The View from the West Mesa

My faith community has a habit of saying "you have to obey the Gospel." By that we mean that we must respond to the Gospel by 1) hearing it, 2) believing it, 3) repenting from sin, 4) confessing your belief in Jesus, and 5) being baptized. But is the Gospel something that can be obeyed? I think not. To suggest such a thing is to rob the Gospel of its power. So, what is the Gospel? It is simply this (my apologies to Paul): God loves you and wants to bless you. That's it. No great theological dissertation. No need to fully grasp a litany of facts. Simply that God loves you and wants to bless you. That is good news and stands in sharp contrast to the message of many religious groups that "you're all going to Hell unless you come be with us." Somehow, "you're going to Hell," doesn't sound like good news to me. And it isn't. So what about that list of things at the top of this post? Aren't they important? Yes they are and critically so....

On the Christian Educators list there is a current conversation about churches becoming "missional." It is interesting that we humans have a habit of creating new buzz words. Not that creating new buzz words is wrong, they can be used effectively to motivate, market, and encapsulate broad ideas. The problem is that we then take those new buzz words and throw them around as though they represent something new. In some cases they do; in most they do not. And so "missional." Missional seems to mean living where people live, hurting with people as they hurt, and inviting them to meet our God. The God that seeks to relieve, to console, to heal. That's a good meaning. Unfortunately, since many of us are human, we try and build a "missional" pattern, a one-size-fits-all-you-gotta-do-it-this-way straight jacket. We have to become Purpose Driven (whatever that is), or leave our denomination and start a multitude of community churches (whatever they are). We bec...

And so he is dead. I have mixed emotions about capital punishment as I suspect many of you do. I believe that human life is sacred and that the intrinsic value of a human being is the highest value we can know on this Earth. And yet something in me urges that we cannot allow each other to so mistreat ourselves; to reduce the value of our lives to thirty or so years in prison. And so I have been pulled in two directions lately. I understand the need for exacting revenge, or payment, or delivering punishment for someone’s misdeeds, but I am also pulled by the conviction that anytime a human being is killed we do violence to our values and our existence. I find myself somehow satisfied by this punishment and yet feel guilty about feeling satisfied. And so, as I wrestle with these competing ideas and emotions, I come to this tension-filled conclusion. We highly value human life and that should give us pause before taking another one. However, it is precisely because we so highly value huma...

I don't know about you, but I often get lost in the details of living and lose sight of the big picture. Doing so results in spending a lot of energy in ensuring the details are correct, sometimes to the detriment of getting the job done. People, families, and churches can all fall into the trap of thinking that they must control every aspect of life, and life together. In so doing, they miss the grandeur of living and the blessings we have in God. I have a chart that, in one page, illustrates Napolean's invasion of Russia in 1812. The uniqueness of the chart is that it includes a map, distances, geographic features, army strengths along the route, and climate information. In short, it portrays the entire campaign including the massive loss of life in one picture. With a little reflection, it is possible to grasp the enormity of that disaster for the French people. Viewing the chart provides the viewer with the "big picture," the complete story in one glimpse. I'v...

Went to Papa Felipe's restaurant yesterday for lunch. I understand that Papa's is run by a family that used to work with the Garduno's family. Garduno's has grown and has multiple sites around the city and they enjoy a good reputation. Papa's family apparently doesn't have the marketing desire and they're still in one location. However, the food at Papa's fits my palette better, if one meal can be used to determine that. I had the three-carne adovada enchiladas plate and was impressed with the flavor and the quality of the food. The carne was tender, but not mushy, the red chile flavorful but not over-powering. The tortillas were tender and not too dry. In addition, there wasn't too much chile spread over the plate, so that I could see the food and taste it through the chile. The food seemed to be more authentic as compared to Garduno's which has become a bit too commercial for me. Papa's was a treat and the service was great. We'll go ba...

An on-going debate within Christianity has to do with what rich folk ought to do with the wealth they have. If you find yourself winning the lottery, would it be appropriate to buy a four thousand square foot house, or a BMW 700 series, or half of your town? Usually, at some point in this discussion, someone will say "it isn't a sin to be wealthy or to have stuff." OK, not by definition perhaps, but don't we have some Scriptural instruction along these lines? What was the point of Micah's and Amos's condemnation of the Jews? Buried in denunciations of perjurous activities, of coniving methods of gaining advantage over each other, of using items of clothing unjustly taken from others in church, there is the denunciation of the Cows of Bashan. These cows are wealthy Jewish women who apparently loll around the house doing not much more than indulging their drink and food urges "...get me another drink!" While we can understand the other behaviors being ...

Fall is great, isn't it? Just came in from the front yard after spending about 30 minutes cleaning up a plant bed. Had to re-dig the borders and put on some mulch to keep the roots from freezing this winter. One of the enjoyable things at this time of year is to gather seeds off the Purple Cone Flowers, Red Yucca, penstimens, and hollyhocks. Then I get to spread them around in other beds or to help fill in their current ones come next Spring. Am reading this fall "The Practice of Spiritual Direction" by Barry and Connolly. Not a bad read, but it seems to bog down from time to time. Learning more about spiritual direction, and spiritual formation has been one of my goals this year. It really is interesting -- and enlightening to read and then to experience some of what so many people before have experienced. This has been a while coming; read Foster's books on prayer and disciplines a few years ago. Fall and reading seem to go hand in hand. The reading sprinkles seeds ...

Marriage is often used as a metaphor in Scripture. From Hosea and Gomer, to the Ephesian letter, God uses marriage as a description of His relationship with us. Spouses are intended to so act as One that we are told a "man is to leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife." God considered Adam incomplete and so made him a helpmeet - from his own rib. Marriage is a melding of two people into one entity. Are we suggesting that the two people lose their identities and become the other? No. And yes. A marriage is not designed so one partner is totally subsumed by the other, but rather both partners maintain their own identities and form a third. They build on one another's strengths and support each other's weaknesses. They are to create a safe place. A place where each can reveal their dreams, their fears, their failings, and expect their partner to accept, challenge, and love them. During the dating game, each partner wears a mask that makes them seem the perfect...

As I travel through this life, I find religious folk who do not really grasp what they are supposed to be doing and non-religious folks who do not quite understand Christianity as well as they think they might. So here's a layman's introduction to God. Well, what our response to God is to be.  The Commandments can be broken into two types: Those that deal with God and those that deal with other people. We see that we are to have no other gods before God and we are to be considerate and kind to other people. The Commandments though are not arbitrary rules this God of ours dreamed up some Tuesday morning. No, they illustrate (granted, negatively) the very character of God. Why is this important? Because as we will see later, the Christian's job, the Christian's mission on this planet is to let God mold them into His likeness. As such, God has provided for us in the Commandments views of His character. We can detect that God is concerned that we honor Him as God and be con...

Having heard all the hullabaloo about the Supreme Court's decision concerning the death penalty and folks who are under 18 years old, it seems that Thielike's book A Little Exercise for Young Theologians might apply. In this book T addresses both fledgling and experienced theologians. For our purposes, we only need to look at his instructions for the experienced ones. Thielike urges theologians to always remember that it is the church that provides the conscience and that theology, appropriately done, is done in and for the church. In fact he will make a distinction between diabolical and sacred theology by evaluating the faith and faithfulness of the theologian. This is not said to put theologians in straight jackets, but to have them remember that they are members of a community of faith that holds various principles as core beliefs and understandings. A theologian who goes beyond the faith and becomes overly academic or theoretical loses contact with the church and is in dan...

Started a Couple's Class at church a couple weeks ago; my wife and I, with another couple. We're using a mixture of media with a video series by the Parrotts as the core. Started well and last night the group had grown to around 18. A nice sized group for discussion and group development. After this iteration is over, may want to morph it into a Saturday a.m. group/class and take a couple hours to get things done.

Am reading N.T. Wright's Paul for Everyone - the Prison Epistles. Not a bad read. Rather simple, but contains some heavy insights. A couple are that Christians have inside them the power that God used to raise Jesus. Kinda neat, but kinda humbling at the same time. Another is that God's plan from the beginning has not been limited to a group of people, but has included every person and the cosmos. That's not a new concept; Scripture generally supports the idea, but comments on Ephesians don't normally point that out. Easy reading and some good points. Recommended.

We are growing an Amarillus this year. Got it from a neighbor and it's been sending up long, green shoots, about four of them over the last couple months. Friday we noticed that what appears to be the bloom stalk has peered over the rough-cut top of the bulb. We wait in anticipation for a six or eight-inch bright red bloom sometime in the next month. Not in time for Christmas, but definitely before Easter. Good enough.

This is our first foray into BlogWorld, but we're up to it. You will find here writings about a rather eclectic blend of topics. We do not pretend to be experts in anything, but have never let that stop us from offering observations about life. So, here we go.... Between class and our second service this morning, talked with a member who was in Abilene last week and knows folks that were in the SUV accident. That discussion reminded me that when we first heard of the accident, the condition and emotional state of the driver came to mind. So during the second service I wrote a note to the driver. Will have to send it to the hospital since I think that's where she still is.