Love Not Fear

I read yesterday that during the chaos after the hurricane, a number of people, hungry, thirsty, and dying at the New Orleans Convention Center, tried to cross the Crescent City Connection (bridge) to the high-and-dry West Bank, where they hoped to find food, water, and, perhaps, help. They were met by Gretna Police who halted them with bullhorns and gun shots over their heads. It wasn't about race, or cruelty, according to the police. It was about law and order, since there were probably looters among the crowd. It was about Gretna not having the resources to support this huge mass of people. "If you wasn't there," said the police chief from Gretna's neighbor Westwego, "shut your mouth, because you don't know." A while back, I remember that a West Bank church tried to install a large lighted sign saying "JESUS". The church neglected to check the city ordinances, however. As it turned out, the display was much larger than the allowed sign s...

Well, it looks like all our youth are safe and more-or-less OK. Thanks to God. There are a couple of things I'd like to mention, because goofy theology always seem to come up whenever anything terrible like this happened. The first stupid idea is that the people who suffered these kinds of calamities do so because God wanted to prove some point, or punish somebody. God doesn't work that way. God never works that way. People who start saying that Katrina, or 9/11, or AIDS or what have you is God visiting judgment on the victims usually don't know any of those victims. If they did, they wouldn't say such stupid things. You, the Northminster youth, know people who have lost their homes (though thankfully not their lives) and you know what nonsense this "God got them" theology is. For a biblical reference, see, e.g., John chapter 9, where Jesus heals a man who is born blind. Before doing this, however, he dismisses as nonsense a question about who's fault the...

If any members of Northminster Presbyterian Church in Slidell/Pearl River read this, please add a comment below or e-mail me at this address (I'm not sure when I can reach my other e-mail addresses.) Our family is fine. We're in Greenville, MS staying with relatives. We're praying for all of you. I've opened the site up for anyone to post comments, at least for now.

Be sure to give some thought to what mission we can accomplish realistically this year. I'd suggest we consider: (1) Who needs help? (2) What do we have to give? What would we enjoy giving? (3) Where do those two meet?

We talked about atonement in Sunday school a couple of weeks ago. We had folks coming in and out due to the string quartet and trumpet voluntary practice, so I said I'd try to post most of what we talked about. Now, one of the main things to understand is that what God did in atoning for our sins is mystic: it's not just that we don't understand it completely; it's that we can't understand it completely. So, we'll do our best, and try to be honest about anything that doesn't quite fit. What is atonement? Here is a dictionary definition. Here's another. In essence, I like to think of atonement as the act of restoring a broken relationship. If I stole your diary, I can, perhaps, atone for that by giving you back the book, and apologizing. (That's the usual understanding: atonement is about making up for something you did wrong.) I think it also counts as atonement if you tell me to consider the book a gift, and forgive me. If I lost the diary, or d...

I just wanted to add a short note about Elder Herman Bartels, who died last week. I am very grateful to God that my life was touched by his. He was a good friend of mine, and a good friend of the church. Maybe it says something about him that at Vacation Bible School earlier this month, he made a point of providing his famous hot dogs, even when he was unable to personally bring them, even when he was finding it nearly impossible just to walk from room to room. I'll miss Herman, but I know that even now I share in Christ's resurrection with him.

We talked some about evangelism today, and I asked you all to think of ways we can reach out to other people about the wonderful news we witness to each week. Click on the post title to go to the PC(USA)'s page on "Presbyterian Evangelism". It has links to some material on evangelism (like definitions, and the upcoming Evangelism Sunday). Also, you can click around a bit and you'll find some related stuff. Summarizing a few things we talked about: 1. IMHO, nothing about evangelism should come from or lead to guilt. If the reason you tell people about the Christ we worship is because you feel guilty, we're all doing something very, very wrong. (Imagine a husband telling people about his wife only because he'd feel guilty if he didn't mention her.) 2. Again IMHO, there are a number of different ways to evangelize; it's not simply limited to referring to some script in a conversation with your friends: Tell me [name of friend] do you know the saving ...