The View from the West Mesa

A comment has been received concerning our last post. Essentially, the question is "do you have Scripture for that post, or are you just making it up?" This is a common question since I don't pay a lot of attention to peppering my writing with citations. I much prefer to assume that my audience has a grasp of Scripture and can recognize it when they read it. However, that is not always the case and there is nothing wrong with asking questions. And so the answer is, "yes there is plenty of Scripture to support the ideas in our last post." To make the point concisely, I would offer Paul's admonition to be transformed into the likeness of Jesus as well as Jesus' urging that we live in Him as He lives in the Father. He further tells us that He and the Father are one. It would seem then that yes, God does call us to live as He would live on this planet. When asked to show the disciples the Father, Jesus' response was something like "what, haven't...

When I was young, I came to know God as creator and eventually as savior, and those things drew me to Him. Those are good things for children to know about God. In fact they are good things for seekers, for new Christians to know, but they exist in the elementary things of which Paul speaks. Elementary I suspect for two reasons. The first, that they can sometimes be based in fear – if you don’t believe, God is going to send you to Hell. The second, that they are things about God; they are objective statements. Objective I suspect as faith concepts can be. But I do not want to stay there. I no longer want to know God as creator and savior only. I want to know God ; I want to know Him in His essence, His character, His love. But here again I do not want to stop at objective statements. “God is love” is nice, but it cannot satisfy. These again are a set of objective statements about God. Much more do I want to know God as my God, on a personal and communing basis. I want to know Him ...

In the last couple weeks our youngest son graduated from Basic Training at Fort Knox, Kentucky. Pretty routine really...music, soldiers, families, heat, humidity, irritability from time to time. The first day was Family Day. We were to get there at 10:00 and so my wife wanted to get there early. As it turned out, we were to be let into the post theater at 11:00. Picture this....200 family members standing in the sun and humidity, pushed up against the front of the theater, waiting. Wonderful really. The Family Day family theater period lasted about twenty minutes and included primarily a hard-to-hear bubba try to tell us the rules for Family Day. Essentially, we could have our soldier until 8:00 that evening with some limits on distance and admonitions that he could not have alcohol, drive the car, or change out of his uniform. Well that went OK and we had him back on time, dressed and with no alcohol on board. The next day was Graduation Day. Oddly enough, it started the same way....o...

A reader (I am always amazed that people actually read this blog) submitted a rather long comment on the original post on Elders. It is apparent that the reader did some good homework as the comment has several, well, more than several, reference citations. It is clear that they both read the original post and did some Bible study before posting their comment. Because the comment was so long, I thought it appropriate to post another entry rather than bury the response in the comment log. In the following discussion, I have included the text of the comment without the Scripture references. If you want to read the comment in its entirety, scroll to the Elders post and click on the comment. --------------------------------------------------------- [Comment~~~~The church is expected to be a people in exactly this sense. We are the people of God who are charged with continuing and preserving the values, culture, hopes, and the identity of God’s people in our time.~~~~ Does this include th...