But that's not supposed to happen ...

This past summer we lost power for 8 days – see my second blog entry. Eight long days w/o electricity. And they say lightening is not supposed to strike twice in the same place – don't believe that! We had another St Louis storm, but this time with ice and snow. 14,400 out of 19,600 in my zip code were out of power! Over 350,000 people went dark. They were saying that it could be 5 days to restore power for most people. Thankfully, we were only out for two and half days this time – thank you Jesus! We have radiant heat – water pipes in the floors – and I was really worried that we might be out for 4 or 5 days. Never mind the inconvenience of no electricity, I was worried about the freezing temperatures freezing my floors. It only got down to about 25 the first night, but down to 15 the second night. The night we got electricity back it was going down to about 10 degrees, which might have frozen my perimeter. Once that happens, the pipes burst and the concrete slab seeps water into the house. And then its forced air and about 2 grand to fix. I spent a lot of time praying for the Ameren UE repair guys. Really tough conditions to work in.

I can do the heat, but the cold – no thanks! Some friends were going to put us up for however long it would be, which turned out to be only one night. Its always nice to have good friends with finished basements. It was the body of Christ in motion. Christians reaching out to the family of God.

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Who is Your God?

So here we are ending 2008, ready to start a new year, with a new president, an economy in recession and a nation that seems 'hell-bent' on continuing to throw away the very faith and values that created her and inspired a governmental structure unlike any other on the face of this planet. No, I'm not getting political or disregarding the 'too many to count' horrible things that have been done in the 'name of Christ' as so many like to point out. We all know these things to be true and are reminded of them continually by people whose motives most likely are suspect. So I'm not trying to put lemon juice on a paper cut, but I do think there's a hidden truth that seems to get overlooked by too many Christians feed up and tired of being brow-beaten with the actions of people that none of us knew, and wouldn't have been able to control had we been alive during their times, or present during their sinful actions. Trying to 'fix' that perception...

How Do We Discuss the Trinity?

The Trinity is a very misunderstood topic, and unfortunately those misunderstandings usually begin with the church. A theological battle or sorts was waged in the 3rd and 4th centuries, and is still being waged today, to help codify what the church had always taught but had never realized it needed to codify. There are four streams of thought on the Trinity: 1) the orthodox view, One God, three persons; each co-equal with the other; 2) One God where Jesus is either a subordinate or lesser god, or a man; 3) that each, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are each separate gods, and 4) that God is one being that manifests Himself as three different beings at different times, sometimes the Father, sometimes the Son and sometimes the Holy Spirit. I subscribe to view number one, the orthodox view, which was believed from the beginning. Believe it or not the church fought off the other three views for the first three centuries, which is why it sought to codify the biblical view with a dev...

A simple beginning

First, let me start by saying that I am a Christian first and foremost. I don't expect some of you to believe what I will be writing, nor do I expect you to agree with it. I see things from a slightly different perspective and I acknowledge that it is colored by my faith. Before you respond (or even read any further), you must also admit that the same is true for you. Each of us believe what we believe because of our background (how we grew up, who we interacted with, how we were treated by friends and family) or particular circumstances in our lives (things that we did or things that occurred to us), as well as the God given personality that we all have. Just like you I have a worldview, but mine is a Christian one. And just like you, everything is filtered through that lens. And since you do the exact same thing, please don't pretend that you don't. Second, I think, investigate and have opinions about a lot of topics. Most of those topics are in some w...

Thanksgiving and Turkey Visiting ...

Last week the Pope embarks on yet another historic good will trip, this time to Turkey. There is considerable open hostility towards him right now in Turkey, or any Muslim country for that matter. But that's really not what's news-worthy, even though its what's being reported. Have you thought about “who” is doing “what”? By this question, I'm not trying to focus on the Pope as the head of the Catholic Church or as the symbolic head of Christianity (but he is doing the heavy lifting, isn't he), but rather on Christianity as a faith. The original flap was about a statement the Pope read which was taken out of context by Muslims, something they do quite often. But the purpose of his comments was to challenge Christians (and in his case, Catholic leaders) to work harder at reaching out to other faiths, and Islam in particular. And that is the real news in this story of his trip to Turkey. The Pope challenged his cardinals and bishops to reach out to Muslims...

Trolling for Truth But Finding None: The Gospel of Barnabas

I seem to have forgotten to post this from my Yahoo 360 blog. Posted Sept 13th .... I sometimes troll for Christians or interesting people on the Yahoo 360. Some times I run across an interesting person or something that peaks my interest. This happened as I was looking at a friend of one of my Yahoo 360 friends. Here is an excerpt from the blog of a friend of a friend, ... There is a Gospel known by the name the Gospel of Barnabas, which the church banned in 492 AD by the order of Pope Gelasius. It was confiscated everywhere. But there was still a copy of that Gospel in the library of Pope Sixtus V. Fortunately a certain Roman Monk called Framarino managed to bring it out. He had found the letters of Ireneus, where the came upon the name of the Gospel of Barnabas mentioned as a reference. His curiosity urged him to look for that gospel. When he became a close friend to Pope Sixtus V, he got that copy of the gospel and found in it that there would come a time when it would be claimed t...

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