily lives in society. It will not come cheap as we sacrifice our time, talent, and resources to reclaim the Church's rightful social ministry to "the poor, the maimed, the lame, and the blind,, to widows and orphans"... and especially to the education of our children. The future depends on it!

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Saturday, March 25, 2023

Where are the 90 percent?

 

Where are the 90 percent?

 

 

Where are the 90 percent?"Liturgical" worship with ritual is neither good nor evil in itself: the container (ritual) must be worthy of its content (belief) – you don't use a throw-away paper cup to serve a fine wine! So ritual must be accompanied by sincere belief and heartfelt devotion. As I was writing this ARC-News, I happened to read the stories of The Ten Lepers and The Good Samaritan in Luke ch. 17. I searched for and found this article which appeared first in our "Hosken-News of 29 August 2020:

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

Jesus asked the one leper out of the ten He cleansed – "Where are the other nine?" Only one of them was truly thankful... and he was a heretic. (BTW, this photo has a link to a really cool video for kids!) You know the story of the Ten Lepers in Luke 17:11-19 – Jesus and His disciples were "up north" in Israel, in Galilee which is right next to Samaria, the region that used to be the center of the ten tribes of Israel that the Lord allowed to be carried off into exile because of their idolatry. The lower-class, poor Jews who were left there had mixed with pagan peoples the Babylonians had resettled there. The result was a semi-Jewish, semi-pagan religious culture. The "true Jews" further south really despised those heretic Samaritans who had polluted the true Jewish faith with their pagan beliefs and practices.

But the fact that one of those ten was a Samaritan didn't bother Jesus: He healed all ten lepers of their awful disease and told them to present themselves to the priest for the ritual of cleansing. That ritual was like a certificate of approval that validated their cleansing and allowed them to get back into society again. So nine of them got on with their normal lives, but only one came back to Jesus to thank Him, and he was one of those despised, heretic Samaritans.

In doing this, Jesus no doubt rankled the Scribes and Pharisees, those sticklers for every detail of the rituals in the Law of Moses and the Mishnah – the legal appendices in their tradition. But what did the prophet Isaiah write about this? In Isaiah 1:13-23 the Lord says -

"Bring no more vain offerings. Incense is an abomination to Me; new moons, sabbaths, and convocations: I can't bear with evil assemblies. My soul hates your new moons and your appointed feasts; they are a burden to Me. I am weary of bearing them. When you spread forth your hands, I will hide My eyes from you; yes, when you make many prayers, I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves, make yourself clean. Put away the evil of your doings from before My eyes; cease to do evil. Learn to do well. Seek justice, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.

'Come now, and let us reason together,' says the Lord: 'Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land; but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured with the sword; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken it.' How the faithful city has become a prostitute! She was full of justice; righteousness lodged in her, but now murderers. Your silver has become dross, your wine mixed with water. Your princes are rebellious, and companions of thieves. Everyone loves bribes, and follows after rewards. They don't judge the fatherless, neither does the cause of the widow come to them."

The Jewish people had been observing their rituals, but without sincere and heartfelt repentance and turning from sin, those rituals became just an empty show, a stinking farce in the Lord's nostrils. Like the nine of the ten lepers, they performed the prescribed rituals but went back to their former "normal" lives of sinful, self-centered practices just like Isaiah described: sexual immorality, murder, greed for wealth, rebellion, thievery, bribery, and corruption of their justice system.

What's the solution to these evils? Repentance! – "Wash yourselves, make yourself clean. Put away the evil of your doings from before My eyes; cease to do evil. Learn to do well. Seek justice, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow." Then, if they do this, the Lord says – "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land; but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured with the sword; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken it." (Isaiah 1:16-18)

Theres a saying about church members: "It's ten percent of the congregation that does ninety percent of the work." Like the one leper who came back to thank Jesus for being healed, it's often the few quiet, simple, and rather ordinary people who really "walk the walk" and not just "talk the talk" – merely observing the religious rituals and then leaving to get back to their "normal" lives. It's like the prophet Isaiah described as follows –

"The Lord said, 'Because this people draw near to Me, and with their mouth and with their lips to honor Me, but have removed their heart far from Me, and their fear of Me is a commandment of men which has been taught them; therefore, behold, I will proceed to do a marvelous work among this people, even a marvelous work and a wonder; and the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the understanding of their prudent men shall be hid'" (Isaiah 29:13-14).

What percentage of the Israelites in the days of Isaiah and Moses actually "drew near to the Lord" and not just paid him lip service, we don't know. But I can imagine that it was likely about 10 percent. Where are the 90 percent? They were messing around with idolatry, sexual immorality, greed, thievery, bribery, and corruption. They showed up at the temple to perform their rituals but then went back to their "normal" lives. The Apostle Paul wrote about this -

"Now I would not have you ignorant, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; and were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea; and all ate the same spiritual food; and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of a spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ. However with most of them, God was not well pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness. Now these things were our examples, to the intent we should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted. Neither be idolaters, as some of them were. As it is written, 'The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play.' Neither let us commit sexual immorality, as some of them committed, and in one day twenty-three thousand fell" (2 Corinthians 10:1-8).

The ancient Israelites weren't "good for nothings," St. Paul says they were good for one thing: a bad example, one not to follow! He is clearly drawing a parallel between the Israelites passing through the Red Sea and Christian baptism, between drinking the water from the rock and Christian communion of the Body and Blood of Christ. But Paul warns the Christians in Corinth not to be like the Israelites who had taken part in those saving acts but then turned back to satisfy their lusts. It is so easy and "natural" to just go through the religious rituals and then fall back into our old, "normal" way of life. It takes real repentance and spiritual discipline to strive for holiness. May we be counted among the ten percent!

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Christ is among us! He is and ever shall be!

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Saturday, March 11, 2023

The Spectrum of Beliefs

 

The Spectrum of Beliefs

 

 

a wide range of beliefs

As you might know, the Sadducees were a religious/political group at the time of Christ who were the power brokers who had worked out a modus vivendi with the Romans; they appointed the Jewish high priest and held a majority in the Sanhedrin. As the Gospels tell us, they did not believe in the afterlife and held that only the five Books of Moses were inspired Scripture.

On the other hand, the Pharisees were the strict literalist biblicists who observed all of the rituals and rules in the Law, Psalms, and Prophets – what we the Old Testament today, but they also held to the Talmud, a collection of explanations and clarifications to their Scriptures that added hundreds of extra rituals and rules. As Christ said, they insisted on ritual washing of hands, plates, and cups, not doing "work" on the Sabbath such as picking and rubbing heads of grain and eating them.

In modern terms, we might call the Sadducees "liberals/relativists" and the Pharisees "conservatives/literalists." On the far extremes of the social and political spectrum, each side can tend toward absolutism. The far left insists the Scriptures shouldn't be taken literally – you should believe nothing in particular but anything in general including dozens of genders and cohabitation – just abort those inconvenient babies, that we should just vaguely be nice to our neighbor and serve society, that everything is relative and there are absolutely no absolutes (except that statement itself).

The far right in response believes in lifelong marriage between one man and one woman to have a big family, insists on a literal interpretation of the Constitution (but we shouldn't get involved in "dirty" politics) and of the Scriptures (but my interpretation of the Bible is right and yours is wrong – this has led to over 20,000 mutually contradictory denominations), just evangelize to save people from the coming tribulation and the fires of hell.

But you've probably seen the color spectrum depicted not just in a straight line as above, but as a "color circle" in which the purple and red curve around to merge into the violet. So by this we can see how absolute relativists and absolute literalists merge into similar forms of extremism: the far-left anarchists and the far-right nutcases – both extremes meet behind the barn and duke it out. How can we avoid this, how can we find the "golden mean" in-between?

In the year 325 A.D. the Church was just emerging from the catacombs and violent persecution by the Greco-Roman empire, but was facing a more serious danger – that from within. A certain liberal clergyman, a deacon by the name of Arius from Alexandria, had begun teaching that Jesus was merely a created being, perhaps a holy man, a moral teacher or a prophet, but not God incarnate. In response, another deacon from Alexandria by the name of Athanasius held fast to the traditions handed down from the beginning of the Christian faith that Jesus was fully God and fully man from the very instant of His conception by the Virgin Mary. This discord spread through the whole Church so that the bishops had to call a council in the city of Nicea.

After weeks of discussion and debate, Athanasius led the charge against Arius' position: Athanasius won the day, Arius was declared a heretic and was driven out of the Church – excommunicated. His followers were cast out of the empire into the Arabian desert, where their idea that Jesus was not God combined with the later heresy of iconoclasm and was picked up by Mohammed to form the basis of Islam.

The Nicene Creed contains the core beliefs of Christianity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one visible, holy and universal Church based on the Apostles, baptism for remission of sins, and eternal life. The "golden mean" – the true Church – teaches that we must combine ortho-doxy (right belief) with ortho-praxis (social ministry). Anyone who sincerely confesses this Creed and puts it into practice is a Christian, and anyone who cannot or will not confess and practice it is not a Christian.

"But be doers of the word, and not only hearers, deluding your own selves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man beholding his natural face in a mirror; for he sees himself, and goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. But he who looks into the perfect law, the law of freedom, and continues, not being a hearer who forgets but a doer of the word, this man will be blessed in what he does. If anyone among you thinks himself to be religious while he doesn't bridle his tongue, but deceives his heart, this man's religion is worthless. Pure religion and undefiled before our God and Father is this: to care for the orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained by the world." (James 1:22-27)

Which one are you?

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