Walking from Chuch

As you get older you tend to see or have more of a handle on things as they are.
When you're younger you're full of ideals, you want to change the world.
Then one day you catch a glimpse in the mirror you don't like and realize this is the you that's just as bad as all the people you had wanted to save the world from.
Then you know you're not just the victim of all the bad stuff that goes on in the world you're also the perpetrator.
I suppose that's got something to do with the young being full of ideals and people who are a bit older receding into resignation.
Jesus said to his disciples - "you have more to learn but you cannot bear it all just now." I think that some of what they could not bear was the truth about themselves in the sight of God.
Does this mean we should do nothing - No, we should still try but to me - not to change the world but to change one heart at a time beginning with our own.
What we need to find within ourselves is not the "good" but the "Jackbooted Goose-stepping Nazi." Subdue this part of ourselves first then the good will come.

The Great Commission

"Injustice is it"... "I will tell you this boy"

Just before Christmas I was in Farmfoods in Govan. A small Salvation Army band were playing outside and collecting money. They kept repeating "Jingle Bells" like it was the only song they knew, the girl at the checkout said "If they play Jingle bells once more I'm going to tear my hair out." It wasn't the only song they knew but it gave me the impression that they thought it was the only song we knew.
I stood beside them but those not playing made no attempt to talk to me or to share anything of the Gospel with me or anyone else.
In the bakers in Govan there was three S A officers, they looked like they were really out of their comfort zone.
In my twenty odd year association with Govan the "Salvationists" from the Citadel in Govan have not troubled me with the Gospel even once.
I know that many Christians campaign against the injustices that are inflicted upon people in every society. And it is right that they do so.
An injustice could be described as being denied an inalienable right.
What about this human right - The human right to hear the Gospel.
Does Christ consider it to be an inalienable human right for people to hear the Gospel.?
Does the church consider people being denied the hearing of the Gospel to be an injustice.?
To be entrusted with the Gospel and to deny people the hearing of it could be the greatest injustice in the World.
Mark 16:15.
He said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation."
Matthew 28.
16 Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. 17 When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. 18 Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

Thanks for the memories

When I was 22 I felt that God was calling me to the Faith Mission Bible college in Edinburgh.
I asked a Baptist minister whom I had known for a few years to refer me. At the time I was a member of the Vale of Leven Baptist church. The minister I asked was in Oban.
He said he didn't think he could refer me and he would explain why the next time he saw me.
So the next time I was in Oban I went to see him.
What he told me was this - He wanted me to take a job for a year first instead of being self employed, when I asked him why he said - "Well when you are with the Faith Mission and someone asks you what you did before, you will be able to tell them about your job and you won't have to tell them you're a Traveller."

What is truth?

For many people
If the personal delusion of who they think they are
were removed from them
then their personality would collapse
in a blithering heap of disorientation.

The truth of who we are is in how we are seen by God.
The truth is not in our own judgement or opinion or criterion or fantasy
the truth of who we are is what God sees when He looks at us.

By nature we compare ourselves with other people,
and by nature we need to find someone or something to be less than we are.
But at the end of the day it's all a human folly that can and has become an evil.
We are already witnesses to what can happen when the flaws in human nature become a political dogma legislated into law.
The beginning of knowing the truth is to see ourselves as a sinner in the sight of God.
This is the first photo in the album of seeing ourselves as God sees us.

Thou God seest me. Genesis 16:13.

The Church

Watching Earthrise from the Moon we see the cradle of the human race
Glimmering like a sapphire set in the jewelled crown of space.

Harold Pinter

There is no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal,
nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.
I believe that these assertions still make sense and still apply to the - (exploration of reality through art).
So as a writer I stand by them but as a citizen I cannot.
As a citizen I must ask: What is true? What is false? - Harold Pinter.

For me as a citizen of the Kingdom of God I must also ask: What is true? What is false?
And when I look to Christian leaders should I expect more than to be gunged with a grey sludge of uncertainty.
From those whom God has chosen and entrusted with the proclamation and the teaching of His word I need to hear
"This is true" "This is false" "This is right" "This is wrong"

Whatever happened to the Sunday morning Ding Dong

Second and third generation Christians who consider themselves to be the educated middle class have managed to turn half the churches in Scotland into warehouses.
It all happens in easy stages

1. Become aloof from the community in the area of the church.

2. Develop a snooty attitude toward and abandon evangelism.

3. Become an enclave of like minded back patters.

4. Sit in the church and bemoan how the local community won't come to church

5. Eventually die out one by one until it is no longer viable to maintain the church building

6. The few people that are left join the congregation up the road.

7. Sell the abandoned church building.