Soul and Spirit | Ain't Complicated

A Great Western Heresy

The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church called the evangelical notion that individuals can be right with God a “great Western heresy” that is behind many problems facing the church and the wider society.

Describing a United States church in crisis, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori told delegates to the group’s triennial meeting July 8 in Anaheim, Calif., that the overarching connection to problems facing Episcopalians has to do with “the great Western heresy — that we can be saved as individuals, that any of us alone can be in right relationship with God.”

“It’s caricatured in some quarters by insisting that salvation depends on reciting a specific verbal formula about Jesus,” Jefferts Schori, the first woman to be elected as a primate in the worldwide Anglican Communion three years ago, said. “That individualist focus is a form of idolatry, for it puts me and my words in the place that only God can occupy, at the center of existence, as the ground of being.”

She’s wrong.

Doesn’t John 3:16 say so?

HT: The Berean Call

Update: Fathima Rifqa Bary

We start with the first paragraph of a post at Christianity Today’s blog:

Fathima Rifqa Bary’s story is quickly circulating on blogs and Christian media as proof of Islam’s violent roots and the cost of following Christ. While the latter is true no matter who’s doing the following, the former is disputable in the case of the Ohio teen who fled her home two weeks ago to meet up with Blake and Beverly Lorenz, Florida pastors she had met on Facebook.

If you want to read the full post, of course you’ll have to click the link above. (As I recall, the writer is not entirely sympathetic toward Rifqa.)

The above post is referenced over at Barth’s Notes:

A blog at Christianity Today sounds a note of caution over the case of Fathima Rifqa Bary, a Sir Lankan teenager living in Ohio who recently fled to Orlando claiming that her parents planned to kill her for converting to Christianity….

Frankly, I’ve been wondering about this whole deal, but not to the point of believing Rifqa is lying.

Whatever the case may be, this case raises (yet again) the issue of when the State may intervene in family affairs.

When??!! Did I just say that?

That accepts the premise that the State has such moral authority.

Better to substitute if for when.

If one of my children goes to CSD and says I’m being abusive, is that sufficient cause for the State to take all my children?

So, putting myself in Rifqa’s father’s shoes, well…never mind.

What do you have to say?

If the State comes for a conservative Anabaptist Mennonite’s children, that’s wrong?

But if the States takes a Muslim’s child, not only is that understandable, it’s also justifiable?

Oh, wait…here’s a piece from the Pakistan Daily:

A very disconcerting video is being shown by the Christan church. A minor Sri Lankan girl belonging to well to do parents has been kidnapped by a church in Ohio and being kept away from the legal guardians and parents of the girl. The family maintains that the girls was into drugs, promiscuous behaviour and raunchy messages on facebook. She was discussing sex with multiple older married men. When the parents tried to control her behaviour she refused to do so. On her return to the home she conjured up a story of conversion to Christianity. There are serious accusations against the church on holding a minor girl in custody against the will of her guardians and parents. How many more girls will the church kidnap?

Media reports indicate that the Muslim father denies his daughter’s charge that he plans to take her life in an “honor killing” because of her conversion to Christianity. And certainly he could have no intention of committing such a heinous act.

😯

Now what shall we believe?!

Unadvisedly With His Lips

Because they provoked his spirit,
so that he spake unadvisedly with his lips.
— Psalm 106:33

The Mystery of Life

Alternate post title: When Life Isn’t

First, the story:

The Charles Manson follower convicted of trying to assassinate President Gerald Ford was released Friday from a Texas prison hospital after more than three decades behind bars, a prison official said.

Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme was just 26 years old when she pointed a semiautomatic .45- caliber pistol at Ford in September 1975 in Sacramento, Calif. Secret Service agents grabbed her and Ford was unhurt.

[…]

Fromme, who got a life term, became the first person sentenced under a special federal law covering assaults on U.S. presidents, a statute enacted after the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

(I remember both Ford assassination attempts, by the way.)

Anyhow, so she was sentenced to a life term, served a few years over 30, and is now free.

For quite a while in America, life hasn’t meant what it’s supposed to mean. (When does life end?!)

Which begs a question with an entirely different point: What do you know about real life and real living?

Source: The Oregonian

For quite a while, I’ve thought owning an LCD projector would be quite handy. So far, though, I’ve done just fine (thank you!) by borrowing the one from the Woodburn Public Library (in Woodburn, Oregon).

This morning, though, I spied one on sale for a penny (or was it a dollar) under $200:

No, I’m not in the market for one. No, I don’t want one for my birthday (even if it is my fiftieth). But that aside — and about the post’s title — I suppose I could be content with such a thing. But I doubt such contentment would last very long. Read it all

Fathima Rifqa Bary: Endangered?

First, from yesterday’s Miami Herald:

An Orlando judge on Monday ordered the 17-year-old woman into the custody of the Department of Children and Families until another hearing next week.

The teenager, who is not a U.S. citizen, says she fears her family would hurt her, kill her or send her back to her native Sri Lanka. Her parents live in Franklin County, Ohio.

The teenager took a bus from Ohio to Orlando. She has been staying with a family she met through a Christian prayer group on Facebook.

And now from this morning’s Examiner:

Rifqa claims her father repeatedly threatened to kill her for abandoning her Muslim upbringing, so the teen fled to Florida to stay with Pastors Blake and Beverly Lorenz of Global Revolution Church in Orlando, whom she had met on Facebook. The Lorenz’s sought the advice of attorneys and alerted authorities that the missing girl was in Florida.

The girl’s father, Mohamed Bary, has denied the allegations and traveled to Florida to bring his daughter home. However, the Florida DCF wants to be sure the girl is safe before sending her back to Ohio, who likely has jurisdiction in the case.

WFTV in Orlando, FL reports that DCF attorney Karelene Cole-Palmer has said, “There are too many conflicting things that are going on with this child and it needs to be investigated thoroughly.”

But for now, the girl will remain in the custody of the Florida Department of Children and Families until her next hearing on August 21.

PS: I’m a slow dial-up connection. Is that an objectionable video?

“Nothing Less Than Prophetic”

For those who have taken our religious freedom for granted or have gradually slipped into lukewarmness or even hypocrisy, this book may jolt us back to reality.

“Have you read The Whirlwind Cometh?” asked my Arizona friend shortly after noon today.

He just came across the book and is probably done with it by now. He said reading it in the context of what’s going on in the United States these days made chills go up and down his spine.

“It’s nothing less than prophetic,” he said (and I think that’s an exact quote).

He thinks every young man and young woman in our Mennonite churches should read it. “Required reading for” is the way I recall him putting it.

Maybe some day I will get around to posting some excerpts from this novel, set in Canada.

Apparently written by an Amish author who chose to remain anonymous, this inexpensive little book is published by Pathway Publishers. (Maybe this qualifies as one of the few truly profitable amish novels!)

This is an unusual book, a story you will not soon forget. A new Canadian government under Prime Minister John Smith sweeps into power, and at once begins a program to bring reform to Canada. One result is that the historic peace churches are put to a test to see if they are truly nonresistant and if their faith is genuine. The young people must appear before tribunals before they are granted conscientious objector status.

For those who have taken our religious freedom too much for granted, or have gradually slipped into lukewarmness or even hypocrisy, this book may jolt us back to reality. This gripping story is not a history, but a challenge to examine the present and be ready for the future.

Hey — an idea! You could buy your own copy and post your comments here!

Anabaptist Bookstore: The Whirlwind Cometh