The ants are back, an analogy

Our summer ants are early. Normally I wouldn't see one until late June. I saw one on the kitchen counter yesterday. Tiny. Then 10 and then more. I got out the Terro ant trap and opened it. At first they ignored it. But they seemed to be everywhere. This morning when I turned on the light, the trap had attracted maybe 100 or more, and others were sort of dazed. An hour later, there were only about 25. Then by 10:30 there were almost none. It's like sin. It must be good, everyone's doing it. Let's check it out. So they take a few sips have a party and take it back to the nest (which I can never find) to tell their friends and neighbors and infect them with the poison.

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Share the wealth, musings and opinions

As Biden puts together his "redistribution" team of former Obama and Clinton failures, I was reading today the wisdom of a man who was writing during the Great Depression, Erling C. Olsen. He was not a political commentator, or pastor, just a layman who had a radio show about the Psalms which was later reissued as a book that went through a number of editions. His message on Psalm 62 included these remarks about pastors and politicians who were trying to make sense of those trying times (during which my parents went to college, got married, had 4 children and bought a home):

"Just now it seems to be a pastime of some to heap all manner of invectives upon those who are of high degree or great position. One voice cries out ". . . Salvation can only be had in the sharing of wealth." Another insists that it is not a matter of sharing wealth, but of sharing income. Still another, a clergyman, used to shout, "In silver lies our redemption." The fact of the matter is that salvation is in none of these, neither the salvation of the individual, nor of society. While we may see some distinction in men, and assume that by the simple process of equalizing wealth we can bring man into a paradise; in God's sight sin is the cause of inequalities. So long as sin reigns, just so long will these situations exist. It is sheer nonsense to talk about sharing wealth WITH THE SHARING IN THE HAND OF A POLITICIAN. It is the same as expecting a Millennium without the Messiah. Sin will reign, until our Lord Jesus Christ Himself rules over this world as King of kings, and Lord of lords.." (Meditations in the Book of Psalms, p. 468, 1952 edition)

Christians and politics

Politics for Christians is messy these days. I came across a clear explanation with good footnotes that I recommend. Due to the fractured nature of the church, no Christian will agree with all points. https://www.allaboutworldview.org/christian-worldview.htm, specifically, https://www.allaboutworldview.org/christian-politics.htm
Here's where a Christian world view differs with today's socialists in our government--they teach in our schools and proclaim in their power that because the founders were ordinary, sinful men with flaws, rulers in the 21st century are smarter, more righteous and more spiritual and able to take our God given rights and give them to the government.
"Christian Politics – The Source of Human Rights
Christian politics within a Christian worldview understands God as the source and guarantee of our basic human rights. Because we believe we are created in the image of God (Genesis 1:26), we know that we are valuable. (This becomes doubly clear when we remember that Christ took upon Himself human flesh and died for humanity.) God grants all individuals the same rights based on an absolute moral standard.
The Declaration of Independence proclaims, “All men are created equal... [and] endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” Two assumptions are inherent in this declaration: 1) we were created by a supernatural Being; and 2) this Being provides the foundation for all human rights.
The knowledge that human rights are based on an unchanging, eternal Source is crucial in our understanding of politics. If our rights were not tied inextricably to God’s character, then they would be arbitrarily assigned according to the whims of each passing generation or political party—rights are “unalienable” only because they are based on God’s unchanging character. Therefore, human rights do not originate with human government, but with God Himself, who ordains governments to secure these rights.
Our founding fathers understood this clearly.
John Adams, in a letter to Thomas Jefferson in 1813, says, “The general principles, on which the Fathers achieved Independence, were the only Principles in which that beautiful Assembly of young Gentlemen could Unite... And what were these general Principles? I answer, the general Principles of Christianity, in which all these Sects were United... Now I will avow, that I then believe, and now believe, that those general Principles of Christianity, are as eternal and immutable, as the Existence and Attributes of God.”2
John Winthrop says that the best friend of liberty is one who is “most sincere and active in promoting true and undefiled religion and who sets himself with the greatest firmness to bear down on profanity and immorality of every kind. Whoever is an avowed enemy of God, I scruple not to call him an enemy of his country.”3
Noah Webster wrote “The moral principles and precepts found in the scriptures ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws. These principles and precepts have truth, immutable truth, for their foundation.”4
Alexis de Tocqueville says, “There is no country in the world where the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America; and there can be no greater proof of its utility, and of its conformity to human nature, than that its influence is most powerfully felt over the most enlightened and free nation on the earth.”5
George Washington, in his inaugural address as first president of the United States, referred to “the propitious smiles of Heaven” that fall only on that nation that does not “disregard the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained.”6"

The Pope is still part of the problem, according to many Catholics

"There are three takeaways from the announcement that came from the Vatican on Wednesday, of a gathering of the presidents of the world’s bishops’ conferences (in February 2019) to discuss “the protection of minors”:

1) the pope is closing the barn door after the horse got out;
2) the C9 cardinals had to twist the pope’s arm to close the door;
3) when it comes to the moral rot in the clergy, high and low, the pope is still part of the problem.
Christopher Altieri, The Catholic Thing, https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2018/09/14/two-on-the-crisis/

Before 21st century Christians, particularly the non-Catholics, get their feathers fluffed and fur standing on end so they can look bigger, let's just remember that all the reprimands Paul wrote to the churches in the first century concerned all these sins--pornography, pederasty, false gods, impiety, every wickedness known to man, mutual degradation, worship of a creature, insolence, scandals in the church, gossip, murder, and so forth. Or, look at the revelation Jesus gave John with descriptions of the church--again first century--the favorite apostle was still alive and the Christians were already stumbling! People were claiming to be apostles who weren't! Members of the assembly of Satan! Kneeling at Satan's throne! Holding to the teachings of Balaam! Listened to a fake prophetess! Harlots! Incomplete works and a dead church.

To each of the 7 churches, Jesus says, "I know your works."

Little sins mean a lot

Most of us at one time have said, or thought, something like:

• “So I procrastinate, it’s not like it’s hurting anyone!”
• “Enough about you, back to me.”
• “I deserve this, so I’m treating myself!”
• “If I can’t have it, she shouldn’t either.”
• “I’ll get around to it… or not.”
• “It’s not really gossip if it’s all true, right?”
• (And the granddaddy of them all) “But that doesn’t make me a bad person!”

Are these really sins, you ask? After all, they’re not murder, theft, or violence. Don’t they just mean we’re human?

   
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Thursday thoughts

The reason it's called "Adam's sin" and not Eve's or the Sin of Adam and Eve is because of headship and leadership. IMO. He got the instructions before she was even created, then stood around and watched what happened when Satan showed up.
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Here's how you spell third party. R-O-S-S   P-E-R-O-T. He was so successful he put Bill Clinton in the White House. I think it was 19% of the vote he took from Bush.
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The April 5 JAMA is filled with praise and hymns to Obamacare, noting of course, all the changes and reforms that are needed, assuming those mean old, greedy, haters cooperate. Ezekiel Emanuel, MD, one of the ACA architects, has an article (Rahm's brother). Had you heard there are still 25.3 million eligible "residents" (in other words, he's including non-citizens) without insurance? And of course, it's the fault of those states that wouldn't bankrupt themselves by expanding Medicaid. He flat out lies about the costs going down. Elsewhere in the issue there is a chart that shows the rate of increase in healthcare costs fell more under Bush than Obama, and it has now spiked again. Sloppy editor must have not caught that.
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I'd never heard of Larry Wilmore, the comedian at the White House Correspondents Dinner, who threw around the N word, but they are all liberal and all laughed, even the President. So coarseness certainly was acceptable before The Donald's appearance on the political scene. And fulfilling their role, the media are explaining to all of us in fly over country who would get fired or ostracized for the same speech, that it's really OK.
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I can think of at least three Catholic universities that should stop calling themselves Catholic. We don't call Harvard and Yale Christian colleges any longer; same with Marquette, Notre Dame and Georgetown and probably many others.
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Fox News and the Fox talkers have been 24/7 trumpeting Trump; I had enough and am desperate enough to watch PBS and QVC.
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"Of all the disheartening signs of the utter ignorance of so many American college students, nothing so completely disheartened me as seeing on television a black college student who did not know what the Civil War was about. Fifty years ago, it would have been virtually impossible to find a black adult, with even an elementary school education, who did not know what the Civil War was about." Thomas Sowell, May 3, 2016

Humility is the queen of virtues

“. . . no one seems to know what just happened [decision of Supreme Court on same sex marriage in June 2015]. This wasn’t the legalization of a behavior—for the legal barriers to homosexual conduct were torn down decades ago. The rights to cohabitate, to share insurance benefits, tax status, and even call each other spouse—without discrimination—are hard fought gains that were achieved before last Friday. A new right has not been created, rather the Constitutional right for the rest of us to think and speak our minds, and to hold our own counsel has been severely curtailed. The right to do something impossible can’t be achieved, not by any court, only the right to demand everyone else be supportive of this masked ball, with legal penalties for refusing to join the dance. We’ve only lost the right to object.”

“. . . Christians shouting the word “sin” at something out there have failed to use this most powerful weapon we have by the Holy Spirit to counter forces beyond our human skill or strength. When an obstacle is too high, too strong, too wide for you to go over it, it is best to adopt humility and go under it. If language against a sin that’s been called a blessing can only draw fire and fill you full of verbal bullet holes, then use the stance that saints have long used in more trying circumstances and under worse governments: the language of humility. When saying, “You are sinners!” just won’t do—and I think this is one of those times—then freely speak the truth and say, “We are sinners and have failed God, but we’ve been found by Him and are happy to be new creatures in Christ.”
Humility: Queen of  Virtues

Shallow memes by Democrats

This is what happens when unbelievers try to be theological and tell Christians what to believe and do.

When did Jesus ever tell sinners to continue as usual whether the sin was greed, lying, sex or telling others how to live? What did he tell Zacchaeus the tax collector who was cheating his own people?  He was really hard on hypocrites and haters, which right now the winners in that class are representatives of the LBGT community who demand service and ruin people’s livelihood after living years in the closet hiding who and what they were, voting for a man who lied about his true beliefs.

 Zaccheus stopped and said to the Lord, “Behold, Lord, half of my possessions I will give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will give back four times as much.” And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”

Sin and the sink stopper

This morning I pulled out the stopper in the bathroom sink drain.  Oh yuk.  It was awful.  I wiped it off—lots of black gunk.  But there was more because the stopper is plastic (bad design) with many edges and crevasses especially near the top.  It’s not that I never clean that sink—and it looked fine until I pulled out the stopper. I wiped it many times with a paper towel, each bringing up a new layer.  Then I soaked it and watched black chunks float loose, then I sprayed it with a Clorox bathroom cleaner—more stuff.

It’s like sin, isn’t it?  You don’t see it at first—all covered up and looking nice because it’s below the slick marble of your good intentions.  Then you start poking around and the horror sets in.  Sin is covered over and really black.  It might take a lot to get rid of it. Like the cross and Jesus’ sacrifice.  But even then, we’re supposed to take care of what he did for us, daily and not let the build up put us and others at risk. Confess it and make amends before the gunk takes over.

Just a thought

What if the nastiness we see on social media, the accusations of meanness, racism and homophobia you see in the comments of on-line publications, the potty mouth language, the theft of ideas without attribution, the cyber-bullying, the sexting, and the hacking isn't a result of modern technology at all, but just plain old sin more desirable and out of control in tight jeans and more make-up, and no one is teaching manners let alone the 10 commandments. Just a thought.

http://mediasmarts.ca/sites/default/files/pdfs/publication-report/full/YCWWIII_Cyberbullying_FullReport.pdf

https://www.dosomething.org/facts/11-facts-about-sexting

http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/human-brain/psychological-reason-mean-on-internet.htm

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-10-31/how-truth-and-lies-spread-on-twitter

The sin of envy

We fight one another, and envy arms us against one another. ... If everyone strives to unsettle the Body of Christ, where shall we end up? We are engaged in making Christ's Body a corpse. ... We declare ourselves members of one and the same organism, yet we devour one another like beasts 

St. John Chrysostom, Hom. in 2 Cor. 27,3-4:PG 61,588

I was looking through contemporary sermons (mostly audio which is difficult) on Sermon Cloud, http://www.sermoncloud.com/, but since the early church struggled with it from the beginning, I think this was one of the best.  “arms us against one another. . .making Christ’s body a corpse.”

St. John Chrysostom was a "golden-voiced" orator and one of the 8 great Doctors of the Church (Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, Gregory the Great, Athanasius, John Chrysostom, Basil the Great, and Gregory of Nazianzus).

The wages of sin . . .

are sometimes an angry cat.

Taking out the trash

Sharon Jaynes writes at her website:

“Once I had a door-to-door vacuum salesman come to my house. To my detriment, I let him in. Before I could convince him I did not need a new vacuum cleaner, he had his demonstration trash sprinkled all over my foyer floor. Almost two hours later, I finally got him to leave.

What was my first mistake? You know it! My first mistake was to let him cross the threshold of my doorway and enter my house. Once he was in, it was difficult to get him out. It is the same way with our thoughts. Once we entertain a thought, once we allow the “salesman” to scatter his “trash” in our minds, it is hard to dismiss it or push it back out again. The place of easiest victory is at the threshold; don’t even let the trash in the door. It has been said, “Every spiritual battle is won or lost at the threshold of the mind.” I think victory is possible once the thought has passed over the threshold, but it sure will save us a lot of heartache and pain if we begin to recognize Satan’s lies and reject them from the start.”

I came across this looking for the exact citation for, “Hold every thought captive for Christ.” (Paul)  The complete wording and citation is, For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. (2 Corinthians 10:5)

At this age, I wouldn’t make the mistake of letting in a salesman of anything unless I had invited him or called for an appointment, but my goodness, the dust and dirt still creeps in and I find ways to avoid cleaning it up (often checking FB or my blog instead). Better to have a good seal and filter so there isn’t so much to clean up later.

She refused to say that

When the Catholics were faced with an updated English version of the Mass in 2011, one woman responded to the new wording, “I was offended at the insertion of "I have sinned greatly" into the Introductory Rite. "I don't go around sinning greatly," she said. "I am not going to say this."

Of course, we Lutherans don’t get big and little, grievous and ordinary.  We just sin constantly by violating all commandments as summarized into two by Jesus.  In the Lutheran Book of Worship (1978) we say,

Most merciful God, we confess that we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves. We have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. For the sake of your Son, Jesus Christ, have mercy on us. Forgive us, renew us, and lead us, so that we may delight in your will and walk in your ways, to the glory of your holy name. Amen. ( Lutheran Book of Worship, p. 56,  based on 1 John 1:8)

Thought, word, and deed.  That about covers it.  And that’s sinning greatly. 

From the fabulous fifties

One of the most popular TV shows in the 1950s was Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, a handsome Catholic priest.  I'm not sure how I knew about him because my parents didn't have a TV, but I knew.  Everyone knew who he was.  He was drawing 30,000,000 viewers a week when our population was only about 172 million and 42 million households had a TV. 

                                    

The other day I heard a story about him.  A man sat down next to him on a plane, and noticing his collar, began to unload on him all his gripes about the church. Just a bunch of hypocrites, liars, losers,  pettiness, etc.  So Bishop Sheen looked at him and said, "How much did you steal?" Turns out he was an usher at his church and had been dipping into the collection plate (which he confessed to Sheen probably in shock). By then I was in the garage and turned off the radio, but it was probably the end of the story.  Might be why he was so popular--he really knew people.

How liberal is your church?

Christians fight about almost everything--baptism, end times, Bible translations, role of women in the church, clothing (is a zipper more worldly than a button?), but on politics, they do have some agreement. You are probably a member of a liberal congregation (although not necessarily a denomination) if you can spot the key words in your literature, sermons, workshops, retreats, magazines: Healthcare reform, social justice, inclusiveness, peace at any price, Bush blaming or bashing.

If you find yourself nodding in agreement (or nodding off) with most of your religious life speakers, academic faculty and government retirees/CNN wannabees hired to inform and entertain you, then you're in a liberal church. And that's probably where you are comfortable, and where you belong. Peek in the congregational wallet. Conservatives give more than liberals at every level from voluntering time to donating money, but all churches could benefit if the $5/week folks would just double that. Churches could then be right up there with the gambling industry, which incidentally would fall apart without Christians like Governor Strickland, a former Methodist pastor.

Journalists vote 100:1 Democrat party to Republican. Librarians vote 223:1 Democrat to Republican. So that reflects what we see in the news, what gets published and which titles are purchased for public libraries. This is your community; do you really want it from the pulpit? Or check the speaker or preachers' resumes. A Congregational, Episcopal, Lutheran or Methodist pastor who believes marriage is for one man and one woman is probably on his or her way out the door in career terms. Many churches now have their sermons on-line--that might be a clue. Major universities don’t promote conservative faculty (if their views are public) and faculty at 2nd and 3rd tier colleges are probably hoping to move up. For that they'll need to carry the liberal union card. There is no freedom of thought, speech or publishing at major name universities; there is some at the smaller schools. Check the buzz words in the publication or sermon or workshop titles. Terms like “food insecurity,” “health disparities,” "income gaps," “intervention research,” “community-based,” “upstream,” or “racial bias” ought to be red flags. If sin is an old fashioned word in your church, except where it appears in criticizing the Republican party, yes, you are in a liberal church, and I hope you find it safe and comfortable with your beliefs never challenged by Scripture. When you find out you can't even reform yourself, let alone a whole town or country, we will welcome you home with open arms.

Meet our newest pastor

Eric Waters. Here's his first sermon at the X-Alt service at Lytham Rd., UALC (Upper Arlington Lutheran Church which has 3 campuses) and it's on God's wrath. http://tech.ualc.org/mp3/audio/080217EWLRX.mp3 Listen carefully as he reads God's word to the Romans. He's not reading. He speaks the scripture from memory, and it makes a huge difference as you watch him, because he's also performing it with facial expression and hand movements. But before you get the good news, you need the bad news. So it's a good introduction not only to him, but to the gospel. His speech pattern, you'll notice, is not midwestern--he's come to us from Fargo, ND but grew up in New York state. However, he was a Russian major in college, worked for awhile in Siberia, and I think I detect that in the up and down, the flow, the staccato. See what you think.