The New York Times is reporting on a recent lawsuit against Japan from individuals taken as slaves for both labor and sex during World War Two. Sadly, the plaintiffs lost because 35 years ago the Chinese Government gave up its right to reparations. So two women taken as teenagers get no retribution, neither do the many men who were suing Japan for being taken into slavery during the war.
These were crimes which should be acknowledged and repented of, instead of double talking like the current Japanese Prime Minister.
But my question is this. This atrocity was committed more than a half century ago. The same thing is happening today all over the world. Young boys in Darfur are being forced to murder their neighbors. Women in Southeast Asia are taken from their families and used as sex toys for rich westerners. Let’s do something to end this injustice now instead of wait until these children are old and gray. Before we are tempted to think that we are not responsible for these heinous acts taking place in lands we have never seen we need to stop and look at the label on the back of our shirts. The world is a lot smaller than it used to be. Our actions and decisions affect people worlds apart from us. If you don’t believe me I dare you to watch Blood Diamond. You will quickly realize how complicit western society is in some of the worst tragedies in the world.
Sometimes it is good to make amends for the sins of our fathers, but perhaps a better idea would be to recognize our own sins. Yes I must repent of slavery in America, I have and I will continue to do so. But maybe we use those sins of long ago as smoke and mirrors to distract ourselves from the sins we commit today.
I ran across this today. This is an amazingly poignant point which i think it helps us all to ponder today. You know I am not a person to jump on the bandwagon and talk about whatever is happening in the news. I prefer to keep the point all about who we are, where we are, and where we are going.
However what I saw is related to the Va Tech Tragedy. This event was a Tragedy. A tragedy brought into this world by sin. And the truly scary thing is that any one of us is capable of being carried away by our sin.
Despite this tragedy, there is hope. That hope is reflected posthumously by the words of one of the students who lost her life that day. Lauren McCain was 20 years old when she died in the shooting at Va Tech. Her myspace page says-
“The purpose and love of my life is Jesus Christ. I don’t have to argue religion, philosophy, or historical evidence because I KNOW Him. He is just as real, if not more so, as my ‘earthly’ father.”
Wow, there is nothing else for me to say. Lauren, you no longer see dimly. We congratulate you on finishing your race, and we look forward to meeting you soon.
I somehow stumbled across some racist garbage tonight that made my skin crawl. Let me be more clear though. I can deal with racist nonsense. You expect there to be idiots in the world. At least I do. I have been around long enough to know there is no shortage of sinners who enjoy the trash that spills forth from their hearts. However when I found this site called white picket fences, i knew i had spent too much time reading blogs.
The moron who is running this site is worse than a common racist sinner. He / She claims to be speaking in the name of Christianity as he uses the n word in various forms. He has the audacity to call someone a “negress.” All I can say is that this guy makes me want to apologize simply for being a white Christian born in the South. However, I will also say simply that one day the person writing will stand in an assembly before God in the midst of people “from every nation, tribe and tongue” and give account. I certainly hope that their every tear will be wiped away, because they will shed many.
I must be honest though as I write that. My sins are plentiful, my heart is often hard. I plead mercy for this hateful writer just as I plead it for myself. May God be merciful to us all for the hatred and animosity we have toward one another.
We receive Voice of the Martyrs magazine. This is an excellent way to hear about hurting people in the world. It really inspires us to be a little more aware of our brothers and sisters in parts of the world who are really suffering for their faith and makes seminary life a lot nicer with the petty srtruggles we have.
Anyway, reading the most recent edition, we discovered an awesome program. through bibles unbound you will receive five bibles a month, which you can then forward along to people whose names and addresses they will provide you with. The people who you will be providing a bible to are people who otherwise might never own their own copy of God’s word. This is a good way to teach your family the importance of God’s word. check it out!
A while back I wrote a brief article on the gospel. Some of you may have seen it. It is reproduced below. A good friend contacted me regarding it, and I have moved that discussion here because I think it is relevant and worth discussing. Feel free to jump in if you’d like.
What Is the Gospel?
I am coming to an interesting discovery lately. I am beginning to understand what “the Gospel” is. All my life, I thought I knew what the gospel was. What I am finding out is just how sadly limited my understanding is. For many years, I considered the gospel to be a set of logical propositions built upon each other. I suppose I would have said this was most succinctly put together in three main principles. You are sinner, Christ died as a penalty for your sin, and you must receive him personally thus inheriting heaven.
What a sad fact that I had come to believe this is a complete summary of the gospel! A few years ago, I began to move away from this. I had a feeling there was a lot more to it, but I didn’t know how to communicate my thoughts. Now I am almost ready to explain the gospel, but I am much more ready to state what it is not.
That’s what I am about to do, so be prepared, some of your preconceived notions might be dashed on the rocks of orthodoxy.
The Gospel isn’t a set of facts, it is not merely a promise that we have, it’s not a faith in a carefully thought out doctrine of atonement. The Gospel is not something that can be put into a neat little tract and still be everything that a person needs to know. Don’t misunderstand me. The doctrine of justification by faith can easily be put into three of four page tract. This can then be used to help someone understand that basic concept.
But contrary to what most of us evangelicals like to believe, that doctrine does not even come close to being the gospel.
I was taught to “share the gospel” by explaining the doctrine of justification. Partly for this reason, I have such a limited understanding of who I am in Christ! Of course, I am not blaming anyone. See, we humans like to live safe lives that insulate us from a need for faith and trust. If I can easily break the Bible down into four simple rules, then I know I am safe.
The truth which we like to deny is that God won’t live within our simple formulas.
A good Being created our first parents, then began to redeem fallen humanity by killing an animal to cover their shame, in this way He began to move into the world. That is the only simple way to state the Gospel, the Creator has moved into creation in order to redeem humanity. What a beautiful truth! But after stating that truth, we are bound to the story of scripture. Everything written in the Old and New testaments is the Gospel. This story is all Gospel. There is no way to pull out a portion and call that part the gospel. The important part of every story has a plot, and the plot is a creator redeeming his creatures. As with all stories this one has a climax. The climax of the gospel is Jesus the Nazarene carpenter who himself was the moment when God fully entered into creation.
I am beginning to realize that many of my own struggles in knowing the poverty stricken young man who died on a cross for my sins is that I don’t understand what he is saying to me.
For so many years, I believed he was coming to me with a set of propositions regarding myself. That is not it at all; rather He is coming to me with a story about himself! When I can shut up about myself and my own ambitions for long enough, maybe I will begin to understand who he is and then and only then, my life will change.
JJ Said:
Hello Mr. Lee,
I was going through my e-mail and read your article on “What is the gospel?” I thought it was good in that it pushed people to think of the gospel in a more full-orbed way, which we should. (Whole counsel of God stuff.) But, I thought you pusheed it a bit too far. I think we are justified in referring to the saving message of Christ as the gospel. (Mainly, because Scripture does this in several places. Matt 24:14, Mark 1:1, Mark 13:10, Romans 15:19) Therefore, I believe we are right to pull out a portion of God’s truth and call is “gospel.” Thoughts? Your friend,
JJ
well not quite. I can write, I just have a hard time pushing publishers and agents around until they decide I am right when I say that. Fact of the matter is, the book I wrote has all the potential in the world to be a best seller. Lately I have had a few people asking about this book. So I thought I would make it a little more public. I have posted chapter one here. It is in pdf so you will need a pdf reader to open it. If you want to read more, just contact me and I will send you the rest. I don’t want to make the whole thing public. Intellectual property thieves you know.
As a teaser I will say that this brief little book will open your eyes to many truths, it will make you laugh, cry, and mostly it will cause you to strive to live life more fully while you can.
Here in St Louis, there is a place called Lone Elk Park. We went there today with good friend from North Carolina. She took this picture of the family.
Lone Elk Park is a really cool place. This little guy was close enogh that if I could have convinced Lyra to roll down her window, Shea could have touched him. My wife (who is considerably more intelligent than I) refused.
I used to work for bell south wireless. A division of what had once been the old at&t. back in 1984 I remember a big hububaloo about this giant corporation that had apparently gotten too big for its britches. In an anti-trust case the federal government required that this big conglomerate divest itself into smaller companies to make competition for long distance rates more realistic. Good idea for the little guys.
So they split into several regional “bell” companies. Most of you probably remember paying one of more of these for your local and/or regional phone service.
Well, over the course of time SBC grew and bought a few of these bell companies. (including bell south - my former employer) ameritech bought some and a company out on the west coast bought a few.
I was at bell south when we made the transition to SBC and then then to cingular (sbc also owned yahoo). Well of course over the course of time sbc, cingular, ameritech and the Pacific bell family reorganized into a new company recently named guess what? The New AT&T.
I think we learn two lessons from this. First of all there is nothing new under the sun, and secondly, the federal government will pretty much let you get away with anything if you jump through the right hoops. I guess there is also one more lesson. Don’t mess around with large companies, they always win. Too bad for the little guys.
So you see I live in a community of seminarians. We call ourselves that to distinguish ourselves from mere graduate students who will potentially graduate to high paying careers, when we are called simply to “come and die.”
That’s not really all that relevant to what I wanted to address this evening. What is relevant is that my apartment complex has a little more than 40 apartments in it. We share two dumpsters. Depending on where you live, you tend to go to the nearest dumpster. Who wouldn’t right?
Well, you know those nice little plastic lids that cover the top so rain, snow and furry critters can not get in and wreak havoc on all our waste? Those tops are annoying. Only professional basketball players are tall enough to simply flip them open without climbing on top of the filthy thing. And even then, they reach back a hand stained with yesterday’s mashed potatoes left over from someone else’s table.
Fortunately for our little community, the left top to one of our dumpsters recently broke in half. The missing half was probably carted away a week or so ago in the back of an unsuspecting dump truck to be added to the piles of accumulated waste from the city of Saint Louis. So now we have one flap that remains closed forever, and about a two and half by three foot opening on the left portion of our trash receptacle.
Every time in the last week or so that I have been to dump my trash, I was amazed that the right side of this dumpster was virtually empty, while the left side was overflowing. Once I actually lifted up the lid on the right side and the burgeoning trash simply toppled over into the empty half. What struck me was that given the option, none of us wanted to exert the energy to maintain equilibrium. Rather, we wanted to add to the pile that was already there. Preserve the status quo instead of get our hands dirty to even things out a bit.
I suppose I could draw all kinds of ridiculous insights from this. And no doubt many would. For me, it was just a funny example of how we would rather toss our trash out the easy way.
I for one am thrilled with the broken top. So much so, that should they replace it, I might form a midnight raid to break the one on the right. Of course that would only be to preserve the status quo.
