MORALS: COMPLEXITY | nationalsalvation.net
Pain:
Bob,
I've gone to seminary. Much of the decision is because of you, so either you borrow more from your Christian boyhood than you thought, or you are somehow a closet Christian that needs to let go and let his faith blossom. But either way, it's between you and your Maker. Anyway thanks for your clear thinking which has helped me out in more ways than you would have thought.
You are the best online. Any true leader recognizes that, and since there are always fewer chiefs than Injuns, it may be that your audience appeal has reached the ones it should, whether every reader comments here or not.
By the way, the book that led me to racial thinking is the Bible, especially the Old Testament, when I was in middle school.
ME:
Given my reputation as a bomb-thrower it is fun to be called a "closet" anything. I have made it very clear where I think of myself as Christian. My whole family was studded with preachers back to Alexander Whitaker and he was merely a continuation.
It is far easier for me to be a Christian than it is for any professional clergyman because he must satisfy some version of the Wordist institutions that have used his name. It is a hell of lot easier to be sincere in politics if you aren't working for anybody.
Of necessity I was a political pimp. Any professional clergyman has to make the same kind of deal, "all things to all men." If I had not made that deal in my field I would not have had access to the audience. A clergyman must do the same to have access to that group. "IN the world but not OF the world."
It is not accidental that I quote the most obvious and basic statements. Jesus' last instruction puzzled the Apostles: "Feed my sheep." To me this is plain enough. As one who is charged with the care of his people, your job is to do what is best for them.
I have never believed that "The Road to Hell is paved with Good Intentions" because Satan has none of that building material. I tend to believe that the road to hell is paved with something Satan has PLENTY of: Complexity.
".. for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven." He was not talking about Gnostics and theologians - much the same thing - but about children. How many light years are there between a Pope or a Calvin and childhood as a virtue?
"Feed my sheep" was very puzzling to Disciples who had had the truth spoon fed to them. But they were now apostles, and the decisions were THEIRS. This involves moral courage.
You are going into seminary as I went into politics, as way to do the right thing IN THIS WORLD. That careful distinction was stated long ago. As CS Lewis said, Christianity is no danger to Screwtape so long as the person doesn't DO anything about it.
But the doing has to be dedicated to the simple rules laid by Jesus and not to satisfying the rules of a Wordist institution. This is so simple it is hard to understand. I USED politics. You must USE the church. So as not to get obsessed with self-righteousness, I just all it "pimping" and proceed on. We must operate IN the world. To a rigid conscience this involves pimping.
So Pure Religion became isolation and self-torture, as one writer put it, "Taking heaven by storm." It was a very painful way of avoiding feeding the sheep. It was a way to do nothing. Self-immolation fed no sheep.
You must feed his sheep, and you must do it in this world.
As you say, I find no problem with this because I was raised with it.
These distinctions are simple. They are NOT easy.