Who Would Jesus Bomb?

Not a helpful question. Seems similar to the question: "What fighter jet would Adam & Eve prefer?"

Even ignoring the obvious road-block presented by ridiculous chronic displacement, it also presents a very complex question as if it's a black-and-white yes-no question.

It's not.

Behind the question is the idea that it is God alone who decides who lives and who dies. In general we believe in this. But the question "WWJB?" implies there are never any exceptions.

Thus, it is wrong to:

1. Throw yourself in front of a bus to push someone else out of the way.
2. Take out Hitler.
3. Protect your child in self defense if you risk fatally injuring the attacker.
   

Due to the length of the quotes, I've moved them to the end of the posting. To sum up...

Augustine writes about Scipio, a Roman, who advised against conquering a wealthy enemy, and against installing seats in theatres, because security and wealth lead to avarice and moral pestilence.

av·a·rice (ăv'ə-rĭs) - reprehensible acquisitiveness; insatiable desire for wealth (personified as one of the deadly sins)

pes·ti·lence (pĕs'tə-ləns) - an epidemic disease with a high death rate



We live in luxury in the West, like Rome but more so. Reading this made me wonder. Scipio, that Agustine is admiring, challenged having seats in the theatres of Rome. The parallel today would be having seats in movie theatres.

He called it an enervating and emasculating influence to have theatre seats!

Can you imagine having to stand in movie theatres?

Our lives are so full of luxury we can't even see it. Yet, he calls luxury an affront to manliness, a threat to good citizenship. Augustine points out that having the feeling of security along with wealth lead to avarice and moral pestilence.

Pagan Roman citizens had gotten so bogged down in this that even after Rome had fallen, and there was neither security nor wealth, they could not pull their lives together for they kept running after money and pleasure rather than piecing their lives and regions back together.

The west's two most remarkable characteristics are avarice and moral pestilence.

We as Western Christians have gotten so bogged down in this that our leaders teach that God wants us to ruthlessly seek more money to enlarge our territory or have our "best" life now by seeking wealth. For us is modeled moral pestilence.

How did we come to embrace into our faith one of the "seven deadly sins"?

Pagan Rome was beyond redemption - even being conquered did not get them to pull their act together. Is the west beyond redemption in this?

Did the great depression halt the influence of avarice and moral pestilence? May the depression have added on 50 years to the lifespan of western civilization because of this?

Should I get rid of lots of my luxuries - things as "basic" as seating in the Roman theatres?

Augustine writes to the survivors of the fall of the Roman Empire:

For certainly your desire for peace, and prosperity, and plenty is not prompted by any purpose of using these blessings honestly, that is to say, with moderation, sobriety, temperance, and piety; for your purpose rather is to run riot in an endless variety of sottish pleasures, and thus to generate from your prosperity a moral pestilence which will prove a thousandfold more disastrous than the fiercest enemies. It was such a calamity as this that Scipio, your chief pontiff, your best man in the judgment of the whole senate, feared when he refused to agree to the destruction of Carthage, Rome’s rival and opposed Cato, who advised its destruction. He feared security, that enemy of weak minds, and he perceived that a wholesome fear would be a fit guardian for the citizens. And he was not mistaken;

And again:

For similar reasons, and animated by the same considerate patriotism, that same chief pontiff of yours—I still refer to him who was adjudged Rome’s best man without one dissentient voice—threw cold water on the proposal of the senate to build a circle of seats round the theatre, and in a very weighty speech warned them against allowing the luxurious manners of Greece to sap the Roman manliness, and persuaded them not to yield to the enervating and emasculating influence of foreign licentiousness. So authoritative and forcible were his words, that the senate was moved to prohibit the use even of those benches which hitherto had been customarily brought to the theatre for the temporary use of the citizens. (you can read the text here, the whole book is online)

Per CS Lewis, and a college prof I had, I've been reading Augustine's City of God.

I once read advice by CS Lewis to read one ancient book after reading a contemporary book. We wonder how people in the past thought the sun circled earth, or how they thought the world was flat.

There are, Lewis states, always mass mis-understandings, sometimes bridging cultures so it seems that everyone in a certain period of time thought a certain way. Our entire culture, or the entire known world seems to miss the obvious in some significant way. If this is true, then we have our own gaps in knowledge and wisdom today.

How do you find out what parts of your world view are baseless assumptions?

As part of your personal permanent presuppositions, you won't notice them on your own. As part of a contemporary cultural or global problem, no one speaking or writing or blogging today will be able to show them to you.

Thus, C.S. very strongly admonishes his readers to read ancient literature. If there are problems that we cannot see within our time or culture, they can only be spotted by someone outside of our time and culture. We have a way of viewing and interacting with the world view of someone else. You'll see it's flaws where we have strengths, but you will also find areas where they were right all along and your world view is challenged in ways it has never been challenged by anyone you've talked to or whose writings you've read.

I've been challenged over the last few days by Augustine. I'll post more details soon. Even if he's right on this, it will sound crazy if it indeed points to errors in our world view assumptions.

I have answered the door at my home twice today to find sales people annoying me to sign up for a free estimate for windows or gutters. Reminded me of the worst sales-person ever to come to my door.

[JonTC is sitting by the front door with a cat.]

[Salesman enters stage-right, walking from neighbour's house, walks across the lawn to where JonTC is sitting]

Salesman : Hi, are your parents home?

JonTC : No.

Salesman : Oh. When will the homeowner be around?

JonTC : I am the homeowner.

Salesman : Really? You're awfully young. Blah blah blah, blah blah blah.

[JonTC staring at guy, wondering how inept he is]

JonTC : No. No thanks.

Salesman : Blah blah blah, blah blah blah

JonTC : No, not even then.

[Salesman walks across grass again leaving the property]

[This is a response toTrevor's blog about the comments by this guy to an original Infuse blog post. Because of the length of the post, I've shortened it. To read all of what I thought, just click here.



Perhaps if you're into initiating confrontational evangelism (curiously rare in Jesus' ministry, though people were constantly approaching him and being confrontational), being "on the offensive" you can get into the mindset that you have the gift of offensiveness, and your mission from God is to argue with people.



Unfortunately, no discussion actually exists there. A discussion works best when both people are humble enough to be pursuing more than their ego - seeking for their understanding to agree more with truth.

Without a discussion, and only an argument, is it even something you want to enter into anyway? That seems to go against the idea of evangelism originally presented in the Infuse blog (link at the top of the post). Jesus tended to end those situations pretty quickly and move on by confusing them with a parable or getting them stuck with a question of his own.

When Paul wrote the churches he said to do our part to live at peace with everyone, and to have speech seasoned with salt. I fear that those seeking to always show confrontation, correction, and whatever else it is that is perceived as self-righteous spite by their targets - that they've lost their saltiness.

I do think we need to always be open to the intellectually and spiritually honest discussion with these same people, but we don't need to get into the argument. The Bible says some harsh things to those trying to stir up controversy in the church.





Question for Trevor - and to see if he reads the blog - you reference something along the lines of a problem of shallowness in the church being that many think that because they repeat certain words on a tract as a prayer they're good to go and don't actually have to follow Jesus with their lives.

Do you think that it's the same problem when people think that to evanglize they just have to go out and say certain words in a certain presentation, and they're good to go and don't actually have to show Jesus by their lives?

We've got three kittens who we think were born under our deck last fall. They're pretty cute, and the live mostly in our backyard.

But I've interacted with three pests today as well:

1. The weed from hell

• No one has ever successfully killed this type of weed.
  
• It seems to feed off some types of weed killer.
  
• Roots can go down 20 feet.
  
• You can't pull it up by the root - it just breaks off.
• It grows by splitting it's roots underground and by seeding.
• It is growing through our wall in one room that's 1/2 under ground in our split-level house.
• It's now not just growing by the house in the front, but in the backyard as well.

So I went to weed the garden a bit, and was reminded of another pest.

2. Wasps - yellow jackets. I don't know where they're nesting, but there's always 1 or 2 right in front of & right behind the house. I've killed one small next as it was starting, but can't find others.

3. Mice - we get them in our garage, though never yet in the house. Occasionally the kittens sneak into the garage, catch & kill a mouse, and bring it onto our deck by the door.

As I was walking back into the house, barefoot, having pulled plenty of the weed from hell, and avoided the wasp that was buzzing...

I stepped on a dead mouse on the deck.

Lovely.

I've started using a service called Jott (jott.com). You call the toll free number, it recognizes you based on your caller ID, and you can record a short message that will be transcribed (via voice recognition) and e-mailed to the recipient, whether yourself, another person, or your blog.

I originally posted this message from Jott, but it cut me off after the first sentence.

Watching this week's Heroes...

"My destiny is not to shoot you.
The universe cannot be that lame."
-- Claire (Teenager)

Project 1.27 is an organization here in the Denver Metro area that is helping Christians get increasingly involved in adopting from the local foster care programs.

An article through the Associated Press and posted on MSN's website was getting a lot of comments in response to the article.

Many of the posts, perhaps a majority of them were just bashing Christians. How dare they adopt. How dare they support 'rights' for the unborn - the unborn don't pay taxes, how can they have rights?! (that is a scary proposition), they Christians down helping after Katrina were preachy, the Christians don't care or they'd be helping the starving in Africa. So I posted:

I think it's very interesting that in response to an article of Evangelicals adopting and providing homes for abandoned children that there are so many responses attacking (with straw-man arguments nonetheless) Christians. These people are working to take care of the orphans.

I've been through Project 1.27's training. It's not about brainwashing anyone. Mostly, they are couples who can't have children on their own, and want to provide a safe and caring place for these kids.

I don't know, it wasn't in the article. Are N.O.W., the ACLU, or Planned Parent Hood heavily involved in pushing for adoption? Perhaps People for the Separation of Church and State were the heroes in Katrina. It's possible that moveon.org is providing more aid to Africa than Compassion International and all of the other Evangelical sponsored movements that are saving the lives of thousands and thousands of people. I don't know about all of that. But what I do know, and you do too from this article, that Evangelicals are not just out there shouting slogans about how children are valuable (even if they don't pay taxes), they are providing homes for the abandoned.

How is this a negative reflection on Evangelicals?

Crazy Christians, there they go again. Their crime this time? Wanting to actually and practically love people.

I've long held to the idea that any small "Mom & Pop" shop can compete with Walmart and other Mega-companies by providing outstanding service and knowing your customers. I am willing to pay (a little) more to go to Ace Hardware than Lowe's or Home Depot, because they care about their customers.

We can make up for not having as low prices by making up for it in other ways.

However, a web site is not something you can excel without.

Not every youth group, church, and business with no website will fail. But they won't excel like they could.

A business today without a website is like a business with no front to their store. No windows, no displays, no signs.





It is no longer just teenagers who use the internet. People of all ages are using the internet now for work, and have stopped using the yellow pages. They look on the Internet. Your website is the first impression your audience will see of you. Your website is the presentation of your organization to the world.

You just might make it by without a website. But what is the reason for avoiding the internet? There are reasons that we use, and I'll be writing about those in the coming few days.

Story 1:

Since I've been self-employed, The vast majority (nearly all) of my work has been for one client, a design firm. They don't want to lose me, so they want me to join them as a full-time salaried employee.

I'm very flattered.

It's been a great experience working with this team, and we've been working on some large projects for VISA USA & the Federal Reserve Bank and Sun Microsystems.

They don't want to lose me like they have other contractors. They're offering a nice salary, and they want me to sign on full-time and commit to not doing freelance work on the side.

Story 2:
I really love serving ministries and small businesses, who usually cannot afford to work with a professional design firm like this. They simply cannot afford the same services that VISA USA can pay for.

The second story is that between Friday and Monday I have been contacted by 2 new companies and 2 new ministries that want my services.

I'm not sure what to do. At the moment I'm thinking about just becoming an hourly 25 hr/week employee for the company (if they'll go for that) and keep doing business on my own outside of these hours.

Any thoughts?