Once again we as a nation are faced with Pure Evil, that being the heartfelt pronouncement of the Sheriff in Broward County. The shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, took 17 lives with an additional 14 in the hospital. Once the Governor, other state officials and law enforcement had weighed in there was the usual interviews with people of note and of course the usual questions. Politicians, an immediate influx of various different theories from experts in different fields as to the type of person that would do such a thing and still the same question remains, how do we stop this from happening?

What motivates anyone to do such a thing? Motivation is certainly a question that needs to be addressed. What can we do better to make this type of event an unusual occurrence? The last question holds a horrible truth. These shootings and the aftermath that follows is becoming the new norm of the day. Same questions, same results nothing of value ever really takes place. It’s as if it is standard practice, almost like a movie script, everyone knows their place, lines and demeanor needed to act out this phase of the story. I used to count and keep names but I don’t anymore, the Politicians who rush to stand on the bodies of the dead to push their political agenda and curry favor among certain groups. The many groups that will use this to further their interests. The gun lobbies and their supporters, pro-gun groups, and the anti-gun. We will hear from the President and religious leaders. Then there will be a parade of Hollywood’s best, I like to call them the Celebrity Caravan lending their face and voice and remarkable knowledge as their contribution to solving this gun problem.

I would suggest that we are the problem and the gun is only the tool. We have seen all over the world and here in the USA a variety of different tools used. Gun, knives, bombs, poison gases, cars, trucks, vans and even humans detonating explosives attached to their own bodies. Here in the Pew is not the place to debate this part of the problem. We find our ground in Mark 7: 21-23

Mark 7: 21-23
21 For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, 22 coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. 23 All these evil things come from within, and they defile a man.”

The secular community and even some of those in the religious community will never take responsibility for our failures or even the state we find our country in, the loss of values and a culture that fosters such evils as we read about in Mark 7: 21-23. We as people and a government find it much easier to place the blame on an inanimate object that is the tool used to commit this evil; it is the guns fault. It is not the purpose of the Pew to debate the gun issue. I stand to be corrected, but I believe the first murder took place a long time ago.

Genesis 4 King James Version (KJV)
8 And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.

There has been a lot of speculation as to how Cain killed his brother, most agree we really don’t know what the weapon used was. We do know that Cain did a terrible thing and God punished him for it. Point being that the loss of life due to evil in any form, is not pleasing to the God we serve.

Luke 19: 41
41 And when he drew near and saw the city he wept over it, 42 saying, “Would that even today you knew the things that make for peace! But now they are hid from your eyes.

I feel that Jesus weeps over this world, over the people of this world, just as he did when he looked over Jerusalem. There will be many words written about Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, I do not have the words to express my sadness. I leave you with this……

Jesus wept. (John 11: 35)

God Bless

jk

Obsessions can become a bad thing while in a totally different way a constant vigilance can be a good thing. Vigilance is keeping a constant awareness for any difficulties that might lie ahead and in our Christian world today there are many. Recent events have taken me to the Book of Jude again and some new thoughts. We all wonder at times what this Christian life expects of us, Jude tells us in the first two verses, what it means to be a Christian.

-Christians are those who are called by God.
-Christians are those who are beloved in God.
-Christians are those who are kept by Christ.

We are summoned to a duty and responsibility. We are called by God and loved by God. As Christians we are never alone. Christ is always watching over us and most anywhere we go there will be other Christians willing to shelter and comfort us. We are privileged to be called even though the challenges will be many. I as well as many others have spoken to or written about defending the faith and the third and forth verses of Jude speak to just that.In the third verse we read what prompted this letter.

Jude 3
Beloved, when I was in the midst of devoting all my energy to writing to you about the faith which we all share, I felt that I was compelled to write a letter to you to urge you to engage upon the struggle to defend the faith which was once and for all delivered to God’s consecrated people.

Jude has received news that there are some misguided people spreading destructive teachings. Jude knew his duty and he rushed to defend the faith. Ever had a Jude moment? Sometimes dealing with the moment instead of focusing on the future is necessary for the defense of the faith. I believe sometimes we forget that there were others who came before us. This faith we are defending has been delivered to us and is a tradition in an unbroken chain going back to Jesus Christ himself. The links of this chain are made and strengthened by the men and women who have experienced the truth and wonder of these facts. We did not discover these facts on our own, they were delivered to us and are unchanging. This tradition was brought to us in a very personal way, passed on from person to person through the generations. It is unchangeable in the sense that at the very center lies the permanence that is Jesus Christ, who brings salvation to all. This Christian faith is given to those who are called and it is strongest within the Church, not resting in the hands of just one person. We, each generation must pass it down intact and undistorted. This will not be easy but each generation must struggle to defend the faith. Jude sees the threat emanating from “The Peril From Within”. (William Barclay pg 204 DBS Jude)

Jude 4
For certain men have wormed their way into the Church – long before this, they were designated for judgment – impious creatures they are – who twist the grace of God into a justification of blatant immorality and who deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.

Jude wrote this letter to warn that the threat comes from within the Church. There are those who have come into the Church and these despicable people are distorting the grace of God as a means to justify their wickedness. There is much to consider in this small book and there is no way a simple blog can do it justice. Jude writes of bad examples of past transgressions, people who live by the their instincts, without reason and even less knowledge. He is relentless in his attacks, he turns to history, encouraging the Church to remember that the wickedness of others has never ended well. He does his best to paint a picture of these wicked people and questions their character. Jude is blunt and in his words of moral indignation there is even a hint of  repressed anger. So much is here in this book but one point I would make, these people have allowed the sins of the flesh to guide their actions and seek to distort the word of God so that they might justify those actions.

How important is defending the faith? There is a goodness in Christians that keep the faith. It is a faith that was passed on from Christ on the cross, his resurrection, from the Apostles to the Church and of course from the Church to us. Generation to generation without change and defended by the Church through the people of the Church. The world is a much better place because of the faith. We must practice a holy faith. The root meaning of the word holy is different. We are called to be different just as our faith is different. Ours is not a faith of opinions, a set of rules, no way! Our faith has the power to change people and situations.…..Our faith is God-given guided by the Holy Spirit.
One last thing about this faith thing. Faith must be defended because it is by faith we are called to reclaim the lost and there are things we must do to meet this calling.

we must pray and seek the Holy Spirit to guide us in our calling.

we must study and be able to give a reason for our faith, leaving no doubt as to its strength by how we live this life.

we must share that faith not only by how we live but verbally, we must tell the story.

Free will, we have all heard that. Sometimes it may become necessary to act forcibly.

we must never allow ourselves to be drawn into the sins of others.

we must be sure that our faith is strong before we try to lift the weak up out of their despair.

We defend what we know to be true because of the certainty of the promises of Jesus Christ and the resurrection and the life to come. I will close with this. In 1964 Barry Goldwater said this,“Extremism in the defense of freedom is no vice.” Some say it cost him the election for President of The United States. I would hope that as I write this I would not offend you, but “Extremism in the defense of the Faith is no vice.”

Keep The Faith, Life is Good
jk
Blog References: *The New Interpreters Bible, William Barclay DBS

Not everything that comes into the pew is centered on biblical thought or conversations. Our daily lives expose us to the other side, so to speak. For the Christian there is something more than just today or tomorrow or even the years to come, there is the promise of eternity, life everlasting, the reality of salvation. Stretching it a bit you could say there are two realities. The one of certainty which lies in the promises of Christ or the reality of these days, the uncertainty of what is to come. So let’s deal with the reality of today which means we will have to step out of the pew. Stepping out of the pew causes problems, because we tend to leave a large part of our Christian values behind. It is hard for Christians to live a life in which their values have been reduced by legislation or marginalized by “Socially Accepted Convention.” Like it or not our reality is one of what is to come, not of this day or this world. Yet we must live in the reality of today, which unfortunately causes many of us to try to blend in with or accept these “Socially Accepted Conventions.” What is this convention we are speaking about?

A convention is a set of agreed, stipulated, or generally accepted standards, norms, social norms, or criteria, often taking the form of a custom.
Convention (norm) – Wikipedia

These norms or standards, social or otherwise, were not necessarily due to legislative efforts but simply the results of the culture of the day. Such is the result of Christians not speaking up or in most cases just leaving our values in the pew and accepting things as they are. It is much easier to believe we can do nothing about these things and allow our silence to validate the culture of the day, accepting what is instead of what is possible. I suppose what led me to this is of all things the political climate in our country. Now politics is not the driver here but the total abandonment of our Christian faith to resist the marginalizing of our values is a big part of today’s disfunction. Is he bringing politics into the pew? No, it is the source of what I am about to write. I will try to be reasonable but what I saw the other night during the SOTU address confirmed in my mind what I have felt I was seeing every day. The disrespect, the reluctance to listen and the level of pure hate that enveloped the faces of those who were there was disturbing. Now it would not be fair to say that all of those in attendance were on one side of the aisle only. Hate is never confined to one place, person or thing. It permeates and effects everything around it. What I saw in that chamber was the culture of hate alive and well and to make it worse, no one challenged it. Just like our society today it appeared to be just an accepted social convention, how sad. It had become just another news story of our day. Here are eight core Christian values we sometimes leave in the pew.

• Grace – a subversive value! Giving people more than they deserve.

• Hope – not a guarantee of immunity from harm but a conviction that God is always
present

• Faith – the means to real depth in relationships of all kinds

• Love – means to love the unlovely

• Justice – for all (not ‘just-me’). A concept biased in favor of the disadvantaged.

• Joy – impossible to legislate for this but an essential social value

• Service – meaning is found in service rather than self-centredness

• Peace– not just the absence of fighting but positive well-being

These are theologically based values, God is in and through all of them. They are Christological values, they are all demonstrated in the life of Christ.
Brian Edgar, Director of Theology and Public policy for the Evangelical Alliance. (ethos.org.au)

I think I can wrap it at this point, 721 words so far, yeah I count words, weird but to many words can dull the point you are trying to make. Our acceptance of those “Socially Accepted Conventions” feeds this “Culture of Hatred” which seems to be becoming one of those “Socially Accepted Conventions”. There were many social norms in Jesus’ day although quite different from ours today, which of course is understandable. If we spend our life in righteous indignation there would be no time left to tell “the story”. I simply turn to scripture to offer a little help in a messed up world.

Philippians 4: 8-9
8 Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. 9 Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.

God Bless, Life is Good

jk