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ericdevine
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Name: eric
Birthday: 10/5/1968
Gender: Male
Interests: God, krys, my kids, one.org, ijm.org, Mosaic Alliance, cooking, coffe, passion, technology, cloudy skies, sunsets, the stars, candy canes, Christmas, Asian Decor, candel light, reading, music, swimming, paintball, art, redemption, people different from me, Sociology, Anthropology, Risk, Mystery, dense fog, the ocean, the Bible, and Jewish mysticism.
Message: message meEmail: email me
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Member Since:
6/26/2005
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| I've moved. . . Here I am!
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| DIRTY CHRISTIANITY PART III
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I love looking at all of the nativity scenes that are set up during the holiday season. They are beautiful. There is something magical and mystical that always draws me to them.
However, the truth is no one really knows what it looked like. But this much I know, giving birth is a gut wrenching and dirty experience. Even in the most sterile of environments it's dirty.
Our Great High Priest entered this world covered in blood.
I am currently re-reading the Torah. There is so much that I don't understand. When a priest is consecrated why do they cover his right ear lobe, thumb and big toe in blood?
What I did take away from my reading is that being a priest is a dirty business. Every day there is sacrifice. At the end of the day you went home a bloody mess. You were tired cause you couldn't sit down. There were fires that could never go out. That meant day and night someone was chopping and gathering wood to feed the insatiable fires.
We are all called to be priest of God. I don't see the image of priest as someone who sits in an Ivory Tower. It's someone who is willing to get dirty. | | |
| DIRTY CHRISTIANITY cont.
There is this type of christianity out there and it needs to be banned. It's in the same category as porn, it's poison to the soul.
The school district in my town wanted to extend benefits to same sex couples and unmarried heterosexuals living together.
A bunch of pastors wanted to get together and show up in force to protest this proposal. I got a call from a pastor and was urged to attend.
I declined.
Looking back, I am still shocked by all of the hate that was coming from the "Christian Community."
I think it was a great proposal and I'm glad to see that it passed.
When I think of benefits, I think HEALTHCARE. I think everyone should have healthcare.
If someone is sick they should get help regardless of their morality. That is just basic human compassion. I don't imagine all of the Gospel/Rescue Missions and Soup Kitchens in the heart of our urban areas turning hungry people away based on their morality.
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| David Arcos wrote:
"To be an artist is to walk with a certain amount of credibility in Los Angeles. For one, when someone identifies themselves as an artist they are connected to ideas like: talented, ambitious, creative, mysterious, deep, and passionate.
To identify yourself as a pastor on the other hand has certain words connected to it as well. You know these words or perhaps you’ve felt them: narrow minded, untrustworthy, legalist, dull, irrelevant, conformist."
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He's right. However, I tend to think that if you identify yourself as christian you get affiliated with those same words. Why is that?
My wife and I went to an internet cafe owned by a gay couple (they have the best coffee in town!) We had to pay $4.00 an hour to get on-line and sign a waiver stating that we wouldn't download any porn or learn how to build a bomb, blah, blah, blah.
So we get our coffee, sit down, and get on-line. We immediately go to one of our favorite "Christian Web Sites" only to discover this "pop-up" that blocked us from accessing the site. It was some kind of filter or something that read: content/religion/christianty. We tried a couple other sites all with the same results. For some reason this struck me has funny, no hilarious! I just knew there was a sermon illustration here somewhere.
Later I'm recounting all this to a kid in my youth group and I ask him, "David, what kind of Christianity is sooo bad it has to be banned in the same category as porn?" He said, "That's DIRTY CHRISTIANITY!"
The people that owned the internet cafe apparently believe that "Christianity" is sooo bad it's got to be banned. I suspect that they have encountered "DIRTY CHRISTIANITY" and lumped all of the other Christians in there with them. Talk about throwing the baby out with the bathe water.
The sad truth is that much of our heritage is dirty. The Crusades, The Inquisition, the fact that many churches owned slaves, on and on and on. I would even have to admit that as a Christian some of my deepest hurts have come from those within the church. I fear criticizing the "Church' because I fear God and Jesus died for it.
The wheat and the tares. . . Why do the tares get more press than the wheat? May the day soon come when we are more often identified as "Artist" being in the likeness of our Creator than the filthy tares.
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