Oncle and Auntie and Silas
God loves everyone and when people hate Him, He loves them still. He sings the love song to us and we love him always. Jesus is powerful.
By Silas Brandle,
May 31, 2014
This is the Jesus I want to follow.
By simply sitting at table with those widely regarded as morally contemptible, Jesus earned the scorn of the Pharisees and other strict observers of Jewish custom. By sharing meals with those considered by the religiously righteous to be outcasts and sinners, Jesus challenged "the central ordering principle of the Jewish social world." As Geza Vermes puts it, Jesus "took his stand among the pariahs of the world, those despised by the respectable. Sinners were his table-companions and the ostracized tax collectors and prostitutes were his friends." The meals Jesus shared with the outcasts were not, therefore, simply the occasion for the delivery of his message. They were the message. They served as "prophetic signs" meant to manifest the meaning of Jesus' ministry. They involved what Borg speaks of as a "radical relativizing of cultural distinctions."
Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads, Gil Bailie, p. 213
Gambia's President Yahya Jammeh on Tuesday (Feb. 18, 2014) called homosexuals "vermin" and said his government would tackle them in the same way it fights malaria-causing mosquitoes.Can you imagine Jesus saying such things? Or treating another person like that?
The latest comments from Jammeh, who last year branded gays a threat to humanity, coincide with a renewed crackdown on same-sex relationships in Africa, where homosexuality is taboo and illegal in 37 countries.
In recent months, Nigeria has outlawed same-sex relationships and Uganda has voted for life imprisonment for some homosexual acts.
"We will fight these vermins called homosexuals or gays the same way we are fighting malaria-causing mosquitoes, if not more aggressively," Jammeh said in a speech on state television to mark the 49th anniversary of Gambia's independence from Britain.
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Often people think in terms of sect, or church, of someone who's really close to the power or to the margins of the power.Wouldn't that make a big difference? Wouldn't that help us move away from the dominant view of the church and Christians as being against rather than being for something?
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What I found interesting in 1 Peter is how it cuts across -- how it completely muddles these distinctions. I think it muddles these around the central commitment to Jesus Christ.
And so it's not that I orient myself over and against the social groups by drawing boundaries, but rather, I am oriented around the center and boundaries fall as they might, as they will.
And the difference ends up being much softer then, as I don't have to shore up the boundaries to be distinct; I can hold on to the center and it guarantees sufficiently my distinctness.
Images of all other groups besides the homeless activated the mPFC. This suggests that the homeless are not recognized as human relative to other groups. They actually are perceived, at least in this area of the brain, more like objects, such as tables.
You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.
Matthew 5:43-45 NIV
In stories that still have the power to scare us, Jesus tells his disciples to live by the upside-down values of God's kingdom, rather than the fear-driven values of human society. He shows how family, tribe, money, violence, and religion--the powers of the world--cannot stand against the love of God. And he tells us that we, too, are called to follow him in breaking down all worldly divisions that get in the way of carrying out his instructions. Sure, it's impossible to feed five thousand people, make a deaf man hear, bring a dead girl to life, as long as you obey human rules. So do it God's way instead, Jesus teaches. Say yes. Jump right in. Come and see. Embrace the wrong people. Don't idolize religion. Have mercy. Jesus' tips cast a light forward, steering us through the dark.(p. 3)The truth is that suffering can become the foundation of faith, if we're not scared to touch the sore places with love. If we don't hide ourselves away in fear, but get close enough to others to feel God's breath on our skin. Everything that hurts the body of Christ can let us know, past doubt, that new life is possible--not by forgetting evil, but through, in terms that are both religious and secular, truth and reconciliation.(pp. 122-123)Yet all religions, at one point or another in their evolution, tries to proclaim their single, inerrant consistency. All religions, even the most liberal, were tempted by the reactionary impulse to freeze faith in place. Because, as Jesus teaches, it's easy to be threatened by the reality of the complicated, messy, syncretic, God-bearing truth that becomes incarnate among us and makes things new. We'd rather have a dead religion than a loving God.(p. 137)
This Christian spirit scattered here and there in many hearts in India must express itself in some kind of corporate relationships. Some kind of a church will be the final outcome. We will put our Western corporate experience at the disposal of the forming church in India and we will say to her, “Take as much as you may find useful for your purposes, but be first-hand and creative and express Christ through your own genius.”
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While we cannot tell what may be the final outcome of this expression of the Christ of the Indian Road on the part of his followers in India, we can see at this distance certain things that will be avoided and certain things gained if they center everything upon Christ.
If India keeps this vision clear, she will be saved from many of the petty divisions that have paralyzed us in great measure. For at the central place of our experience of Jesus we are one. It is Christ who unites us; it is doctrines that divide. As someone has suggested, if you ask a congregation of Christians, “What do you believe?” there will be a chorus of conflicting beliefs, for no two persons believe exactly alike. But if the question is asked, “Whom do you trust?” then we are together. If the emphasis in our approach to Christianity is “What?” then it is divisive, but if the emphasis is “Whom?” then we are drawn together at the place of this Central Magnet. One has the tendency of the centrifugal and the other the tendency of the centripetal. He is the hub that holds together in himself the divided spokes.