The Great Commission or the World?

When you`ve had a stroke you have a lot of time to sit back and think. Being back in New Brunswick I had a chance to go back to my old stomping grounds and I realized that my preaching has been ineffective. People still love the world more than they love Jesus. The so-called Great Commission` (this is what we call it)  has been badly misinterpreted. We always forget that Jesus said, `Go and make disciples, teaching them to obey everything I taught you.`Therefore, the teachings of Jesus are very important. How come we don`t take Jesus more seriously? We are more concerned with the accuracy of the Nicene Creed than the Great Commission. Why don`t more Christians DO what Jesus commanded us to do? Why am I always coming up against Christians who think that faith alone is just fine? Even demons have that kind of faith. Being baptized and going to church is not enough. We must take Jesus seriously. Being a Christian means `little Christ.`Therefore we should be Jesus to the world. If what they see, meaning the world, is love of TV, love of worldly affections, then we are not little Christs. Christians need to reflect the values of their Messiah. St. John himself says that to love the world is to hate God. So should we not take Jesus seriously…

Listening in a world of anxiety

Who do we listen to if we don’t listen to Jesus? Jesus preached Leviticus 26 – horrible curses – “and you will flee when no one is pursuing you.”

A world of anxiety, a world of loss and need, when there isn’t enough bread.

Knowing this, the Russian martyrs said to their murderers, “Kill us now, but do not break God’s law further.”

You will eat and not be satisfied – the Russians stood in bread lines following the Revolution.

Jesus preached this, “I shall take away the bread that supports you,” in preaching the Way of the law. Is God not taking away the bread now?

Land lies fallow, the farmers having left for cities, and it becomes wilderness. Crops grown to feed people are replaced with crops to make into non-food. Where will we get bread?

We are not excused from the Law just because we follow Christ. He came to fulfill the Law; the Anglican Church affirmed this in Article VIII of the Articles of Religion.

Modern people are beset by the sin exemplified in Leviticus 25 and 26, yet we pay no attention.

Still Pondering…

…about a new post.

New post coming…

I will be back to posting again soon, as I make my recovery and find the time and energy to do so. Thanks for your prayers. (I had a stroke.)

Name Change…

After 4 years of prayer, discernment, study, wrestling with demons, identifying notions, following leads and many discussions, I have taken the plunge. After dressing plain and defending the Anabaptist ethos in and to the Anglican church here in Canada, after many debates and answering questions like “why do you wear that black hat?” and “Are you Mennonite?” amongst others I have decided to follow my heart and my Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ and become a Quaker.

I feel an afinity with those that have wrestled with the Anglican church and found themselves outside the pale. After many disagreements and being totally and completely ignored and shunned by the heirarchy of the church that ordained me I now find myself in the company of people like George Fox and Menno Simons, John and Charles Wesley and William Penn and the many, many Anabaptist martyrs who sacrificed thier lives for the Truth and did not give in to the powers of the state churches that could not or refused to see the errors of thier ways.

My wife and I will now move forward, continue our ministry at the Farmer’s Market and gather in like minded folk who want to take the teachings of Jesus as found in the Gospels seriously. People who want real community and simplicity of living. People who want to renounce the false gods of the world and all the pomp, ceremony and status that goes with it and embrace a church that finds as it’s example the early church of the Book of Acts.

Would you come with us too?…

Taking things literally…

One thing that I find interesting about modern man is our insistence on always being right. Even in the face of overwhelming evidence we tend to only believe what we want to. Even when our position is self-evidently false, we still want to think that we are right. The true meaning of having an “open mind” is that we be willing to change our position when confronted by sufficient evidence to the contrary. To be willing to change your mind in order to conform to objective reality. Now before you start squirming that I am about to embark on a long philosophical diatribe on epistemology, don’t fret! My wife, Magdalena, has her “rock routine” when a discussion of reality comes up. She simply insists that the rock is real if it causes pain. So far no-one has taken up the challenge that if they are hit with a rock, no pain will occur.

On the other hand, Christians still want to interpret the scriptures in order to suit themselves. We want the universe to run the way we want it to run and not the way God originally set it up. So we take the words of Jesus and twist them to aid our particular theological position. Take the institutional church. Any one will do – Roman Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran or you name it.The only institutional church to take the words of Jesus seriously is the Eastern Orthodox. They still teach orthopraxis as well as orthodoxy. They insist that we take the teaching of Jesus as found in the Gospels seriously. And instead of philosophizing about Jesus, they take His words literally. Read the Eastern Saints. You will find that they insisted we follow the teaching of Jesus no matter how hard that might be. And before you tell me that it’s OK for the Saints to do that, we’re not expected to, think again. We are all called by virtue of our baptism to live as Christ taught. The Anabaptists called the reformation Church to DO what Jesus said, not just be good intellectual assenters. As one Christian put it, are you a “Mountie” or a “Christian”? A “Mountie” is a person that greatly admires the Sermon on the Mount. A “Christian” is a person that takes the Sermon on the Mount as a clarion call to right living. The sermon is taken in it’s literal and literary sense. Not to the point of chopping off hands, but to the point that the Kingdom of God becomes THE most important thing in a person’s life.

So…. are you a Mountie… or a Christian?

Accommodation…

is such a nice word. It conjures up images in the mind of luxury hotels and hanging out by the pool and catching a few rays. It rings quite loudly of the Christian virtue of hospitality, of being made to feel at home… to feel comfortable and well fed. It’s a warm, fuzzy kind of word that smacks of happiness. Something your travel agent will look after for you and do it rather well. At the end of a very hard and tiring day you just want a good accommodation with a warm, cozy bed that will allow you to “sleep in” in the morning.

But let me suggest that the word “accommodation” can have a negative aspect to it as well. Planned properly, this type of thing could take you off your guard and make you complacent. The scriptures are always talking about “being sober” and keeping watch for the devil that prowls around like a lion always ready to pounce on some unsuspecting prey. One of the best tactics of the Evil One is subtlety. And the World is nothing if not subtle.

The Church has always had to be “on guard” against the flesh, the world and the Devil. But it seems to me that in the last 40 years or so, at least in the Anglican Church, Christians have been very eager to “accommodate” the world. At one time the Church understood that She was to be the example to the world on what it meant to act as human beings. While I don’t want to ignore all the horrible things the church has done throughout history in the name of God, we all know that those things occurred as a result of human selfishness and greed and not because of following in the footsteps of the Master. We speak of a “slippery slope” in philosophy. It is the slope of negative influence that, once started, continues to degrade to a most undesired conclusion.

We have seen the result of one such slippery slope in Quakerism. I have trouble understanding how you can get from a movement firmly grounded in the excellent ideals of Anabaptism and the energy of a George Fox and his desire to take Jesus seriously and follow Him as best he could with the help of the Holy Spirit to the modern Liberal Quaker attitude that you don’t even have to be a Christian to be a Quaker. One Liberal Quaker was overheard saying that “the sooner we get George Fox outta here, the better!” The next step, apparently,  is to get Jesus outta here too. While Conservative Quakers maintain their Book of Discipline and the desire to be a “peculiar people” grounded in the Gospel and obeying the commandments of Jesus and trying  to live out the Sermon on the Mount, Liberal Quakers have embraced the Universalist movement which is nothing but Politically Correct Deism dressed up in an inclusivist umbrella that chants that horrible secular mantra “It’s All Good!”

It’s time for Christians to stand up and be counted. It’s time for Christians to live the way Jesus commanded us to live and not to “water down” the Faith in order to “accommodate” the world. You know that a church is just a business when the only concern is getting bums in the pews so we can keep the building open. Why does the Church want to accommodate the world when St. John tells us that if we have the love of the world then the love of God is not in us. It’s time to STOP accommodating the world and START preaching the Gospel. We need to be on our knees in prayer asking God to forgive us of our wayward mistakes and help us to be an example of the Christian life that brings honour and glory to our Lord. We need to eliminate the passions of our human nature and put on the whole armour of God. (see Ephesians 6: 10-20).

The time is short. No more excuses. No more accommodations. Always preach the Gospel. Use words if you really have to.

A Grand Design…

When I was a much younger man I had ambitions of being an Astrophysicist. I attended the University of Toronto and studied Astronomy, Mathematics and Physics. I have always had a great love of the sciences. At the age of thirteen I was a member of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada and attended the lectures and meetings on Friday evenings at the Planetarium in Toronto. I was not a Christian in those days and didn’t have much respect for people who would place their trust in some invisible God that allowed too much evil to exist. 

They say that of all the hard sciences, physicists are the most open minded. I don’t know if that is true, but there are quite a number of them that are decidedly Christian. I read about some of their conversion experiences while at U of T and even considered taking some theology courses to see if Christianity could actually have a rational side. I was becoming more and more curious about the Faith. But I kept a safe distance from churches and especially anyone wearing a collar. During my first year at university I worked hard at keeping an open mind about Christianity, God and Jesus.

It happened on a bright, sunny winter morning. I went to my 2nd year Quantum Physics class early. The lecture that day was going to be about “Nearest Neighbour Interactions”. That’s just a fancy way of talking about the behaviour of electrons in copper wires. Because we were specialists, the mathematics describing said behaviour had to be derived from first principles. The professor began to fill the first of four boards with nothing but math. I followed him intently, sipping my coffee and trying not to get lost in the Greek symbols. Then, after what seemed an eternity, the prof wrote the final equation on a fresh blackboard. It sat there, white on black, the most elegant formula I have ever seen in my life! I don’t know how long I sat there staring at it with slack jaw. It was absolutely beautiful! It was one of those ineffable experiences that was deeply spiritual to the core. As I became aware again of my surroundings there was a sentence looping around in my mind. “There IS a God!” was swirling through my consciousness. 

Einstein was surprised that humans were capable of describing the universe in mathematical terms. I came to realize that mathematics was not just the language of physics but it was also the language used by a Creator to communicate with us about how He built the universe and continues to sustain it. I began to study the concept of the Big Bang with more vigour. I was deeply curious about the mystery of not just the origin of the universe but the origin of life on Earth. I have a great dislike for the Darwinian theory of Evolution. Suffice it to say that that theory doesn’t work no matter how much Richard Dawkins wants it to. Two books in particular have shaped my own conclusions about our origins: The first written by Frank Tippler called, The Physics of Christianity and secondly The Science of God by Gerald Schroeder.

I’m not going to take you through all the fascinating science that demonstrates that if the universe itself was not “fine tuned” right from the beginning, life on Earth would not exist. But I would like you to read for yourself the great science behind the Intelligent Design theory. What I would like you to consider is a small part of that design that I discovered for my self.

Jesus is described as the Church’s Bridegroom. Therefore, the Church is His Bride. At the end of the age we are promised a wonderful wedding feast. So, for now, the Church is betrothed to Jesus. The Church and Jesus are engaged, so to speak. The scriptures tell us that near the end of the age there will be great signs in the sky. Now, what does a future groom give to a future bride? An engagement ring of course! Usually a beautiful diamond ring.

During a solar eclipse, the moon moves in front of the sun and blocks out the sunlight to a certain area of the Earth. A Total Solar Eclipse actually lays a path of darkness along a region of the earth. Now, think about the sizes of the sun and moon. The sun could hold a million earths. The moon is only one sixth the size of earth. But because of the relative distances of those objects from the earth, from where we stand they appear to be the same size! Just coincidence? Read on. At certain points in the moon’s orbit, the moon appears to be exactly the same size as the sun. If a total solar eclipse occurs during this time there is a very definite path across the earth from which the sun is completely and perfectly blocked out. At other times the moon is closer to the earth so during the total eclipse, instead of perfect darkness a slight ring of light is seen surrounding the moon. But here’s the cool part. Because the moon has mountains and valleys then sometimes during totality, sunlight will stream through a valley and instead of a nice smooth ring, you will have a brilliant spot of light at a single point. Astronomers call this the “diamond ring effect”! So every once in a while a very unlikely event occurs and God shows us His promise of a marriage by displaying His beautiful engagement ring for us to marvel at. Random process? Fortuitous coincidence?… God’s future promise!

What about the T.V.??

In my last post I talked a little bit about T.V. and the way it has changed. I don’t need to quote the myriad articles that have been written about the horrible side-effects that watching T.V. has on all of us. My favorite nick-name for the T.V. , that I got from, Ference Mate, the author of A Resonable Life, is the mind-numbing machine. There are so many passages in the New Testament that would indicate that Christians should not be T.V. watchers that my whole post could be nothing but NT quotes. St. John and St. Paul were outstanding in their admonition that the Christian ought not to be worldly. St. Paul tells us that Christians should not “conform to the things of this world”, (Rm 12:2).

Let’s take a good look at that word “Conform”. According the the Internet famous Wikipedia ”Conformity is the process by which an individuals attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors are influenced by other people. This influence occurs in both small groups and society as a whole, and it may be the result of subtle unconscious influences, or direct and overt social pressure. Conformity also occurs by the “implied presence” of others, or when other people are not actually present. For example, people tend to follow the norms of society when eating or watching television, even when they are at home by themselves.”

If we agree that Jesus not only came to redeem us from sin but also to be THE exemplar of what it means to be truly human, then we, as Christians or “little Christs”, need to conform to the image of God that we were meant to be and not become more and more the image of a very sinful world. Watching T.V. can be O.K. if you use it to get the news and weather and learn how to tile a bathroom, but there is still the sinister presence of the advertiser, lurking around the corner and pouncing on you and demanding that you buy something you don’t need every eight minutes or so. 

The amount of stuff that passes for programming today can only be categorized as the glorification of the passions. Human beings are sinful and it seems that the media in general and T.V. in particular wants to practice the ancient art of sophistry. In other words, T.V. wants to make the worst into the best. Hollywood and everyday slang wants to make evil good and good evil. (This was predicted in the bible BTW). Just listen to a group of guys admiring their buddy’s new car. “That car is really SICK!!” The first time I heard this type of slang it took me by surprise. I get it now, but why do we have to change the language in such an inappropriate way?

The Philokalia is a collection of writings of various saints dating from the 4th to about the 15th century A.D. Saint Peter of Damaskos compiled a list of the passions and this list is preserved for us in the writings of the Philokalia. Now remember, these things called the passions are the basically the seven deadly sins unpacked. If you examine the sin of Pride, for instance, there will be a bunch of related emotions that lead to the big one called Pride. The Fathers of the Church urges each Christian, with the help and assistance of the Holy Spirit, to destroy the passions within us and increase in the virtues. So, here goes. It’s a long list but well worth looking at:

The passions are: harshness, trickery, malice, perversity, mindlessness, licentiousness, enticement, dullness, lack of understanding, idleness, sluggishness, stupidity, flattery, silliness, idiocy, madness, derangement, coarseness, rashness, cowardice, lethargy, dearth of good actions, moral errors, greed, over-frugality, ignorance, folly, spurious knowledge, forgetfulness, lack of discrimination, obduracy, injustice, evil intention, a conscienceless soul, slothfulness, idle chatter, breaking of faith, wrongdoing, sinfulness, lawlessness, criminality, passion, seduction, assent to evil, mindless coupling, demonic provocation, dallying, bodily comfort beyond what is required, vice, stumbling, sickness of soul, enervation, weakness of intellect, negligence, laziness, a reprehensible despondency, disdain of God, aberration, transgression, unbelief, lack of faith, wrong belief, poverty of faith, heresy, fellowship in heresy, polytheism, idolatry, ignorance of God, impiety, magic, astrology, divination, sorcery, denial of God, the love of idols, dissipation, profligacy, loquacity, indolence, self-love, inattentiveness, lack of progress, deceit, delusion, audacity, witchcraft, defilement, the eating of unclean food, soft living, dissoluteness, voracity, unchastity, avarice, anger, dejection, listlessness, self-esteem, pride, presumption, self-elation, boastfulness, infatuation, foulness, satiety, doltishness, torpor, sensuality, over-eating, gluttony, insatiability, secret eating, hoggishness, solitary eating, indifference, fickleness, self-will, thoughtlessness, self-satisfaction, love of popularity, ignorance of beauty, uncouthness, gaucherie, lightmindedness, boorishness, rudeness, contentiousness, quarrelsomeness, abusiveness, shouting, brawling, fighting, rage, mindless desire, gall, exasperation, giving offence, enmity, meddlesomeness, chicanery, asperity, slander, censure, calumny, condemnation, accusation, hatred, railing, insolence, dishonour, ferocity, frenzy, severity, aggressiveness, forswearing oneself, oathtaking, lack of compassion, hatred of one’s brothers, partiality, patricide, matricide, breaking fasts, laxity, acceptance of bribes, theft, rapine, jealousy, strife, envy, indecency, jesting, vilification, mockery, derision, exploitation, oppression, disdain of one’s neighbour, flogging, making sport of others, hanging, throttling, heartlessness, implacability, covenant-breaking, bewitchment, harshness, shamelessness, impudence, obfuscation of thoughts, obtuseness, mental blindness, attraction to what is fleeting, impassionedness, frivolity, disobedience, dullwittedness, drowsiness of soul, excessive sleep, fantasy, heavy drinking, drunkenness, uselessness, slackness, mindless enjoyment, self-indulgence, venery, using foul language, effeminacy, unbridled desire, burning lust, masturbation, pimping, adultery, sodomy, bestiality, defilement, wantonness, a stained soul, incest, uncleanliness, pollution, sordidness, feigned affection, laughter, jokes, immodest dancing, clapping, improper songs, revelry, fluteplaying, license of tongue, excessive love of order, insubordination, disorderliness, reprehensible collusion, conspiracy, warfare, killing, brigandry, sacrilege, illicit gains, usury, wiliness, grave-robbing, hardness of heart, obloquy, complaining, blasphemy, fault-finding, ingratitude, malevolence, contemptuousness, pettiness, confusion, lying, verbosity, empty words, mindless joy, daydreaming, mindless friendship, bad habits, nonsensicality, silly talk, garrulity, niggardliness, depravity, intolerance, irritability, affluence, rancour, misuse, ill-temper, clinging to life, ostentation, affectation, pusillanimity, satanic love, curiosity, contumely, lack of the fear of God, unteachability, senselessness, haughtiness, self-vaunting, self-inflation, scorn for one’s neighbour, mercilessness, insensitivity, hopelessness, spiritual paralysis, hatred of God, despair, suicide, a falling away from God in all things, utter destruction — altogether 298 passions.

Now, I don’t supply this list to make anyone feel bad and some of the terms are old and need some contextualization but I ask you this… Think about the movies and T.V. shows that you have watched in the last 6 months and identify as many of these passions as you can. Is Hollywood glorifying God or the baseless perversity of human beings? Remember my little anagram from the last post called G.I.G.O.? Garbage in – Garbage out. 99% of T.V. is simply garbage that you really don’t want conforming you to it’s ways. The example of Jesus is what we are to conform to. St. Francis told us to “preach the Gospel always, use words if you really have to.”

What’s my solution? Have a competition in your neighbourhood. Arrange with your municipality to set aside a day where people can set up catapults on the side of the road facing the local dump or landfill.  Invite the neighbours to bring out their T.V. sets and see who can fire the mind-numbing machine the farthest. Offer prizes for the number of T.V.’s brought to the event by one family, the longest shot and the biggest T.V. fired that day. Have a Bar-B-Q and get to know your neighbours. Hire clowns for the kids and show them how much fun you can have liberating yourself from a life-sapping addiction. Then celebrate your T.V.less house by playing a family game… as long as it’s not something that will inflame the passions… 1,2,3…

FIRE!!!!

Can I Have a Menu??

In the baptismal rite of the Anglican church one of the questions that is put to the candidate or the candidate’s sponsors is the following: Do you renounce the world, the flesh and the Devil? In today’s environmentally conscience world it is not unusual to hear someone ask at prep classes, “But if God created the world and pronounced it good why do we have to renounce it?” It must be remembered that the “world” in this context is the political and social values systems that we impose on each other. It is NOT the planet earth or the stars or the trees or birds or anything God Himself has made. The world that John talks about in his gospel is the human made social systems that so often have the bad habit of benefiting those at the top while the great majority go without the bare necessities of life.

One of the values that the world imposes on us is CHOICE. People seem to have this obsessive need to be able to CHOOSE from amongst a huge offering of similar goods. I can remember years ago, when I would eat out more than I should have, looking through the menu and having real trouble making up my mind what I was going to eat. The wait staff would always come back too soon and I felt compelled to make my choice and get on with it. Then when the food came I would see what others had ordered  and I would think to myself, “Man, I should have had that. That looks great!”

My daughter, when she was a pre-teen, had a terrible time at the store. She would come with me to put gas in the car and at the counter she would see the veritable smorgasbord of candy and ask me if she could buy something. I would tell her to pick something out and then I would have to stand at the cash and wait for fifteen minutes while she made up her mind. It was mildly annoying.

Then I started paying attention to the huge number of “menus” that were beginning to pop up all around me. They were literally everywhere! When I was a kid you had a dial on the TV that went from channel 2 to 13. That was it! 2 to 13, and you never got all 12 stations! You were lucky if 5 came in clearly, most were covered in snow. You never had TV in the wee hours of the morning. Most stations signed off the air at 11pm and signed on again at 7am. My how times have changed! Now you can subscribe to satellite TV and get a “menu” of 500 or more channels 24 hours a day. Just sit in a room with someone that has satellite and a remote! They never just select a station and watch a show. The TV is constantly skipping through a myriad of channels and nothing ever sits still. If the camera isn’t “floating” around everywhere, then the background is so busy you don’t know what to look at with ticker tapes rushing across the bottom of the screen. It’s enough to cause you to run screaming from the room. And with all that choice the quality of programming has taken a huge nosedive. Most of TV today is covered in nothing but absolute trash – garbage! It reminds me of the scene from that old Beatles movie where people are willing to swim in a cesspool just to retrieve the paper money floating on the surface – disgusting! In the 70’s computer programmers using the BASIC language had a great saying about it. It was called GIGO. It stands for: Garbage In – Garbage Out. Just as St. Paul told us to think on those things that are lovely and useful and excellent so we should be careful what we put into our heads…

Take a look around. The menus are everywhere. The culture demands it. Want a cell phone? Well, we have 150 to choose from. Want a car? Lots of manufacturers and dealers around and even more used cars that you can shake a stick at. Want a chainsaw. Go see you local dealer. He’s got 20 to 25 to choose from. What’s the purpose of all this choice? It is certainly NOT to make life easier. How do you ever make up your mind? And that’s the whole point! With so much to choose from you never know if you made the RIGHT choice. It is designed to keep us discontented and always second guessing what we bought. “Maybe I should have bought the red one, I’m bored with this green one” It is the brilliant devil-child of Madison Ave. It keeps you coming back for more. That’s how we have such a clutter problem in North America. We have way too much stuff because there is way too much choice!

My solution is simple. Rent a dumpster. Purge your life of all the crap that has accumulated over the years. Then, when you actually need something new…    shop at Nicholas’s NO CHOICE store. I plan to open a chain of them.

Need a new shirt? Step this way! I have one style in one colour. Socks? Got a special this week on white sports socks. Nope, no red ones. White only. One kind each of a sensible variety of products that takes all the second guessing and pain out of decision making. I have no evil menu here. NO CHOICE. Get what you need and only what you need without the worry and anxiety. Shoes? Absolutely! Men’s sizes 8 to 13…  Black…  Just one style.