Go ahead and call me sacriligioius if you want, but I thought the following video was hilarious!
Besides the humor (Steve Carell is hilarious), there are definately some things worth thinking about as a Christian.
Should be concerned how we 'come across' to others?
Date: December 17th
Feeding the poor, homeless, and hungry."Whatever you did unto the least, you did unto me."
- Jesus
Jesus calls His church to be a compelling force for good in the world. God uses people as agents of change, to relieve suffering and fight injustice, living out the transforming message of the resurrected Jesus. At Axis, we believe that the church is at its best when it serves, sacrifices, and loves, caring about the things God cares about. We were created to live for something larger than ourselves.
I found this picture here.
If you're "up" on the emerging, postmodern thing, then this should make you laugh or smile or at minimum smirk.
HISTORY OF RELIGION
Ran across this site. The history of religion in 90 seconds.
5,000 years of religion - ready, set go...
I suggest that every problem in the world is a problem of broken relationships, where we aren’t loving toward God, others or ourselves.
I like to talk about relationships a lot because I think that if we don’t get them right, then we have very, very little left with which to build our one and only life.
Let me lay a foundation so that I can say what I really want to say.
First:
I will summarize love as “Doing the very best thing possible towards someone”. It’s foundational to understand that love is so much more than a feeling. The way I will be using it always implies action, not feeling.
Second:
Jesus puts enormous amounts of importance on three relationships.
Matthew22:37-40 records what Christians have called for years “The Great Commandment”. To summarize it says:
Note about loving yourself: Please don’t confuse this with ego or arrogance. Remember my definition for love is “Doing the best possible thing…” In the case of loving yourself that may mean leaving an abusive situation, getting off your a!#, um butt and getting a job, or proposing to the woman you’ve been dating for 6 years. Also note that it’s not, “..love each other instead of yourself…” It’s “AS yourself”.
Let’s think for a minute. If God were to come to earth and summarize the most important thing or things that humans should know, what would he say? Well, he did just that. In the verse I referenced above, Matthew tells us that Jesus was asked, “What’s the greatest commandment”. In other words, what is the most important action for human beings? Jesus tells us to do the best thing possible toward, GOD, OTHERS and OURSELVES.
Now back to my suggestion... I suggest that every problem in the world is a relational problem. I suggest that all of our problems are based on either an inability or an unwillingness to truly love God, others or ourselves.
LOVING RELATIONSHIPS SHOULD BE BASED ON VALUE, NOT BEHAVIOR:
God has the most value, so we should love him not because he’s bigger and stronger, or because we’ll go to hell. We should relate to him through worth-ship. We relate to him well because he is the one who is worth the most… he deserves it.
If a baby is crying and crying in the middle of the night, it’s (pretty much) universally agreed upon that shaking that baby or throwing that baby is wrong. We treat babies well because they have value, not because they behave well (think of poop, and ‘spit-up’ and, well that’s enough). Somehow, someway as people get older we loose sight of treating people well because of value and we began to treat them according to their behavior.
How many times have I (we) treated someone poorly because they were annoying us or they took advantage of us or they’re just weird? It’s easy to flip someone off during Christmas traffic jams, yet we’re told to love our neighbors. It’s important to love them, not because they behave well (they don’t very often), but because they have value.
That brings up the question, “Why do people have value?” I suggest that all humans have value because we were created in the image of God. This by no means suggests that we ARE God or a god.
People have value because no amount of darkness can erase Gods divine imprint on a life.
----------------------------
Love isn’t a sissy word.
If you attack one of my kids, I will do the most loving thing possible by trying to beat your head in before you touch one of my kids. Yes, love protects.
Love isn’t a victim.
If you are being abused physically, sexually or verbally, then the most loving thing you can do for yourself is to leave and leave now. Yes, love protects self. It’s also the most loving thing you can do for your abuser… it refuses to enable destructive parts in them.
God is Love.
I suggest trying to do the very best thing toward God today. For some, that means choosing to follow his ways for the very first time. For others this means you should look for what he’s doing right now in your circle of influence and join him in that…. Or maybe spend some quality time with him.
I choose to be part of the solution, by trying hard to be better at all my relationships. If I’m not part of the solution, then I’m part of the problem.
I like to talk about relationships a lot because I think that if we don’t get them right, then we have very, very little left with which to build our one and only life.
p.s. Thanks to Dean Sherman
there is more grace in GOD than there is sin in us
grace is disruptive to this world, to me
may GOD'S grace disrupt your life today, and mine
may it be aggressive
I'm having a hard time with Christmas this year.
"Booty Shakin' Santa" - $19.97 at Walmart.
A ceramic Nativity with baby Jesus' hands outstretched toward heaven - .97 cents
Silent night?
No crying He makes? (Have you ever been around a newborn?)
Chubby naked baby angels telling shepherds not to be afraid? (Maybe they'd tell the shepherds not to laugh at such a ridiculous sight.)
I think that Hallmark may have ruined Christmas. Or maybe Consumerism has.
I think it's very, very easy for people to subtly distance themselves from the original Christmas story to such a degree that they can't relate to what it meant for the very first readers. What chapter in Luke do we find the elves and candy canes?
Peace? Joy? Celebration?
Christianity never has to sanitize and fluff up reality in order to find peace or joy. True joy and peace are found when we plow right through difficult situations and trust (God) that there is something better on the other side.
So, why do we bother to sanitize the scene? Did cute little angels spray Lysol on the hay before Mary laid the newborn down? Were there bugs in the hay?
Frederick Buechner wrote "in the night among sweet breath and steaming dung of beasts…"
Shit, people. Poop. That's hardly the scene Hallmark projects. That's hardly the scene 99% of the churches present.
Ever wonder why there was no room in the Inn? Maybe Joseph's relatives can count to nine. Nine months of pregnancy – obviously Mary and Joseph didn't "Wait" (like True Love does).
Luke set's the stage by telling us that Augustus was in power. Augustus considered himself divine and ruled through power, conquest, control, and through fear. Matthew set's the stage by telling us that Jesus was born in the time of Herod. Herod ruled through murder, oppression, accumulation of wealth, and manipulation. Both writers confront us with the question, "Who's your king? Who will you serve?"... or probably better stated, "Which Kingdom do you operate in?"
Frederick Buechner: "those who believe in God can never, in a way, be sure of Him again. Once they have seen Him in a stable they can never be sure where He will appear or to what lengths He will go or to what ludicrous depths of self humiliation he will descend in his wild pursuit of humankind.
In a total random (if you believe in that) set of circumstances I ran across the following photos less than one hour before I decided the topic for this blog.
This blog is my contribution to a blog group that I belong too… the topic has to do with church. I choose to title my blog "I am the Church". The actual blog topic is "Is the Church Broken?"...my answer is a resounding "NO!" and an equally passionate "YES!". But that's only becuase I am the church.
I ALWAYS feel the need to elaborate, yet in a rare moment of restraint I will write as few words as I can manage and I will let the photos say the rest. (at the end I give credit where credit is due)
I am
the church
a movement
countercultural
a revolution
Church is not
A meeting
A building
A denomination
The Church is
People
Possibly you
Credit is due to http://thelongbrake.com/ Josh Longbrake writes a blog that i visit and that inspires me. His community photo project (see blog dated 11.08.06) is simply amazing. I've e-mailed Josh and asked him for permission to re-use his photo's here. If I take this blog down, it's out of respect for Josh. Please, Please, Please visit his blog now... reading his thoughts and comments from other people have really touched me deeply. I've not been this encouraged about the Church in a long, long time.