Mission Faithwalk

                    Discipline your children, for in that there is hope, do not be a willing party to their death. (Proverbs 19:18)                 According to the authors of Generations , each generation seeks to correct the errors it believes the preceding generation or two made. One result is that the rearing of children swings like a pendulum between too domineering and too smothering, or between too attentive and virtually negligent.  The Millennials were seen, it seems to me, as golden children. They were our future, our hope, and could do nothing wrong, but we expected a great deal of them. The I-Geners or Z-Geners seem to have been, in some ways, the heir of the Millennials, reigning supreme but with no real expectations of them except “self-realization” in whatever form they decide to take it. Others may, of course, have very different ...

                   Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. (I John 5:12)                 What is life? How do we know when someone is alive? Dead? Medically, someone is generally considered alive if they are breathing, have a heart rate or pulse, are moving, have blood pressure and vital signs (yep), and, though it wasn’t listed, brain activity.  The list is somewhat redundant, and there are always stories of people who appeared to be dead but somehow are revived, often dramatically as the result of medical intervention. As a general rule, however, dead is dead.                 When we shift our perspective from the physical to the spiritual, we sometimes start thinking in magical terms. We assume that spiritual aliveness is eter...

                       Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. (Proverbs 18:2)                   This morning, I found a post on Facebook calling for us to pass laws that prevent communists from holding office in America and asking who agreed. Then I found this verse in Proverbs 18. At the risk of being one of those fools who delight in airing their (my) own opinion, it seems to me that this verse is a warning that we desperately need to heed.                 One of the warnings we hear about communists is that they are authoritarian. They take away people’s rights, etc. And I have read enough history, philosophy, and psychology to believe that. When you are in control of things and expected to make everything “wonderful...

                 Acquitting the guilty and condemning the innocent— the Lord detests them both . (Proverbs 17:15) There’s a lot of acquitting and condemning going on, and those who are doing it are sure that they are acquitting the innocent and condemning the guilty. But of what are they innocent or guilty? How can we determine it? For some (and I am not among them) the guilty and innocent include anyone within certain collectives: one skin color is guilty, another is innocent. One income bracket is guilty, another is innocent, etc. And above all else, those who agree with someone are innocent, while those who disagree are not only guilty, but guilty of all of the worst possible crimes. Those who disagree are “literally Hitler” even if they don’t agree with anything Hitler believed or did. Some people believe that what makes a person guilty or innocent is entirely up to the subjective perspective of the observer. If that is the case,...

                 Therefore, since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God. (II Corinthians 7:1) While this doesn’t look like a collective verse, it still has the “we.” This allows the verse to be both about us as individuals and us as a community. There are two questions that need to be addressed. The first and obvious question is what contaminates our bodies and spirits, either as individuals or communities? The obvious answer is “sin,” but  sometimes what contaminates doesn’t seem bad. Pray about it and see what God tell you. The second question is what are we willing to give up, or take on, out of reverence for God. Do we revere God? If we do, what does that mean in our lives? What should it mean? This is one of those “exam table” questions that I automatically answer negatively. I don’t think I revere God, or...

                 Accept the one whose faith is weak, without quarreling over disputable matters. One person’s faith allows them to eat anything, but another, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted them. Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To their own master, servants stand or fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand. (Romans 14:1-4)                 When Paul wrote this, it was common for the meat that people served to have been sacrificed to some god, including God. Some people thought that it was evil to eat meat sacrificed to any god except God. It’s not quite the same thing, perhaps, but would you eat a meal that was prepared in honor of Adolph Hitl...