I thought you might like to read this short article.  When the Poor Die.

Our first day in Swaziland Pastor Gift told us about Maswane and asked if we would be willing to go pray with her. When she was five years old she was raped which is how she contracted HIV.

She was raped again when she was seven and has never once consented to sex with a man. One of the men who raped her has died, and the other is free; he escaped to South Africa. Her virginity as well as her life has been brutally ripped away.

We have had a place to submit ideas for our authors to write posts about for some time that hasn’t been working all that well.  However, that has been updated.  So feel free to use the submission page (the link is on the left side of your screen) to share your ideas with us.  However, we want you to remember that just because you want us to write about something, that doesn’t mean that we want to write about it.

Thanks for your continued dialogue.

I couldn’t help but post this nearly picture-perfect abuse of Scripture, as illustrated by a tinfoil-hat-wearing Christian with slightly too much knowledge of video production for his (and our) own good:

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Now – I don’t hide my political affiliation, nor my utter (and nearly complete) disdain for the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Even so, I think that stretching the historical (and linguistic) truth to shoehorn the newspaper into one’s voodoo-theologics is just plain silly…

PS: Apologies for my AWOL-ness recently – I hope to be through this particular stretch of woods in the near future…

[HT: A 'Christian' friend of mine...]

#2 in a series of quotes about faith, life, or religion.

“Of all religions, Christianity is without a doubt the one that should inspire tolerance most, although, up to now, the Christians have been the most intolerant of all men”

Voltaire

Spurred on by Joe C. and his “finding truth anywhere” post and encouraged by the dialogue as of late I’ve decided to start a new series called “Whaddya think?”

Each week I’ll throw out a different quote and see where it lands.  The quotes will be from everywhere and will be controversial so as to engender dialogue.   So let the games begin:

I have been thinking about the notion of perfect love as being without fear, and what that means for us in a world that’s becoming increasingly xenophobic, tortured by fundamentalism and nationalism.   Bell Hooks

As I continue to transition from the position of lackey to that of servant of God–that is, a Jesus follower unshackled from the ball and chainof a church signed paycheck–I realize how much I was missing for so long. I realize, more and more, how much of a legalist I was and had become and how it would continue to get worse as long as I was being paid to preach. It is sad. I realize that for the better part of my life I was fighting the wrong war, waging war against the wrong enemy, not realizing that the war was already fought and won and that I was to follow where He led.

A friend of mine came to visit today. He is a pastor. He served me communion last Sunday and put his hand on my bald head and prayed over me. I haven’t been served communion for a long time; the prayer was like rain. When our visit was nearing its appointed end, he, another friend, and I, engaged in prayer. Sweet fellowship and the Spirit’s refreshment. But when he prayed, he said something like, “Lord, help Jerry not to be planning.” I know what he means. Following means following not leading. It means waiting. It means not pressing my plans in order to hurry the Lord along. Resting. Waiting. Patience.

Following means learning to trust again. Following means that I don’t have to understand everything. Following means going in the path of someone else, doing what they do. Following means learning to love again.

Following means loving?!? I’ve complained to the Lord a lot about love because there are people I don’t want to love. Talk about war; it’s much easier to be a prisoner of war sometimes and growing accustomed to scarcity, brutality, unfeeling, emotionless, self-pity and mental anarchy. Much harder is it to follow the protocols of war and make it my first duty to escape. I heard in a song yesterday, “It’s true that love can change us, but never quite enough.” That might be skepticism; it might also be optimism. You can guess yourself.

So I have been, as I have found myself doing much lately, thinking and wondering if love has truly changed me–realizing that for all of my 39 years I haven’t grown all that much. Then I just happened to find this.

I heard my pastor say once, when there were only a few of us standing around, that he hated Bill Clinton. I can understand no liking Clinton’s policies, but I want my spirituality to rid me of hate, not give me a reason for it. I couldn’t deal with that. That is one of the main reasons I walked away. I felt like, by going to a particular church, I was a pawn for Republicans. Meanwhile, the Republicans did not give a crap about the causes of Christ.

Only one more thing that bugged me, then I will shut up about it. War metaphor. The churches I attended would embrace war metaphor. They would talk about how we are in a battle, and I agreed with them, only they wouldn’t clarify that we were battling poverty and hate and injustice and pride and the powers of darkness. They left us thinking that our war was against liberals and homosexuals. Their teaching would have me believe I was the good person in the world and the liberals were the bad people in the world. Jesus taught that we are all bad and He is good, and He wants to rescue us because there is a war going on and we are hostages in that war. The truth is we are supposed to love the hippies, the liberals, and even the Democrats, and that God wants us to think of them as more important than ourselves. Anything short of this is not true to the teachings of Jesus. (Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz, 131-132)

So there has been this cosmic shift of worldview in me. It’s not that I find everything that certain groups do appealing or something I can sign on to. It is that it doesn’t matter if certain groups do everything to suit me or my opinion. It means that because Jesus matters, everyone matters. It means that because of the cross, there are no insignificant or unlovable people. It means that the “best way to change the world is to change your mind…you find energy to do something you hadn’t expected to do” (Anne Lamott, Grace (Eventually), 252).

It means that love has changed me, but not enough. Self-examination is never the easiest thing to do–it’s ugly in there. But love.

It means that today, starting today (or starting three weeks ago when I was informed that my ministry was over, or just beginning), I am in the business of finding new people on earth to love.

I don’t need any more people to hate. I do not need a spirituality to cause me to hate. I don’t need a worldview that is filled with hate. There’s enough hate in the world and in the church. I’m done with hate.

Hello Love.

“Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.”

Praise the Lord!

Sometimes, I think there may not be an angrier subset of humanity than Christians. Certainly, we have plenty of proof in the internet and blogosphere, and that’s a post for another day. Quick, answer this question: “Who’s more abusive, pastors or congregations?” I bet your answer is strongly tied to which side of the pulpit you’ve spent most of your life on.

Pastors can be mean and abusive. Congregations can do great impersonations of slave owners.  Blogs allow people on both sides to write scathing critiques of others. Pastors are leaving their vocational ministry by the droves. Families are being destroyed.  How does Christ speak into this? How does love speak into this? How do we as Christians act like Christians? Well, to start we forgive. Take a bland sheet of paper. Seriously, go get one. Now, write down the names of the people in your congregation who have wronged you, abused you, unfairly criticized you, hurt you, and attacked you and your family.

Now, go ahead and do the same thing if your not a pastor. I’m sure we all have a list. Are you willing to forgive them? Are you willing to say that out loud? I forgive ___________.

We’ve just finished a three part series on forgiveness. I would strongly encourage everyone to download all three sermons and take a listen. Please note this does not mean I will engage anyone in conversations about Rob or Mars beyond the scope of these teaching times. I want to write more on this later but as I attended the last day of Poets, Prophets and Preachers today sitting next to someone who’s words were being used to hurt my teaching pastor I realized that there are those who live to hurt the church.  There are those people who are toxic. They don’t have to be engaged, but they must be forgiven. Forgiveness sets us free. Forgiveness leads to Resurrection.

A grieving child:

Ingrids take:

This is slightly outside the realm of our commentary here at Slice, but the mawkish, vomit-inducing spectacle in L.A. today over the death of a desiccated, prescription drug-abusing pop star demands a reality check…

…God help this nation, and may we always remember the young people who have died in the service of their country, unsung and unnoticed, while Americans behave like fools over a dead singer with a proclivity for young boys.

emphasis mine.

More Christian love here

May you all be blessed today and this weekend. My prayer is that you’re never lonely.