Posted on 01/14/2017 5:22:19 AM PST by jhouston
See what I mean.
I agree 100% - most of the time ;-)
Her abbreviated passage was out of context - perhaps to suit the guy/girl context you mentioned.
When it comes to citing the Bible - I take context more seriously than anything else.
But, your post helped me decide I can state such w/o being "abrasive".......Thanks
Unless this was a subcontext of a larger context... see, these contextual arguments can get very interesting!
As a programmer in C++ I have to be mindful of that sort of thing. Each subclass (short of explicit overriding) carries the context of its superclass(es), and it all is one big happy family as long as we are aware of it all.
And as America (as I hope and pray, and believe I see happening) transitions into a more and more Christian model of life, shrugging off a prodigal past, many scriptural contextual presumptions will automatically become true.
When living in a gospel themed country, we don’t have to ask if it’s about serving Christ, at least at some level. We know it is.
Amen
And that realization really gets ME going sometimes. If it had not been for the degree of hope extended to mankind in the gospel, mankind would never have gotten off the ground far enough to see what we called the Industrial Revolution. People sometimes talk like the kind of hope and vision required just grew on trees everywhere, and it can get pretty silly when atheists do it. Every grocery store with its proliferation of goods is a testimony to Jesus and we had better believe it, if we want to really give Him the proper place in our hearts and lives.
I see the start of the taking back of America by Christians.
Christ was/is passionate - I think He expects us to be so also. He has provided us with all that is worth living and dying for and we owe it to Him to carry His Word as passionately as the Evil One pushes to deligitimize Him.
Because God will be taking it over.
As the doggedly theological one I am, I have to tie this to something else. And I believe it can be found in the principles of both predestination and choice, working together. God is not going to be able to bless an adamantly unwilling people, one that would remain hell-minded in spite of anything God could present to them. However, He can seed suitable souls into history, and then His action towards those souls (and the action of those souls back towards him) will fuel history at that point.
Calvinism, with its limitations, can provide a useful perspective here. If one is firm that God can schedule souls into history, one can then pray with faith that suitable souls will be scheduled to result in a revival and a blessing (and most of all, a direct glorification of God). It is a heady time in history now. Perhaps when Jesus said that “this generation” would not pass away before He returned, He meant the generation when Israel was re-established. If that means the 1948 event, we could be looking at a return circa 2028 — well within the Donald Trump / Mike Pence mini-dynasty.
And one area of shyness of witness that I believe can be remedied (I personally pursue this through poetry and songwriting) is to relate the witness of Christ through the creation back to Christ himself.
Some weird things have resulted — I call them weird in a self deprecating way. Ever think of Jesus as a redneck? I have. Much of His biblically documented background is roughly in that vein, although the term is a modern one. The result, love it or hate it, was this:
https://soundcloud.com/daniel-levy-6/a-humble-redneck-i-was-born
But the redneck himself/herself is an American phenomenon... which in turn harks to its gospel believing foundation. They aren’t separable.
Kind of ironic that the term "Redneck" referred to "poor, uneducated Southerners" who got red necks from working hard in the sun and folks sneered at those who provided food/cotton and host of other necessities for a civilized society.
Love the song - have it playing now.
I'm not musically inclined at all (my Dad used to describe me as one who couldn't carry a tune if it was strapped to my back - he was right, but I love music and a lot of the modern Gospel music - I remember the first time I heard Mercy Me's song "I Can only Imagine", but used to get into poetry - both reading and writing, and may give it a go again with a more spiritual slant.
I’ve tried to point out too, that black people have nothing to fear from the redneck spirit. That never enslaved a single one of them. They were picking their own cotton, even if that meant humble circumstances.
But sometimes I come across the faux redneck. The fellow who (and Dylan Roof is an extreme, sick example) drapes himself in the tradition while affecting a quite twisted, evil, even quite backwards distortion of it. But I’ve seen such posers on FR and when examined with hard, logical questions their redneckhood falls apart into the fantasy it is.
People hate what they fear and they fear what they don't understand - sometimes by looks alone.
Nice haircut, BTW - been shaving mine for years (the wife mentioned that she thought it would be sexy and my thinning hair had no way to look good) - put me in a set of dark shades and folks have said I look like a redneck trooper.....I suppose the way I carry myself after 24 years in the military adds to the effect.
She knows how to manipulate me in good ways - I was an agnostic when we met/married and she would ask me what i thought of Bible passages she was reading over a period of years. Got me interested in Church and was sitting next to me when a sermon hit me so deep that I was saved and fighting back tears of joy (and relief). I was 50 years old when that happened (14 years ago) and it seems my appreciation and respect for her has grown exponentially since then - funny how Christ touches you when and where you need it the most.
I’ve just now been trying to explain it to a fellow who is more than a mite conspiracy-theorist concerning the nature and presence of God.
It’s hard to keep my patience in the face of such dogged contrariness. But ultimately with patience that kind of person’s hand will show. No you don’t have to go research God out of Scandinavia. God is all over the place.
It’s ultimately up to him. Maybe coming back at me directly with what he thinks is evidence is a good sign. The really hardest, perhaps impossible, cases won’t argue... they won’t bargain... they’ll just dodge. Arguing and bargaining implies a context of logic and sense. Dodging is Machiavellian.
That the fellow is talking and thinking is a good thing - some of the most passionate evangelist speakers I have heard started out as atheists and their efforts to disprove God led them to an absolute belief. Funny how that works....
And on bikers... I have a soft spot in my heart for them, I confess. At one time I raised my own ruckus on a small Harley. Ended up having to sell it when my affluence ended. I wasn’t really hard core, sacrificing everything for that manner of approaching life. But I respect those who do, for the calling is spiritual too. More Christians than one might think are found among outlaws.
And I really think Waco was a dunderheaded screw job on them. The authorities, in whatever particular way is not totally clear now but it seems overall manifest, wanted to trap a bunch of bikers that they just hated... rather than head off a particular effort to have a deadly fight. This sounds to me like it does not rhyme with the tenor of the Donald Trump administration, and a lot of the governmental grand standing seems to stand ready to simply get knocked down soon.
He’s not an atheist; he has fixed upon a very peculiarly parochial idea of God, and of course all those ordinary Christians are just washed up and he’s the smartest person in the world.
C. S. Lewis is one storied ex-atheist who ended up not only believing, but actually laboring to come up with a unifying popular theology for all Christendom, and hence his book “Mere Christianity.”
Having gone through a number of wringers myself, I think I could well refine Lewis’s approach, or at least refit it to the current of thought in the present age. But that doesn’t make Lewis’s work itself un-useful, when taken with the salt that it needs. This also hailed back to a time when Lewis’s Anglican church was more serious about the presence of Christ than it is today, over 50 years later.
I usually give a synopsis of the Old Testament and how it led to the New Covenant. Then focus on the New and what it really means to us. Some folks refuse to be convinced, but the upshot is that it does me a world of good to engage.
I never read much of Lewis - tried to go through the Screwtape Letters and it was as torturous as The Book of Numbers in the Bible to me. Seemed he did some self-indulged working things out in his mind and published the journey rather than the wrapped up gist - of course, when my mind gets bored, I can miss a lot of the important stuff.
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