Who knew that when I moved to the tropics I'd be ducking a heat wave.
Prayers for everyone on that side of the nation. If you need to cool down, come on out for a visit.
(I never imagined I'd be writing those words!)
I'm really curious about this one… In the comment stream on a friend's posting, someone stated:
However the Church cannot just change the rules just to play fair and reverse the playing down of the relevance of women's ministry. The fact is that women cannot be ordained priest, not my words but the words of God through His Church.
The commenter says these aren't his words, but God's. I've been looking in the Bible for where it says, "Thou shall not ordain women." I haven't found it.
Is it in there, or is this something new God said? Or is from some volume that didn't make the canon of scripture, perhaps? Help me here…
The funny thing is, doing this search revealed something interesting. Ordination as a whole is a human invention. There were priests of various sorts in the old testament, sure. But the whole bishop, priest, and deacon thing, was all after Christ ascended. We created that. And given that Christ also came to fulfill the law, and was pretty critical of the existing Jewish authorities… Maybe none of us should really be ordained.
But when you get right down to it, Jesus did call women and give them jobs, and so did people in Paul's time… So if we aren't going to throw out ordination all together, why are we excluding women?
Surprisingly enough, my chief complaint in all of this isn't the protesting at military funerals. Granted that does bother me a little, not because they're military funerals but because they're funerals, period. A time when people are already on edge emotionally, and trying to greive and heal, and so on. This is not the time to be trying to stage a protest, especially when you're saying, "Hey, you do know that God took your loved one to punish America, right?" Yeah, not the most pastoral statement.
No, my chief complaint about all this is the line "God hates…" Fill in the blank with a person, group, etc. Do these people read the same bible I do? Do they worship Christ? I don't see how that's really possible. Or if they do, they've edited the bible heavily, for as best as I know that's the only way to put "God" and "hate" in the same sentence when referring to a human being. I just did a quick search on the NIV bible at Crosswalk. Interesting enough, there are some things God hates. For example, God hates some of the "detestable things" other people do in the worship of false gods. And He's (or She's) not all that thrilled with sacred stones.
But people? I don't recall reading those passages, and couldn't find any right off hand. In fact, the last item to come up on that search was 1 John 4:20: "If anyone says, 'I love God,' yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen." So someone who carries a sign that says "God Hates" and holds hate in his or her heart toward another human being, cannot at the same time be honestly said to love God. And if you really don't love God, why are you so concerned about who God might hate?
Perhaps the truth comes back to that old reality: We often fear what we don't understand, or what is different. But rather than admit fear, or admit that you're hating someone or something for your own reasons, you hide behind God. You claim God hates something, and therefore it is okay for you to hate it too.
The problem, again, is that God really doesn't hate people. God might hate behaviors, but not people, period. Normally I'm pretty open to the different ways people read the bible, different interpretations, and so on. But no matter what your views on human sexuality, war, poverty, … on anything, I do not understand how you can use the words "God" and "hates" in the same sentence to refer to humankind. Not reading the bible I read.
A search on "God" and "love" reveals 104 initial results. That says something. So do these examples.
"But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked" (Luke 6:35).1
God Hates? I don't think so.
…the promotion and reappointment ceremony is right on track.
I am so very excited about the event. It marks the end of my "chaplain candidate" phase. I can stop telling folks "well, yes, I'm with the chaplains but I'm not a chaplain, I'm a chaplain candidate." And I can stop explaining why, if I am representing the chaplains,