Monday, September 13, 2004
More about Love and Wrath
God, however doesn't just love the victim, he also loves the sinner. God's anger burned against Israel many times, yet he never gave up on her. One of the most beautiful and bizarre love stories in history is the marriage between Hosea and Gomer. God told Hosea to marry an adulterous woman. He chose...
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Saturday, September 11, 2004
Love and Wrath
We find Jesus loving and kind, and we find the Old Testament God angry and cruel. So many Christians reject the Old Testament. I grew up with Bible stories and I don't cringe with horror at them. I do however find it difficult to explain to those who are repulsed by them, why a loving God should do...
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Wednesday, September 8, 2004
Values and choices
I was talking to my daughter about choices and I realize how tied up they are with values. Choices are made between bad choices or between good choices. If one is bad and one is good, there is no question about what to choose. If you have a clean sense of values, making choices is easier. You can...
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Tuesday, September 7, 2004
Healing
In Isaiah it says that with his stripes we are healed. In the gospels it says that Jesus healed them all. So some people believe that everyone who believes is always healed. I disagree. Paul not only suffered from what was probably malaria, and was also nearly blind. Timoth had stomach trouble....
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Friday, September 3, 2004
Picking blackberries
When I was driving around Salem, on my way to going to Costco, I took the long way to it, accidentally. I drove past some blackberry bushes and thought about stopping and picking blackberries. Then I decided that I was wearing my dress clothes so they would get ruined by the stickers and my sandaled...
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Sunday, August 29, 2004
Endurance and Apathy
may appear the same, but the motives are different. You may decide that God placed you in your current situation and no matter how difficult it gets you are going to stick it out. Others may stay because they no longer care and it takes too much energy to move. I am a church hopper, which is...
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Saturday, August 28, 2004
Honesty
Honesty is another virtue that can also be a vice. We must be honest about ourselves and to ourselves, but we can keep some things to ourselves. Blurting out every wrong that you've committed doesn't help anyone. On the other hand if we pretend that everything is great when we are going through the...
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Wednesday, August 25, 2004
Is this a vice or a virue?
Sometime during our lifetime, we will have to make decisions based on what other people say or do. In order to do so, we will have to judge whether another person is being honest. We will have to judge another person. Jesus says not to judge or we will be judged. This doesn't mean we never judge...
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Tuesday, August 24, 2004
Additional virtues
Humility is one of the most important ones, but the least practiced. The church is always talking about servant leadership, but sitting on the podium and letting other people wait on them. When the planes hit the twin towers in New York, many churches did little or nothing. Not because they didn't...
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Christian Virtues
are different from our cultural virtues. Two virtues of our culture that come to mind are tolerance and independence. Tolerance is the big one in our culture, but it is almost a vice in Christianity. That is one reason why there is a cultural war between the two. Love without acceptance isn't love....
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