A great post-Sandy prayer and practice list

Here's a good prayer and action list from a former DC ally and friend of mine, Dr. Calvin Beisner, who is a former pastor-- here.

Friend, foe or fiend

     In this season of John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, we are dealing with our sinful actions so I thought to consider our reception of truth that hurts. The Lord can reveal our sin to us through our spirits, the Word, friends and enemies. If both friends and foes can wound us, how can we spiritually know the difference between whether the wounding is coming from a friend or foe? Both enemies and friends can occasionally be very intent upon showing us our faults, sometimes gently and sometimes not so gently. They can both be very intent upon our correction! Is it important to know whether they are friend or foe? Sometimes I’ve heard  teaching saying that “conviction is from God and condemnation is from the Devil” so if you feel “condemned,” or maybe just bad, you are to not listen to this voice. But I think this is wrong.

OT Themes

Okay, so here’s some of the themes we’ve been seeing in our OT study so far. (At least I have!)

Love the sinner, love the sin

    Christians like to say, “love the sinner, hate the sin,” but as I see it, this is not the attitude of Jesus or the desert monks of the early Church.

Why I left politics

     After people hear about my experience in politics in a very cool job with very cool people doing very cool work they usually ask why I left. I tell them this. (This does relate to our Scripture study, I promise.)

Fearless, reckless love

Make no mistake, however. Christian ascesis is not only, or even especially

about moderation, self-control, wisdom.

It is the folly of those who in Christ fling themselves into the furnace of the spirit,

of those who have something in common with fire. Olivier Clement

     I started on the issue of fear in my last post and I thought it might be helpful to someone if I continued on the subject of fear a bit. (Btw, Marshall liked some of these ideas of mine! :) )

The lust versus fear continuum

     This week our ToB topic was on JPII’s discussion on the lustful intent of the eyes. But I guess I see this as only one side of the issue. I’ve never struggled with lust, but I have had trouble with fear which can create a disconnect between our minds and our bodies.

One flesh for better and worse

     In Theology of the Body we are attempting to understand our faith within the metaphor of marriage and relationships. In a recent post I wrote on how the Law is not meant to give us a reputation as the Pharisees sometimes treated it.  Instead, we learn to let people sometimes think ill of us, as Jesus did. Within the marriage analogy, we also learn that becoming one flesh with our spouse can both build up and sometimes also break down “our reputations.”

What intercession looks like

     Kill my people? Kill me, Esther effectively said, but this isn’t because the Jews so deserved to be saved (Esther 8:3). The Jews were in exile because of their sins. Likewise, Christians need saving but not because we deserve it more than others. The Church too is ugly. It’s full of self-serving, judgmental, greedy people like me. We can’t see in front of our own noses to care for those around us. We are hypocrites talking about how important marriage is, all the while going behind our spouses’ backs to “get our wants met” in other ways and hurting others in the process.

The Law--Not a Reputation

     Sometimes you hear people say, “I’ve never broken the Ten Commandments,” implying (even if it were true) that the commandments are a measure of righteousness. The scribes and Pharisees certainly used them in this way. How well you kept the rules showed how holy you supposedly were: this built up their reputations, which they highly prized. Jesus said to them, “you love the places of honor…” (Luke 11:43, 14:7, 20:46; Matt 23:6). His disciples also struggled with this, wanting to sit at his right and left hands in the kingdom (Mk 10:37, Matt 20:21).

Soul Surfer Questions

     I watched the movie Soul Surfer last week on Netflix. Bethany Hamilton does have a powerful testimony in it on how God was able to redeem a terrible event in her life (losing her arm) and use it to cause her to be more compassionate towards those who are disabled.

The Exodus from the Hotel California

     I was baptized by someone in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I don’t know much about his life at all other than he got out of Hollywood, and that he started a new life in Christ with his family as a pastor at a little church in Boulder Colorado which I attended.  I loved the heart for Christ that he showed when he led us on Sunday mornings singing even those bad, early 1980 worship songs—I’ve never listened to his pre-Christian music. But he escaped from Hollywood. In the Theology of the Body context, I suppose Egypt reminds me of the song Hotel California, where  “prisoners” “can check-out anytime you like, but you can never leave.” You can never leave, that is, until God or His chosen deliverer comes and helps to extricate you.

Covenant and management practices

     Before going into seminary full-time, I worked for three years in an established DC libertarian think tank and I absolutely loved it. We had every life-style, political stripe, sexual expression, age and religion represented, and yet we worked together as friends in an “iron sharpens iron” kind of way. Every voice was heard. Somehow even I was accepted, with my ascetical, conservative, one husband, one religion views.

The violence of Lamech

     I grew up in California as a non-Christian and rather gender-blind. Yes, that’s me on the far left, the only girl with nine boys in the mountaineering club—and I honestly never thought twice about it. We went cross-country skiing, hiking, rock-climbing, and snow-camping together. They treated me like one of them and some are still my friends today.