The View from the West Mesa

Congratulations on your baptism! Below are some thoughts about baptism and the Christian life that would be worth your reading and maybe even keeping in your Bible. This letter is a little long, but I just didn’t know how to make it any shorter. Your baptism marks your decision to follow our God, to yield yourself to Him, to let Him make you like Him no matter the cost. It is a milestone along your journey back to God. It is not the culmination or end of that journey, but comes near the beginning of a life-long adventure. The Christian journey is one of transformation, of being completely re-formed. We change from selfishness and fear toward other-centeredness and confident submission. Just as our God loves you, let Him change you into someone who loves others. While that idea seems easy and desirable, in practice it can be hard and frightening as you attempt to make the idea concrete in your every day life. It is eternally imperative that you see your decision to follow God as absolut...

Explanation: At last night’s meeting of the Sacrament Review Committee, I made a comment, well several I suppose, that apparently revealed myself to be a heretic and ignorant. I make that conclusion based on the number of gasps, choking noises, and the number of people leaping away from anticipated lightening bolts. My comment was that God’s story isn’t about God, but creation. This post is intended to illustrate my comments and to place them in perspective. God’s Story In one aspect it is patently obvious that God’s story is about God. After all, who else would God’s story be about? Isn’t that why we would call it God’s story? Well of course. God is the actor, He does great and mighty things, it is He who moves in history to craft and to cause what He wants. Similarly, it is clear that any biography is the story of the person whose name is on the front of the book. It is a story about what they did, a description of their life. But a person’s story, if read only to get the details of ...