I just want to say thanks to God for hearing the prayers of my people. We are not forgotten. I also ask that you will pray with me for our new President, that God will give him wisdom and discernment to lead America righteously, and courage and faith to stand against the wind and hold on to hope in the living God no matter how hopeless situations appear before him.

Let’s begin this new era of America with prayer and repentance–letting the change begin in us.

Congratulations Mr. President.

Wow!

–By Carol Wimmer

But thankfully, there’s an article on CNN’s website that makes things a little clearer. Click here to check it out.

No Splinters

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
Galatians 3:28

W. C. Fields once quipped, “I’m free of all prejudices. I hate everyone equally.” Well, in every heart there lurks a splinter of prejudice, causing us to view with discomfort or disdain someone different in some way from us. Jesus, being sinless, didn’t fall into that trap. When He met the Samaritan woman by Jacob’s well in Sychar, He effortlessly crossed every barrier that might have separated them.

He crossed the racial barrier, for the Jew of that day despised the Samaritans. He crossed the gender barrier, for men of that era didn’t initiate dialogue with unknown women. He passed the social divide because the two of them were from different lifestyles. He was a man; she was a woman. He was a rabbi; she was uneducated. He was a Jew; she was a Samaritan; He was moral; she was immoral. But Jesus loves everyone and takes no notice of race, language, gender, or social status. He died for all.

Being Christlike means that we prayerfully and continually purge from our hearts every trace of bias, partiality, preconceived opinions, or prejudice. There’s a bit of that lurking in every heart—but none in Christ’s! Let His heart set the tone for our own.
It’s never too late to give up your prejudices.
Henry David Thoreau

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you should know that Christianity, Christ, the Bible (and all of the inherent principles of morality that arise out of these entities) have been under a swelling attack for quite some time.

Although it shouldn’t surprise me as a follower of Christ that these days would come (after all, Jesus said that following Him guaranteed some level of persecution in this life), I still get angry, hurt, and defensive when I see the great lengths people go to just to try and discredit the name of Jesus.

I guess that’s what gets to me about this story. It’s filled with so much hypocrisy and irony it’s unreal.

A federal judge, whose legitimacy in her judicial oath (Code: 28 U.S.C. 453) is rooted in a statement ending with “so help me God” has ruled that God has no place in Missouri’s educational system. Never mind the fact that the Preamble of Missouri’s own Constitution explicitly mentions God by saying, “We, the people of Missouri, with profound reverence for the Supreme Ruler of the Universe, and grateful for His goodness, do establish this Constitution for the better government of the state.”

To say that the mentioning of God in this school district is unconstitutional is to say that your own constitution is unconstitutional and shouldn’t be permissible in your state’s government because it mentions (and praises) God.

Do you see what I’m getting at? It doesn’t make any sense. Either God is in or God is out. And I understand the whole if you do it for the Christians, then you have to do it for the Muslims and other religions debate. But I don’t believe that is at the heart of this issue. But anyway…

All I’m saying is that people, especially people who believe in Jesus, need to wake up and take notice of what’s going on in our society. We need to stand up for Christ. We need to stand for what’s right—regardless of how unpopular righteousness is. And we need to live our lives in such a way that there is no hypocrisy or fault to be found in us.

But I’ll digress. I just wanted to share that with you and ask that you keep these people in your prayers.

The alleged response to San Joaquin’s decision by their denominational superiors/leadership boards is essentially, “Do it and we’ll sue.”

With this type of nonsense going on with people of Christ, it’s no wonder why so many church pews are empty on Sunday morning.

I took a world religion’s class in college once and the professor (who was a presbyterian turned atheist turned Taoist) said that outside of the hypocrisy and monetary issues, the biggest complaint he had with the Christian church was that they couldn’t agree on anything. He would say that if Christians can’t even agree on what they believe, why should he believe in the faith they’re offering?

As much as I disagreed with his stance on many things, he did have a valid point on this glaring problem within the church. What do we as Christians believe? What irrefutable grounds do we stand or fall upon (popular or not)?

You can say the answer is easy. We stand upon the bible. But whose bible? The Catholic Bible? The Protestant bible? The Jehovah’s Witnesses bible? Joseph Smith’s Book of Mormon? Whose word do we trust and stand upon?

You could say that we stand upon the word of Jesus. But which Jesus are you talking about?

The Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that Jesus is the archangel Micheal; He isn’t God; and His resurrection and return is entirely spiritual–Jesus’ didn’t physically rise from the grave, nor will He physically return.

But the bible says that Jesus is above the angels. Jesus is indeed God. And Jesus did indeed physically rise from the grave. If He had truly risen in a spiritual form, His body would still be in the grave but it wasn’t. Jesus’ body was never found. And if Christ was a spirit, then why did He make it a point of telling the disciples after His resurrection that He was not a spirit, but flesh and bones?

This may not seem important to you, but if His body is still in the ground, then His sacrifice was simply a horrible tragedy to a good man. If His body is still in the ground, then He hasn’t truly conquered death. But it’s because He lives–it’s because He got up out of the grave that we have everlasting assurance that this Jesus of Nazareth was who He said He was. It’s because of His bodily resurrection that we can have peace knowing that death isn’t the end. There IS life on the other side. And this life is in Jesus.

But which Jesus are we talking about?

According to Presiding Episcopalian Church Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, Jesus is “a” way to life but not necessarily “the” way to life. In a popular magazine publication, she stated that although Jesus is “our [Christian] vehicle to the divine….for us to assume that God could not act in other ways…is to put God in an awfully small box.”

From this statement, Mrs. Jefferts Schori’s stance sounds eerily similar to the increasingly popular inclusion thought or Hinduistic view that there are many paths to the supreme, just as there are many incarnations of the supreme. By saying that Jesus is the only way to life is to limit the saving power of God.

And still others believe that Jesus IS the only way for salvation. Without Him, you are choosing to go to hell when you die–that is, if you subscribe to a belief in hell (fiery lake with brimstone prepared for the devil and his angels)–which yet again, many Christian churches don’t currently subscribe to.

Are you beginning to see the confusion? To say that the church is divided over doctrine is an understatement.

So how can a body that’s engulfed with internal wars heal itself and be a unified light in a deceptively dark world?
Well, it depends on who you ask.

Some say we should forget about the doctrinal splinters and instead focus solely on the moral aspects of the Word. We should emphasize Jesus’ teachings on love, helping the poor, feeding the hungry, and visiting the sick. The other stuff simply isn’t as important.

However, Jesus Himself said that on the day of judgment, many people will say that they did these good things while on earth–they treated the sick, clothed the clotheless, and fed the hungry, but His response will be, “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. Whatever you did not do for one of the least of these [people], you did not do for me.”

That’s hardcore.

Others, like the Pope for instance, believe that unity in the body of Christ will come when Christians come back to the one and only true church–which according to him is the Roman Catholic Church. In his opinion, if your heart and allegiance is not with the Roman Catholic Church, you are not involved with a church established by Christ!

However, Jesus said that He alone is the resurrection and the life. He said that the believers make up the body of Christ. Jesus taught that where 2 or 3 people are gathered together in His name, He is there in the midst of them. Jesus wasn’t a catholic. Jesus wasn’t a methodist or a southern baptist. But despite his non-affiliation with the Greater Israel Synagogue of Believers (or whatever religious sect/denominations were around in His day), the Father still commanded that the people weren’t to follow any voice other than that of Christ. Jesus was the focus of the church even before the church was officially born! Without Jesus there is no church. And the church is not bound to the edicts of a high-ranking official within the church body. The head of the church is and always will be Christ and the body & saints of the church is and always will be the believers and followers of Jesus. Even Paul, when writing to the churches of Galatia said that we are all children of God by faith in Jesus Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, male nor female in Christ. We are all one in Jesus.

So although you should go to a Jesus-believing Bible-teaching church, care for the needs of others and definitely let love transcend your life; the bottom line is that morality and church affiliation can’t save you. Good deeds, spreading the love of universal human truths, and ignoring the inconveniences of Christ are not the answer to a revived, unified, and utterly authentic church.

If the church–or the people of Christ–are to be unified examples of the “real” Jesus, then we need to stand and fall upon truth. Truth shall aways stand. Truth cannot be negated. Truth cannot be divided. It’s like an impenetrable, immovable rock. It stands when other elements fall. It lasts when other philosophies and theologies wither away like fading popularity. Truth trumps everything.

And when it comes to life, whether in the here or hereafter, the truth is simply Jesus. As profoundly delicate or intricately complex as Jesus is. He is what unifies the church. He is what makes us all “one.” And the further away from Him the church (or the world) moves, the more divided we will become.

So my prayer for the Episcopal church and the body of believers everywhere is that we will keep our focus on Christ. If we study the word with prayer, remove ourselves from things we shouldn’t be doing, and make Jesus our foundation, aspiration, and guiding litmus test, then the doctrinal issues will take care of themselves.

But anyway….

As a Christian who hears the name of Jesus mocked, cursed, trampled upon, and made fun of almost every day of the week, I should get as blindly irate and angry as these people did, but I don’t. Why? To be honest, I don’t know. Maybe because I understand what Christ said when He told His followers (and future followers) that people would hate us for His names’ sake. Maybe part of my peace is because I’ve grown accustomed to the belittlement and hatred cast towards Christians in modern society. I don’t know what it is exactly. All I know is that Jesus said that we should love those who persecute us. He also said that vengeance is His. God will repay for the wrong that is done against His children. I just have to continue to stand up in love for what I know is right–even if I stand alone.

But anyway, I’m so thankful that Gillian came out of this craziness in good health & good spirits. In the great words of Gordon Brown, “Common sense has prevailed.” And in modern society, that’s a marvel. Common sense ain’t so common anymore.

To be honest, I haven’t been to this site in a couple of days and I’m still lusting over some of the photographs I saw. But then again, I’ve always been a sucker for a woman that knows how to make your mouth water, especially when she does it so sinfully well as Deb has done.

If you’ve got a soft spot for things dipped in chocolate or draped in butter, you definitely don’t want to miss out on the Smitten Kitchen. It’s one of the best recipe sites online!

If you haven’t noticed yet, 2007 has to be one of the most outwardly racially insensitive years in a while. I mean, seriously. Think about it. Anyone who says racism in America has gotten better is crazy. People are just as ignorant as ever–and it’s starting to show.

But regardless of that, God commands that we love each other, forgive each other, and as much as resides in us, we are to live peaceably with each other.

If anyone says “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And He has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother. (1 John 4:20-21)

So with that in mind, I refuse to cast judgment on my favorite dog. Instead, I pray that God will help me and him and everyone else to think about what we say before we say it. I also ask God to help us view those different than us with the same manner of light, love, and mercy that He Himself looks at us with.