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Showing posts from October, 2020

Giving Good Gifts

Half-baked thoughts: I believe people are essentially bad, but not without hope.  How/why would I believe that "nonsense" when many could just point to the Billy Graham's or Bader Ginsberg's of the world as examples of how spectacularly good people can be -- if we would only think and act rightly?  I guess I believe it because God appears to have said as much in Matthew 7:11: "If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!" This makes sense to me because I have three suspicions about what is thought of as good today. See if they make sense to you... (1) good always seems to involve two or more persons. When someone does something that is *only* good for themselves, to the detriment of others, we call that bad/evil. (2) our good does not outlive us. It needs other people to appreciate and sustain it. Otherwise, it becomes neglected, corrupted, forg

Standing in the Shadow of Babel Today

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Remember the story of the tower of Babel?  (Genesis 11:1-9). Consider it in light of our 2020. The post-flood nations of the world were living in the aftermath of a cataclysmic world event. They saw social distance and disunity as problems threatening their survival. So they began constructing a solution to bring them all together as one. God's response to this grand unification project? He decided instead to confuse them until they couldn't understand each other anymore.  Sound familiar? Maybe you are quite disturbed by this story. I was. Something doesn't seem quite right or fair. Is God threatened by our unity? Is He scared we might actually outgrow Him? Overcome Him? And didn't Jesus pray for unity? Do Jesus and God disagree like rival candidates vying for our devotion? Is there an eternal Facebook war between the members of the Trinity? Simply, no. The problem arises (pun!) from a faulty understanding of unity. One that begins with us. The Unity God Does Not Want U