Who to Vote for in 2016

What's on my mind, FaceBook asks.... How should I vote? That is what is on my mind...

I got my mail in ballot the other day asking for my choice of person to represent my political party in the presidential race. I have yet to choose. None of them show the type of integrity I would wish to see represent me to the nations of the world. I would be politically embarrassed if any of them succeeded in gaining the position. Still the choice looms and not choosing is, to use a good old 70's term: "A cop out". Therefore I ponder...

There is a passage in Ezekiel 16:46-50 that weighs on me heavily as I consider where to place my little black dots signifying my support for the person running for the office of President of our nation.

If the words of God in the Old testament were printed in red as the words of Jesus frequently are in the New Testament, the page would positively glow with the color. God is upset with the country that He calls His. The people that He has chose to be a blessing to the world. The one He calls "beloved". His words are harsh for His people.

He says:

“Behold, everyone who quotes proverbs will quote this proverb concerning you, saying, ‘Like mother, like daughter.’ You are the daughter of your mother, who loathed her husband and children. You are also the sister of your sisters, who loathed their husbands and children. Your mother was a Hittite and your father an Amorite. Now your older sister is Samaria, who lives north of you with her daughters; and your younger sister, who lives south of you, is Sodom with her daughters. Yet you have not merely walked in their ways or done according to their abominations; but, as if that were too little, you acted more corruptly in all your conduct than they."

Paraphrased: You are as bad, no, worse than the countries that you hate hate the most. And the worst part is that all of the other countries that you think should look up to you - They are the ones mocking you, using you in cliche, saying you are no different from them.

He continues:

"As I live,” declares the Lord God, “Sodom, your sister and her daughters have not done as you and your daughters have done."

Wow! Remember Sodom? They were so evil that God destroyed, no, obliterated them. And we all know what they did wrong. Right?

"Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had arrogance, abundant food and careless ease, but she did not help the poor and needy.Thus they were haughty and committed abominations before Me."

Oh, Wait. That is not what I expected to hear. They did not take care of their poor? That is why they were wiped from the face of the planet? But... but... but... What about the way we treat our poor? Surely there was an escape clause for the lazy or the stupid or those that made poor choices. Searching.... searching.... can't find one. I think we are in trouble.

He closes with a single, very short, blunt and to the point sentence:

"Therefore I removed them when I saw it."

Friends, if that does not make you want to run and hide, you are simply not getting it. I want to run and hide. I want this election to be over. I want to stop being the laughing stock of our "sisters" and and "mothers" as the politicians profess a life they do not live and seek to gain a position of power through fear mongering, deceit and false promises.

How am I going to vote??... I don't know yet but this one thing I do know. I will side with those that would not be arrogant, not be careless at ease and who will work diligently to care for the poor and needy. If these are God's priorities, they should be the priorities of all those that would call Him Lord.

If you got all the way to the end of this post then you have more patience that I probably would have had :)smile emoticon 

God bless you and vote responsibly!

Don't be the "they" that say...

I am listening to music on my back porch tonight. I love the evening and the pleasures of mild night and a song comes on and it touches me in a place I don't like being touched.... My conscious, my heart...

The lyrics to say:

We've all seen a man at the liquor store beggin' for your change
The hair on his face is dirty, dread-locked, and full of mange
He asks a man for what he could spare, with shame in his eyes
"Get a job you ****ing slob," is all he replies
God forbid you ever had to walk a mile in his shoes
Cause then you really might know what it's like to sing the blues

Not sure why this touched me. Maybe because I have been guilty of similar sentiments. I resolve that this is not who I am.

The song then continued and broke my heart...
Mary got pregnant from a kid named Tom that said he was in love
He said, "Don't worry about a thing, baby doll
I'm the man you've been dreaming of."
But three months later he say he won't date her or return her calls
And she swear, "G*d d***, if I find that man I'm cuttin' off his balls."
And then she heads for the clinic and
She gets some static walking through the door
They call her a killer, and they call her a sinner
And they call her a whore
God forbid you ever had to walk a mile in her shoes
Cause then you really might know what it's like to have to choose

Not the language I use but I can feel her pain her shame.

I know right from wrong. It has protected me from having to make such hard decisions. I praise God (and my mom) for that. But not all have had that blessing. Brothers and sisters allow empathy to trump judgment and recognize that the blessings you enjoy are just that: blessing, and give us no room to judge choices we were never required to make.

Brothers and sisters don't be the "they" that say...

Again, I resolve, with God's help, this is not who I am.

(song : Everlast singing "What it's like" )

Bible Study

For the first 40+ years of my life I studied for the purpose of proving that I was right. I knew what I believed and when I read my "study" was successful when it made me feel good, righteous, right.

I have since done all that I can to remove that type of study from my life and have tried to repent of that arrogance. I consider those 40 years a total waste. I knew my facts but did not know my God. And as it turns out I did not know my facts either.

It has been amazing what doors have been opened as I read with fresh eyes! God's word is much more beautiful that I had ever imagined. I was taught that there was no grace or forgiveness before Jesus. I was taught that the Old testament was replaced by the new. I was taught that the God of the Old covenant was a god of law and that He changed His attitude after Jesus was born. That God is a nit-picker and to mess up even a little was to bring down His wrath.

I have learned that all of that was so far from the truth that God would not even recognize that as His teaching. God has shown grace and forgiveness from the beginning. I have learned that you can not fully understand the New testament without knowing the old testament. There are riches there that I am still mining and becoming richer every day. I will never again carry a pocket New testament for it is not even a Readers Digest of God's Word.

Those are just a few of the things that I have learned that are new and pray that God continues to add to it.

Sodomites

Why was Sodom and Gomorrah destroyed by God? It is likely not what you think. It actually has nothing to do with what you have likely been taught all of your life.

If you are a believer you should allow the Bible to answer the question you. If you are not, you might still be interested. The answer is in Ezekiel 16:49. It says "'Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy."

Brothers and Sisters, how do we get so mis-focused? I see so much political rhetoric from people that claim Christ that dehumanizes the poor and the aliens that makes me believe we have completely missed the mark.

If we are to live the life with the focus that God wishes us to have we will care for those less fortunate. Jesus would call these people "the least of these" and add that if we do not care for them we will be unrecognisable as His followers on Judgement day and asked to depart.

We should be community focused. Our focus needs to be on helping people. Not judging them. Our focus should be on saving/helping them not labelling them (homeless, illegals, welfare recipients, etc) so that we can hate them as a group. Hate is not a Christian quality. And if you say they do not deserve our concern, consider whether you deserve the grace you have been given.

And just to set the record straight, the actual, Biblical definition of a Sodomite is one who is : "arrogant, overfed and unconcerned...[for] the poor and needy". It has absolutely nothing to do with sexual preference. I know many "straight" sodomites, do you?

Sometimes it is just too clear why those that do not believe call us hypocrites....

What is a "True Christian"

I have a Christian brother that I met on Google+ that I have really come respect. He sees Christianity through fresh eyes and asks questions that provoke me to thought. In one of his posts he posed the following question:

How do you determine if a person can be trusted as a "true Christian"?

How does your church determine who can be trusted as a member of the church and a "true Christian"?

A very important question. This question is at the heart what divides the Christian community and is the point Joel was making when he posed it.

I am not going to claim that I have a complete answer to this but I believe I am getting closer. Here is how I responded to his question:

I have been "going to church" for 56 years. I could describe a good part of that time as circling the wagons to keep differing opinions out of the camp. I was probably guilty of worshiping my beliefs more than God. Still God loved me and called my His child, even though the relationship was heavily one sided. That is the way God is.

I am now one of several leaders in a medium sized congregation in Tucson. It still has the same moniker on the building as the one that I grew up in but it is not the same closed minded community it once was. We accept diversity and have placed Christ back at the center instead of our doctrine.

As for membership, we have taken a new track that we believe is really an old track. It used to be that one must Believe (like I do), Behave (like I think you ought) and then you can Become (a member of my church). We are actively rearranging those priorities. We call it "The Three B's" and we refer to it often in our teaching and admonishing.

First you Belong. Period. It does not matter who you are, what you wear, how many tattoos you have, if you are conservative or liberal  or progressive, young or old or what you believe or even if you have faith of any kind. We are family, not institution. It is our fervent hope and prayer that if you don't believe that by belonging you will come to faith and wish to develop a relationship with Jesus. We plant the seeds by the examples of our lives and study of His Word and let God do His part to bring about Belief. The last "B" is Behave and this is expected to be a process, not an instantaneous revolution. That is what Grace is for and Grace is not something only God can grant.

Are we perfect at doing this yet? Nope. :) But we are working on it and God still loves us and calls us His children. That is the way God is.

The reality of human acceptance

Just thinking tonight... Sorry, this will be a long post.. move on if you are judgmental and think that that is the same as righteousness... :-)


Read carefully and digest:

 "The human need for human acceptance and love will always always always trump the desire for righteousness."

This is a fact, though we may not wish to believe it. It has been proven true over and over again. What this means is that people, created by God, need your human love first before they can ever consider that God even exists, much less is worthy of their attention and much much less their affection.

Because I recognize this fact, I, Paul Lemmons, confess that I will knowingly commit sin to gain acceptance and especially love from flesh and blood humans above acceptance from God. I wish with all of my heart that this were not true but it is. And, even though I do not represent all of humanity, I believe this to be true of most humanity; Especially non-Christians. I, however, believe it to also be true for all Christians who are honest with themselves. God made us with a desire to be loved that is more powerful than even hunger. So, this should not be a revelation.

What, as Christians, should our response to this fact be? A fact that we have for so many years completely ignored with sayings like "Jesus Saves!" and 'God loves you! (but I don't)" and "John 3:16" on banners at football games, completely ignoring John 3:17 in the way we conduct ourselves and our lives.

I also confess that I, Paul Lemmons, need your love more than God's love. I do not believe that is blasphemy. I am a fairly strong and mature (in my own eyes) Christian and I can say, unequivocally,  that without your love my love for God (which is real) would shrivel and die.

Ok. If this is true for a fairly strong and somewhat honest-with-himself Christian, what must it be like for those that do not know God and think that "Jesus" is some kind of exclamation of "wow!" and can be used interchangeably with the word.

It means that those who do not know God will never, and  I mean never ever know Him through our hatred, prejudice and judgment. If I can not walk up to a gay man and extend my hand and accept him as a human being first, I will never ever connect that person with the love of God. If I can not talk, without judgment, to the woman selling her body to pay for her drug habit as an equal, I will never ever even be given the chance to talk to her about how much God loves her. If I can not walk up to a child molester, drunk, thief, spouse abuser, murderer, sexual pervert, porn addict or fill-in-the-blank sinner and treat them as a person first...

...I will be writing their ticket to hell... and mine as well...

God, please remove all of my inhibitions of being with sinners, feelings of superiority and righteousness. Let me see people first and labels not at all. Let me see people as Jesus saw people. Let me see the woman at the well and the woman caught in adultery as a woman who could repent. Help me see the short Roman collaborator and extortionist in the tree with the desire to share a meal with him. Help me have the compassion that Jesus showed to the woman that touched the hem of his cloak and the Roman Centurion that begged for the life of his servant. Give me the strength of will and courage to touch the leaper and embrace the unclean.

It strikes me that the only people that Jesus openly criticized were the religious folks that rejected grace in light of their own righteousness. He never criticized the sinner. Sinners, he reached out to. Sinners He forgave. Sinners were His best friends. Let me be like Him. For I am a sinner myself and Jesus has accepted me.

Giving God what He wants

I am contemplative today. The house is quiet and I am reading a number of blogs and commenters (yes I spelled that the way I wanted it spelled) and my mind is trying to digest and draw spiritual nutrient from what I read.

I have read a number of blogs and posts on church growth. There seems to be a common theme in them which is causing me some anxiety. In a nutshell they say that we should be sharing Jesus' forgiveness and grace and somehow by accepting that grace they have pleased God by giving Him what He wants. God does want to extend His grace to all. But I do not believe that us accepting His grace is what He really wants.

I also see a theme of teaching people to become disciples. This too is good but not the end all. Discipling (a word that nobody really knows what means inside the church much less outside) is not just about gathering followers. Jesus calls us to follow Him but even there I am not sure we really fathom what that means. We seem to get it that it means to become like Jesus but how does that manifest itself? Helping the poor? Service? Those are probably part of it but certainly not all of it.

God is a Father. He, has adopted us. Think about that for a minute. If I were a parent that adopted a child, why would I do that? So that they could eat from my table? So that they could experience my grace? So that I could make them look like me? So that I would have a follower? I don't think so.

I think it is because I would want a relationship with that child. I want to have the child greet me at the door and wrap their tiny arms around my leg and squeal with delight when I come home. I would want to hold them in my arms and show them how precious they are. I would want them to look me in the eye and tell me they love me because that is what is being reflected from my own eyes.

God has surely shown us His love and Grace and called us to follow. He has offered His forgiveness and at an awful cost. But why? Because that is what people in relationship do. God calls us to a leg hugging, wet kisses, full body embrace, reflective love relationship. Once we can show *that* to the world we will have succeeded in giving God what He wants.