How will we pray this week?

It seems to me that so often people regard prayer as an opportunity to tell God what they want!

For many, prayer is the opportunity to return to the childhood days - when you wanted something, all we needed to do was . . .

Climb on his knee and tell Him what we wanted!

And for so many of us, this is the model of prayer we've adopted and used in our Christian lives.

The question has to be: How will you pray this week?

God knows our needs before we even ask. We pray to remind ourselves how important people and things are, not to tell God what we want Him to do.

Perhaps, for many of us, having lost sight of this can best be explained by this . . .

There are others of us who will be totally bound up in the formulaic ACTS - a great thing to teach people to pray, moving past the 'gimme, gimme.gimme' praying. But so often ACTS is the end point, not the starting point - so if that's what we think prayer is, then we need to grow our prayer life a bit more.

And of course there's that prayer we ought to be saying every day:

Let's try to pray for people and things in a different, more engaged, less demanding way this week and perhaps, where we can be the answer - we will determine to be the answer!

Christmas Cards - Dec 21

I always love Christmas and the collision of Jesus (the real reason for the festival) and Father Christmas (the perceived and marketing/retail industry's proclaimed reason for the season) and all the fallout that occurs. This card says it all I guess:

Universalism in a nutshell

Everybody wants to go to heaven and they come up with some amazing theology to ensure that they can rest easy

Well it seems that for some there's no 'but' involved because they are 'Universalists'. One of those whom I know (and love) holds the view that Jesus, having died for everyone, guarantees that all are now destined for heaven. They contend that it whether you have a faith or not, regardless of how you have lived, you are 'in' - Faith in Jesus is not a requirement for us to be 'saved'.

When I point to John 3.16: 'For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life,' I am told that I believe this because I have too high a Christology!

The same criticism (too high a Christology) is thrown at me when I come to John 14.5,6: 'Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me'.

I feel that the two passages conspire together to make for a message that says that whilst Jesus did indeed die for everyone, there is an element of recognition and reception required. The ticket to the game is yours but unless you take it and journey towards it, you will never get to see it - the same is true of eternity (as I understand it) for jesus is the turnstile by which we enter.

__________

The second group I encounter tell me that regardless of what we do in this life, we have a second chance - a post-mortem salvation opportunity - once we have left it. It's like Jesus wakes us up, tells us that we've died and asks if we'd like to reconsider our rejection of God and come into heaven. Now, if I was dead and was 'woken' with an offer like that I'd be a bit of a mug to pass it by, wouldn't I?

My struggle here is that the words of Hebrews 9.26-28:
'But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.'

I am of the understanding, thanks to this passage, that we live - die (once)  - and are then judged and to be honest, the wake you up from the dead / second chance bit appears to be a conveniently created accommodation to me. Mind you, like the first option, I can understand it as after all, who wants to think of loved ones not making it? Then again both mean that one of the benchmarks many use when challenging me about faith, grace and forgiveness, namely Hitler, makes it into heaven using them I reckons - so it wouldn't sit well with many inside or outside the Church!

An interesting aside to this is the belief some have that hell is but a temporary condition and that whilst serving our time there the opportunity for parole and release into heaven will be made ours at some time - so all may sin and continue to fall short - but in the end it doesn't matter!

__________

Some tell me that what matters is the moment of death - as long as you call on god with you're last breath then this bringing of god into your life, regardless of how short or even what god is called - the general concept of there being a god is enough or so one of my clergy colleagues tells me! I think that there has to be a little more than this but then again they base their view on the the passage that says (Joel 2.32): 'And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.'

But in doing so are speaking of calling upon god rather than God and when you consider that the word LORD (for the upper case) means 'YAWEH' - it is a specific name not a general name 'elohim' - then we can see that the idea of calling on god as the entry into the afterlife is merely a wistful, fingers crossed, bit of being hopeful!

__________

So at the moment I have to say that that leaves me thinking that that's three strikes and those who pin their hopes on something more for having lived as something less than God calls us to be will now have to sit down.

I think I regard this issue as residing in a place where I have a clue about some people from their professions and attempts to live as the Bible requires but even then I won't be sure until the end - and then I might only know because I'm outside and know who's out there with me and assuming those who aren't have made the cut.

Thankfully we don't have the right, or ability, to say who is in or not and I actually reckon that's the best way - I'm not concerned with judging people but helping them to be the best they can be and to keep God's laws and commandments and live in love and peace with all.

At the end of the day, as I understand it,  it all comes down to being:

i. Reconciled to God by the atoning death of Jesus, the Christ,

ii. Living a life that keeps the commandments and lives in peace with all, and

iii. Recognising that we are all fallen and sinful and not regarding ourselves as better than those around us but as brothers and sisters with them.

There are some who seem to take joy in those whom they consider to be 'out' whilst of course they are (or so they think) 'in' and this is wrong on so many levels. And for those who want to see God as a Father Christmas figure who have presents for everyone, even when they've actively kept away from His presence - good luck with that. As much as I would like to agree I'm afraid that my theology doesn't fit in with that - sorry, I think you're wrong too!

So here we are - a very simplistic explanation of some of the thinking around eternity - hopefully it will provide a basis for some deeper dialogue and thinking.

Pax

Christmas Card - 5

Know someone who refuses to have buy Christmas cards with penguins, Santa and all the other 'non' Christmas icons on them? I do and it is for her that today's card is presented!

Ho Ho Ho and all that sort of thing :)

Universalism - Where I am

Regarding my comment in the last post about how, "You pays your money and makes your choice – don’t say no one told you!" I received the response, "Doesn't sound like very good news to me...!"

The person went on to explain how they'd been led to universalism and that really nicely moves me on from annihilation rather nicely. Those who adhere to universalist views tell me that I have a high Christology and that my views limit God. So what are my views:

God made man to have a relationship with him, walking and conversing with him in the garden in the cool of the day (Gen 3) but man (generic) sinned by disobeying God and thus came separation from God, expulsion from the garden and all the other stuff.

Disobedience brought separation, a finitude to life and so sin (missing the target) became our lot and it marked us out, and led us into despair, from thence onwards. So God engaged in floods, covenants, prophets, miraculous signs (including deliverances) and still man was separate. Whatever humanity did, it never lasted and always fell short of the target (sin again).

So God realising that without the shedding of blood there could be no forgiveness decided to pay the price for sin Himself, with Himself! Enter God incarnate, Jesus (the Christ) who taking upon Himself our sin, personally and individually identifiably, dies on the cross for us so that the debt (tetelestai) is cancelled - paid upon the nail!

Those who accept that Jesus paid this price for them may come and take from His hands the certificate of divorce between us and sin, for we are no longer bound and no longer in relationship. The tie has been broken and we live in that freedom with the father as author, the Son ans the means and the Spirit as enabler. Simples isn't it?

And best of all, this offer is open to all, for in dying Christ secured that freedom for all (see I am a universalist), we just need to recognise, accept and gratefully take the ticket from His hands.

The first response to my views was that the person I was talking to, "Wouldn't want to have a god like that, I don't imagine my god doesn't do that!"

Well, to be honest I have to say that I thought then, and still do, that 'their god' was a god of their own making. They decide that they want a faith where everyone gets into heaven (what's the point of spending eternity with someone you didn't want to spend a temporal life with? Now that's illogical!).

"It doesn't matter what you've believed, what you've done or how you live, God opens the door to all!"

In that case I don't need to engage in evangelism, after all I'm not plundering hell to populate heaven, I'm just moving the markers around a bit. I don't need to live as Christ would have us live, because there's no goats at the end (said he sheepishly!) and eternal punishment was just a typo! Mind you the people I was dialoguing with claim that the Bible was subject to the editor's pen, additions and changes to make religious and political views and never contained half of what it now does and has lost all the bits we'd disagree with!!!

"You have far too high a Christology. Jesus isn't that powerful and doesn't have the ability to pick and choose - everyone ends up in heaven regardless!"

Funny that but my Bible tells me, "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world mto condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God."

So that's the position I occupy on this (in a nutshell)

Pax