There are several faith related issues that I’ve found clumsy to explain as I try to span the difference between my current faith and worldview and that of Bible believing American evangelicals I have known and loved while living in the southwest.
The next few entries will be short summaries of my thinking and influential books regarding topics I have changed my mind about....
John Wesley taught us that there is previenient grace, salvific grace, and sanctifying grace. God chases after us and loves us before we love Him. He forgives our sins and allows us unmediated audience with Him. And He prunes our bad habits and makes us holy day by day.
Showing posts with label kingdom of god. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kingdom of god. Show all posts
Friday, March 2, 2012
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
A rambling
Regrettably, I have not subjected the internet crawlers to my barely-formed-thoughts in months.
Here's one:
Around here there are folks who like to talk about "primitivism" - it's sort of like an anarchy system... well actually, that's the anarcho-primitivists who predict a collapse of society as we know it. They're planning, or at least thinking about what the future will look like when we no longer have sufficient oil, or maybe even electricity. When our trucks of food stop hauling from California, and our military/ government/ corporations suffer an uprising of some kind. When that "collapse" happens, people will have to figure out some other way of living. Frankly I have not given this much meditation. But the critique of an unsustainable westernized method of society destroying itself does sort of ring true. (Right?)
The primitivist part is pretty interesting, though. This has to do with hunter-gatherer societies. You know, pre-contact indigenous groups from six continents have managed to live for thousands of years prior to the introduction of farming, steel, guns, slavery, banks, credit, satellites, wide-screened TV's and democracy.
(That's my introduction...)
I read a book called Ishmael some time ago (you can find it at the library) and there are some good bits in this little novel about takers and leavers. Takers hoard and store up more than they need. They have power, because they have big piles of stuff. They take from the earth, and they take from other groups when they want to. Leavers are people who gather what they need and no more. Leavers try not to impose on other groups, and they trust that tomorrow there will be enough. Hunter-gatherers are leavers, while the agrarian and the banker are takers.
Western people like you and me - modern and post-modern thinkers like you and me, we have walls that quickly go up around this issue. "Those savages all died off of curable diseases. What do I stand to learn from them?" "Thank God for progress." These arguments come from my head too. But if you just take a second to think about our Judeao-Christian creation story; our stories of origin might be a little more heavy on the leaver life values than those of the taker. Why was Abel's sacrifice accepted and Cain's not? What was the Garden like? How did the Israelites eat in the wilderness? What happened when they gathered too much? What did God want them to know about Himself in that?
Lately I have been hearing how, in the sermon on the Mount, Jesus was reminding his audience that God wants them to live like their ancestors did in the wilderness. When Jesus says not to store up treasures on earth, that isn't a new teaching - it was a reminder. The fool is he who builds more barns to store up his excess. Blessed are the ones who live hand-to-mouth.
Did anyone read all this? Leave me a comment! Thanks... oh, and there is always more. Read this from my friend Ric...
Here's one:
Around here there are folks who like to talk about "primitivism" - it's sort of like an anarchy system... well actually, that's the anarcho-primitivists who predict a collapse of society as we know it. They're planning, or at least thinking about what the future will look like when we no longer have sufficient oil, or maybe even electricity. When our trucks of food stop hauling from California, and our military/ government/ corporations suffer an uprising of some kind. When that "collapse" happens, people will have to figure out some other way of living. Frankly I have not given this much meditation. But the critique of an unsustainable westernized method of society destroying itself does sort of ring true. (Right?)
The primitivist part is pretty interesting, though. This has to do with hunter-gatherer societies. You know, pre-contact indigenous groups from six continents have managed to live for thousands of years prior to the introduction of farming, steel, guns, slavery, banks, credit, satellites, wide-screened TV's and democracy.
(That's my introduction...)
I read a book called Ishmael some time ago (you can find it at the library) and there are some good bits in this little novel about takers and leavers. Takers hoard and store up more than they need. They have power, because they have big piles of stuff. They take from the earth, and they take from other groups when they want to. Leavers are people who gather what they need and no more. Leavers try not to impose on other groups, and they trust that tomorrow there will be enough. Hunter-gatherers are leavers, while the agrarian and the banker are takers.
Western people like you and me - modern and post-modern thinkers like you and me, we have walls that quickly go up around this issue. "Those savages all died off of curable diseases. What do I stand to learn from them?" "Thank God for progress." These arguments come from my head too. But if you just take a second to think about our Judeao-Christian creation story; our stories of origin might be a little more heavy on the leaver life values than those of the taker. Why was Abel's sacrifice accepted and Cain's not? What was the Garden like? How did the Israelites eat in the wilderness? What happened when they gathered too much? What did God want them to know about Himself in that?
Lately I have been hearing how, in the sermon on the Mount, Jesus was reminding his audience that God wants them to live like their ancestors did in the wilderness. When Jesus says not to store up treasures on earth, that isn't a new teaching - it was a reminder. The fool is he who builds more barns to store up his excess. Blessed are the ones who live hand-to-mouth.
Did anyone read all this? Leave me a comment! Thanks... oh, and there is always more. Read this from my friend Ric...
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