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| More than one way?Religious Americans: My faith isn't the only way
Here are some quotes from a surprisingly balanced article:
"America remains a nation of believers, but a new survey finds most
Americans don't feel their religion is the only way to eternal life —
even if their faith tradition teaches otherwise. The findings, revealed Monday in a survey of 35,000 adults, can either be taken as a positive sign of growing religious tolerance, or disturbing evidence that Americans dismiss or don't know fundamental teachings of their own faiths."
By tolerance, they mean illogical and ecumenical confusion. The latter clause is the most accurate assessment (regardless of how indirect it is) of people who claim to be Christians that I have ever read from a major news outlet ever.
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"Another finding almost defies explanation: 21 percent of
self-identified atheists said they believe in God or a universal
spirit, with 8 percent "absolutely certain" of it."
I guess they're just functionally atheist.
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"Nearly across the board, the majority of religious Americans believe
many religions can lead to eternal life: mainline Protestants (83
percent), members of historic black Protestant churches (59 percent),
Roman Catholics (79 percent), Jews (82 percent) and Muslims (56
percent)."
83%?!?!?!? By comparison, the 59% of black protestants looks a whole lot better, but that is still a MAJORITY of black christians.
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What do I think is the cause of all of this?
1. Watered-down teaching
2. Neglect of Church Discipline
Matthew 7:13-14
“Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it."
Matthew 7:21-23
“Not everyone who says
to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does
the will of My Father in heaven.
Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in
Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your
name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’
There will be people who profess Christ that will be rejected by him on the day of judgment.
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| surprise/updates/barack quoteI'm writing this as i'm (hopefully) sanding the drywall that i put up for the last time. I've been having a hard time getting everything to be perfectly flat and even. My goal now is to get everything to be as near-perfect as possible.
surprise?
Some friends from my church threw me a surprise birthday party at a park that is a 5 minute walk from my house. It was a BEAUTIFUL park. What's crazy is that I never knew the park was there. I heard people talk about this nebulous park in the past, but i had never beheld it for myself and never knew that it was SOOOO close to my house.
My roommate planned the whole shebang. I didn't see the surprise coming at all (even though a bunch of people from my church who would have no reason to know my birthday wished me a happy birthday at various points during the service...in a sense...almost an apology for not being able to make it to the surprise party)...not even when my roommate blindfolded me with a towel as we got close to the surprise location. I guess i'm not one to expect the unexpected  .
Here are some pictures from the event!
People at the party. My roommate is the guy in the middle. Don't mid the tie that i'm wearing. They put it on me.
The cake
Me blowing out the candles on the cake
Worst surprise birthday party speech EVER. Never ask me to tell you a story about 1984 (thanks, eva) without first allowing me to prepare beforehand. just don't do it...ignorance is bliss.
Me wearing the tie and hat. Did i mention that it was like 100 degrees outside?
Another shot with the tie and a friends camera. I took a bunch of pictures with his camera but he never sent them to me because he's a bad person. I would've brought my camera, but one does not walk with a camera to what they think will be a prayer walk/evangelistic outreach in the park.
My birthday also marks my second post-college year in maryland.
Brooklyn -18
Boston - 4
Baltimore - 2
= 24 years of life
Maryland is cool, but it is no new york (fields amens from both new yorkers and marylanders alike). I might consider an internal move to nyc with my job in the future. We'll see how that works out.
What did i do on my actual birthday? I went to the gym, came home, realized that I didn't have much work to do after 3 hours of emailing and other stuff...so I stopped working and:
-went to the dentist
-went to the bike shop
-went to the music store to buy some music stuff
I had to have a filling redone at the dentist...so i was numb for a little bit. After all of that, I went to home fellowship. I'm not really a big "HEY, let's do THIS THING for my BIRTHDAY" kinda guy. I was perfectly content with how things went. I kinda sorta planned to grab dinner before home fellowship, but the dental stuff put the kibosh on that.
oh and here's a quote from Barack Obama:
“When it comes specifically to HIV/AIDS, the most
important prevention is education, which should include — which should
include abstinence education and teaching the children - teaching
children, you know, that sex is not something casual. But it should
also include - it should also include other, you know, information
about contraception because, look, I’ve got two daughters, 9 years old
and 6 years old. I am going to teach them first of all about values and
morals. But if they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a
baby…”
Very articulate, barack. Thank you for your clear views on morality and the punishment that we call children.
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| Obama - Racism, Wright Revisited"Racism alarms Obama's backers"
This article is a testament to the reverberating effects of racism in this country. None of these people said "I'll never vote for him because he supports the killing of babies" or "I'll never vote for him because universal healthcare doesn't work".
Here are some quotes from the article.
"...She made 60 calls to prospective voters in Susquehanna County,
her home county, which is 98 percent white. The responses were
dispiriting. One caller, Switzer remembers, said he couldn't possibly
vote for Obama and concluded: "Hang that darky from a tree!""
"The first person I encountered was like, 'I'll never vote for a black person,' "
In other news here is a question that Jeremiah Wright was asked regarding Salvation:
Q: Jesus said “I am the way the truth and the life; no man cometh
unto the father but through me”. Do you believe this, and do you
think Islam is a way to salvation?
This was his response:
A: Jesus also said “Other sheep have I, who are not of this fold”
That is a quote from John 10 that has been yanked out of context from its place in the book of John, and yanked out of context from the rest of Scripture. Jesus was speaking to (and correcting the wrong thoughts of) Jews who thought that not only was salvation from the Jews, but that it was also for the Jews only. The other sheep in the this context are non-Jews (gentiles).
For Jeremiah Wright to use this verse in this way shows that he does not understand the gospel of Jesus Christ at all. This "wider mercy" view as it is called has no foundation in scripture and can easily be categorized as heresy. Let's take what Jeremiah Wright is saying to its logical end.
A muslim, who rejects the deity of Jesus Christ and rejects the notion that he was even crucified will be saved as long as he is a morally good person.
No one will enter heaven on the basis of their own righteousness or moral goodness. Only those who truly have turned from sin and are trusting in the righteousness of Christ alone for the forgiveness of their sin will enter heaven.
At best, Jeremiah Wright gave a vague and "political" answer so as to not draw any strong criticism (matthew 10:33 anyone?), at worst he is a universalist who does not know the Lord.
"The one who hears you hears me, and the one who rejects you rejects me, and the one who rejects me rejects him who sent me."
-Luke 10:16
To say that Jesus Christ was only a prophet or a good teacher is to reject him as God. To say that Jesus Christ never died on the cross for the sin of all who would repent and believe is to deny him as savior. To have an apathetic attitude toward Jesus Christ is to deny him as Lord.
*for those curious* No, i do not have strong feelings for any particular candidate in the 2008 election.
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| matters of racefigured i'd share the start of a conversation that i'm having:
Here are questions that I was asked:
where do you see racism most? And what creates the greatest chasm
between the races, particularly white/black? Is it an issue that is
waning?
Here was my answer:
Where do i see racism most? I don't really know how to answer that question.
Racism is everywhere. It's just that it isn't always manifested to the same degree.
I believe that Jeremiah Wright hit the definition of racism on the
head in the speech that he gave when he said that people define normal
by themselves (and in keeping with that, they also define what is not
normal by themselves). The problem comes into play when that which is
not seen as normal is relegated to being "not as good as" (a subjective
measurement that has now become the norm) as opposed to just
"different".
I believe racism to be a subset of the tendency of people (in
general) to judge that which is different to be "not as good as" what
they deem normal. There is a "leaven" of sorts which, when left
unchecked, can give rise to racism.
For example: are the bad kids in the neighborhood the bad kids in
the neighborhood, or the bad HISPANIC kids in the neighborhood? Is the
kid who failed intro to differential equations at MIT, they slow kid or
the slow BLACK kid? There's small, and yet significant, difference.
I believe the biggest chasms between people who are different is
the result of cultural isolation and negative stereotypes that replace
truth. The problem is that cultural isolation takes place along racial,
socioeconomic and cultural lines (so the italians think the irish are
fall down drunks, the rich think the poor are lazy and the
non-conformists think the conformists are tools).
I believe the issues wane in the face of integration, however, our
propensity to self-segregate into groups that define a subjective
measure of "normal" starts the cycle again.
Ultimately, people are sinful.
Thoughts?
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| It's been a while!It certainly has been a while since I've written anything here. I've got my reasons!
I've been "here and thereing" the individual things that I've wanted to blog about. Here's a list:
-What exactly identifies a black voice? I've discovered that I can always identify when a speaker is black and I can't pinpoint the exact reason as to why. The thing that got me to thinking about this was a desiring god pastor's conference that I was listening to on the trinity. When I made my way to around minute marker 12 of the 5th sermon, I said to myself "HEY! this guy is BLACK" I did a quick search on race and voice recognition and I wasn't able to find anything.
-My weekend in Boston: I went to boston for a long weekend (fri morning -mon morning) and had an awesome time. It was characterized by a lot of free food, awesome christian fellowship, a bible study with some of the christians at my fraternity house (including the new ones), catching up with old friends that lived in boston as well as old friends who were coincidentally in town for the same weekend, an entertaining and yet somewhat grievous intercollegiate gospel concert at MIT and AN AWESOME WORSHIP SERVICE at the trinitarian UPC (UPC is a oneness denomination, but this church and 2 others in its immediate "family" confess the trinity) church that i attended for 3 years in college.
-Matters of Race/Jeremiah Wright: Considering his prominence in the media as of recent, I have had a lot of time to learn a lot about Barack Obama's pastor. I've listened to his sermons, watched a pbs documentary/one on one interview on him and listened to his speech at some NAACP breakfast. After all has been said and done, I must say that he is not the man that politicians and the media make him out to be. He isn't unpatriotic and the liberation theology that his church confesses isn't liberation theology in its most conservative (read: heretical) form. Do not take that statement to mean that I support his church. Many things have been said that have merited strong rebuke, however, after learning more about Jeremiah Wright (unless he is an outright liar), I would have to say that he is a brother in the Lord in need of rebuke and counsel (as opposed to an apostate in need of disfellowship).
LAST, BUT CERTAINLY NOT LEAST:
I went on a 10-day cruise from 4/15-4/25 that left from Florida and sailed to Aruba, Colombia, the Panama Canal, Costa Rica and Jamaica.
It was a family cruise of sorts with a bunch of temporarily ingrafted branches.
Cruise Highlights:
-the christian fellowship: I got to spend 10 days in close fellowship in a vacation setting with a bunch of people who genuinely love the Lord and appreciate the fellowship of the saints. Here are some of the highlights of the christian fellowship.
1. We had a bible study on anxiety on the second tuesday of the cruise.
2. We sang hymns with the wait staff in the formal dining room
3. We had a chance to pray with the waiters who served us for the entire cruise
We also got to see God providentially work in the life of my godbrother, who has been estranged from his father for his entire life. One night at dinner we were talking about forgiveness and reconciliation. My godbrother left that dinner intent upon reaching out to his father when he got back home and later that night, HIS FATHER REACHED OUT TO HIM to invite him to a dinner.
-the food: The food on the ship was awesome. Absolutely awesome. I ordered at least 3 items on the dessert menu each night (for the purposes of sampling)
-the excursions: We went snorkeling and tubing (behind a motorboat) in Aruba, took a walking tour of Cartagena, Colombia (an historic city), paid $10 for a 1 hour tour of Cristobal, Panama in a cab, went tubing down a river in Costa Rica and kayaked to Dunn's River Falls in Ocho Rios, Jamaica.
-the boat: Was huge!! My room had a balcony!!
-bass stuff: I got to play bass on the ship with one of the ship's main bands. My godbrother got to play drums too! He was actually offered a job to play with the band since the temp drummer was leaving in 2 weeks!
-miscellaneous: ummmm i can't think of anything else.
Here are two links to albums with all the pictures followed by selected pictures from the cruise: Pictures - on board Pictures - on land (if you can't see these pictures, you can either navigate to my weblog or to the above links) Tubing Behind a motorboat: 
Going Through Panama Canal, looking at a boat behind 
RC Church in Cartagena, Colombia 
Beach in Aruba (went snorkeling here) 
Me, fruit lady, sister and sister in the Lord: 
Outdoor pool on deck: 
Playing bass on the ship. Godbrother on drums 
Eva, me, my godbrother (justin) 
Sunrise 
Sunset 
the monkeys have no bananas (simpsons reference) | | |
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