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Double Crossed

10/30/2012

Precious Savior, keep our eyes fixed on your cross, let it define our lives and make us bold in proclamation.

      All over the community where I live front yards are being marked with small white crosses, simple crosses. There is nothing ostentatious about these crosses; nothing seemingly unique or special. They’re just bright white crosses that catch your eye. Like clothes hangers out of sight in the closet they seemed to be multiplying. Eventually, it was clear it was more than just a few families or a single congregation that was putting them up. It was a simple idea and I liked it. So where were they coming from?

     A little typing in a Google search box and I had an answer. Double check it on Snopes.com and it seemed to be true but the story was far more involved than I might have imagined. In the end the story and the outcome appealed to my sense of irony.

     The crosses are called Frankenmuth crosses and they began as part of a bit of civil conflict in Frankenmuth, Michigan. Frankenmuth is a small town in Michigan that had been settled by German Lutherans in 1845. As part of that heritage the town had frequently used the cross as part of its cultural identity. On one of the local bridges a cross had been attached to each end. In 2008 a local resident objected to the two crosses on the basis of separation of church and state and the town council on advice of legal counsel decided to remove the crosses. Frankenmuth had, also, used the Luther Rose as part of the town shield. In time the same resident had, also, questioned the appropriateness of that. In time, after a month or so of conflict, he withdrew his request. Although the resident has been accused of being an atheist there is no direct evidence that this true. There continues to be conflict over a 55 foot cross in the local town park. Numerous ugly and hateful emails have, also, been spun out of the story, as well.

     The yard crosses began to appear when in response to the controversy. St. Lorenz Lutheran Church of Frankenmuth produced and distributed 800+ crosses and gave them away. The crosses were to be displayed in peoples’ yards. How wonderful a response! An act of simple personal action. How ironic, too.

       How ironic that the cross is yet again at the center of such a controversy. The cross has been used for good and evil, for the best intentions and the worst. It is used daily by millions of Christians in the simple signing of the cross as an act of personal devotion and it has been burned on the lawns of blacks, Catholics and Jews as an attempt to instill fear. Often Christians have been the biggest abusers of the cross.

17 For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel—not with wisdom and eloquence, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. 18 For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

      In the United States of America we have never been solely a Christian nation; not a protestant one, not a Roman Catholic one, not a Baptist one, not a Pentecostal one, not a Calvinist one, not a Lutheran one. Nor have we been a Jewish nor a Islamic nation. We have been all of these and more including atheistic. Alexis de Tocqueville coming to America a generation after the Revolutionary War found a nation with the most vibrant faith he had ever encountered. This was in contrast to the church in Europe which was synonymous with the King and people rarely attended church. He attributed that living faith to the responsibility each man or woman took for the exercise of their own faith. No one could turn to the nation expecting it to exercise the faith of the nation as the King had in England or Europe. In America the practice of faith was in the hearts of the people.

      Whatever the motives of the resident who objected to the crosses on the bridge or on the city shield as part of the Luther rose, or in the 55 foot cross in the city park and whatever the motives of the individuals for good or for ill who have put a small Frankenmuth cross in their yard what has happened is that people have taken responsibility for their own faith and an act to exercise it. No government can give you or me faith. No government can teach you or me to believe, not by command of the King nor by command of the Senate, not with slogan on coin or on bill, not by commandments posted in a courtroom.

      Faith comes by the very Word of God proclaimed in Jesus Christ and by living as a follower with the cross where it belongs most surely; in our hearts. It is great to put a cross on our lawn. It is appropriate indeed that we take personal responsibility instead of sloppily and lazily deferring it to government but if the cross of Christ is not on or in our hearts, as well, then it is just a couple of pieces of wood and little more.

      Put the cross in your yard where you can see it even more than your neighbor and remember that it is where Christ's life was given for your life, remember in your going out and your coming home that Christ died for you and remember to live like that cross matters in your life and let it be as evident in your living as it is on your lawn. That is then double crossed, one on your lawn and one on your heart. Thanks be to God.

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Will of God or Man?

10/26/2012

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Holy God and Mighty Comforter teach us your will that we may walk in your ways and not according the to the flesh.

John 1: 12 Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God-- 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God.

   In the prologue to his Gospel John opens with a glorious hymn of creation and the nature of God's Word in the incarnation of Jesus Christ and in believers in Christ. In it he notes a difference between God's will birthed in the Living Word and the usual events within of birth within the created order. Children are normally born in the natural order of human will and decision. In contrast, Christ and his followers and believers are born of God.

Get this straight. Rape is an act of human will and ever since the Garden of Eden the story of scripture tells us human will starting with Adam and Eve has been getting us in trouble. Human will exerts itself again and again constantly mucking up God's order. After the disobedience of Adam and Eve, Cain kills Able, humans beget children with the sons of God, the Tower of Babel is built to ascend to the heavens and claim God's power, Sodom and Gomorrah become synonymous with rejecting God's order and the abuse of the sojourner, and on and on. Even the stars and heroes of the Chosen People and in turn Israel and Christianity are deeply flawed; Jacob who steals his brother's birthright, Moses who murders an abusive guard, David who sends forth Uriah to die in battle and so David can have Bathsheba Uriah's wife, the nation cast into exile for abusing the poor and selling judgments, Peter denies Jesus, Paul persecutes the early church. Again and again, human will causes destruction in contrast to God's blessing and grace.

   If there can be any hope involving the circumstances around a rape it is because God rejects the violence and hate of the rapist and empowers so incalculable a grace that a woman is able to rise above destructive will of a man and embraces the possibility of life over against the hideousness of evil. The woman who does this does so only by God's grace and not because some politician declares rape "just another form of conception" or, more pervertedly, adds to the assault defending "father's rights" prolonging the suffering, torment, and fear of a woman. Men who rape have no rights to their offspring conceived against the will of the raped. They must not be allowed to stretch 30 seconds or 30 minutes or 30 days of assault into a lifetime of torment.

   To deny the victim of rape any other option than to have the child so conceived by the force of human will diminishes where and how God's will acts. It reduces God's will only to law and human law at that because there is no law in scripture demanding such things. If God, absolutely, intends that abortion should not be tolerated among the community of faith God is amazingly silent on the issue in the midst of a world where Israel's and the church's neighbors practiced it. Nor does the ritual of jealousy mentioned in the last post make any sense.

   God's will and grace cannot be commanded by congressmen or senators, not even courts and presidents. God's grace only emerges from divine love and hope reigning over and against the hate and the violence. God's grace must first heal the victim and that is, apparently, not controlled by human timetables ranging from days to years. Sometimes it is only discovered when we, as individuals, are confronted with the most horrible of realities. Sometimes its greatest expression is only found in the victims ability to forgive themselves for an irrational belief that they somehow caused or deserved their fate. No one deserves to be raped.

   The good news is that birth and life in God's grace, even in such circumstances, can overcome the torment of hate and the abuse of power. Rape is, after all, about power and one man's will over against a woman's right of refusal. No one can deny that God has worked amazing acts of grace by helping women to decide for life. Some women, Christians and non-Christians, who have chosen to bear the children who were so conceived by force of will, sometimes as the victims of war. Even those children can be blessings and filled with God's grace. Consider the stories of the four women listed in Jesus genealogy, Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba. They were all unexpected participants in carrying the story of salvation history forward, each less than "expected" but more than could be hoped for and central to the story of God's grace in Jesus incarnation.

   Women must be left to make decisions about how to deal with the pain and suffering caused by assault and rape and conception by rape with the people they choose to involve, such as, their family, their pastor, the doctor or anyone else they so choose. People of faith must allow them the right of conscience and not seek to make into law what God did not give as law. Broken saints and healing sinners, such are the victims of rapes. I trust my sisters in Christ to struggle honestly and faithfully with God's will and their own. Sometimes the healing seems inconceivable, and the decisions horrifying but with God all things are possible.

Note: Here is an interesting article of the shift in this issue over the last 40 years. Rarely have so many in the church abandoned a belief of the faith so quickly for such distorted reasons and reasoning.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2012/02/18/the-biblical-view-thats-younger-than-the-happy-meal/

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God Did This?

10/24/2012

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Lord, you are Alpha and Omega, the beginning and end, of all life. Grant us your grace that we may never use your holy name for our selfish will nor violence against our neighbor.

      OK, I am a bit ripped today. There is a rising attitude being expressed by some political candidates that is actively hostile to women and absolutely offensive and non-Biblical. A number of candidates are no longer simply advocating against abortion but doing so against all abortions, including those in the case of rape or incest. In addition, the definitions of life they propose and through which they propose to limit access to birth control find little support in Biblical material.

     Todd Akin made headlines in his Senate race in Missouri when voicing this opinion and Paul Ryan has in the past expressed similar opinions although he is currently disavowing that position, I think, and now we can add Robert Mourdock Republican Senate candidate in Indiana. Mourdock’s comment is the most wildly offensive of all saying, “it is something God intended to happen.” That is right, far right, Richard Mourdock wants you and me to believe that rape and pregnancy by rape is an act preordained by God.

      He is not saying that God can cause something good to come out of an hostile, sinful, and evil act; he is saying that God “intended” for a man to force himself onto and into a woman and to impregnate her against her will. I would suppose then following Mourdock’s logic that we must conclude then it is God's Spirit who led the man to commit an action of violence and assault because God intended it. Apparently, he does not agree with Todd Akin about the women's bodies natural defense against pregnancy by rape.

Let me say that whatever one thinks about the rightness or wrongness of abortion we must all completely reject any notion that God intends violence towards women and approves of rape as a means of procreation. Carried to its logical end what Richard Mourdock is advocating is a line of thought that excuses an individual's responsibility for good and moral action because if God didn't want me to do this he would stop me and NOT let me do it. If I can do it and get away with it then God must want me to do it. Folks, this is psychopathic thinking.

We need to get some things straight. God does not cause bad human behavior nor does God excuse bad human behavior. God provided the law of the Ten Commandments, the “whole word of God,” to teach us the intention for our lives within creation and the community of faith. If what Mourdock suggests is true then there is no need for God to give us the law because whatever we do will simply be what God intends for us to do. After all, if it is God's intention to use rape as a means of procreation how can “He”object to me beating my wife to keep her in line and maintain harmony in “my”home. Please note the sarcasm.

So what does the Bible have to say about abortion, rape, nascent life of the child, and procreation? Fact is that it says very little about abortion. The theology of abortion is a derivative doctrine based on God's valuing life, therefore we should do what we can to protect it, before and after birth. What most or many of you may not know is that God provides a ritual of jealousy in Numbers chapter 5 which results in the intentional miscarriage of the fetus if it is the result of adultery along with the permanent barrenness of the guilty woman.

Numbers 5:26 The priest is then to take a handful of the grain offering as a memorial offering and burn it on the altar; after that, he is to have the woman drink the water. 27 If she has defiled herself and been unfaithful to her husband, then when she is made to drink the water that brings a curse, it will go into her and cause bitter suffering; her abdomen will swell and her thigh waste away, and she will become accursed among her people. 28 If, however, the woman has not defiled herself and is free from impurity, she will be cleared of guilt and will  be able to have children.

     The entire purpose of the ritual of jealousy is to bring judgment on wrong action if the wife has committed adultery OR to clear her before God, the community, and her husband and guarantee her protection and right position within the household and community if not guilty of adultery. But what should not be lost is that God provides to the community is a trial by ordeal which results in judgment and loss of the fetus.

      The suspicion of rape itself is, also, discussed and how one protects a woman after rape and the rights of the husband or father if she was. Sorry ladies, all things in the law of Israel were passed through the patriarchal filter. In Deuteronomy chapter 22 immediately following a teaching regarding the proper means of resolving the situation of a bride and her virginity and her value to her husband the following is recorded:

Deuteronomy 22: 22 If a man is found sleeping with another man’s wife, both the man who slept with her and the woman must die. You must purge the evil from Israel. 23 If a man happens to meet in a town a virgin pledged to be married and he sleeps with her, 24 you shall take both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death—the young woman because she was in a town and did not scream for help, and the man because he violated another man’s wife. You must purge the evil from among you. 25 But if out in the country a man happens to meet a young woman pledged to be married and rapes her, only the man who has done this shall die. 26 Do nothing to the woman; she has committed no sin deserving death. This case is like that of someone who attacks and murders a neighbor, 27 for the man found the young woman out in the country, and though the betrothed woman screamed, there was no one to rescue her.

If a woman is raped in the countryside where there is no one to come to her aid if she were to call out so she is protected against accusation of adultery. However, if she is in the city, however, and she does not call out she is to be put to death presuming that without screams of protestation it is adultery. What Mourdock fails to mention is that in both cases the man is put to death. In the city when they are found out, man and woman, they are to be killed for their act of evil against the community and there is no provision made concerning whether the woman is pregnant and the life of any fertile consummation, thus man, woman, and possible child all die. No provision is made to wait and see if she is pregnant and to insure delivery of a child. In the country if the man is found out only the man is killed.

   Conveniently, Mourdock neglects the law as it pertains to the man and the woman and only turns to the protection of the fetus declaring the act of rape to be just one more way God’s will is done. Hooey.

(More tomorrow)

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Accountable for the Word of God

10/16/2012

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May we hear the voice of the Spirit calling us to the study of God's Word and gladly hear and learn it.

        If you are reading this newsletter then all the manipulations and calculations of Harold Camping to predict the beginning of the “rapture” as occurring on May 21st and then October 21st, 2011 have been proven wrong. Given the number of such predictions and the 100% failure rate over the 2000 years since Jesus Christ one would think that people, especially, the people of God, would begin to listen to what they read in scripture. 36“No one knows when that day or hour will come. Even the angels in heaven and the Son don’t know. Only the Father knows.” (Matthew 24:36) It is straight forward and simple, no need for a lot of difficult translating or interpretation. People will give millions of dollars in fear of the unknown for some unbiblical prognosticator of the end of the world or the rapture while local congregations doing real work caring for their neighbors struggle.

         The problem is today that we are quickly becoming a nation of Biblical illiterates and increasingly do not know simple basic Biblical content and concepts. The excuses for either not reading the Bible, although 70 percent of Americans say they have read the Bible at least once during the past year, or more importantly, actually, studying it include; too busy, too difficult, too confusing, the world is too different today and a few others. Instead of reading the Bible for themselves many people have chosen one of two other paths, 1) to forgo reading scripture at all on a regular basis let alone studying it, or, 2) allow others to do the interpreting for them without using any criticism of what is being said. This allows people like Harold Camping and others to completely define for them what the Bible says because “He sounds smart” or seems to know a lot.

         The Bible is a complex library of books but it is understandable and is one that can be studied to very good ends. It is not some type of Dan Brown novel and jigsaw puzzle of deep, dark mysteries. It is the experiences of people experiencing God’s self revelation across centuries in real world contexts. It defines the basic doctrines of the church and points towards the basic values of lives well lived before God and dependent upon God. It provides the foundation for both Judaism and Christianity.

         The Bible study I have been teaching this fall has attempted to teach people some important basic techniques that scholars use to study the Bible and more importantly that members can see and apply these concepts for themselves in an introductory way. What is surprising to many is how simple, direct, and intuitive many of these insights are. We have come to see that the Bible is a library of books filled with different authors writing to different communities in different situations and periods of history, material carefully studied and stitched together from a great multitude of manuscript fragments, and it is material containing numerous types and genres of literature, including poetry, letters, history, story, parables, and more. And we are learning how to ask questions about the passages we study to broaden our understanding of God's Word.

         When individuals and congregations fail to study the Bible and become skilled we give all the more power to those who either abandon its relevance and power all together or those who use it to their own ends as power to manipulate people. The middle path between these two positions is broad and deep but does require us to be involved and to pick up our Bibles and do some of the work for ourselves.

         Every program of the church and every corner of our lives are benefited when we directly engage the Bible, personally. When we do not participate in Sunday School classes and Bible studies, when we do not read the Bible devotionally at home, then we empower those others who dismiss it or manipulate us through it. Lay hold to the Bible for yourself and discover its power for your faith.

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Pruned and Still Living Faithfully through God's Grace

10/15/2012

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Holy Spirit grant us your grace that like a grapevine we may continually be pruned and grow through the experience of life and God's continuing presence in all things, the joys and the struggles, that leave us changed and renewed.

    As we move through life most people encounter times which may be termed as faith crises. These often surround significant life changing events but also can come on slowly; grown over many years. In these moments our faith may experience one of three things fixation, transition or termination. Of the three, transition is the necessary element for maturation of faith.

    Paul writes in 1 Corinthians, “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” Paul is speaking of the process of faith maturation. Harry Wendt observes that one of the problems in the church today is that we teach kids like adults and adults like kids. His implication is that we overload kids with material they are not developmentally ready for and we dumb down classes for adults preventing their development to mature faith.

    The journey of faith from childhood to maturity is a complicated one. It moves through a variety of stages that parallel and are related to human development. James Fowler is the most notable name of the last twenty years in the area of faith development. He related faith development to the cognitive and moral developmental models of Piaget, Kohlberg and Erikson. He believed these stages extended long into life and that not all were completed by all people. These stages did impact, however, on how people dealt with life crises of faith and the transition from one stage of faith development to another was important in resolving these crises.

    One’s faith is a deeply personal experience by definition. It is “one’s” faith. It grows and matures in a world, however, where it is surrounded by an uncountable number of faiths. These different faiths are not necessarily different religions, but other the personal faith expressions of family members, teachers, friends, pastors, and more. Each person’s particular faith shaped by their life’s experience and their ability to process the experience of spirituality and the mystery of the divine.

    Early in life this faith develops through the stories of the faith filled with fanciful possibilities. A child is no more able to separate the stories of fairy tales from the stories of the Bible than they are from real life. Reality is no more concrete and fixed than are such stories of Santa Claus and the tooth fairy. The child’s ability to incorporate the experience of faith is connected to their experiences of love and nurture. In time this emotional development of faith gives way to appropriating faith through the thoughts and faith expressions of siblings, parents and grandparents and the language of faith used by these important figures in their life.

    In pre-adolescence the first of the major transitions in faith occurs with the onset of Fowler’s Stage Three where personal faith really begins to emerge with the development of cognitive abilities. A child begins evaluating and testing ideas and begins to appropriate faith for him or herself rather than as an aspect of family practice. At this stage judgment is often made about the faith of others, weighing and evaluating them, but since personal faith is not yet fully formed little energy can be directed to reflecting on one’s own faith. Faith tends to be very ideological at this time. “It’s” what I believe. Such faith struggles to accept that others might, faithfully, believe otherwise. 25% of adults become fixated here.

    What pushes us out of this cocoon of early personal faith and into the next stage of faith development is encounter with dramatic life experiences which directly conflict with the one’s presuppositions about God and how faith works. Leaving home or loss of significant persons in one’s life often promote this turn inwards towards evaluating the effectiveness of one’s faith. Fowler calls this stage Individuative-Reflective faith. It shifts emphasis to an attitude of, “Its what “I” believe”because it treats all beliefs as equal for individuals. It demythologizes religion and its stories: treating everything as symbol. Ritual becomes important for how it organizes life not because any real power lies in it. Fowler found 60% of adults functioning through this faith experience and expression.

    Development beyond this stage usually depends on the experience of tragedy or personal defeat. Fowler calls this fifth stage Conjunctive faith because it "implies a rejoining or a union of that which previously has been separated." "Unusual before mid-life, Stage 5 knows the sacrament of defeat and the reality of irrevocable commitments and acts. … Alive to paradox and the truth in apparent contradictions, this stage strives to unify opposites in mind and experience. It generates and maintains vulnerability to the strange truths of those who are 'other.’” It accepts seemingly incompatible concepts like “God who is just and merciful” as part of the mystery of God without internal compulsion to rationalize or explain as them as disrupting to faith. It is an experience expressed by Paul in Romans chapter 5, “Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.”  This stage often does not begin until a person is middle-aged.

    Maturing in faith is a strange and unsettling process that moves forward in starts and fits. It sometimes is aided by a crisis that is resolved well and sometimes stunted or fixed when issues of conflict are not resolved or are handled immaturely.

    How does a congregation help to support this path to mature and healthy faith? We do it being constant and faithful servants of God lifting before ourselves and our brothers and sisters a variety of the images of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We do it by creating opportunities for Bible Study where young members and old can hear other people’s faith stories and how they meet life’s challenges through their faith. We do it by speaking about God in our homes and having conversations about why we as a family do some things and not others. We do it by learning to, and teaching our children to value the insights and wisdom of others but being willing to remain faithful to our personal experience of God. We do it by being open to discovering new wisdom from God and his Word as our lives are changed by experiences good and bad, joyful and sorrowful; and above all things with hope in Jesus Christ.

    God may be the same yesterday, today and tomorrow but our experience of him and his world is not. When we are children we have a faith that is sufficient for how we know the world, but as we move into and through adulthood we must have a faith that matures with us. If we resist moving forward to new ways of seeing and knowing God we resist the very way God has created us and we will not be prepared for the challenges of life which require a new faith. We are to be like grape vines bringing forth new fruit knowing that when we stop growing we become brittle and break. “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became an adult, I put childish ways behind me.”

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Broken Covenants and Righteous Living

10/5/2012

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Gracious God help us keep us steadfast in your Word, Jesus Christ, and may we extend his love through the covenant relationships of our lives.

    The Gospel lesson for this coming Sunday is from Mark 10. Within the lesson Jesus teaches an important lesson to his disciples about the realities of marriage and divorce. Some religious figures of the day seek to entrap Jesus in a question about divorce and he responds with a question about the teachings of Moses. They then note that Moses had stated that it was possible to issue a certificate of divorce. Jesus responds that Moses only did that because of the hardness of heart of the people. In other words divorce was not God's will for human relationships, especially, covenant relationships like marriage and, similarly, God's relationship with Israel.

    Marriage is not an easy path but most of human life is filled with struggles so that should not be a surprise. Nor should we be surprised that in a world and marriages filled with sinners that struggle enters the most intimate of our relationships. To understand what Jesus says to the Pharisees one needs to understand Moses comment and the nature of marriage and divorce in Israel and the cultures surrounding her.

    In many of the patriarchal cultures surrounding Israel all that was necessary for divorce was for a man to put a woman out of his home. There was no divorce she was just expelled. Worse yet because she was not "divorced" she was unable to remarry and so she was in limbo and had no protection in the society. Into this situation Moses spoke God's protection by requiring that a woman be given a writ of divorce and therefore have the possibility of remarrying. However, in Israel's history the cause for divorce by which a man could dispose of his wife was extremely broad to the point of almost anything he didn't like while a woman who was treated largely as property could take no equivalent action against a husband even if abused. He could write a letter of dismissal but she had no recourse. Women were still very vulnerable to the whims of men.

    Out of this background the Pharisees put their question and answer to Jesus about divorce and Jesus responded noting that the only reason Moses offered divorce at all was because of the hardness of the human heart. That same hardness of heart with which the Pharisees were trying to entrap Jesus. Jesus is saying that human relationships and even covenant relationships fail because of our self will and self interest. The evidence of this is scattered through out proclamations of the prophets.

    In contrast to this attitude Jesus acknowledges the divine intention of the marriage relationship that two people share a single life and move forward with a single will. They are to be as one flesh. That single will is expressed most intimately in the birth of a child and a new life that moves forward from the two. As anyone knows, however, by looking at the world around us just having a child or children is not a guarantee that sin and hardness of heart disappear. Most of the time, life becomes more complicated and the battle of self wills grows exponentially.

    Not just marriages are impacted by this hardness of hearts. We can become divorced from each other in numerous ways putting away or parting paths and relationships, parents from children, brothers from sisters and brothers, friend from friend, neighbor from neighbor, nation from nation, race from race, religion from religion, management from labor, political right from political left, teacher from student, 99% from 1%, 47% from 53% and all of the reverse and more. All of these relationships broken and separated from one another by hardness of heart and sin without a love of neighbor.

    In contrast, when the disciples object to little children being brought for blessings in the face of such an important discussion Jesus calls for a child and says that to be like these littlest (and most vulnerable) is what it is like to be in the kingdom of God. Learning to be a child of God is to be dependent upon God for everything just as the small child is dependent. The kingdom of God means to be held in Jesus embrace and in his love learning like him to love the neighbor, family member, and spouse from whom you have been separated in every broken covenant and relationship.

    The hardness of our hearts means that sometimes it is less evil and sinful to divorce and end a marriage or another relationship than to continue together. When the enmity and anger and hardness of heart and harm within a marriage is greater than outside it then it is time to divorce. In God's Kingdom, however, that divorce and separation does not release us from our responsibility to love each other, even to love each other at great cost. Such is the story of the Gospel and Jesus Christ as expressed by Paul in Romans chapter 5.

7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him! 10 For if, when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! 11 Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

Even in ending a relationship Jesus teaches us that all of life is still found in the two great commandments. Love God like a child, and your neighbor like yourself. Such things are only possible in the kingdom with God's own Spirit.

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Double Crossed

Will of God or Man?

God Did This?

Accountable for the Word of God

Pruned and Still Living Faithfully through God's Grace

Broken Covenants and Righteous Living

Pastor Bill Esborn

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