Hellfire and Damnation?

Ok, so a preacher man in our church a few days back had the unfortunate task of delivering the message from the passage of Luke 16:19-31, "The Rich Man & Lazarus". Respect. Right up front he says he can only talk about half the passage, because he doesn't get this God cursing people thing. "Honesty, I don't get it, lets all have a chat about it over coffee after the service maybe?"

Fair enough, but this passage now has me really questioning what I believe about grace.

Does God really curse people? I thought God was love? Can I trust a God who'd let that happen to somebody? If God is gong to curse bad people, what the hell can I do about it? I'm a sinner right? May as well just go bananas and wait for the pits of hell to come along...

Well, after some contemplation, here comes the jelly :)

I think God does curse. If God is love, He HAS to hate all that is against love. Self-centeredness, pride, greed, prejudice (just some examples I could stretch out of the rich man).

BUT, what if the rich man was just a representative for a part of the same man that was Lazarus? The selfless love of God struggling to survive in the selfish, greedy attitude of his human-ness. If we are born again Christians, are we not to let go of the old self, or the things that are not of God, not love in other words? Can we, with God's help cast away our selfish and loveless attitudes & actions, throw them into the pits of "hell and torment" in order to make room for more of God? More love, more compassion, more action?

So I don't believe that God will ever curse me, but He will curse my sins, casting THEM into the pits of hell, leaving me just as He intended. Good.

Free of charge, nogal, just say thanks!

Well, that's what I think anyway. Any thoughts?

it's happening...

this idea that started in February is taking off. as you can see from the post below, 'here...' is here.

puns aside though, the choose community video series is in the process of being written to disk, put in pretty boxes and sold to the general public. we have a dream that people watch + talk + share + blog about these videos, so put this link up on your Facebook, twitter, whatever to start getting the word out.

Here...

guaranteed awesomeness

http://gallery.mailchimp.com/fc16d9341ac9c47f53e99e241/files/Own_Way_Home_Piano.1.mp3?utm_source=Fans&utm_campaign=5609aa770e-Newsletter_01_09_2010&utm_medium=email

i like jesus...

made me laugh, but also made me think... i come from a place where chrstianity has always been a apart of my life, someone says "jesus loves you" and that has a definite meaning to it for me, but what about others who haven't had this long standing idea of jesus, how does that phrase work out for them?

water for life? or life for water?

something that's stuck with me for a few weeks... we operate in central, apparently it's a scary place. maybe i'm blind, but i don't always see the scary side as much as i see the potential for live, grace and freedom from oppression, but the thing that's stuck with me for the past few weeks is we decided to put a lock on the tap of our front garden outside the church office. (i say we, because i was part of the meeting where the end result was a tap lock, but let the record reflect i was vociferously opposed to the idea.)

doesn't seem like much does it? one lock on a tap. we're on water restrictions after all. who even noticed? nobody in the congregations i'm sure. but what about the people for whom the tap at the methodist church was their only source of water, those people who have no home and in the middle of winter wash themselves in the freezing water? i've seen this with my own eyes. do we even care about them?

widjet said in his last post "Welcome to our church, keep out... Jesus loves you, get off my lawn..." so i suppose all i'm saying is, ja, Jesus loves you, but you can't use our fucking water.

it's stuck with me because i don't know what to do with this feeling of helplessness when i hit these walls of opposition we seem to always face when we want to reach out in love rather than in scared protracted protection. any thoughts?

bricks and jelly... (the overview)

over the years the church has often gotten the idea of tradition and faith confused. on the one hand we have things that are tradition - practices that are useful and serve a purpose to bring life and healing to a place and people at a certain time, and then there are the teachings of Jesus - timeless principals that no matter who's listening, where or when they are, they always bring life and hope to those who hear them. the confusion comes when we use the one as if it's the other. traditions are like jelly, mould-able, wobbly, if you poke your finger in it it will break, it's important to have jelly in a faith community like ours, but we must never confuse it with the brick of faith in Jesus and what he taught. bricks are hard, have edges, you can build a solid structure from it. Jelly on the other hand it terrible to build with.

the trick comes when we use both. you need to put the brick in the jelly, and not confuse the two, sometimes we may need to look at the jelly as well and get a new flavour, make more because the old jelly has been eaten up or simply the people here and now just don't like it's flavour of this particular jelly.

bricks and jelly...