Saturday, May 30, 2009

Blessings

I love snowpeas. Especially fresh from the garden, and eating a few while picking is not cheating.... it's experiencing. Lately, I've been playing with a dish featuring the green veggie du jour: I start steaming chopped onion, after a little while I add diced potato and then, after another little while the green veggie. I add a dash of cayenne for zip, and pepper just because, and then, when the veggie is just Chinesed* I put it in a bowl, add olive oil and stir.
Gardening is great!

*A term I picked up from somewhere that describes the way veggies are cooked in Chinese style; just past raw when the texture and flavor is changed, but the life is not cooked out of them.

Thursday, May 28, 2009

"The Truth Project" Project: Toward a critical analysis

I attend an Evangelical Friends Meeting, though I am far more "Quaker" than evangelical. I am happy in my church family and rarely do any difficulties arise, largely because I don't think that the proceedural conclusions reached by the earlier Quakers were the only answers to the concerns they were addressing. Occasionally, something will come up that causes some uneasiness for me, and one arose very recently: our Wednesday night adult study group took up "The Truth Project," sponsored by Focus on the Family. The idea of that project is to provide "a Christian worldview." My first reactions was, "'Christian worldview?' That's easy, read Matt 5:43 to the end of the chapter, which basically says that God loves everyone and we should try to be like God." No problem and no need for an elaborate program, right? All we need to do is figure out how to apply that worldview to our lives. I didn't think it was that simple to Dobson and crew. That little voice said, "Nate, you need to check this out." I guess I was nervous because, whatever good he has done and is doing, James Dobson has become a voice for conservative political Christianity. You may think that's fine. I don't. I don't think it is the business of Christians to try to make the kingdom of God into a kingdom of this world by legislating purely religious perceptions, partly because I don't want to live under Sharia under whatever particular perception of God gains political power.
SO.... I did what checking I could do online, but I still went to the youth group meetings on Wednesday night where I have been a sponsor for years. Ok, I was hedging, but I checked, right? Aside from factual checking such as titles of different lessons, I found a few commentors that seemed hostile to the program among a sea of comments indicating that it was the best thing since sliced bread. Then, as I casually kept track of what was going on, checking in from time to time, I ran into Del Tacket's tax day blog http://deltackett.com/2009/04/15/tax-day-who-is-carrying-all-the-bricks/ in which the "tour guide" for the studies of "The Truth Project" complains about the comparative tax loads of different people, relating it to how many bricks each is required to carry. Right off the bat I thought that this did not sound like it was coming from a "Christian worldview." Why? To start with our attitude toward possessions is that we are stewards of what belongs to God, and somewhere Paul said something about our governments being instituted by God and acting as His agents to maintain order, and that paying taxes were part of the program. Second, I remembered a little lesson in economics that Jesus gave in which He indicated that the number of bricks (I don't recall Him using that wording, but, you know) was not the point, but how many bricks the contributor had in the first place. We call that lesson the parable of the widow's mite. "Nate," that little voice said to me, "This sounds more like a politically conservative worldview, and I don't think this is what a Christian worldview should be teaching, you better attend the sessions and see what is going on." So I started, a little late, but highly interested, and I asked to use the dvd's already covered to catch up. Over the next little while, I hope to cover what I have found and am finding. I am not hostile to the program as a whole, and I find a LOT of good there, but it is laced with some VERY questionable materiel. I doubt seriously that my little musings will affect the program or participation in it, but I gotta put out the information that I see, let God use it for His purposes or allow it to fall by the wayside.
This seems to be a pretty big project for my little blog, and it's not all that interesting to many Quakers in any case, and I SURE don't want my blogging to be all about this kinda stuff, but it's one of the things heavy on my heart right now.

In His Love,
Nate

Friday, May 22, 2009

What am I DOing?

So, I'm minimally competent technologically and adrift on the sea of the world wide web. I've been having a wonderful time giving bloggers a bad time and posting on message boards after a fairly extensive trip into chatrooms. So why stick my neck out and blog on my own? How risky is it? Who's gonna pay any attention to me? (With THAT thought, maybe the risk element isn't that great after all). Well, occasionally things come up that I want to talk about and I don't really have an appropriate vehicle to do so. Therefore I launch this bird and see how it flies.

My concerns, at least to start, will deal with faith and community, primarily in a Quaker setting, with special interest in convergence, renewal and youth ministry.