orbeqpedro
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14 years ago @ Trying to follow - Order Slave-Free Choco... · 0 replies · +1 points
14 years ago @ Trying to follow - A Reflection on the Fo... · 1 reply · +1 points
I was thinking over that last weekend about the history of dissent in America. As commentators have mentioned, our independence was an act of defiance against awhat was perceived to be unjust and illegitimate tyranny. Since, the Boston Tea Party, however, protest and dissent have been censored and suppressed. Think the veterans' march on Washington after the Civil War to collect promised yet withheld pensions; the "red scare" of the Cold war; the sit-ins during the civil rights movement, J. Edgar Hoover's ruthless pursuit of dissidents, including John Lennon; and the heavy-handed treatment of peacful protestors alongside their more radical counterparts at the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul. Among others, of course.
14 years ago @ Trying to follow - 6 Glorious Years! · 0 replies · +1 points
14 years ago @ Trying to follow - Guess Who’s In T... · 0 replies · +1 points
"The quote from your letter is a good example of the tone you should set if you want to get published. I know your heart is to challenge injustice, but it's easy to write off someone who sounds angry (note to self). Praise where it's due never hurts. Think carrot and stick.
Good job - and keep writing for justice. "
14 years ago @ Trying to follow - An Open Letter To Mayo... · 0 replies · +1 points
Good job - and keep writing for justice.
14 years ago @ Trying to follow - Guestroom For Jesus · 0 replies · +1 points
14 years ago @ Trying to follow - Guestroom For Jesus · 3 replies · +1 points
Hey - could you add an "email to friend" button to the bottom of your articles?
14 years ago @ Trying to follow - Story Of Nonviolence: ... · 0 replies · +1 points
14 years ago @ Trying to follow - Story Of Nonviolence: ... · 1 reply · +1 points
15 years ago @ Trying to follow - My December Experiment... · 0 replies · +1 points
Not only have we humans screwed this created order up, but we have also come a long way in our understanding of the created order both individually and culturally as God's people. God did not stumble upon us and is not limited by our language, but unfortunately we are. Our language is bound by our view of the cosmos.
If you look at the development of theological concepts throughout scripture from the ancient wisdom books through the gospels, epistles, and into the old and new testament eschatological apocalyptic tomes, it's really easy to see that how we view God today is radically different from how the ancient Hebrews and the Hellenized Jews viewed God. A striking and complex example is that of the remnant. In Job and early Genesis, remnanat was a concept used to understand God's preservation of God's people from certain existential annihilation. Think Noah. His family was the bearest-bones remnant there is. This had nothing to do with salvation as we think of it but as salvation from a cosmic catastrophy that wiped out the entire existence as they knew it.
By the later prophets, this concept had a much more eschatological cast. Due to prolonged captivity under the Babylonians, Persians, and eventually Greeks, the Jews had begun to conceptualize an afterlife. throughout most of the old testament, afterlife is not even within the realm of conceptualization. Existence after death was encapsulated by the concept of sheol, the grave, a shadowy netherworld strikingly similar to the graves they put their dead in. By the New Testament, the remnant were God's faithful seed, God's people who are the true believers as evidenced by their commitment to justice, mercy, and obedience (a stark contrast to the corruption of many of the Jewish religious and political leaders who were castigated by the prophets).
Other examples abound of how our concept of God and our relationship to God have developed and expanded as our understanding of existence has expanded.
One of my favorite quotes comes to me second-hand (I think it was placed before one chapter in Mark Noll's America's God):
Christ took flesh and was made man in a particular time and place, family, nationality, tradition, and customs and sanctified them, while still being for all men in every time and place. wherever he is taken by the people of any day, time, and place He sanctifies that culture - He is living in it . . . but to acknowledge this is not to forget that there is another, and equally important, force at work among us. NOT ONLY DOES GOD IN HIS MERCY TAKE PEOPLE AS THEY ARE; HE TAKES THEM TO TRANSFORM THEM INTO WHAT HE WANTS THEM TO BE (emphasis added).
Because I believe that mister Walls is on to something, I will definitely agree that at the end of the day, " . . . you should look at the way God presents masculinity and femininity and let that color the way you behave with regard to gender."