Tag: hell

Lady Gaga and Fundies (video and commentary)

I TRIED to clip down this gagavision 41 video to focus on a perfect example of how not to create encounters with pop stars. But I couldn’t. (I’m not the techie I hoped I could be.)

There are parts that could offend some of you, my readers. If Lady Gaga offends you, you are certainly not alone and I respect your perspective. In that case, I urge you to not watch this video–at all. The parts I refer to happen at minute 2:20 – 4:00, and are suitable for audiences over age 10. My advice is to skip the other parts, primarily because they do not refer to this post.

The scoop: It appears a Christian Fundementalist gave Lady Gaga a card/tract that said, “Get Out of Hell Free.”

In a far friendlier tone than I can image approaching hostile protesters, she said, “Hi, I’m Lady Gaga.” and they said, “What do I care?”

What I find so interesting is that she bothered to talk to them, and tell them she did believed in God, and that she had Christian influences in her formative years. It was like she was trying to find common ground. A novel concept for approaching those you disagree with, huh?

They were more concerned with showing their opposition, and contempt for her. From her comments, it seems to me, that their actions, got to her, at least for a little bit. They bothered her. She said that she didn’t want her fans to have to see that, but it seemed to bother her on a personal level, as well. (But, sadly, NOT in a way that would likely bring her to a closer fellowship with followers of Jesus.) I would really like to hope that Gaga would not lump these loonies with authentic followers of Jesus. I hope it wouldn’t sour her on the whole bit.

Maybe these people just couldn’t find a Koran to burn that night, or something.

At best, the whole encounter would be confusing, or hurtful to her, or anyone. Hurtful? To a super star, really? Yeah, that’s my guess. Because, I think she’s mostly a regular 25 year old young woman. Like almost all of us, she wants to be liked and not be disparaged and maligned.

It’s easy to hear the condescending tone from the protester speaking, and his smug uses of the word “darling”. In snide fashion he tells her that the book “with the black cover, and the gold pages, and the ribbon down the middle” will show her she has “pervert ways”. It seems he’s piecing it all together for her, in case she’s not aware of the visual image of a Bible. Really, a sweetheart…um. NOT!

Ya know, these are not endearing traits of Christians. They are shameful ways to act. (I should put that word Christians in quotes, because I think they had their own agenda, and their “Good News” …sucked.)

Perhaps Get out of Hell Free signs, tracts, and cards, helped these protesters turn from sin and come to God. But, in most cases, relationships (read: legit friendships) are far more helpful. Their demonstration and literature was probably are more of a confusing message.

So, now we know how to not show God’s love and redeeming grace, right?

IT BEGS THE QUESTION:
What if there had been loving dialogue? What if the people who think they are doing God’s work, acted like Jesus, and started interacting with Stefani Germanotta on common ground, instead of peacocking self-righteousness on what they deem to be enemy lines.

Maybe you’re a Gaga monster, paws up, and everything. Or maybe you don’t care for Lady Gaga’s music or showmanship techniques, but will you share your take on Christianity / evangelism, and music stars?

So, You wanna ditch your church? Top 5 Mistakes

Alphonse Mucha's work here reminds me of Redeemed Humanity, the Bride of God's Only Son

Sometimes going to church doesn’t seem worth it. For heaven’s sake, wouldn’t it be better to just have breakfast with some family or friends, and forego irritating people, scheduling problems, overblown or petty dramas de jour, personality conflicts, politics, dodgy doctrinal positioning, and the rest of machine the local church can be? Is the Cracker Barrel growing a bit more more alluring each Sunday morning?

Seems like a no brainer, right?
If this is kind of thing is happening for you, in your local church, maybe church shopping is around the bend? Well, wait just a minute. Here are 5 Mistakes you can make (or have made) regarding your local church.

1. Making theological judgements for what are personal preferences.
2. Mistaking the “local church” for The Bride of Christ.
3. Misunderstanding the idea of “community.”
4. Implementing a consumer approach with the spiritual and transcendent.
5. Overlooking what is happening in the sacraments.

Being from a more independent faith tradition, I grew up with the sense that church, in the local setting, was mainly about worship and fellowship. Well, it is, but not in the small sense I understood it to be. Now a bigger view of Church guides my life, and my relationship with my God and Savior.

Simply put: Church is hardly about “the local church” or about any human individual.

Jesus saved humankind through his Bride the Church. That means our preferences have very little to do with what God is doing, and the workings of Church.

The Church is something universal, invisible AND visible, international, and local. It is bound by culture and history, and yet handily transcends them both. It may exist in a location temporarily, but exists eternally in every location. Yes, it’s bigger, in every way than you think, or have the ability to imagine.

We apprend it in such tiny ways at times…
Perhaps, we get caught up or annoyed by such things a personalities, worship styles, programs, or issues related to our doctrinal formulations, opinion, or personal preference.

We may go “church shopping” and miss the point completely.

How correct to say, “Church is not about me.”
It’s about WE.

In the sacraments, the community of God (Trinity) intertwines with the community of man (humanity). We receive divine grace. God is with us. God is with his Bride, the Church. Locally the church celebrates what the collection of Christians, past, present, and future is enacting, together.

Each Sunday, worldwide, Christ’s Bride gathers, and meets together. The church is with “him”, as it has done from the beginning.

Even as the earth spins, the variances in time zones cause prayer without ceasing, and the fellowship and communion of the saints occur, globally.

And with Christ, Father, and Spirit, we celebrate the reality of koinwnia (koinonia) with the Divine.  Thomas Aquinas wrote, “the Eucharist is the sacrament of the unity of the Church, which results from the fact that many are one in Christ.”[7] (Eucharist means thanksgiving.) Koinwnia is what Christ exercised divinely with humanity, by grace, through his work in his ministry, on the cross, and in his resurrection. It is how we commune with each other, and worship God in Spirit and Truth.

Through a local church body, we live out, and enact the Gospel and participate the actual in-breaking of the Kingdom of God here on earth. The local church is people, and people are flawed. What God has done, is doing, and will continue to do, is not.

This whole concept is all summed up nicely in the Apostles Creed, in which followers of Christ unite in spirit and truth. Many of us may not know the creeds, or declare them together with other Christians. But, this particular creed, well-established in the 300s A.D. (C.E.), and is the/a manifesto (see ref. link) of the Bride. It is a speak-act and agreement of followers of the divine Father, Son, and Spirit, for a way of living and being; and understanding the world.

To take this creed fully to heart will expand your idea of church, unify you with Christians of the last 2,000+ years, and may even help you forebear with the frailties of  local church you attend, here and now.

From the Book of Common Prayer –

I believe in God the Father Almighty,
Maker of heaven and earth:
And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord,
Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost,
Born of the Virgin Mary,
Suffered under Pontius Pilate,
Was crucified, dead, and buried:
He descended into hell;
The third day he rose again from the dead;
He ascended into heaven,
And sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty;
From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Ghost;
The holy Catholick Church;
The Communion of Saints;
The Forgiveness of sins;
The Resurrection of the body,
And the Life everlasting.
Amen.

Your comments are welcome.

Everlasting Torture in Hell: McKnight and Piper

Another intriguing post by Scot McKnight! (It’s worth a look)

He notes the issues contained in this book: A review of John Piper, Jesus: The Only Way to God: Must You Hear the Gospel to be Saved? (123 pages, $5.99), by Terrance L. Tiessen.

It brings out important topics like- How do the various views of Hell effect Evangelism and sharing the gospel?


What in the Hell?

fires of hell?

Scot McKnight has an intriguing post regarding Sharon Baker’s book Razing Hell: Rethinking Everything You’ve Been Taught About God’s Wrath and Judgment. His article here.

After you read these 7 considerations (from Scot’s post), will you please comment here?

1. Theodicy: how does God deal with evil if it, in effect, exists for ever in a hell-state? Does evil not continue to exist, even in spite of the statement in Revelation 21:1-4 that death and suffering will be no more? So, the issue here is squaring God’s goodness with eternal evil.

2. Eternal hopelessness: a traditional hell does not permit any hope after death for anyone, including those who have never heard. Is there a law that says God’s grace can only be active in the temporal sphere — that is, during our physical lifetime?

3. Eternal evil: does not the traditional view entail the view that God never really does purge his world of evil?

4. Justice vs. Love: the issue here is an old one. If God is love, how does justice fit in with that love. Is God ambivalent or split? An image of God that emerges for many is a cruel father who guides people to think of eternal punishment as an act of love.

5. Eternal divine violence: assumptions are that punishment is an act of violence and eternal punishment would mean God is eternally violent. She connects this view of God with acts of violence in history. She thinks God’s violence contradicts God’s love.

6. Retributive justice: again, a major issue is that God’s justice in the Bible — in Christ — is restorative but hell is a belief in a retributive justice that never becomes restorative.

7. Eternal punishment for temporal sin: how can it be just to punish a human being, who sinned temporally — that is over a life time (and no more), for an eternity for that temporal sin?

7 Reasons We (all) Aren't Ready for Heaven

 

God is love, pure, and holy.

 

Great balls of Fire –where could I be going with this?

This will take 2 min and 15 seconds. Hang in there.

1. Grace. Our life in heaven isn’t up to us. We’re not good enough or ready to be with a Holy God. God overlooks this. He, himself paid the debt, to cover over our deficit. Many of us remain awfully content with our goodness, or special knowledge to gain eternal life. But, this life beyond life remains fit as God’s territory singularly. Our residence there is a gift we could never afford. This is what is meant by Saving Grace.

2. Community. Interestingly, atheist Jean-Paul Sartre wrote that, “Hell is other people.” Many of us find being with others (who are not of our own choosing) gets difficult, tiresome, frustrating, annoying, or worse. Even extroverts don’t enjoy communing with every type of person. Some of us get to a point where we consider being with others something to consciously limit, or avoid. Sartre would be very uncomfortable in heaven, would you? God is Trinity, so God in its (pick your pronoun) own Divine essence is community. This is the basis for love-which must have a beloved, or personal recipient of love. And hence, community is the very stuff of heaven.

3. Humility Andrew Murray wrote a wonderful book called Humility: The Path to Holiness. In it, Murray aptly shows how humility was Jesus’ chief characteristic. Jesus was the human face of The Holy God. Jesus was not concerned with being humiliated, and didn’t consider himself above others, but a servant of all. Many of us have quite little of this characteristic that is plentiful in God, and in heaven.

4. Self-absorption Many of us tend to think life, and life after life is about us, and our needs. With this viewpoint, we would be quite out-of-place in heaven. The Kingdom of God is about loving God and others. In doing so, we are found, healed, known, and freed.

5. Idolatry The things that capture our attention, time, and desires are the gods we worship. They can even be good in themselves, like, staying healthy, or being devoted to our children, doing ministry service, or working hard. Whatever we love or enjoy become idols when they possess our main focus. It is our natural bent to allow things other than God, to become first priorities, but it is not good for us. When we have our life ordered properly, everything else falls into place well. In heaven, that will be the case. We will have a chance to learn, and enjoy many things far more amazing than we do in this life. The heavenly, top-down-priority system will likely jar many of us very much for a while.

6. Judging Many of us are not use to leaving the judging to God. As humans we are not in the position to be good, accurate, or fair judges. We are skewed because of our sin, and we are not innocent. However, this doesn’t seem to stop us from doing it to others. We won’t be foolish enough to do that in heaven. The time we typically use to surmise and judge others will be all freed up, leaving many of us feeling quite disoriented, perhaps. This adjustment could take some “time” to get used to.

7. Holy Fire God is good. How grateful we can be for this! But have you ever noticed when righteous people in the Bible meet an angel of God, they flip out, and feel very uncomfortable in the presence of holiness. God is so very good, and so very pure. In this way, God is like a refining fire in the presence of any impurity, or imperfection. Shock and awe, yet all together good. No darkness can exist in God’s Light. It makes one wonder if the course to be made in God’s image (and fit for heaven) will be wonderful… eventually, but the Fire of God’s Holiness will be more of a conflagration, of sorts, during the cleaning process. The process of spiritual growth isn’t for God’s benefit, but our own. All that is not right for heaven will be burned away in his presence, otherwise we really aren’t ready for paradise with him.

Perspectives on Heaven

Some people think, once we are in heaven, we will be instantly and miraculously transformed, and be suddenly fit for heaven. I have thought this, even wished for it. But, I’ve also had to ask myself, “Is it like God to do this? Or, does God most often–for our best interest–allow us to benefit by going through some kind of ‘refining fire’?” Would a shortcut make our characters Christlike and fit for, that is,fully comfortable, in heaven? I’m thinking, probably, nah. A Junior Varsity area might be a good idea.

Though we may be forgiven, and allowed admittance to the place where God has prepared for us, I wonder if God will still be interested in continuing to make our character more like his, in a process fashion, not unlike we normally learn, and experience reality. When we see him revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is; that is–knowing we are children of God. Understanding our connectedness. We are relational. But that may, in fact, be a process, and not be something that can or should be done instantaneously.

Author and philosopher, C.S. Lewis proposed that heaven could be a place where people would move deeper and further into heaven, and better awareness, as they were able to become accustomed to it. He goes into this quite a bit in his fictitious rendering of heaven in his short book called The Great Divorce. It’s well worth the read. The Catholic idea of Purgatory has a similar notion, of a holding spot, where the heaven-bound are refined in character, and prepared to be with a Holy God, in a holy place, forever.

Since I haven’t tried out the place, I won’t make a blanket or dogmatic pronouncement about how heaven must truly be, and how it may work. I’ll find out all too soon–as will you.

Regardless, of what you believe, or what may happen, it is important that we understand:

• God is Holy, and we are not. 

• We cannot be with God, or in a heavenly place after this life without God mercifully allowing us to be.

• We must humble ourselves to our Creator, and be willing to be crafted into God’s divine character.

thank you for reading.

Please leave your thoughts, of any kind.