Reply on Husbandry

The following is taken from a friends facebook note:
This is the climax of an article entitled "Husbandry" that I read in a magazine recently.

"The truth is, every long-term relationship--whether with a spouse, friend, relative, or lover--is predicated not on love or trust or any of those other cuddly Oprah-ish words but on tolerance. You learn to tolerate views that, deep down, you don't share. We all do this, every day. And not because it makes us bigger, more generous people (as we tell ourselves) but because we need the eggs: loyalty, companionship, intimacy. That's what keeps us in relationships."

As much as the above paragraph disgusts me, I wonder. Not at its truthfulness, but at its validity. I am forced to examine my own relationships, and wonder how often I simply tolerate people instead of truly loving them. Am I in relationships because I value people as creations of God, or am I in them because I "need the eggs?" I wonder also, at how many other Christians like myself should be asking themselves the same questions. So often (too often) we mindlessly objectify people. We make people means to our own ends. We look like the rest of blinded humanity. Living each day, each moment, purposefully, and for the gospel seems like an exhausting task, but we have all seen what the absence of this lifestyle looks like. We have seen in our own lives how dark the darkness can grow. It never stays gray, it always fades to black.

Lord aid us, No! CARRY us!
As we strive to Gaurd our hearts,
and reorient our thoughts to you.
May your Word be our plumbline.

"O LORD God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, let your ear be attentive and your eyes open, to hear the prayer of your servant that I now pray before you day and night for the people of Israel your servants, confessing the sins of the people of Israel, which we have sinned against you. Even I and my father’s house have sinned." Nehemiah 1:5-6

"Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love." I Corinthians 16:13-14

My reply: I find it hard to leave a note of honesty. Majority because I do find that to many of my friendships I am looking for just that a friendship and not because I initially see you as a God's creation but because I see in you ways I can be encouraged or ways in which you can fulfill a hole I may have, with full knowledge you won't fill every hole rather one hole or a couple consistently. But that's just what this author of the article wants us to realize is that we really just tolerate each other. Sure we do have some zero tolerance policies, however we still "put up" with the person doing the action and want to correct them. It is in the long term relationships (spouse, parent/child, sibling) in which we have the most tolerance for the things in which are an annoyance. We do need, as Lizzie reminded us by quoting Nehemiah, to confess our sins and seek the Lord day and night. I don't want to tolerate a person, I want to learn to love you more through that which if it was not for the Lord I would just tolerate.

Cheap Grace

How is it that I can so cheaply miss-place the grace you have given me. Dispense of it as if it the the cheapest thing I can obtain. Cheaper than a copper coin. I am this dirty prostitute who has cheaply given away of your flesh more than any other. I am running from you and towards that which gives me immediate gratification. All I know is that which pleases for the moment, for it is what I live for. The moment is the only that matters for I do not know if I will have the next. Eat, Drink, and be merry! Teach me that which does not fade. Show me how it is that you are committed to me more than any eye can see or know. I confess that I am not suited for the life I ask for but know that you will show me how it is to live in that way.

Fears (Note Taken, Spoiler)

So I am not one to get scared over a movie, but I have not had a normal sleeping pattern since watching this particular one. Taken. The stroyline is a former spy allows his 17 year old daughter to go to Paris with a friend of her's during the summer. The two girls get to Paris and then are abducted by some Eastern European Mobsters and sold into prostitution. The Father then goes in search of his daughter, only to find her being auctioned off as some "prime-meat". Yes, there is redemption in the movie, but it is some of the scenes that are forever ingraved to my memory. Scenes in which girls ranging from 16-25 are drugged up and raped. I sit here still awake at 11:37, five days after seeing this movie, still haunted by the filming of what these women are going through and the thought that there are some people who go after even younger females, literally little girls, for the same thing sickens me. The fear that I have, which is driven by the scenes I saw, is that something more common and not as easily traced as we would like in order to stop it.

If you did read this please pray that these people will be brought to justice and that the women who do go through this will some how be able to live again, to trust again. Pray for me and others who are haunted by the scenes of this movie.

Necessary Being

NECESSARY BEING: THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

Principle of Sufficient Reason: For every truth, for everything that is so, there is a sufficient reason for it’s being true of being so. This is from G. W. Leibeniz’s metaphysical statement in that “the great principle…which holds that nothing takes place without sufficient reason, that is to say that nothing happens without its being possible for one who has enough knowledge of things to give a sufficient reason to determine why it is and not otherwise.”[1] The Principle of Sufficient Reason does not tell us that everything that happens has a meaning or explain the existence of contingent beings other than be an appeal to the existence of a necessary being that is in some manner responsible for their existence. (148) Van Inwagen, takes the route of trying to find a justification for the existence of contingent beings without a necessary being. This does not for go the universals, such as numbers, because they in and of themselves cannot explain the individuals.

Contingent Beings

In the assumption that there is nothing but contingent beings, (which we know is not possible because if there is a necessary being which exists in one possible world then he necessarily exists in all possible worlds including the actual world) is there a reasonable answer to the question, “Why are there contingent beings?”
In this world (I am not saying possible because I do not believe it to be possible or the actual) beings exist on how they relate to each other, in other words on their contingency. This then presupposes the existence of contingent beings, it does not give the explanation nor the rationale for their existence because there is no appeal to something other than the contingent beings (van Inwagen states, "...to explain the existence of the members of any class of contingent beings, one must cite facts about the properties and relations of beings outside that calls." (p 148). Then it must be reasonable that we appeal to something other than contingent beings, whether God or the theory of evolution etc., for existence.
In a possible world such that there are beings, the beings are either necessary or contingent. A being can be necessary or a being can be contingent then making that there must be at least one necessary being (otherwise we would dive into an infinite regression of contingency). Simply stated then the cosmological argument states that if there can be something, there has to be something, if it is not impossible for there to be something, it is impossible for their to be nothing (149). But this statement neglects the Principle of Sufficient Reason. So we are now to find if the statement is upheld with the Principle of Sufficient Reason.

Principle of Sufficient Reason

We start off with some scientifical difficulties, natural events happen without explanation if their incidence. Another problem that occurs is that according to the Principle of Sufficient Reason is, "...that all true propositions are necessarily true." (150) If there is a given reason for a contingent being, there must exist another contingent being that has no connection to the first contingent being. Therefore, the whole of contingents can have no reasoning and then there

[1] Leibeniz: Philosophical Writings trans. and ed. by Mary Morris (London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1934) pp. 25-26.

The Village

So I went to The Village tonight for the first time in about three months, or something crazy like that, because a dear friend of mine was getting baptized. I heard her testimony, and saw the freedom that there is in her and thought it so sweet. Heard Matt preach and realized that I not fully surrendered in every area of my life. Right now I am in a position of dying to my self-gratification and knowing full well that it will not end so easily and wanting it to just go away. Life is rough. if it were not so it would not be called life, it would be called boring.

You Can't Tell Me...

That there is no such thing as Resurrection in the Old Testament. It is all throughout the book of Job. The narrative of Abraham and Issac in which Abraham's faith is tested, Abraham had faith that God would bring back Issac to him if he was to follow through with sacrificing Issac. David says of Bathsheba's child, who dies after only living for a week, basically that he (David) believes he will see the child again. That is a hope of Resurrection. Nothing is clearer than the prophet Isaiah, "Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise.
You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy! For your dew is a dew of light,and the earth will give birth to the dead." (26:19) You can't convince that there is no mention of the Resurrection in the Old Testament when an Old Testment Prophet speaks of the earth giving birth and the dead living.

Sending These

Last night, The Village Church had a service in which they invited their members to send out three families overseas. (I will not say the mission field because they viewed the area in which they were living as their mission field. They lived missionally here in Dallas, and knew that they were called to go overseas and live missionally there as well.) Their stories were filled with reasons as to how God called them to there respective areas (Zambia, Kenya and Guatemala) and the work that God has already started there and well as in themselves. They all were families with children, from ages 3 to 11, ready to minister to these places which they have been to previously. I pray that they will continue to use them, that right now to be sufficient for the moment because the next to hard to think about. They each expressed how hard the past month, even week, has been the hardest emotionally and spiritually, relieving themselves of the material goods they have obtained in making the Dallas area there home. The families each have a different emphasis in what they are going to be doing, orphans, medical, and building of the local church. I want to see these families defend the case of the orphan and the widow and push back the oppressor. I pray that they might take part of these in the respective countries.