Through Faith and Patience

I would like to remind my fellow-Christians, we serve  a Savior who did not insist, nor fight for, nor allow his right-hand man to fight for, his constitutional rights.
Rather, he bore the punishment of a cruel civil .gov backed up by a band of religious zealots.

Jesus Christ did not argue with Herod, nor Pilate, nor Caiaphas. He already knew that his ultimate victory was assured, because. . . while allowing their bloody conspiracy to totally defeat his body, they were unknowingly setting the historical stage for the greatest human victory of all time—our triumph over death itself.
His world-class demonstration of how to prevail over adversity advances the purposes of God on this earth.
He did not nit-pick about his right to gather on Sunday or maintain any semblance of religion. In fact, on one occasion he ran the religious folks out of their temple.

He was telling them to get their priorities straight.
His most ardent spokesman later reminded us, through a written legacy, that  faith and patience would be the basis of our inheritance.
Not the promises of man . . . nor our legal right to get together on any particular day and play church. while the rest of the world is engaged in a life/death struggle.
We now have in the world a life-and-death situation that will ultimately demonstrate, like Jesus’s own ordeal, the power of our God to deliver us from evil, amen.
So let’s not cloud the issue by trying to split hairs over traditional religious whoodoos like what they think about what we can or not do on Sunday.

They cannot defeat us.
They can’t defeat the ongoing presence the risen Messiah in this world. His greatest life-affirming act was remaining obedient unto death . . . a death that erupted as Resurrection and changed the world forever. He was a man unjustly executed, but then he lived to tell about it.



And get this: they will never defeat his followers.
His victory was a world-changing event that greatly outweighs our power to quibble over freedom of assembly issues during a life-threatening pandemic.
My dear brothers and sisters, they cannot beat us. That’s been tried already, multiple times through multiple ages.
But they can still join us.

You can't beat down a man who survives death.

King of Soul

Free Kim Davis!

The legal issues surrounding Kim Davis' job duties should be worked out in courts of law. But there is no way this public servant should be confined to a jail cell.

Free Kim Davis!

Glass half-Full

An amicable encounter of worldviews

Every weekday at noon I take an hour break from work to eat a sandwich and some little carrots. During that time, the availability of two NPR-affiliate stations affords me a radio choice between two excellent news analysis programs: Boston WBUR's Robin Young, who hosts Here & Now, or Philly's WHYY presentation of Fresh Air, hosted by Terry Gross.


Today I chose to listen to Terry's interview with evangelical Christian leader C. Peter Wagner, and I'm glad I did.


I am a Christian who happens to live in the USA, which is a nation that cherishes freedom of speech, and respects a multiplicity of opinions. Although I frequently discern a gulf of difference between Terry Gross' worldview and mine, I have often admired the sensitivity and skill with which she conducts interviews. Terry chooses her interviewees from a wide array of philosophically diverse personalities. including some persons who are markedly different from herself. This was one of them.


At no time has Terry's respectful sensitivity been better demonstrated than it was today in her conversation with Peter Wagner.
Mr. Wagner represents a charismatic Christian subculture with which I have some common history and familiarity. Terry Gross represents a free-thinking secularist intellectual culture that is, in many ways, antithetical to Peter Wagner's.
The inquistive exchange between their two gentle souls today was an example of civility that is sorely lacking in today's cacophany of combative discourse.
I'll not say much more about their discussion. You can listen on the link above. I will, however, quote from Mr. Wagner's final comment to Terry, which was "I really congratulate you for the good research you've done."
In other words, Terry took the time to explore what fundamentalist preacher Wagner really stood for, instead of forming her interview strategy on caricaturized stereotypes or political exaggerations. The result was exquisitely instructive, and an example of the exploratory enquiry that public media should aspire to.


As for Mr. Wagner, this apostle, who was chosen to represent the so-called dominion theology movement of contemporary Christendom... I commend his unique optimism, founded upon a love-centered faith that is rarely seen these days. At one point he said to Terry: "I think the world is going to get better and better...He (Jesus) will return to a very strong world...reflecting the kingdom of God-- not the miserable world we live in today."
Amen, brother.

Glass half-Full

Demoniac tantrums

In the USA we have a long tradition, beginning with the Constitution, that separates church from state. Other countries each have their own histories and precedents as pertains to this issue.
In Germany, a union of the Christian church and the State, or Government, was a long collaboration that stretched back into history many centuries, going all the way back in time to what is called the Holy Roman Empire, of the middle ages.
In the secularizing 20th century, this church-state collaboration became a problem.

In Nazi Germany, the union of church and state became a problem for Christians of conscience who detected some decidedly heathen policies that were imposed by the Nazis, long about 1933. It was also an impedement for the Nazis until they clamped down on religious freedom by restricting the activities and freedoms of certain German pastors who were dissenting against the third reich.

In August of 1933, the Nazis rounded up a bunch of submissive church leaders and imposed upon them a new identity that neutralized their espousal of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and replaced it with a Nazi-approved theology that suited the hateful programs of the third reich.

The new Nazified theology was rejected by pastor Martin Niemoeller, who shepherded a chruch in Dahlem, a Berlin suburb. Niemoeller not only spoke publicly from the pulpit in opposition to Nazi restrictions, but he also proceeeded to organize support among Christians to resist the corrupted churchianity that the Nazis were trying to impose on the German church.


The most notable atrocity that the Nazi heathens had sought to force on the church in Germany was the "Aryan paragragh," a reprehensible dictum that banned all persons of "non-Aryan" ethnicity (or having non-Aryan spouses) from holding state office. Since the collaboration between church and state had been a very old arrangement in Germany, this affected the church indirectly.

But even more important than that, it was wrong, and some discerning Christian smelled the Aryan rat.

When the dissent arising among Pastor Niemoeller and others likeminded with him became an inconvenient irritant to the emerging Nazi program of exterminting the Jews (and other groups), Hitler and Goering ordered that the offending churchmen should be rounded up and taught a lesson.
In January, 1934, Hitler devised an end to the Christian clergy problem when, in the presence of those pastors, he threw a tantrum, assaulted them with his yelling tirades, and then left the room before they could object to his sociopathic behaviour and the oppressive policies that would ensue.

Unfortunately, Hitler's bluster worked, as did much of his reprobate assault on civilization until the Allies later defeated his militaristic machine of heathenism.

After that meeting with the resistant pastors in 1933, most of the good German reverends treated Martin Niemoeller coldly, and withdrew their support of his brave resistance to the Nazi tyranny. Martin Niemoeller, although he had been a U-boat hero in WWI, was later imprisoned by the third reich. Thus did the domoniac Hitler neutralize Christian resistance in the Nazi era.

I want to thank Clarissa Start Davidson, whose book God's Man, the history of Pastor Niemoeller, published in 1959 by Ives Washburn, Inc. of New York, informed me in the posting of this blog. Thank your, Clarissa.

If this ever happens again in the world, I hope and pray that Christians, me included, will have the Christ-inspired courage and good sense to not comply with heathen megalomaniacs, their oppressive regimes, or any other worldly power that seeks to wipe us or our Jewish compatriots out. I'd also point out that the vision of apostle John, as recorded in Revelation 12, reveals that when the evil principalities of this world make murderous assault on the Jews, their persecutive pursuit of us Christians is not far behind.

Glass half-Full