#and praying effectively in the way Jesus did. His unique perspective

[hieromonkcharbel]

Jesus Christ: Priest and Victim

by Msgr. Arthur B. Calkins

I. The Mystery of Mediation

An attentive study of God's revelation to us in both the old dispensation and the new discloses that God chooses to deal with his people through certain men whom he designates to represent him to them and to represent them before him. We might describe this as the "mystery of mediation". After the sin of our first parents, which was subsequently to be multiplied billions of times over by the personal sins of all their descendants, the Old Testament shows us numerous instances in which a representative is designated by God himself to intercede on behalf of his people in order that God's wrath, stirred up on account of their sins, might be turned away from them and that his people may receive instead his blessings. Among the many instances, "the prayer of Moses becomes the most striking example of intercessory prayer, which will be fulfilled in 'the one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus'."1 The Catechism of the Catholic Church adroitly sketches the role of Moses as mediator:

From this intimacy with the faithful God, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, Moses drew strength and determination for his intercession. He does not pray for himself but for the people whom God made his own. Moses already intercedes for them during the battle with the Amalekites and prays to obtain healing for Miriam. But it is chiefly after their apostasy that Moses 'stands in the breach' before God in order to save the people. 2

The priests, prophets and kings of the Old Testament, each according to his particular office, all shared in this role of mediation. In varied circumstances and with an ever clearer manifestation of God's plan these chosen mediators reveal to us both (1) the divine dispensation of mediation which God established in order to show mercy to his people and (2) at the same time the provisional role of this mediation.

A. Priestly Mediation

We have already alluded to the fact that most probably the greatest of all the mediatorial figures of the Old Testament was Moses, the lawgiver, who in a certain sense combines in himself the categories of prophet, priest and king. Functioning in a priestly perspective, he offered sacrifice (cf. Ex. 24) and was empowered by God to "ordain" his brother Aaron high priest (cf. Ex. 29). In the course of time it eventually became established that it was exclusively the priest who offered sacrifice to God on behalf of the people and through whom the bounty of God was dispensed to them.3 Here is how the eminent Dominican theologian, Father Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, sketched the divine institution of priestly mediation:

To accomplish the exterior and social worship due to God, the priestly mediation must both ascend to Him and descend from Him. Man, being composed of soul and body, owes God both interior and exterior worship, and living by nature in society, owes Him, too, social worship, God being no less the author and benefactor of human society than of our soul and body. We need the priest to bind into a single whole the prayers of all the people, to unify their acts of adoration, of praise, and of reparation, and to make up for the imperfection of the acts of the faithful. His sanctity, that is, his special consecration to the Lord for this purpose, makes him capable of offering the prayers of the people to God as an expression of their whole soul.

The priest is no less necessary to bring to the people the things of God, divine light and grace, without human alteration or adulteration.4

B. Sacrifice

While the duties of the priest in the Old Testament included a number of functions related to the sanctuary,5 by far their most important function was to offer sacrifice. Because this was also true for the priests of many pagan religions, it would be possible to approach the question of sacrifice from the perspective of comparative religion and philosophy as well as from that of the Old and New Testaments and of Christian theology.6 We follow here the descriptions developed by Monsignor Antonio Piolanti, abstracting from the biblical, philosophical and theological data.

Sacrifice, which constitutes the supreme act of external and public worship, may be defined as the offering and immolation to God of something sensible (fruits, liquids, animals) in order to recognize his absolute lordship and in order to atone for sin. Sacrifice, consequently, has two aspects: one material and sensible because it is an external and public act; the other internal and spiritual because in order to have an effective moral value it must be motivated by a spiritual and intimate content. The offering especially of something living such as fruits and, even more, animals and then the consequent immolation or destruction of these offerings is the counterbalance to the creative act of God. As God has given life to all things, man symbolically restores life back to him. Particularly in the immolation to God of a victim such as a lamb, a goat, a calf or a bull through the mediation of a priest, man expresses his total dependence and dedication to God. The ultimate end of the sacrifice is the mystical union of man with his God.7

Let us listen to Garrigou-Lagrange comment on the offering of sacrifice:

The twofold priestly mediation takes place especially in sacrifice, the offering of the sacrifice forming the ascending mediation, and the sharing of the victim offered with the faithful by communion forming the descending mediation. Just as the priesthood constitutes the pre-eminent sacred function, so sacrifice, as its name indicates, forms the pre-eminent sacred action. Without sacrifice, no priesthood; without the priesthood, no sacrifice; for sacrifice supposes an offering priest and an offered victim.8

C. The Shedding of Blood

The pre-eminent way of atoning for sin in both ancient pagan religions and also in the Old Testament always involved the shedding of blood. Here is a fascinating analysis of the rationale for this from the late Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen:

Pagan people, without knowing it explicitly, sensed the truth that "unless blood is shed, there can be no remission of sins" (Heb. 9:22). From the earliest times, through the kings and priests, they offered animals, and sometimes even humans, to turn away the anger of the gods. As in the Levitical priesthood, however, the victim was always separate from the priest. The sacrifice was a vicarious one, the animal representing and taking the place of the guilty humans, who thus sought to expiate their guilt in the shedding of blood.

But why, it may be asked, did the pagans, without the help of revelation, reach the conclusion expressed by St. Paul under Divine inspiration that "without the shedding of blood there was no remission of sins"? The answer is that it is not hard for anyone who ponders on sin and guilt to recognize: first, that sin is in the blood; and second, that life is in the blood, so that the shedding of blood expresses appropriately the truth that human life is unworthy to stand before the face of God.9

While it was clear that God required an acceptable reparation in order to restore man to his friendship, it also became clear to the thoughtful man of the Old Testament that no mere man could ever definitively "breach the chasm" which sin had caused between God and his creatures. As the inspired author of the Letter to the Hebrews tells us:

Since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices which are continually offered year after year, make perfect those who draw near. Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered? If the worshipers had once been cleansed, they would no longer have any consciousness of sin. But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sin year after year. For it is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins (Heb. 10:1-4).

Sin, an offense against the infinite God, in effect required a reparation which man, left to his own devices, remained incapable of making. No mere human creature could really succeed in mediating between God and his people except in incomplete and partial ways which could, at best, foreshadow the full, complete and definitive mediation which was needed.

II. Jesus the Perfect Mediator

At the very heart of the mystery of our redemption is the fact that Jesus Christ is the "one mediator between God and men ... who gave himself as a ransom for all" (I Tim. 2:5-6). Why is Jesus the unique and perfect mediator? This affirmation from the new Catechism provides us with the fundamental elements needed to formulate a response:

No man, not even the holiest, was ever able to take on himself the sins of all men and offer himself as a sacrifice for all. The existence in Christ of the divine person of the Son, who at once surpasses and embraces all human persons, and constitutes himself as the Head of all mankind, makes possible his redemptive sacrifice for all.10

One with God in his divinity, Jesus is at the same time one with man in his humanity.11 In his divine person he unites the two natures of the two parties who had become separated by man's sin: he represents God to man and man to God. As the Word who is one with the Father from all eternity, the Son is not a mediator, but he becomes one from the moment he begins to take flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary.

A. Jesus the Priest

The position of being a mediator, according to St. Thomas, and indeed, according to the undivided Christian tradition, is in a pre-eminent way exercised by the priest. 12 Indeed, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the inspired author of the Letter to the Hebrews would come to grasp that, even though he was not sprung from the priestly tribe of Levi and never referred to himself explicitly as a priest, 13 Jesus was the perfect high priest who succeeded in bridging the gap between God and his people in a way that no other priest ever could.

Meditating upon this fact, the Fathers of the Church came to an ever deeper appreciation of the fact that precisely by virtue of the Incarnation, Jesus became the perfect mediator, the perfect priest. He was not so from all eternity as the Word coequal to the Father and to the Holy Spirit, but only from the time when he took on our human nature. 14

We can speak, then, of the ontological nature of Jesus' priesthood, that is to say of his being a priest by virtue of his assumption of our human nature. This understanding, in fact, was solemnly defined by the Council of Ephesus in 431. 15

Thus Father Clément Dillenschneider says that

By his union with human nature, the Son of God is ontologically constituted the Sovereign Priest of humanity, and God the Father recognizes him as such in the mystery of the Incarnation. As Son of God made flesh, he is priest forever, according to the order of Melchisedec, although the consummation of his priesthood was attained only after the sacrifice on the cross (Heb. 5:9-10).16

One with the Father from all eternity, Jesus became one with us in an irrevocable way at the moment of Mary's fiat, hence by virtue of the hypostatic union. Garrigou-Lagrange puts it thus: He [Jesus] is a priest, therefore, because of the Incarnation itself, and His priesthood, like His sanctity, is substantial. God decreed the Incarnation and called Jesus to the priesthood and to His universal mediatorship by one and the same act. 17

B. Jesus, Priest and Victim

I believe that it was the special merit of Archbishop Sheen, in what he described in his autobiography as the third [and last] stage of his life, to have meditated at length on Jesus' priest-victimhood and to have drawn out the implications for Catholic priests of today. 18 Hence it is to him that I turn for another crucial insight into the person of Jesus:

The sin-bearing character of Christ did not begin on the cross. He was not first a Priest and then, during the last three days, a Victim. His Victimhood was never at any one moment divorced from his Priesthood. 19

Whichever way we look at Christ, we never find Divinity isolated from humanity or humanity from Divinity. Neither are priesthood and victimhood ever separated. Arianism would deny Divinity as the new Arianism would deny victimhood.20

Jesus could offer the perfect sacrifice to the Father precisely because he is one with the Father in his Godhead and one with us in our humanity and also because he is uniquely and simultaneously both priest and victim.

Here is the answer as to how Our Lord differs from all the other priests -- pagan and Jewish. All other priests offered a victim distinct from themselves: e.g., a goat, a lamb, a bullock, but Christ offered Himself as a victim. "He offered Himself without blemish to God, a spiritual and eternal sacrifice" (Heb. 9:14).

Everyone else who ever came into this world, came into it to live; He came into it to die. Hemlock juice interrupted the teaching of Socrates. But sacrificial death was the goal of His Life, the gold that He was seeking: "I have a baptism to undergo, and what constraint I am under until the ordeal is over!" (Lk. 12:50).

He is both Offerer and Offered; both Priest and Victim. This deep secret of the Suffering Servant He did not develop in His public utterances, but reserved it for His disciples and future priests. To them alone did He unveil Isaiah 53, and only to them does He interpret His death as vicarious dying for sinners. 21

With his marvelous rhetorical gifts Sheen presents this paradoxical truth that Jesus is simultaneously both priest and victim as if he were slowly revolving an exquisitely cut gem. From every angle we see a different facet which helps us to enter into the mystery from yet another perspective. Permit me to share a lengthy excerpt in which he sets forth his theme and develops it with rare skill.

As a Priest He was sinless: "Which of you can prove me in the wrong?" (Jn. 8:46). "The angel answered: the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the Holy Child to be born will be called Son of God" (Lk. 1:35). "I shall not talk much longer with you, for the prince of this world approaches. He has no rights over Me" (Jn. 14:30). "What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have You come to destroy us? I know Who You are .. the Holy One of God" (Mk. 1:24).

As a Victim He was identified with sinners: "God made Him one with the sinfulness of men, so that in Him we might be made one with the Goodness of God Himself" (2 Cor. 5:21).

As a Priest, He was holy with the Holiness of God;

As a Victim, He was "made sin."

As a Priest He was "separated" from the world;

As a Victim He came into it to fight against the Devil, the Prince of the world.

On the Cross, He was upright as a Priest;

On the Cross, He was prostrate as a Victim.

As a Priest, He mediated with the Father,

As Victim, He mediated for the sins of men.

Before Pilate, He spoke seven times as the Priest- Shepherd;

Before Pilate, He was silent seven times as the Victim-Lamb. As a Priest He has vertical relations with heaven;

As a Victim He has horizontal relations with earth.

As a Priest He had dignity;

As a Victim He suffered indignity.

As a Priest: God is alive;

As a Victim: God is dead.

As a Priest He prays to the Father that the Cup pass;

As a Victim He drinks it to its dregs.

St. Augustine, in his Confessions, interprets it well: Ideo Victor Quia Victima. As the ministry of Christ approached its climax, He more and more insisted that the victory over principalities and powers had to come through His sacrifice and death.

Christ personally was sinless, but He voluntarily bore imputed guilt. If He were only a priest, He would have stopped short of the Cross and the Resurrection. As our Representative, He was found guilty of blasphemy because we blasphemed; at the courts of Annas and Pilate, we sinners were on trial in the person of the Sinless Substitute. Though personally sinless, He was officially guilty. ...

The very sinlessness of His priesthood was the necessary basis of His work of sin-bearing. "Christ was innocent of sin, and yet for our sake God made Him one with the sinfulness of men, so that in Him we might be made one with the goodness of God Himself" (2 Cor. 5:21).22

III. Jesus' Heavenly Priesthood and Victimhood

Now there is another very important aspect of Jesus' priesthood and victimhood which we must consider: the heavenly dimension. In the Letter to the Hebrews, which is our most important source in the New Testament on the priesthood of Jesus, we are informed that

The former priests were many in number, because they were prevented by death from continuing in office: but he [Jesus] holds his priesthood permanently, because he continues for ever. Consequently he is able for all time to save those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them (Heb. 7:23-25).

Since his priesthood began when Christ took on our human nature and that human nature is now at the right hand of the Father in heaven, even so Jesus continues to exercise his priesthood there. This exercise is described in the Letter to the Hebrews in terms of the liturgy performed by the high priest on the annual Day of Atonement, the day which the Lord had appointed for expiating for the sins of Israel.23

In terms of this ritual the Epistle presents an image of Christ the King entering the heavenly sanctuary as a priest. Risen from the dead, he crosses the heavens, "a tent not made by human hands, not of this creation" (Heb. 9:11), that is, the place where God dwells, and he enters definitively the presence of God, the sanctuary (Heb. 9:12). The blood he bears which wins him admission is not the blood of goats or calves but his own blood which has won for us eternal redemption (ibid.). Christ has entered within the veil to the Holy of Holies into the presence of God (Heb. 6:20; 9:3; 10:20). It is in terms of this comparison with the liturgy of Expiations that Hebrews lays more stress on Christ's bearing his blood into the presence of God than on the actual shedding on Calvary. The slaughter outside the tent was secondary in the Jewish ritual; what constituted the sacrifice was the sprinkling of blood in the Holy of Holies. "This is why Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people by his own blood, suffered outside the gate" of Jerusalem (Heb. 13:12). Christians are come "to Jesus the mediator of the new Alliance and to the sprinkling of blood more eloquent than that of Abel" (Heb. 2:24). Evidently, the metaphor is maintained here; what is expressed by the sprinkling of blood is the presence of Christ, body and soul, before the Father, the submission of his humanity to Him and the intercession which he makes for us in virtue of his sacrifice.24

Admittedly, we are dealing with a mystery here. We are not saying that Jesus' death on Calvary was one sacrifice and that in heaven he offers another, that of his blood. We are rather speaking of two phases of the same exercise of his priesthood: the earthly phase and the heavenly one. As St. Paul emphatically states: "Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him" (Rom. 6:9). Yet, by the same token he continues as a priest to intercede for us at the right hand of the Father (cf. Heb. 7:25).25 Here is the way our Holy Father put it in an Angelus address on 13 August 1989:

Jesus is the eternal victim. Risen from the dead and glorified at the right hand of the Father, he preserves in his immortal body the marks of the wounds of his nailed hands and feet, of his pierced heart (cf. Jn. 20:27; Lk. 24:39-40) and presents them to the Father in his incessant prayer of intercession on our behalf (cf. Heb. 7:25; Rom. 8:34).26

In effect, Jesus intercedes by presenting his sacrifice to the Father who never tires of looking upon the wounds of his Son which are now radiant and glorious and by which the fruits of the redemption continue to be applied to us, especially in the Mass and in the sacraments. A. Jesus' Priesthood and Victimhood in the Mass

It is extremely important for us to strive to grasp this heavenly exercise of the priesthood of Christ in order to understand how we continue to benefit in the Mass and the sacraments from the one sacrifice of Jesus. In his ever fascinating manner Archbishop Sheen put it this way:

Using human words to describe Divine things, we can say that each time we offer Mass, Our Lord shows His Heavenly Father the scars in His hands, His feet and His side; for this very reason He kept them. At the Consecration of the Mass, we can imagine Our Lord as saying: "In My Hand I have engraven their hearts. Not for their worthiness, but for My love unto death, grant them graces through the Holy Spirit. My wounds healed, but My scars I kept, that I might always hold them up before Thee, O Father, as pledges of My love. If Thou couldst not strike in justice the sinful people because the uplifted hands of Abraham stood in the way, then shall not My Hands win for them that mercy I won for them on Calvary? I am not just a Sacerdos in æternum; I am a Victima in æternum."27

What the Archbishop expressed in these evocative words is nothing other than a restatement of the Church's traditional teaching on the sacrifice of the Mass. This is exactly what the priest expresses when he prays in the third Eucharist Prayer: "Look with favor on your Church's offering [oblationem], and see the Victim whose death has reconciled us to yourself [Hostiam, cuius voluisti immolatione placari]."

The new Catechism of the Catholic Church presents this doctrine on Christ's state as victim by quoting from the Council of Trent:

The sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of the Eucharist are one single sacrifice: 'The victim is one and the same: the same now offers through the ministry of priests, who then offered himself on the cross; only the manner of offering is different.' 'In this divine sacrifice which is celebrated in the Mass, the same Christ who offered himself once in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross is contained and is offered in an unbloody manner.'28

With particular reference to the separate consecration of the two species of bread and wine, Pius XII had underscored Jesus' state as victim in the Mass in this way in his great Encyclical Mediator Dei:

On the cross Christ offered to God the whole of Himself and His sufferings, and the victim was immolated by a bloody death voluntarily accepted. But on the altar, by reason of the glorious condition of His humanity "death no longer has dominion over Him" (Rom. 6:9), and therefore the shedding of His blood is not possible. Nevertheless, the divine wisdom has devised a way in which our Redeemer's sacrifice is marvellously shown forth by external signs symbolic of death. By the transubstantiation of bread into the body of Christ and of wine into His blood both His body and blood are rendered really present; but the eucharistic species under which He is present symbolise the violent separation of His body and blood, and so a commemorative showing forth of the death which took place in reality on Calvary is repeated in each Mass, because by distinct representations Christ Jesus is signified and shown forth in the state of victim. 29

After the consecration the priest says: "Let us proclaim the mystery of faith." It is precisely this mystery of faith which we have been trying to elucidate and penetrate. In the strict sense it always remains a mystery, something that is beyond the capability of our finite minds to grasp. Even if we don't know the how, we are capable of knowing the what. Jesus, who accomplished his role of priest and victim on the cross, is still priest and victim in heavenly glory and on our altars through the ministry of his priests.

B. Jesus' Priesthood and Victimhood in His Priests

There are surely more ramifications of this central mystery of faith. Here I should like to introduce one more and I will let Archbishop Sheen do it in his own inimitable way.

I was a priest without being a victim. The priest is one who offers to God; the victim is what is offered. In the Old Testament and in all pagan religions, what was offered was something distinct from the priest himself -- a lamb, an ox, a bullock. But when Our Blessed Lord came to this earth He changed all this. He, the Priest, was also the Victim. He did not offer something apart from Himself; He offered Himself. ...

Eventually I came to see that the Lord was teaching me not only to be a priest, but also to be a victim. This explains why two of the books which I authored are on this very subject.

I can remember when, after four months in the hospital, I began to recover; I was reading Mass on an altar constructed over the bed before a few priests and friends. I spontaneously gave a sermon, which I remember so well. I said that I was glad that I had open-heart surgery because when the Lord comes to take us all, He will look to see if we have any marks of the Cross upon ourselves. He will look at our hands to see if they are crucified from sacrificial giving; He will look at our feet to see if they have been thorn-bruised and nail-pierced searching for lost sheep; He will look at our heart to see if that has been opened to receive His Divine Heart. Oh what joy is mine just to have endured the minuscule imitation of His suffering on the Cross by having a wounded side. Maybe He will recognize me from that scar and receive me into His Kingdom.30

Quite evidently Archbishop Sheen considered the beginning of "the third stage" of his life as the point at which he accepted being both priest and victim.31 He doesn't tell us exactly when this occurred, but indicates in the introduction to The Priest is Not His Own, which appeared in 1963, that these thoughts began taking shape while he was writing his Life of Christ. 32 His second book, Those Mysterious Priests, was published in 1974. I have been quoting extensively from these books in this presentation because I believe that they are prophetic works which have a great deal to say about the nature Catholic priesthood. Sheen analyzes as few others, I believe, the malaise which afflicts the priesthood today. He saw the crisis coming over thirty years ago and so devoted the last years of his life to preaching retreats for priests and promoting among them a daily holy hour before the Blessed Sacrament. I will leave to him once again the specific application. He states the premise succinctly:

In the New Testament there is no priesthood without victimhood. In Christ the two were inseparable; therefore, they are united in every priest called to be an Ambassador of Christ. 33

Fulton Sheen was surely not the first to recognize the necessary connection between being a priest of Jesus Christ and a victim with him, but he did underscore this nexus in a particularly striking way with reference to the era in which we live. There are any number of luminous figures in the history of spirituality who exemplify this teaching. One thinks, for instance, of Sylvain-Marie Giraud, the second Superior General of the Missionaries of Our Lady of La Salette, whose masterpiece is considered to be his last work, Jesus Christ Priest and Victim. 34 Again one thinks of Saint Maximilian-Maria Kolbe, who offered one of his Masses his first Christmas as a priest for the intention "pro amore usque ad victimam [for love to the point of becoming a victim"35 and who received the grace requested by giving his life on behalf of another innocent victim.

Further, one might ponder with great profit one of the most important conclusions which the great Sulpician Scripture scholar André Feuillet draws in his classic book, The Priesthood of Christ and His Ministers, which is a sustained meditation on the high priestly prayer of Jesus in chapter 17 of the Gospel of John. This magnificent prayer, Feuillet states,

offers the great advantage, lacking in the letter to the Hebrews, of linking to the consecration of Christ as priest and victim the idea of a participation of the apostles in this consecration. ...

In the priestly prayer of Jesus, the latter makes it clear that he intends to govern, sanctify, and unify his Church through the apostles: to this end he gives them a share in his twofold consecration as priest and victim.36

Granting that Fulton Sheen had personally rediscovered what many before him had also come to understand of the mind of Christ Jesus for his anointed ones, let us allow Sheen to draw out some important ramifications of his discovery which seem particularly pertinent to our postconciliar era:

In continuing the Mediatorial office of Christ, the priest-victim, is to be holy and unholy; holy, because in intimacy with the Father; unholy, because He will never deny His responsibility for the wickedness of men. The basic reason for the confusion in the ministry of Christ in the last few decades has been: the identification of the priesthood with liturgy and ceremony instead of with holiness: and the identification of victimhood with social action rather than with human guilt. The priest was linked with the altar; the victim with poverty exclusively, rather than with human frailty and ignorance and suffering. Once the priesthood no longer meant a vertical relation to the Holiness of God, and the victimhood no longer a horizontal relation to all men who have come short of the glory of God, then the priest was chained in the sanctuary and the victim to the inner city. 37

His final conclusion is this:

The divorce of husband and wife endangers the children; the divorce of priest and victim harms the Church. But once the priest is holy because the Lord is holy, once the priest is victim because the sinless Christ died for sinners, then the wounds of the Church become glorious scars.

[eternal-echoes]

Some differences between Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism

I should first say that they are very similar in the regard that both churches claim to have the fullness of Truth, both have the apostolic succession, and both have the 7 sacraments. In fact, if there are no Catholic Churches nearby, a Catholic can receive communion from an Eastern Orthodox Church. We don’t do it regularly out of respect for them since they don’t believe we should receive theirs. 

So onto the differences: 

Scholasticism vs. Mysticism 

The Roman Catholic Church developed Scholasticism while there is more emphasis on mysticism in the Eastern Orthodox Church. 

Scholasticism is the term used for Medieval philosophy. It starts from the objective fact that God is the ultimate source of Being, the ultimate reality, and rationalizing from there. Formulating arguments for the existence of God by taking note of what we observe from nature and tracing ethics to God as being the source of morality. Scholastic philosophers in the Middle Ages drew heavily from the works of the Ancient Greek philosophers so you would see a lot of them, most notably St. Thomas Aquinas, comment on Aristotle. One criticism I’ve read from an Eastern Orthodox is that this development of rationalism in the Roman Catholic Church is what paved way to the Enlightenment. It’s honestly just a matter of perspective, rationalism is a tool; it can be used for either good or bad. Good in the way of strengthening the explanation in theology, but bad in the way that you just question the belief in God altogether. Rationalizing God as if you can fit in Him in your head. Even then, some skepticism is healthy to be able to dig deeper in the truth. 

This opinion is probably coming from ignorance, but personally, I think the mysticism in the Eastern Orthodoxy relies way too much on tradition. I believe you need rationalism to purify religion of superstitious whims that comes from human imagination. 

While it’s true that Eastern Orthodoxy didn’t change as much as Roman Catholicism, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. To quote Father Angel, “To be human and Christian is to be growing. It is be open to the ongoing inspirations of the Holy Spirit, who deepens our understanding of the Gospel and the Christ Event.” I believe that through all the years of the Church’s existence, the Holy Spirit has been spoon feeding us new ways for us to understand God’s word. Not to say that the Church’s teachings has evolved. Not to say that the Church’s teaching has evolved. Catholic theologians have a specific term for it: development in doctrine. Evolution in doctrine sounds like it has been cut off from its roots. But development in doctrine means that the Church receives her nourishment from her roots. G.K. Chesterton explains this better than I do: 

“When we talk of a child being well-developed, we mean that he has grown bigger and stronger with his own strength; not that he is padded with borrowed pillows or walks on stilts to make him look taller. When we say that a puppy develops into a dog, we do not mean that his growth is a gradual compromise with a cat; we mean that he becomes more doggy and not less. Development is the expansion of all the possibilities and implications of a doctrine, as there is time to distinguish them and draw them out; and the point here is that the enlargement of medieval theology was simply the full comprehension of that theology.”

Nicene Creed 

In the Nicene Creed, the Catholic Church has added the filioque, “and the Son,” while the Eastern Orthodox Church has criticized as for it. The reason why the Catholic Church added it is because: 

246 The Latin tradition of the Creed confesses that the Spirit "proceeds from the Father and the Son (filioque)". the Council of Florence in 1438 explains: "The Holy Spirit is eternally from Father and Son; He has his nature and subsistence at once (simul) from the Father and the Son. He proceeds eternally from both as from one principle and through one spiration... And, since the Father has through generation given to the only-begotten Son everything that belongs to the Father, except being Father, the Son has also eternally from the Father, from whom he is eternally born, that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son." 

248 At the outset the Eastern tradition expresses the Father's character as first origin of the Spirit. By confessing the Spirit as he "who proceeds from the Father", it affirms that he comes from the Father through the Son.77 The Western tradition expresses first the consubstantial communion between Father and Son, by saying that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son (filioque). It says this, "legitimately and with good reason",78 for the eternal order of the divine persons in their consubstantial communion implies that the Father, as "the principle without principle",79 is the first origin of the Spirit, but also that as Father of the only Son, he is, with the Son, the single principle from which the Holy Spirit proceeds.80 This legitimate complementarity, provided it does not become rigid, does not affect the identity of faith in the reality of the same mystery confessed.

- from the Catechism of the Catholic Church. 

One note about the filioque is that this is not included in the Nicene Creed in Eastern Rite Catholic Churches. That’s because the Greek language makes it seem to mean a different meaning. 

Original Sin

The Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church have a different perspective on Original Sin. I’m not an expert on the Eastern Orthodox position but they seem to believe that Original Sin is a flaw. They don’t believe that we inherit Original Sin because it was only our first parents who sinned, and we only inherited the effects of it. Effects being the flaw: weakened will, tendency to sin, and mistake evil for goodness. 

The Catholic Church position is that when Adam sinned, his body became corrupt, and there was no uncorrupted body for us to inherit. The term Original Sin implies guilt, someone did it out of their own free will that made us lost the grace. 

Here’s a better explanation. 

Immaculate Conception

Immaculate Conception is the doctrine that the Blessed Virgin Mother Mary was conceived without Original Sin, unlike the rest of us who have to receive the Sacrament of Baptism to cleanse the Original Sin from us. The reason God designed Mary to be that way is because the vessel for His Son has to be clean. Not to say that the Blessed Virgin Mother Mary did not need saving from Jesus, she did. But hers was unique because it happened beforehand. Jesus’ death still saved her. An analogy to explain this is how you would use a credit card to buy something you don’t have money for yet. You would eventually pay it off with the earned money at a later date. Another way to explain how Mary was saved compare to how we were saved is the two different ways you can save someone from the puddle. One is blocking their way of going to the puddle and one is after the person has slipped into the puddle, you offer your hand so he/she can get out of it. The Blessed Virgin Mother Mary was saved similar to the former, we were saved like the way in the latter. 

The Eastern Orthodox Church do not believe in the Immaculate Conception. There are two reason for this, one is because of what I said earlier, they have a different conception of Original Sin. Since they don’t believe we inherit the Original Sin but only the flaw that comes with it, they also believe Mary was flawed, even though she never personally committed any sin herself. The other reason is that the doctrine of Immaculate Conception has only been recently been promulgated. It wasn’t that the Church didn’t believe in it before, there was a tradition behind it. It was just implicit. Pope Pius IX made it more define. 

Sacred Heart of Jesus 

Someone asked me how to respond to an Eastern Orthodox about the devotion to the Sacred Heart, saying it was like praying to a body part. I think that reaction stems from the fact that Scholastic philosophy didn’t develop in the Eastern Orthodox Church. In Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy, there is a term called Hylermorphic doctrine. It teaches that the body and soul, make up one substance. As opposed to the teaching of Descartes, dualism, teaching that the mind is separate from the body, and you are only your mind and the body is just your instrument. In relation to Christ, praying to His Sacred Heart is essentially praying to Him as a whole person. Just with emphasis on His heart because He loves us with it. 

Also, the devotion to the Sacred Heart is from the approved apparition to St. Margaret Mary of Alacoque. This happened after the Great Schism so this is absent in their tradition. 

Supremacy of the Pope

Eastern Orthodox Christians do not believe that St. Peter had that authority, but here are the passages in the Bible that we Catholics cite in support of that: 

+Among the Twelve Apostles, Peter’s name is mentioned the most, being 195 times in New Testament, while the next one, St. John, is mentioned 29 times.

+Whenever the apostles are all listed by name as a group, Peter’s name is always mentioned first, while Judas, the Lord’s betrayer, is always mentioned last.

+There are times when the apostles aren’t called by names but instead we see phrases like “Peter and the others,” which indicates that Simon Peter represented the college of apostles.

+Matthew 16: 18-19

+Jesus called Peter to come out of the boat and walk on water (Matt. 14: 25-33)

+Jesus Christ preached to the crowds from Simon Peter’s fishing boat.

+St. John waited for St. Peter to enter the empty tomb of Christ (John 20:6)

+Luke 22:31-32

+St. Peter preaches the first post-Pentecost sermon

+St. Peter performed the first miracle (Acts 3:1-10)

+God delivers revelation to Peter that Gentiles could now enter the Church without the need to observe Jewish Kosher food laws, and this teaching Peter made binding on the whole Church at the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15.

+St. Paul checked in with St. Peter before starting his public ministry. 

Eastern Orthodox Christians would also argue that the Eastern Fathers before the Great Schism did not believe in the primacy of the Pope, but here is a website debunking that. 

Hope that helps. If anything is confusing let me know. I’d also ask my fellow Catholics to correct me if I’m mistaken on any of these.

[weareelegant-blog]

LOVE VS HASTE

I’ve had a lot on my mind lately. Especially when it comes to church and God’s people. I had a conversation with a dear friend of mine about the importance of approaching people we disagree with, with love. Disagreement can be ​tough. Confrontation in the midst of disagreement can be ​tough.​ But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.

Let’s take a step back and think about how we approach disagreement? What goes through your mind? Your heart? Your spirit? What does your time line look like? Do you take time to think about what you say before you say it? Do you practice before hand?

Maybe you don’t do any of those things. Maybe you’d rather avoid conflict entirely. Maybe it’s not worth it for you.

Whatever the case may be, how we approach disagreement and conflict is crucial. We are all fearfully and wonderfully made, and therefore we are all beautifully different. We have different ways of thinking, doing things, speaking things... we’re different, and that’s beautiful. But it’s with in those differences that we find disagreement.

So, now that we’ve taken this into consideration, now that we know that we are all fearfully, wonderfully , and uniquely made by the hands of our wonderful Creator, how should we address one another when we find ourselves in the midst of conflict?

Like I mentioned earlier, disagreement can be extremely difficult, and therefore it’s hard to not let our feelings get the best of us. This is especially true if what we are disagreeing about is something we are passionate about. It’s hard to not be impulsive. However, acting on these impulses can cause some serious hurt and pain.

I can’t tell you how many friendships I’ve lost due to my inability to handle disagreement properly. I’ve struggled with letting my emotions get the best of me for as long as I can remember. I still have a hard time controlling my emotional impulses. I will be the first to tell you, that disagreement, when handled wrongly, can be a disaster. I’m writing this to myself as much as I am to whoever decides to read this. I want to challenge us to take a step back, and reconsider the way we approach others.

Let me share some verses with you that have truly transformed the way I engage with others.

Colossians 3:12-14

“Therefore as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Bear with one another and forgive each other if any of you has a grievance against someone.  Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these things put on love, which binds them all in perfect unity.”

James 1:19

“Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger;”

Both of these verses remind us to approach others with both grace and kindness. We are called to bear with one another, to ​listen​ to one another, and to be slow in how we react. Now I know this seems easier said then done, but when we truly put the effort in and depend on Jesus’ strength to get us by, we can do it. All it takes is stepping back, breathing, reflecting, and praying before we approach disagreement.

So I ask, what would this approach look like for you, in this season of your life? What would it look like to truly listen to an opposing point of view? Take a second and think. What would this look like for you? As I mentioned above, everyone is different and therefore the way we approach this way of thinking is vastly different. 

I know for me it takes some serous time to reflect. Like I explained, I can be rather impulsive with my emotions, but in an effort to stop this behavior, I’ve been trying really hard to give my emotions time to breathe. I have to stop and ask God whether or not I even need to engage with the person I disagree with. Sometimes I don’t feel called to at all, other times I do, but it’s in those moments that Jesus reminds me to extend grace, to be patient, and to have an open heart. No, not every time does the conversation end with everyone on the same side, but it does end with everyone having a better understanding and appreciation for one another. 

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Before I end this post, I’d like to consider one more thing. The Church. The Church is filled with different people, from all different backgrounds, with all different perspectives. It can be easy to step on each others toes, or to get annoyed with people we serve closely with. I mean, If I’m being honest, I know I’ve said and behaved in ways towards others while serving that I shouldn’t have, and when I’ve reflected on those moments I’ve come to realize that I did more harm than good.

So not only does the way we choose to handle conflict and disagreement effect our close relationships, but it can effect the people we serve with and maybe even the church as a whole. 

I want to challenge myself, and anyone else who feels led to, to consider how different the church might look if we engaged others using Colossians 3 and James 1 as a guideline. By no means do I think the church is in some awful place, and that it’s in need of a heart change... This isn’t my heart at all. What I do know, however, is that I’ve been the person serving who isn’t always the nicest, and I know that my behavior impacted the church. That being said, perhaps it’s important to consider how we treat the people we see at church every Sunday and consider how changing our approach might effect the church as a whole? Perhaps how we respond to people at church will leak into how we respond to those we work with, go to school with, and are in community with. What if changing our approach meant changing the very atmosphere around us?

As people who follow Jesus, we are called to love. To forgive as the Lord forgave us. We are called to be compassionate, kind, and patient. The church is His bride. We are His masterpiece. At the end of the day, we’re all on the same team, and we are called to love both Christian and non Christian alike.

So, can I be so bold as to challenge you to consider how you approach others? Is it full of love? Is it impulsive? Is it productive? What do you think?

[dailyaudiobible]

02/28/2019 DAB Transcript

Leviticus 22:17-23:44, Mark 9:30-10:12, Psalms 44:1-8, Proverbs 10:19

Today is the 28th day of February. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian. It is great to be here with you is as we close down, right, the second month of the year. So, two months in, we have established a rhythm, we are on a journey as a community and it is a joy to be coming to you today from the holy city of Jerusalem. And we spent we spent the day yesterday in and around Jerusalem and the exhaustion of it and the crush of it, as well as the tremendous excitement of it and we’ll talk about that when we get a little bit further into our time together today but first let's go to the Scriptures, that’s what we’ve come here to do. We’re reading from the New International Version this week. Leviticus chapter 22 verse 17 through 23 verse 44 today.

Commentary:

Okay. So, as we we’re kind of moving through the law while reading the Gospels at the same time we are indeed provided with some unique perspectives because we’re doing it this way. So, for the last several days in book of Leviticus we’ve been reading all kinds of interesting things that kind of boil down to clean and unclean, blemished or unblemished, spotted or spotless, right? So, God's saying, you know, I want my priests to not be defiled in any way, to not be deformed in any way. I want the sacrificial system to be the best of the best, unblemished. You’re not supposed to give second best, third, fourth, fifth, anything substandard to God whatsoever. So, what God is putting in place in this culture is that He is holy, and He will set his people apart to be holy unto Him and that this will be lived out in every conceivable way, in everything that they do they will be reminded of this. So, a set apart people, an exclusive chosen people. Over time as we continue our journey through the year and watch this people form and then be in the Promised Land and then all of their struggles, we’ll find that they wanted to hold onto the identity of being exclusive while eventually being anything but, which will eventually bring exile and downfall. Zoom forward into the time of the Gospels in the first century, we still have the rules we saw this exclusive concept, but exclusivity means that some are excluded including being excluded from God's presence, right? So, we go back to unblemished, spotless, without any deformity and then we pause, and we think about precisely who is it that Jesus is ministering to. So, we have God giving these laws and then we have God coming to live this out before our eyes in person, in the person of Jesus and where does he go? He goes to the blemished, He goes to the unclean, He goes to the deformed, He goes to the oppressed, and that speaks volumes because in effect here have God in the flesh among His chosen people making the deformed and spotted and blemished people whole. And that friends, that is the kingdom of God in action and that is what we're supposed to be doing every day of our lives. And Jesus sums this up from our reading in the book of Mark today. “Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last and the servant of all.” He is in effect saying the world system is absolutely backward to the way that the kingdom of God works. And we spend, you know, so much of our time trying to defend what it is that we think we know and fight everybody else over what they are or are not doing. Are they saying enough Jesus’s in their songs? Do they have enough bumper sticker fish on their cars? And on and on we could go. And we’re like searching out for the falseness in everybody else but we just somehow are blinded to our own and we lose sight of the fact that if we want to be in the kingdom then we have to be servants and we have to keep our eyes on our own lives instead of everybody else's lives. And this played out in the gospel of Mark today too when the disciples came to Jesus and they’re like, “teacher, we saw someone try to do what you're doing, we saw somebody doing what we are supposed to be doing. They were throwing out demons in your name and they're not part of our group. So, we told them to knock it off.” What was God's response to that then in the person of Jesus. Jesus said, “don’t stop him. Whoever is not against us is for us to.” So, Jesus didn't run around pointing out people's blemishes and uncleanness and spots. He came to make them whole. So, can you not see how easily we as Christians can be stereotyped because we have mastered pointing out people's blemishes and faults and uncleanness and we thrive at trying to theologically prove a point. Are we this thick that we can't see that we are only being Pharisees in the moment? So, let's go ahead and get two heaping teaspoons of that and stir it into our cup today,

Prayer:

Holy Spirit, we invite You. As we meditate on these things and consider these things we realize that what we are railing against is our own fears our own security…insecurities our own uncleanness our own blemishes and if we can divert that and pay attention somebody else's faults and blemishes then we do not have to deal with our own. And yet, You’re not gonna let that happen, not if we’re gonna stick to the Scriptures and walk our way through every day. You’re gonna keep coming after things in us until they're not in us anymore because their poison to us. They are not how Your kingdom works. And yet we are claiming Your kingdom. And, so, we have to and we will have to continue to repent, which fundamentally means we have to change, we have to change the way they we’re looking at things, and the first thing that we do is surrender to You. All we need is to walk with You and to see our brothers and sisters in this world as You do and understand that we are one, that we are in this together and we’re getting nowhere trying to destroy each other. Come Holy Spirit bring life into us we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Announcements:

Okay. So here in Israel the rains are a blessing from God. And, so, we have been getting overwhelmingly blessed. Yeah, so yesterday was an early morning, the earliest morning of the journey and we have to do this so that we can kind of get in line to go up on the Temple Mount. And we did exactly that, we got up early like we were told and got on the buses and everything and got in line in and got a good shower. And it rained and rained, and we went on the Temple Mount and when you’re going up, you can see the Western Wall or the Wailing Wall as it's sometimes called and there was nobody there. I’ve never seen it that way in my life. There was no one there at all. And I'm sure that happens often, but it was the first time I’ve ever see no one there at all. And then got up on Temple Mount and, yeah, it rained on us, and we moved through and pressed on and saw what we needed to see. And, you know, you’re standing up there and realizing the temple of God was there and we haven't gotten to the construction of the first or second Temple yet in our reading as we’re moving through this year but, you know, like, this is it. Man, the presence of God was here, the Holy of Holies was here. It's a profound thing to realize and you realize that you are in the center of it all in terms of biblical importance, the center of it all. So, we spent some time and we didn't skimp. We moved through and got off the Temple Mount and went down below into the archaeological park that surrounds the area including the southern steps which is really the birthplace of the church and certainly a place that Jesus would've frequented. And, so, we pointed that out and let that kind of sink in. And, of course, we’re trying to document, take pictures, and remember, there’s just so much on a journey like this that it's hard if not impossible to absorb everything. And, so, you know, photographs and journaling and this is kind of activity helps with that for processing later. So, we spent some time there and got wet and then we got back onto the buses and headed toward Bethany, biblical Bethany, which is where Lazarus’s tomb is, which Mary, Martha, and Lazarus lived, a place where Jesus often stayed, would stay in Bethany on the Mount of olives and then go back down across the Kedron Valley to the temple complex. So, we just kind of pointed that out. There's not a lot of ruins. It's an active city but the tomb of Lazarus still there. And, so, we did contemplate the resurrection of Lazarus and Jesus words, “that which has died will live even though it has died” and tried to apply that to our own lives. What has died and can’t it be resurrected? And isn't that one of the, if not the most important aspect of our faith, that that which has died can live even though it has died. And the clouds lifted, and the sky was blue. It was a little chilly, but the sky was blue. And, so, that was nice. We fought the rain all day. And after visiting Bethany then we went to Bethlehem where Jesus was born and this might sound like it's all nice and easy but the logistics of these places even though they are very, very near each other are challenging because checkpoints and walls and fences and just moving around and on top of that a very congested major world city that we’re in. So, we did get to Bethany and had some lunch and in the weather was good. It wasn’t raining on us. We went in and visited a friend who has a shop in in Bethlehem and he's an antiquities dealer and a reputable one and his grandfather was heavily responsible for the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and bringing them to light. And, so, we get to hear that story and it’s always a fascinating story and one of the original jars that were found out it Qumran near the Dead Sea, it’s there in the shop. So, you can kind of see that. Just spent some time before moving to the church of the Nativity. And there were plenty of fellow brothers and sisters from all over the world there and the line was quite aggressive to go down into the grotto where Jesus was born, where the star is placed over the spot believed to be the birthplace of Jesus. And it has been believed to be the spot for a long time. So, pilgrims have been coming for 1700 years to this place and we just took part in that grand and long tradition before then making our way back into Jerusalem for the end of the day. And that takes a little while, just getting through the traffic and checkpoints and all this. So, that was day one in and around Jerusalem. And thank you for your continued prayers moving around the weather. And we’ll see how the day goes because there are more blessings in the forecast for today. So, thank you for continuing to pray over safety, technology, logistics, health, stamina. I mean, getting out in the rain and it's a little cold and kinda getting damp is, you know, it’s easy enough to catch a cold or start feeling poorly. So, thank you for your prayers.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com. There's a link on the homepage. I thank you profoundly and with all humility for those of you who have partnered with the Daily Audio Bible. If you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or, if you prefer, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or comment, 877-942-4253 is the number to dial.

And that's it for today and that's it for today. I'm Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

[andrewuttaro]

The Friction of the Gospel

Dorothy Day maybe the most cited Saint-to-be of the twentieth century. Her life’s work consisted of advocating for the poor and oppressed in the form of the working people of New York City throughout the Depression Era and beyond. Her Catholic Worker’s Movement took Jesus’ Gospel message seriously in a way few other organizations dared to. She and her compatriots were radically involved in the hopes and needs of those excluded from the benefits of American society as its first gilded age gave way to the brutal realities of a massive economic downturn. A copy of her daily Catholic Worker Newspaper can still be bought for a penny.

Day and her right-hand man Peter Maurin believed in “blowing up the dynamite of the Gospel” as contemporary apologists and evangelists will remind you. This phrase of course being a modern expression for the “Good News” the New Testament speaks of. In other news: the explosive, liberating reality of God made flesh in Jesus Christ, death, and resurrection. The focus of evangelizing the Gospel, particularly after the Second Vatican Council from the Catholic perspective, would focus on finding similar modern retellings of the same ancient truths that have moored Christianity for twenty centuries. Pope St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI both spilled much ink laying out the theological groundings that they believed could undergird a new evangelization in an increasingly Post-Christian world with an eye for Day’s charism.

As those who know Dorothy Day are probably already saying to themselves reading this: “blowing up the dynamite of the Gospel” is actually something very few Christians really want to do. Day’s message didn’t belong to any person except Jesus, and it isn’t easily fit within contemporary conservatism or liberalism. The thing about dynamite is its really hard to control. You light it up and then run away because it’s going to tear through everything around it. As the fifties and sixties drew on an aging Dorothy Day didn’t stop challenging indifferent power structures for the sake of the poor for Jesus Christ. She firmly embedded herself in the Civil Rights movement and the Counterculture of those days, often finding herself arrested and in prison for her activism. The thing about the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that it doesn’t neatly fit into anyone’s narrative. The Gospel challenges all of us and only comforts those who truly, recklessly love Jesus and neighbor. This is a hard life to live so most all of us domesticate Jesus in some way, sanding off parts of the Gospel we prefer to downplay.

There is a friction implicit in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Dynamite might be a good way to imagine it. On one hand we are called to follow the Son of God: the one true God who became incarnate in our flesh to suffer with us and finally wipe free our consciences of the guilt of sin on the cross. There is an objective truth to it. On the other hand Jesus tells us to go, baptize in his name, and make disciples of all nations. Go to the gutters of the excluded like he did and eat a meal with the outcasts, welcoming them in as Jesus himself. The first will be last and the last will be first. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man into the Kingdom of God. There is a missionary calling that will do whatever it takes to save souls in every time and place: Mercy.

Truth and Mercy aren’t in friction theologically but anyone whose really contemplated how they would tell someone why they have a relationship with Jesus intuitively knows it’s a different story on a practical level. Oceans of tears have been spilled in the religious trauma of that unique pressure to share Jesus in every interaction. Rivers of ink down through the centuries have been spilled trying to strike the most effective balance between accommodation and proselytizing. Perhaps us Christians haven’t nailed that balance since we were being fed to lions in the colosseum. The practical friction that exists within our Gospels callings, to love God and others AND go make disciples of all nations, is at a fever pitch in the world today.

Within my family I have the full range of friendliness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. On one end I love family members in outright departure from our Catholic faith, judging it (like Dorothy Day did) as corrupt, self-interested, and ultimately abusive in myriad ways. These family members have very strong moral codes and I’m not convinced Jesus isn’t working in them in less overt, non-institutional ways, but they certainly wouldn’t let you know it. On the other end I have family members I love who are so devoted to their particular domestication of Jesus that they are convinced the magisterium of the Church upholds it. Perhaps they are attentive to the assent to Jesus, but their missionary zeal is gone: others coming to him is ultimately on them to walk in the door and accept his truths point blank as if they’ve always been presented the same way with little help. It’s a club you have to pay your dues for apparently.

With both the ends of the spectrum and everyone in between Jesus is domesticated to look the way we need him to for our ideological convictions. For many of us an ideological first principle unrelated to anything Jesus actually said is what really dictates how we approach the Gospel. Even among the most outwardly Catholic people I’ve ever met there is a clear ideological messaging that is not in line with Jesus Christ. To look at it from the outside looking in it would seem 40-60% of those who apply themselves to spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ, clergy or not, are outright toxic to contemporary audiences. Their own clout is their God and Jesus condemns more than anything else for them. In Catholic circles one might say there is an unwillingness to “think with the Church” if you will, to act as with one heart no matter what our ideologies would prefer. In the broader Christian world Jesus is being used as a cudgel for strongmen and bigoted regimes the world over. Here in America we are only now trying to contemplate how we can answer the sin of Christian nationalism.

Too often I hear my brothers and sisters in Christ repeating the tired old euphemism “we are to be in the world, not of the world”. Often these co-religionists of mine will struggle to say why nationalism is bad if it’s a “Christian nation” or why the sinful world minoritarian perspective shouldn’t just win out, allowing us to isolate ourselves from disagreement. Some seem to aspire to a permanent retreat into a neat enclave locking ourselves behind doors of moral certitude and walls of self-assured righteousness. We know Jesus is our treasure: what we frequently seem to forget is that Jesus wants to share himself with all of humanity. There might be no more godless place on the internet these days than the forums where Jesus is discussed.

That friction of the Gospel, between upholding truth and saving souls at all costs, has always been with us and always will be until Jesus comes back to settle it himself. In the meantime the dynamite remains here with us, unlit and hidden beneath a bushel in the biblical metaphor: a light hidden away. Have we decided to horde it? Have we locked Jesus in? Does he knock from the inside now, asking to be let out to a world who desperately needs him? Whatever the state of your relationship with Jesus the next step for each of us is the devotion of Dorothy Day. The kind of devotion that is recklessly in love. If we can fix our eyes on Jesus sincerely and humbly enough to know we don’t have all the answers then we might just find him right there with us leading the way. Jesus respects our consent. He knows the fiction his Gospel brings, and he will help us to the right way of things if we can only first focus on him undomesticated.

Perhaps the friction of the Gospel only really exists when we have reservation: when we want to keep something from God we’re not quite ready to subject to the explosive power of Jesus just yet. He can wait. Take your time. Do your research. Suffer through that confused ranting from yourself and others. Listen. Open your ears. Attend to the hearts of your loved ones. Attend to the needs of those who have nobody and nothing. Attend to your own soul, it’s needs, and pray to the one who reaches out to you everyday just waiting for you to reach back without anything holding you back.

[standtoreason93]

Harvester or Gardener?

I have a confession to make. I haven’t led anyone to Christ in over 30 years. I know that sounds unbelievable, bizarre—even borderline lame—but from one perspective, it makes perfect sense.

I want to tell you why I’ve been, by one measure, such a spiritual loser. I also want to show you how what I have to say may radically improve your effectiveness as a voice for the gospel.

First, though, the backstory.

Simple Times, Simple Gospel

I became a Christian during the Jesus Movement in Southern California in the early 70s. Evangelism back then was fairly simple: Share the simple gospel, answer a few simple questions, invite a person to simply receive Christ, pray. And lots did. Not too complicated. Would that were still the case.

That was almost half a century ago. Times have changed. The gospel is not “simple” anymore, nor are the questions people ask. Of course, the gospel is still the gospel. That hasn’t changed, or rather, it shouldn’t change—though more “progressive” types continue to fiddle with it, hoping to tickle postmodern ears.

No, the truth is still the truth. The way people hear it has changed dramatically, though, because the cultural conversation has changed dramatically.

Fifty years ago, Christian words and Christian doctrines made sense to people, more or less, even if folks didn’t always believe them or, if believing, didn’t live them out. Clearly, the doorkeepers of culture back then were increasingly post-Christian, but they had not become anti-Christian, as they are now.

Worse, the hostility nowadays is not just against the gospel—which has always been a “stumbling block”—but against virtually every detail of the biblical view of reality, including what it means to be human, what it means to be gendered, what it means to be moral, even what it means for something to be “true.”

Bestseller lists frequently feature rhetorically powerful offerings challenging virtually every aspect of the Christian worldview. Consequently, in the thinking of the rank and file, the smart folks have weighed in and found Christianity wanting, so they have no reason to give our message a second thought.

Worse, for many, the words of hope we offer are taken as words of veiled hatred of outsiders—bigotry towards those who don’t believe our spiritual views or obey our moral convictions.

In short, the culture has moved on. Unfortunately, our methods have not. They’ve remained largely static. We continue to be dedicated to outdated devices, using Christian language largely unintelligible to non-Christians. People don’t understand our ideas, so they don’t understand our message—which to them seems obsolete, antiquated, and irrelevant.

And that confusion can be spiritually lethal, as Jesus points out.

Road Kill

In Matthew 13, Jesus relates the famous parable of the sower. The first seeds sown, He says, fall beside the road, and birds swoop down and eat them. No mystery here. Hard ground, no growth. Some people just won’t listen. Not too complicated. But that was not Jesus’ point.

In His clarification to His disciples, He explains what He meant. “When anyone hears the word of the kingdom,” He says, “and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart. This is the one on whom seed was sown beside the road” (Matt. 13:19).

The seed is sown, true enough. It’s “in his heart,” Jesus says. Yet it’s not understood, so it’s easily snatched away by the devil.

By contrast, Jesus tells them, “The one on whom seed was sown on the good soil, this is the man who hears the word and understands it; who indeed bears fruit and brings forth, some a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty” (Matt. 13:23).

So here is the question. According to Jesus, what is the chief difference between the first and the last, between the faithless and the faithful, between the one who bears nothing and the one who bears an abundance? The difference is this: The second understands the message; the first does not. As a result, they’re road kill.

This insight is central, I think, to Paul’s exhortation in Colossians 4:5–6:

Conduct yourselves with wisdom toward outsiders, making the most of the opportunity. Let your speech always be with grace, as though seasoned with salt, so that you will know how you should respond to each person.

Vital to my point is Paul’s last phrase. Circumstances are unique, and people are individuals. They sit at different places along the continuum between total rejection and complete surrender. If our personal evangelistic game plan emphasizes only the end of that journey—the harvest—then we are not following Paul’s directions because we are not crafting our communication uniquely to each person.

The cookie-cutter approach that worked so well 50 years ago now leaves listeners mystified, dumbfounded, confused—in a word, without understanding—so that the seeds scattered are easily snatched away. The evil one steals the word we have sown because the message itself is largely incoherent. It is not intelligible to many given the unique cultural circumstances we find ourselves in.

I’d like to offer an antidote based on an insight that suggests a more fruitful approach.

Spadework

I want you to think about an aphorism that’s not especially profound in itself but has profound implications for our approach to sharing the gospel. It’s a truism that has completely transformed my approach to evangelism. Here it is:

Before there can be any harvest, there always has to be a season of gardening.

Fruitful harvest, in other words, is always dependent on diligent spadework: sowing, watering, weeding, nurturing. Here is how I put the point in the new, expanded edition of Tactics:

Before someone ever comes to Christ, there is always a period of time—a season, if you will—when they are thinking about the gospel, mulling it over, wondering whether it might be true. They may be putting out little probes by asking questions. They might even be fighting back a bit. But still, they’re wondering—maybe praying secretly, God, are you real? [1]

That’s what I was doing as a college student at UCLA in 1973. I was testing the waters, asking questions, pushing back, and—eventually—listening. “When this happens in someone’s life,” I concluded in Tactics, “it’s an opportunity for you and me to do some spadework, what Francis Schaeffer called ‘pre-evangelism.’”[2]

The night I finally trusted the Lord—a Friday night, September 28, 1973—my younger brother Mark came to my apartment for a visit, intent on continuing his efforts to bring me to Christ. I cut him off.

“Mark,” I said, “you don’t have to tell me about Jesus anymore. I’ve already decided I want to become a Christian.” It took me a few minutes to peel him off the ceiling, then I bowed my head, confessed my need, pled for mercy, turned my life over to Jesus, and began walking with Him.

There is something in this exchange I do not want you to miss. When I was ready, I responded—no fuss, no pushback, no hesitancy. That’s the way it is with ripe fruit. It’s easy to pick. All it takes is a little bump, and it falls into the basket. The gardening came first; that was the hard part. In evangelism, when the spadework is done well, the harvest pretty much takes care of itself. The first makes the second possible.

This is precisely Jesus’ point in a familiar Gospel text.

Two Seasons, Two Workers

Consider Jesus’ comments in John 4—the well-known woman at the well passage. I want you to notice something Jesus says after that famous conversation that teaches an important lesson that is not so well known.

The disciples arrive on the scene just as the Samaritan woman leaves for Sychar to tell others about the amazing man she’d met at the well. Here is what Jesus then says to the twelve:

Already he who reaps is receiving wages and is gathering fruit for life eternal; so that he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together. For in this case the saying is true, “One sows and another reaps.” I sent you to reap that for which you have not labored; others have labored and you have entered into their labor. (Jn. 4:36–38).

I had read this passage for years without noticing a critical calculus of evangelism embedded in that conversation. In this exchange, Jesus identifies one field but distinguishes between two different seasons—sowing and reaping, gardening and harvesting. He identifies one team but distinguishes between two types of workers—those who sow and those who reap, those who garden and those who harvest.

For Sychar, the reaping season was at hand. Someone else had done the heavy lifting, but the disciples now had the light labor. They were going to gather the low hanging fruit, the easy pickin’s. Again, the harvest is easy when the crop is ready.

Go for the Gold?

Some Christians are convinced we should try to get to the gospel in every encounter. Go for the gold. Press for the decision. Close the deal. I think the impulse is right-hearted, of course, but it’s wrongheaded; there are problems with this approach.

One, I’ve already alluded to. I suspect we are not spending enough time listening to people long enough to learn their cultural language, so to speak. If we do not first listen to understand their views, how will we be able to communicate in such a way that they will understand ours? If we speak words of truth, but they fall on uncomprehending ears, there will be no understanding. Those precious gospel seeds will get whisked away and, in that conversation at least, the devil will have the day.

There’s another problem. What happens when a massive number of Christians gifted as gardeners rather than as harvesters are presented with a harvesting model of evangelism that’s inconsistent with their spiritual temperament? I’ll tell you. They sit on the bench, inactive, out of play. The idea of pressing someone for a decision—especially in today’s hostile environment—is simply too unsettling, too disconcerting, and, frankly, too frightening.

I sympathize completely. The fact is, most of us are not good closers. Consequently, we never get into the game. And when gardeners don’t garden, for whatever reason, then the harvest suffers. Remember the sluggard from Proverbs. He did not plow after autumn, so he had nothing when harvest time came ’round (Prov. 20:4).

Please do not misunderstand me. Harvesting is critical. There would be no kingdom expansion without it. But there would be no harvesting without good gardening, so without the spadework, there’s no kingdom growth, either. Remember, one sows; the other reaps.

This is why I do not feel compelled to sprint for the finish line if the circumstances don’t warrant it. Instead, I have a different goal.

Lowering the Bar, Raising the Impact

When I’m in a conversation I hope will lead to spiritual matters, I never have it as an immediate goal to lead that person to Christ. I make no effort to get them to sign on the dotted line. I don’t try to “close the deal.” In fact, I don’t have it as a goal to even get to the gospel, though I may end up there.

Do I want that person to come to Christ? Of course I do. Is the gospel necessary for that? Again, of course. It’s the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes (Rom. 1:16).

Getting to the gospel is not the issue, though. Returning for a moment to the parable of the sower, the problem is the ground the seed falls on. There’s no understanding. The hard ground needs tilling first before the seed has any chance of taking root.

I have adopted, therefore, a more modest goal when I engage others in conversation. It’s one I communicate clearly at the outset of virtually every talk I give to a secular audience. Here’s what I tell them:

I’m here tonight because my life has been deeply changed by an ancient teacher. His name is Jesus of Nazareth. Decades ago while I was a student at UCLA, I began to think more carefully about the claims Jesus made about Himself, the claims He made about the nature of reality, and the claim He made on my own life. After thinking hard on the issues, asking a lot of questions, and doing a lot of arguing, I finally came to the conclusion that Jesus got it right, that He saw the world the way it really was. I realized the smart money was on Jesus, so I began to follow Him.

Then I say something they do not expect to hear. I tell them I’m not there to convert them. “I have a more modest goal,” I say. “I just want to put a stone in your shoe. I just want to annoy you a little bit, but in a good way. I want you leaving this auditorium with something I said poking at you, something that gets you thinking, because I think Jesus of Nazareth is worth thinking about.”

Then I move forward with my talk, whatever it happens to be. I make it clear to them that I’m not in harvest mode. Instead, I’m gardening.

At this point you may be wondering, Does this guy ever get to the gospel? The answer is simple: Of course I do. Then the next question: When do you get to the gospel? Here’s my answer: I get to the gospel whenever I want.

I know that may sound cheeky, but here’s what I’m getting at. I do not feel forced to squeeze the gospel into the conversation in an artificial way simply because someone told me I have to. Jesus didn’t even do that.

Jesus took His time. He carefully weighed His words to be sensitive to His audience and to the unique circumstances He faced. Lots of times He went only halfway. He gave the bad news then let it weigh upon His listeners. Only later—after they were exhausted from shouldering the crushing weight of their own sin—did He say, “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28). Rest from what? Rest from the burden of the bad news, from the hopeless load of living according to the law. Yes, He got to the good news, but first He gardened.

In the many years I have taught this concept publicly in front of audiences, I’ve watched carefully when I tell them about the importance of gardening before harvesting. I can see in their eyes something slowly beginning to dawn on them.

Here is what the expression on their faces tells me they’re thinking: I can do this. And they are right, of course. They can. Yes, I’ve lowered the bar a bit for them. But a lower bar gets them off the bench and into the garden, and that means a bigger harvest in the long run.

Who’s in Your Garden?

Which brings me back to my original confession, the one that made me sound like a lame Christian, an evangelism loser.

Years ago, I realized I was not a harvester but a gardener. My efforts for decades—on radio and at public events, speaking in churches and at universities, writing books and articles—have all been, largely, to serve a single end: gardening.

The reason I haven’t personally prayed with someone to receive Christ in over three decades is I haven’t really tried. I’m not in harvesting mode because I’m not a harvester; I’m a gardener. And so, I suspect, are most Christians. They just haven’t thought of themselves that way since the option was never really open to them.

There’s something else you need to know, though. You need to know who’s been in my garden.

Does the name J. Warner Wallace sound familiar to you? He’s the legendary cold-case detective who, as an atheist, applied his considerable investigative skills to the eyewitness reports in the Gospels. In the process, he became a believer, then an apologist, and then a bestselling author. You might have read his books: Cold-Case Christianity, or God’s Crime Scene, or Forensic Faith.

Or maybe you’ve heard of Abdu Murray, former Muslim now Christian apologist and current senior vice president with Ravi Zacharias International Ministries. You might have read his books, too: Saving Truth, or Grand Central Question, or Seeing Jesus from the East.

You may know of them, but here’s something you probably don’t know aboutthem: They were both in my garden. When J. Warner Wallace was still an atheist, he was listening to our broadcast. When Abdu Murray was still a Muslim, he was listening to me on the radio. And I’ve met many other Christians just like them.

Do you realize what happened? I was patiently—and unknowingly—doing spadework on Jim, and Abdu, and the others, then somebody went into mygarden and harvested my crop. Do you think I care? Of course not; we’re all on the same team. Schaeffer’s “pre-evangelism” was the gardening essential for that bountiful harvest.

Bringing in the Sheaves

In the Body of Christ, different people have different gifts.[3] When it comes to working the field, some sow and some reap—as Jesus taught.

If what I have written so far really bothers you—if you think I’m letting people off too easily and I’m not pushing them to get to the meat of the matter quickly enough—you’re probably a harvester. And I’m glad you are. We need you.

If, on the other hand, what I’ve said encourages you, if you’re thinking, “I can do that,” then you are probably a gardener. That would be most Christians, I suspect, and we need you, too.[4]

If that’s the case, if it’s beginning to dawn on you that you might be a gardener like me, then make it your modest goal to try to put a stone in an unbeliever’s shoe. Focus your efforts on giving him just one thing to think about. That’s plenty good for starters.

Don’t worry about the endgame. Instead, get busy doing some spadework. Think about getting into conversations using the game plan outlined in the new, expanded edition of Tactics to help you start gardening effectively.

Remember, you don’t have to swing for the fences. You don’t even have to get on base, in my view. All you have to do is get into the batter’s box, then let the Lord take things from there. That’s the secret—and the beauty—of gardening.

If you do that—if you get off the bench and get into play in simple ways that are friendly yet moderately challenging, I think you’re going to see a dramatic difference in your impact for the gospel.

Don’t ever forget, the more gardeners we have, the bigger the harvest is going to be. Then both “he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together” in the bountiful result.

__________________________

[1] Gregory Koukl, Tactics—A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions, 10th Anniversary Edition, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2019), 18.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Both 1 Corinthians 12 and Romans 12 make this point clearly.

[4] For those concerned that my approach may miss opportunities, keep in mind that the “praying to receive Christ” practice is not part of the New Testament pattern. It entered the life of the church only a few hundred years ago. In Acts, people simply preached persuasively and listeners believed. The Holy Spirit brought conviction that led to humble faith. The closest thing to an altar call in the New Testament was a baptism, but that came after faith, not before it.

[stevedonnellyfaith-blog]

What Remains Hidden

                        I spent the least enjoyable portion of my week in a termination interview for an employee, with whom I had worked for a number of years.  The man had run afoul of our 10-point no fault attendance policy.  The employee, who is a friend, had scored an impressive array of points in all sorts of amazing circumstances within a relatively short period of time.  He was like the Michael Jordan of attendance infractions – raining in the points in one and two point weekly episodes.  His stories ranged from the incredible to the improbable, but as usual he and his union representative focused in on the couple of points that might be in doubt so that the man could remain an employee of our company.

I encouraged both of them to pursue their grievance, because I respected the excellent work that the employee had done for us previous to his most recent run of total unreliability, poor workmanship and serial distraction.  My friend, an ex-con and recovering addict, had been a great talisman for human potential and second chances until his struggles in the last eight months.  

But really, I explained to them both, gaining my friend an extra couple of weeks of employment really seemed like a lot of bother and paperwork prior to his inevitable final flameout with the next one or two point incident.  I posited that the employee needed to fix whatever the root cause was that was making him the second most prolific scorer of attendance points in the history of our facility.  My friend’s visage flickered brighter momentarily and he blurted out, “You mean I should do something to resolve all this car trouble I’ve been having.”  

“No,” I replied, “that is probably not what you need to take care of.”  What was hidden remained concealed; my intervention failed.  We finished up the required paperwork and the transacted our final goodbyes.  After he left, I prayed to Pam to intercede for my friend at whatever level she has access. In the short term, his future looks pretty bleak.

My bereavement meeting with widows and widowers in the Hall at 6PM of Thursday was a much brighter chapter of my week.  The meeting doesn’t take long, but it is a good chance to review the ups and downs of my life with some other people who are walking similar paths.  This week we discussed how to get through the holidays, a uniquely challenging season for people in our circumstance.

In our discussion of family vendettas that sometimes occur at Thanksgiving, it struck me that hidden things can contribute to family friction as well.  Like rocks submerged in navigable waters, underlying and unspoken issues can ruin family harmony and destroy relationships.  One person described a death of a father that occurred two days before a family gathering several years ago.  A couple of siblings immediately engaged in an argument that has separated them for the several years since.  Was the father previously acting in a way that prevented the full exercise of an otherwise underlying bitterness in the family?  Were the siblings, like my daughter Abby and I did after Pam’s death, choosing to argue over some unimportant minutia as a distraction from their overwhelming grief.  The road to reconciliation is different depending on the underlying true cause of the disagreement, a cause that must be brought to light for resolution.

Unspoken issues and unconscious motivations are ubiquitous to the human condition.  I met two friends for lunch the other day, and in our discussion it became clear that both men were being shaped by the Holy Spirit in particular ways without an apparent root cause.  Through our conversation over several hours, more and more puzzle pieces were added to their stories so that a vague idea of what God was trying to accomplish became more discernable.  

The first man works for law enforcement in one of the most violent neighborhoods of our local area, yet he is walking ever closer to the Lord in his daily life.  While waiting for our other friend to arrive, he and I discussed a recent shooting that he had witnessed and how our reaction to the tragedy differed so greatly from the laughing perspective of a person who had uploaded video of the same incident onto YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvEKq5CeGJo&sns=em). (Violent content)  

My friend had been driven to pray the Hail Mary aloud during the ordeal.  By contrast, for the person filming the car-jacker dying in a hail of bullets, the incident was pure entertainment.  I have struggled with the purpose of why the Holy Spirit moved my friend to his quiet act of piety for several weeks, but in the course of our conversation it became apparent to me that my friend’s outlook on his whole career had been altered by being inspired to make a few simple prayers.  He has spent the ensuing time considering the plethora of poor corpses that he seen over the years and has begun to pray for their many souls.  Before the incident my friend had protected his sanity at work with a Kevlar vest of emotional detachment.  Now the policeman was allowing the plight of perpetrators and victims alike to touch him in a very human way. I expect that the Holy Spirit is preparing him for additional service to the community in a new role.  Instead of merely maintaining the simple peace of the community; his future will involve leading others to the profound peace of Christ.

My other friend arrived later and described the gravity like pull he feels in his life towards devotion to the Virgin Mary.  Although, he was Catholic as a young child, his family made a few years long foray into the Protestant faith.  He returned only in recent years carrying much of the same anti-Marian baggage that I also lugged around for thirty or so years.  Lately, my friend has been feeling irresistible urges to pray to Mary for a very specific thing that have been subsequently granted in dramatic fashion. He has also received a free copy of Tim Staples’ new book, Behold Your Mother, under unusual circumstances. Through seeming coincidence, he was likewise put into a situation regarding the visit of the Fatima statue to IHM that removed his visceral dread of praying to Mary and Jesus through painted or sculpted representations of them.  

None of these dominos that appeared to be buffeting my friend towards a vocation in the Blue Army made sense to me. Why was my friend such a high value target for conversion to devotion to Our Lady?  Finally, he confided in us that as a young child he had been awed by a beautiful Christmas card of Mary holding Jesus.  He subsequently, cut Mary out, pasted her up above his bed and prayed to Her nightly. By appearances Mary is not making a new claim to a convert; she is exercising a latent consecration that has lain dormant for decades.  My friend has always had an underlying Marian devotion and he is going through a process of rediscovering the childlike faith that he had once possessed - a faith of simplicity that is the sweetest oblation to Our Lord.

In my case, forever the observer, my subterranean tensions remained hidden at our lunch.  I spent the weekend pondering the lingering questions about my own vocation.  In A Grief Observed, C.S. Lewis draws a simile between being a widower and having a leg amputated.  I guess I have reached the emotional state he described as functional hobbling.  I now know that I can effectively hop through my work day – no matter how full of dysfunction.  What remains uncertain is whether I can stumble along effectively as I resume my duties as a parent of a nine-year old girl or whether I can go a step further and emotionally juggle answering God’s call to seek ordination as a deacon.  To be effective in either role, there seems to be a necessity for a prerequisite joyfulness and hope that I seem to be lacking.  Still my current inclination is to step over the gunwales and into the waves and try to walk towards Jesus in hopes that I find something in His eyes to replace my inner storm with serenity.

Finally, I had another experience with hidden issues over the weekend.  Scrolling through people’s personal errata on Facebook, I happened across a video link that promised hope for divorced people.  Because I am so emotion starved, the video, called Rejoice,  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdxLwqGsRkQ) seemed to exercise a gravitational pull at my heartstrings.  The attraction disconcerted me as the scourge of divorce is as irrelevant to my current personal situation as is a couples nights out.  I felt compelled to watch the film even to the point of ignoring the timewasting Facebook game that has obsessed me for a week.  I even rebooted when it froze and accessed it through several different links until I was able to watch the whole thing.  In the end, I was reduced to strange tears as the video left me with an impression of hopefulness for the hero and heroine.  This romantic rock submerged in my sub-conscious surprises me whenever I run afoul of it, but it used to make Pam smile whenever she could conn me into watching the Notebook or something similar.  I will have to be more careful in my social media scrolling in the future.

[altmediabuzz]

' When Prayer, Love And Light Aren't Enough'

💫New Age Passiveness

Recently a friend asked how to deal with one of his friends who he felt was displaying Cognitive Dissonance while discussing many of the harsh truths about the world we are living in today. His intentions were good, but being the empath that he is , he realized discussing these topics was quite difficult for her, and they in fact made her so uncomfortable that she didnt want to discuss them at all.

While dialogue and communication are key elements in any friendship/ relationship, it is important to understand timing and when, where and how some of the tougher topics should be discussed. Please dont let this deter you though.Some people swallow red pills easily, while for others they may be a little bit more hard to swallow.There are many different reasons people choose to deny harsh truths, or even better yet accept them and express ambivalence towards them. It seems however their are some personality types within two particular Spiritual Beleifs that are more likely to do so. In my experience those two beleifs are 'Christianity' and ' New Age' Spirituality

I suggested he send his friend prayers positive vibes and uplifting energy( ofcourse, right?) But....to also give her her space..still making it clear that he was there for her if she needed him...to not push discussing the topics they disagreed on as much for awhile and focus on the ones they did . to work on strengthening their friendship bond , and remember that they are on the same team. To try to have empathy..but not to be swayed. To discern and decipher if there is any truth in her opinions through her feelings, words and actions and what the universe might be trying to teach him through her apprehension.

As one of my favorite motivational speakers Teal Swan says ' a lot of these 'love and light ' ' kumbya' 'que cera cera' , ' whatever will be will be' ' live and let live' 'New Agers ' who were previously just sitting back and 'letting be what will be ' are realizing that in this season,they have to take a little bit more of an affirmative and active stance in order to help change the world for the better .

This is the Age of Aquarius .The dawning of a new day .Lies to be exposed, truths to be revealed and justice to be served. The collective consience is truly being stirred. Some new agers are not used to this concept and this is a rude awakening for many of them.Some ,after being awakened to many of these harsh realities that have been kept clandestine from the population at large ,even feel extreme levels of guilt for' turning a blind eye' to the injustices of others for so long.

Many of the ' New Age ' spiritualists I know have suffered some kind of trauma which caused them in many ways to dissassociate from society ( similar to abused children who develop dissosiative identity disorder to cope with the anger, pain and confusion their abuse leaves them with). Sometimes the fear/ pain of the darkness is just too much for them to handle until theyve healed enough.Then will they realize by conquering that fear and having the courage to fight back, that they have actually taken the first step toward victory in the battle of spiritual warfare.

Some say there has to be negativity in the world because there needs to be balance in the universe and both darkness and light must be present for balance to be acheived ( yin-yang energy). Others are all about combating it outright ( doing more than just trying to balance out the negative energy in the universe by doing positive deeds). But a lot of this is new for many of them. They have no idea the depths of the evil that exist in this universe and the IMBALANCE and abuse of power that goes on in higher realms. And the ones that do realize might be too intimidated to fight or address it.( Again , many , likely due to previous trauma). Doing this would actually increase the positivity and love and light within them and help them to strengthen their spirit to face these dark entities and forces and tackle them head on, thus helping fight the good fight along with the rest of us .

However doing this before its ' proper' timing can be just as detrimental as fearing the fight against evil itself. Let these people get their strength ,courage and wisdom up . And again focus on discussing positive topics for a while if you can unless it's something extremely detrimental to their immediate health of course . Try to honestly understand their perspectives and points of view as well as the reasonings behind them. Be patient, Be nurturing, Be understanding Be the light you want to see 💙💫✨

🙏Christian Passiveness

When addressing Christians ( I myself being one) I get the sense from many of them that their stance is to ' let the Lords will be done' ' let go and let god' , and ' give it to god' etc. Which is a comforting concept when being overwhelmed with circumstances such as stress, general day to day anxiety or a physical illness. But once a relationship with God has reached a level of maturity and acheived enough strength for that person to withstand their own personal battles, it is then they should be ready and willing to step in and help fight the good fight as intercessors for others who cannot or simply refuse to do so.Ofcourse never alone, but with the courage to know that the Holy spirit isnt only BESIDE them ,leading and guiding their words and actions.But also INSIDE of them.

Many say with their mouths they beleive in a higher power but dont express those sentiments through actions. Yes there is only so much a mere mortal can do.But with meditation and prayer ask God/ the Universe just what your role should be to help the healing of our earth in this particularly tumultuous era and season. Realize that you are not alone and have your spiritual brothers and sisters fighting the battle of good vs evil along with you.Realize what an integral peice of the puzzle you are due to your unique God given talents, skills abilities, and experiences. Know that while communing with the Most High Infinite Creator ( through prayer, meditation, song, dance, whathaveyou) you are doing in fact one of the most powerful and effective actions possible to fight the dark and evil forces running rampant in this world. However ask for the discernment on just how much you could and should do in ADDITION to prayer.

Prayer is seen by many as passive and cowardice.( and many scoff at the mention of being in somebodies' thoughts and prayers') however taking the time out of your busy schedule to think of someone and wish well for them while sending them positive energy and reminding them of their value and worth is one of the most effective ways one can show another humanity and compassion.

This however, should preferably be balanced with action. The bible states that ' faith without works is dead' and that we are to be the ' hands and feet ' of Jesus on this earth. What are we doing to edify this concept? Are we sitting back, while this world is going to Hell in a Handbasket? Comfortable in the notion that as a Christian at least we are 'lucky enough to be chosen to spend eternity in heaven' and passively waiting for what many people refer to as Christs second return? Or are we actively out in our neighborhoods, communities and even online reaching out to those left broken and beaten down by the ways of this world as we await? Are we as the book of Exodus advises us to do combating evil by exposing it so that justice can be served? And by that contributing to the freedom of those afflicted by this worlds suppresion?

Yes no matter what the ' Lord's Will will be done'. But dont underestimate the power of 'free will'. The gift God has given us from the beginning of time. We aren't puppets being controlled by strings or mind controlled brainwashed zombies tricked or otherwise manipulated into believing our spiritual beliefs . You make a CHOICE to believe or not to believe them .( At least most of us do, unless we were raised in a Religious cult or suffered some sort of Satanic Ritual Abuse since the day we were born...but that is another blog entry for another day).Dont think of your life as simply a movie you are watching on a screen or play you are seeing on a stage with God acting as the director. Realize that you are the main character and how much of an active role you play in directing your own life as well as influencing and impacting others around you.

During this season of ' Great Awakening,many all over the globe fortunately are coming together, being brought together by a common interest, to fight the good fight in this spiritual battle of GO(O)D vs. (D)EVIL.

No matter our gender, race, nationality, religion or socio-economic status , people are coming together to help spread the great awakening. Knowledge that will be difficult to hear, but once truley understood, cannot only provide healing for us individualy, but as a collective as well.

Bottom line, know the power and authority that lies within you. Acknowledging it while determing to remain passive is the oposite of ' love and light' its actualy continuing to contribute to the pain and darkness that exists in this world. Instead Pray and ask the Most High God/ the Universe what you can do PHYSICALLY to help spread love and light not just ' send' it. Pray and meditate on when and how to begin doing so.Dont let negative energies and dark forces rob you of your desire to help change the world we live in for the better and to realize the power and ability you have to do so.

💫💙✨

[hellosaltysaladcollectionstuff]

THE UGLY HISTORY of the Children of God broke into wide public view in 2005, when Ricky Rodriguez — groomed from infancy to lead the cult known for sexual sharing in their communal homes — murdered his former nanny before committing suicide. Apocalypse Child, an enlightening but narrowly focused memoir by Flor Edwards, paints a more complicated picture of the group than do the lurid headlines.

Born in 1981 to rank-and-file disciples, Edwards lived far from the inner circle. Neither she nor her parents ever met David Berg, the group’s prophet and leader. Yet by Edwards’s account, Father David was ever-present through his revelations, his teachings, and his practices.

Edwards describes an unusual, fascinating, and demanding childhood — full of love and affection, but also full of disruption and uncertainty. Her family lived a peripatetic existence, moving from Spain to Sweden (where she and her twin sister were born) to Mexico to California, and on to several places in Thailand for a number of years, before returning to the United States and settling in the Chicago area.

Because memoirs must focus on the experiences of a single individual, we lose the backdrop. In Edwards’s book, that would be the larger picture of life and times in the 1970s, when Southern California was the epicenter of a religious counterculture, and when the majority of first-generation members like her parents joined in. The charismatic Lonnie Frisbee brought the Jesus People from San Francisco to Los Angeles; Chuck Smith baptized hippies on the beach near Costa Mesa, where he started Calvary Chapel; and John Wimber, a consultant to Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, established the Vineyard Fellowship in a break with Smith over exorcism and healing. (Both Wimber and Smith expelled Frisbee from their groups when they learned that he was gay, and they wrote him out of their church histories.)

The most famous, or perhaps infamous, of the Jesus Freak movements, however, was the Children of God. Renamed the Family of Love in 1978, and the Family International in 2004, most members knew it simply as the Family. The group was founded in 1968 by David Brandt Berg, a one-time minister in the mainstream Christian and Missionary Alliance. From his new pulpit on the streets in Huntington Beach, “Father David” channeled the spirit of the counterculture with his condemnation of “The System” and his promise of a coming apocalypse led by Jesus, the one true revolutionary. He was also fascinated by sex in all its forms and developed a theology that justified promiscuity — the “Law of Love.”

As a child, Flor Edwards clearly resented her parents’ religious commitment and their rejection of The System. Their decision to live communally, rather than as a nuclear family, particularly seemed to gall her. “As members of The Family, we were expected to ‘share’ our relatives with each other,” she writes, noting that some “uncles” and “aunties” were quite nice, and others were harsh disciplinarians. Her parents’ decision to “go for the gold,” and have as many children as possible, was simply additional evidence that “Mom and Dad’s loyalty was to Father David rather than to us kids.” Frequent training sessions that her parents attended as home leaders helped them focus on service to Jesus apart from the distraction of children, who “continued to take a backseat in their priorities.”

Edwards has no idea what motivated her parents to forsake the world and join Berg’s End Time army. They were trying to follow Jesus and prepare for his return in what seemed to them to be the biblical way: living hand-to-mouth, evangelizing on street corners, praying, and working in anticipation of the coming apocalypse. “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me,” said Jesus (Matthew 19:21). Adults in the Family took this injunction literally. But there was a cost to the children, as Edwards observes.

The author escaped many of the antinomian and abusive sexual conventions that existed in the Family throughout the 1980s, although she recalls seeing and, more often, hearing adults coupling in a vacant bedroom (by 1990 the group had repudiated adult-minor sexual contact and abandoned the practice of bringing in new converts via sex, which they called “flirty fishing”). She did not escape occasional discipline, however, including a memorable occasion where she was given seven hard whacks with a paddle for “disorderly conduct,” which included the “vices” of disobedience, foolishness, defiance, and pride. With the adults distracted, she and her sisters had run wild, relatively speaking — playing instead of raking leaves, wearing outside shoes inside the house, laughing through mealtime, and staying up past bedtime. She was nine years old.

But Edwards also relates warm memories of going on fun walks with her mother, creating a swimming pool in one of the family homes, and living an exotic, if challenging, life abroad. Somewhat unexpectedly, she found life trying in the United States, where she experienced bullying, ostracism, and poverty for the first time. “I had never felt shame living in Thailand,” she admits, “even though it was a third-world country and we had no money.” Her isolation from modern American life, and growing disenchantment with the Family as a teenager, led her into a hard-drinking crowd and culminated in a suicide attempt. A year in alternative high school, however, and a teacher who encouraged her to go to college set her back on track.

By the end of the memoir, Flor Edwards is a bit more forgiving and understanding of her parents, seeing children and adults alike as victims of an abusive cult. It is clear that her parents did not share this victim mentality, although they gradually drifted away from the group when they sought medical care for her mother, who was diagnosed with cervical cancer. Serious abnormalities had first appeared in 1981 while pregnant with Flor and Tamar, but her mother thought nothing about it “since the world was going to end anyway.”

Just as it is difficult today to imagine a Los Angeles teeming with Jesus Freaks, it is hard to envision the dedication required to give up everything in the belief that time on earth was short. Although Edwards does not actually use ironic quotes when writing about being “God’s End Time soldier,” they are nonetheless present.

The 1960s and 1970s lacked the pervasive sense of irony that marks our own century. Devotion, loyalty, perseverance, and ardor were not considered pathologies in that era. A counterculture had arisen that rejected the values of the 1950s — the parents’ values — in a quest for a life of meaning. One of the most self-revealing statements to appear in the book is when Edwards declares that as a child she had been “burdened with saving the world.”

Fortunately, Edwards did not suffer the molestation a few children experienced in other communal homes or the cruelties inflicted on adolescents in some of the teen homes. Indeed, her book noticeably indicates that each home had its unique culture and practices, despite the edicts that came from on high. This undermines any attempt to make vast generalizations about the Family, even though former members tend to paint the past in broad strokes on critical websites. The mistreatment that occurred in one household was absent from another, and national differences made everyone’s experience different.

Children swelled the ranks of the movement because members of the Family did not believe in using artificial contraception. As early as 1982, children made up the majority of full-time members, and this imbalance continued for several decades. As a result, leadership shifted the focus of activities from street ministry and evangelization to education and homeschooling of children.

The educational background provided in the Family appears to have been exceptional for Edwards. She reports completing the Family-created fourth-grade workbook when she was seven, but not finishing the fifth-grade book because she was busy with chores in the communal home where her family lived. Even when she began attending public school as a teenager, she and her sisters were responsible for cooking and child care. Nevertheless, Edwards managed to maintain a 4.0 grade point average in high school and gained acceptance to UC Berkeley when she was 18, as did her twin sister.

Her separation from the Family began when she graduated from high school — at least mentally and emotionally — so the memoir does not cover institutional developments that have occurred in the last two decades. These would include the 2010 “Reboot,” which abandoned the communal-home model and, in effect, dismantled the last vestige of the group’s notorious past. The Family International exists today primarily as a virtual religion. A visitor to its website would find a completely traditional evangelical Christian message. 

Apocalypse Child thus presents an absorbing snapshot of one individual’s experiences in a radically alternative movement, even though it lacks the sociological backdrop and wider lens that would have put her experience into its historical context. A reader would need to view a bigger photo album to gain a complete understanding of how that one snapshot fits.

¤

Rebecca Moore is Emerita Professor of Religious Studies at San Diego State University and the author of Beyond Brainwashing: Perspectives on Cult Violence (Cambridge University Press, 2018).

The post When the Apocalypse Didn’t Come appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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[fr-martin-gospel-reflections]

10th June - ‘Here are my mother and my brothers’, Reflection on today’s gospel reading (Mk 3:20-35)

Tenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Every so often a crisis can arise in a family relating to some family member, and other family members often feel the need to intervene. It can be difficult to know whether or not it is a good thing to intervene. Will it make matters better or worse? If a decision is made to intervene, there arises the question as to how best to do so. Such interventions are not always well received by the family member in question, even if they are done out of love and concern, which is generally the underlying motivation.

We find a somewhat similar situation in the family of Jesus in today’s gospel reading. Since he left his home in Nazareth, Jesus has literally been a man with a mission. The son of the carpenter has become the proclaimer of the presence of God’s kingdom. His message was experienced as good news by many, especially the most vulnerable and broken. However, the same message was perceived as dangerous and troublesome by others, especially those who prided themselves on understanding God’s will as expressed in the Jewish Law. Jesus has been making many enemies among the influential and the powerful. So much so, that many people have been saying about Jesus, ‘he is out of his mind’. Jesus’ family feel the need to do something out of concern for his well-being. The beginning of today’s gospel reading says that his relatives set out from Nazareth to take charge of Jesus. It sounded as if they were going to forcibly take him home. The end of today’s gospel reading shows what happened when they reached the house in Capernaum where Jesus was teaching with a group of his followers sitting around him, listening to him. When Jesus was informed that his family, including his mother, were outside asking for him to come out, he looked around at those seated about him and said in effect, ‘this is now my family’. ‘Here are my mother and brothers’ and sisters. Everyone who seeks to do God’s will as Jesus reveals it is now a member of his new family.

Here was a family intervention that did not quite go according to plan from the perspective of Jesus’ family members. God was at work in the life of Jesus in a way that his family did not understand and struggled to accept. Their plans and purposes for Jesus were too small. They had yet to learn to surrender to God’s purpose for Jesus’ life. Sometimes, our plans and purposes for others, even for those we love the best, can be too confining. We often struggle to let them go to a greater purpose that we don’t fully understand at the time. God’s purpose for Jesus was that he would form a new family, a family of his disciples. In time, this new family came to be called the church. We are all members of that new family of Jesus. God’s purpose for Jesus’ life has come to embrace us all. All who have been baptized in the name of the Trinity belong to the family of the church. The words of Jesus at the end of today’s gospel reading are very striking. He is saying in effect that the members of his family of origin do not have a stronger claim on him in virtue of their blood relationship with him. He clearly wants the members of his family of origin to become members of his new family, but, in doing so they are no more his brothers and sisters and mother than the other members of his new family. Jesus’ words bring home to us the privileged relationship we have with him. Through the Holy Spirit, we have become his brothers and sisters. Although Jesus is the Son of God in a unique way, we have been caught up into his own relationship with God; we are sons and daughters of God.

This great privilege contains its own calling. When Jesus looked around at his new family at the end of today’s gospel reading, he said, ‘anyone who does the will of God, that person is my brother and sister and mother’. Sometimes the call to do the will of God, as Jesus has revealed it to us, does not always come easy to us. The first reading refers to Adam who did his own will rather than God’s will, eating from the tree that God had forbidden to him, in an effort to be like God. As a result of not doing God’s will, he felt distant from God and hid from God; so God had to cry out after him, ‘Where are you?’ In the gospel reading, the learned scribes were clearly acting contrary to God’s will in attributing Jesus’ healing power to an evil spirit, Satan, rather than to God’s Spirit. Jesus declares that those who demonize goodness in this way put themselves beyond the reach of God’s forgiveness. The demonizing of those who proclaim God’s will to the world, and live accordingly, has been with us all through history, up to the present. As members of Jesus’ family, Jesus taught us to pray, ‘Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven’. Our daily calling as the Lord’s brothers and sisters is to make that prayer a reality in the concrete circumstances of our lives, by doing the will of God as he has revealed it to us.

Saint John the Baptist Parish, Clontarf, Dublin, Ireland

Parish Website:  www.stjohnsclontarf.ie Join us via our webcam

Twitter: @SJtBClontarfRC

Facebook: @SJtBClontarf

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[maciaslucymua-blog1]

When Your Husband Returns From Combat – The Warrior Soul

New Post has been published on http://www.healthgoesfemale.com/when-your-husband-returns-from-combat-the-warrior-soul/

When Your Husband Returns From Combat – The Warrior Soul

The physical, emotional, and spiritual “soul damage” of war, combat experience, or military service is part of the battle you and your military husband will face when he comes home from active duty. Surviving and healing from the trauma and violence won’t be the most romantic thing you face as a married couple, but it could be the most important. In Tending the Warrior Soul, Louis Harrison offers a tender, heartwrenching, and valuable look inside the heart and mind of soldier. He wrote this book to advance a counselor or minister’s understanding of the soul damage that warriors (such as soldiers, military combatants, or other types of army or navy service) experience. I want to share a few insights from Harrison’s book, to help army wives better understand their military husbands. If your husband is a warrior or has military experience, I encourage you to read Tending the Warrior Soul. It is written from Harrison’s perspective as a counselor or minister for men who have served in active duty – and it is not intended as advice for you to “treat” your military husband in any particular way.

Rather, this book will give you valuable insights into your military husband’s spiritual, emotional, and physical experience as a combat survivor. This will change how you relate to him, and help you become a wise, compassionate, loving army wife. When Your Husband Returns From Combat Harrison wrote Tending the Warrior Soul not only to increase a non-combatant’s understanding of the spiritual effects of war, but also to support and encourage the ministers and counselors who work with military men. Here are a three insights that stood out to me. This book contains an ocean of valuable information and I can’t do justice to everything Harrison shared; this blog post just barely scratches the surface. If your husband has served in the military, I do encourage you to read this book. Your husband’s soul wounds need God’s attention The “soul damage” your military husband faces after surviving combat is deep and difficult to address. If he does talk to a military psychologist or counselor about his experiences, he may not receive the spiritual care he needs. Your husband needs to find the peace and rest only God can offer before he is truly ready and able to find healing for the spiritual and emotional damage of war. As an army wife, you may know how post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) affects many men physically, emotionally, and spiritually. But, you may find it surprising – as I did – to learn that some military men need a deeper spiritual process to bring peace and healing to the core of their souls. Through the work of the Spirit of God your husband will find healing and peace for his conscience – especially if he needs assurance that his soul is clean before God. This is work only the Holy Spirit can do. Even if your husband gets psychological help, his spirit thirsts for more “The descriptors used, such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Combat Operational Stress, and others potentially involve the hidden dimension of chronic spiritual conflict,” writes Harrison in Tending the Warrior Soul. “Crucial help for the warrior comes through skilled medical, cognitive, and behavioral therapies. But it’s not the domain of these approaches to address the poison of chronic soul conflict. In our care for the warrior, if this distinction is not made he may receive excellent medical and psychological help, and yet be left with the lifelong plea, ‘I don’t want thanks; I want to be forgiven!’” It’s wonderful and encouraging if your husband accepts or even actively seeks psychological counseling for his emotional wounds. But it’s also important to remember that his soul has been wounded in ways that psychology can’t heal. As the wife of a warrior you won’t be able to give your husband the peace or forgiveness he needs, but you can pray for your husband. Pray that God leads him to the right counselor or minister. Ask for the Holy Spirit’s guidance, for the love and peace of Jesus to fill your husband’s heart, mind, and soul as he seeks to heal from the trauma of combat.

Your prayers, quiet support and steady love will help your husband heal Every military husband requires different types of support – and his need will be affected by not only his combat experience, but whether or not he is returning to active duty. And, every marriage is unique! This means that there are no easy answers or quick tips on how to help your husband cope with post traumatic stress or the soul damage inflicted by war. Be still. Spend time with the Lord. Listen for His guidance, for the Holy Spirit’s whispers that will help you know how to support your husband when he returns from combat. Some men need to re-learn how to communicate with civilians, while others seem to slip right back into home life as usual. Some men change after active duty; others appear to be unaffected. You know your husband, and you know yourself. Trust your intuition, and ask God to give you wisdom and guidance as you walk alongside your warrior husband. The Survivor Psalm – a poem by a warrior and veteran While researching military husbands and the effects of combat on a man’s soul, I found this beautiful poem. This “Survivor Psalm” offers hope and faith for the journey towards healing and restoration.   . Survivor Psalmby Frank Ochbery, M.D. I have been victimized.I was in a fight that wasnot a fair fight. I did not ask for the fight. I lost.There is no shame in losing suchFights, only in winning. I have reached the stage ofSurvivor and am no longer aslave of victim status. I look back with sadnessrather than hate.I look forward with hoperather than despair. I may never forget, but I need notconstantly remember.I was a victim.I am a survivor.. . Take heart, dear reader. Trust the healing power of the Lord your God who created you and loves you deeply. Open your heart and soul to His love and guidance, and know that if you don’t give up on Him, He won’t give up on you. I welcome your thoughts on supporting and helping your husband after combat below. I can’t offer advice or counseling, but you may find it helpful to share your experience. Tending the Warrior Soul In Tending the Warrior Soul, you will gain a greater insight and understanding of the spiritual and emotional traumas that your military husband is experiencing. Some of these “soul traumas” aren’t helped by even the most excellent psychological care, medical intervention, and official support military programs. The mission of this book is to advance your understanding of this soul damage, and to offer support, encouragement, biblical counsel, spiritual challenge, and helpful resources. About the author of Tending the Warrior Soul: Lou and Linda Harrison have ministered to the military for nearly fifty years through Cadence International — an organization dedicated solely to the purpose of “sharing the Gospel and our lives with the military community.” Out of these years of relationships with military people, Lou has composed a thoughtful and tender exposition of the warrior’s soul. Cadence International joins him in dedicating this book to every one of our country’s warriors and to their family and friends who walk lovingly and faithfully beside them.

xo

[miajolensdevotion]

What Did You Say? Mary Southerland

Today's Truth "A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver" (Proverbs 25:11).

Friend to Friend Fruit  is one of my favorite foods. When I go grocery shopping, it always   takes me longer to get through the fruit section than any other area of the store.I spend what some might consider a ridiculously long time   picking out what I hope will be the juiciest apples, the plumpest grapes  and sweetest bananas. Experience has taught me to quickly discard any piece of fruit that is bruised, mushy or discolored. I shake cantaloupe  and thump watermelons. Ripe strawberries have a unique sweet scent and  only the reddest cherries will do. Plums and tomatoes must be firm to the touch, bright in color and wrinkle-free while the more wrinkles the  better when it comes to choosing passion fruit.

On a recent trip  to the grocery store, I was carefully making my fruit selections when the thought occurred to me that I spend more time choosing fruit than I  spend choosing my words.

Words are power tools that can build and  encourage. Words can also destroy and cause confusion. We have all been  hurt and even defeated by words spoken in anger or words rising out of a  wounded and bitter heart. I have been guilty of speaking damaging words  with the ulterior motive of flaunting power or demonstrating control.  It is so easy for my mouth to be in motion before my mind is in gear,  and the result is rarely good or godly.

The words we speak can  clarify or complicate a situation. I have watched my husband diffuse an  emotional bomb and avoid a potentially explosive situation with a few  carefully chosen and quietly spoken words of wisdom. I have also  observed him in the art of confrontation – and with Dan, it really is an  art. In fact, one person told me that he was halfway home before he  realized that Dan had just confronted and corrected him.

Solomon  offers great wisdom concerning the use of words, "Whoever controls his  mouth protects his own life. Whoever has a big mouth comes to ruin"  (Proverbs 13:3 GWT). If we do not learn to use and control our tongue,  it will use and control us. While it is true that we need to choose our  words carefully, it is just as true that the tongue is a spiritual  thermometer that reflects the condition of the heart.

I am not a  good patient and tend to think that most medical rules apply to everyone  else in my life – but not to me. After all, I am a woman and I am a  Southerland. According to my husband, it doesn't get much tougher than  that. Several years ago, I was slammed with a high fever and blinding  headache that sent me to bed for days, something highly unusual for me. I  called my doctor. When he heard my symptoms, he told me to come in  immediately and even though his waiting room was full, he would make  room for me in his already crowded schedule. His urgency was not  encouraging.

The minute I walked in his office, the receptionist  waved me back to the patient area where a nurse promptly escorted me to  an examination room, hurriedly recorded my symptoms, took my  temperature, glanced briefly at my throat and quickly left the room.  Minutes later, the doctor and a nurse walked in and stood on the  opposite side of the room, almost smiling at me. At this point, I  realized that whatever I had was evidently highly contagious and  probably fatal. I felt so awful that the latter was definitely  appealing.

"Mary, I am almost certain you have viral meningitis,"  the doctor said. Seeing the blank look on my face, he explained, "Your  abnormally high fever of 104 and severe headache are classic symptoms of  meningitis, but we need to run some tests to verify my suspicions. Oh,  and by the way, how long have you had the solid white coating on your  tongue?" I was stunned! What coating? Why is the color of my tongue even  important in determining my illness? The doctor continued, "The health  of the tongue is a very strong indicator of the health of the entire  body."

The same is true when it comes to the words we speak. "The  mouth speaks the things that are in the heart. Good people have good  things in their hearts, and so they say good things. But evil people  have evil in their hearts, so they say evil things" (Matthew 12:34-35,  NCV). If my words are boastful, my heart is insecure. If my words are  filthy, my heart is impure and if my words are critical, my heart is  filled with pride and anger. In other words, the problem is not really  my mouth, it's my heart. The words I speak reflect the true condition of  my heart.

Careless words can cause such grief. Unless strained  through discipline and holiness, words can convey false perspectives and  untruths. However, the right word, spoken at the right time and in the  right way can bring order in the midst of confusion and light on a very  dark path. I believe God gives us spiritual "radar" so we can assess a  situation and speak the right word for that circumstance. We just need  to check the "radar screen" before we speak.

Let's Pray Father,  I can be so careless with the words I speak. Forgive me. Please help me  learn how to control my tongue. Create in me a clean heart, God, so  that I can speak words filled with grace and love. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Now It's Your Turn Read Colossians 4:6. "Let your conversation be gracious and effective so that you will have the right answer for everyone."

How would you describe words that are "gracious?" How can our words be "effective" in the lives of others? What do you think Paul means when he says that we can have the "right answer for everyone?"

More from the Girlfriends The  subject of taming the tongue is a hard one. Since communication is a   gift from God, He has a plan for the right way to use it. My problem is that I tend to think my plan is better. I know. I can be arrogant … and  stubborn. Someone recently sent me this prayer: "Lord, keep Your arm   around my shoulder and Your hand over my mouth." Amen!