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Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Currently Reading
Emotionally Healthy Spirituality: Unleash the Power of Authentic Life in Christ
By Peter Scazzero
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"The following are the top ten symptoms indicating if someone is suffering from a bad case of emotionally unhealthy spirituality:

1. Using God to run from God (ex: When I do things in his name he never asked me to.  When I focus on certain theological points that are more about my own fears and unresolved issues than concern for God's truth. When I apply biblical truths selectively when it suits my purposes but avoid situations that would require me to make significant life changes.)

2. Ignoring the emotions of anger, sadness, and fear.

3. Dying to the wrong things (God never asks us to annihilate the self.  We are not to become "non-persons" when we become Christians. The very opposite is true.  God intends our deeper, truer self, which he created, to blossom freely as we follow him. God has endowed each of us with certain essential qualities that reflect and express him in a unique way. Part of the sanctification process of the Holy Spirit is to strip away the false constructs we have accumulated and enable our true selves to emerge.)

4. Denying the past's impact on the present (Sanctification does not mean we don't go back to the past... it actually demands we go back in order to break free from unhealthy and destructive patterns that prevent us from loving ourselves and others as God designed.)

5. Dividing our lives into 'Secular' and 'Sacred' Compartments (Human beings have an uncanny ability to live compartmentalized, double lives. 'Whether the issue is marriage and sexuality or money and care for the poor, evangelicals today are living scandalously unbiblical lives' - Ron Sider, The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience)

6. Doing for God instead of being with God. (...work for God that is not nourished by a deep interior life with God will eventually be contaminated by other things such as ego, power, needing approval of and from others, and buying into the wrong ideas of success and the mistaken belief that we can't [afford to] fail.)

7.  Spiritualizing away conflict

8. Covering over brokenness, weakness, and failure (...every human being on earth, regardless of their gifts and stregths, is weak, vulnerable, and dependent on God and others.)

9. Living without limits (Why are so many Christians, along with the rest of our culture, frantic, exhausted, overloaded, and hurried... Sadly, many believe that taking care of themselves is a sin, a 'psychologizing' of the gospel taken from our self-centered culture.  It is true we are called to consider others more important than ourselves... However, 'self-care is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have.')

10. Judging other people's spiritual journey (By failing to let others be themselves before God and moveat their own pace, we inevitable project onto them our own discomfort with their choice to live life differently than we do. We end up eliminating them in our minds, trying to make others like us, abondoning them altogether or falling into a 'Who cares?' indifference toward them.)

Are you spiritually unhealthy?"

So the book continues... 


Thursday, March 29, 2007

Currently Reading
Emotionally Healthy Spirituality: Unleash the Power of Authentic Life in Christ
By Peter Scazzero
see related

"Christian spirituality, without an integration of emotional health, can be deadly - to yourself, your relationship with God, and the people around you..."  and so the book begins.


Thursday, March 08, 2007

Today in the NY Times "Denial Reopens Wounds of Japan's Ex-Sex Slaves"

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/08/world/asia/08japan.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp

"According to historians, the military established the [comfort woman] stations to boost morale among its troops, but also to prevent rapes of local women and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases among soldiers.

Japan’s deep fear of rampaging soldiers also led it to establish brothels with Japanese prostitutes across Japan for American soldiers during the first months of the postwar occupation, a fact that complicates American involvement in the current debate."

In regards to human rights issues, despite the big talk, the US's own actions disqualify it from taking the moral high ground.  Let's not disqualify ourselves.  I Corinthians 9:27.


Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Gives the concept of one man dying for another a whole different meaning - Man commits suicide in hopes of killing Cheney in process

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/27/world/asia/27cnd-cheney.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin


Thursday, February 22, 2007

Front page NY Times online edition - "Korean Men Use Brokers to Find Brides in Vietnam". Complete with picture.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/22/world/asia/22brides.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Movie to watch - Mail Order Wife

http://www.mailorderwifethemovie.com/

Other important news - Chief to Retire after one last humiliating display http://media.www.dailyillini.com/media/storage/paper736/news/2007/02/21/News/Chiefs.Last.Dance.Signals.End.Of.Era-2732519.shtml

"When he was promoted from assistant Chief in April 2006, Maloney took on the title of Chief Illiniwek XXXVI... 'It feels like a huge chunk of my past, of my experience on this earth, is disappearing. It's very disheartening," Maloney said."

Of course. One person's 1 year experience as Chief Illiniwek supersedes centuries of entire people groups' histories of genocide, intolerance, and cruelty.   It's not for reparation, (centuries of genocide will not be reconciled through a single apology) but for the condemning of an atrocious history which has been neglected, and therefore condoned, that absolutely necessitates the retirement of the Chief.  As many supporters have pointed out, the Chief represents tradition.  But what tradition?  A tradition of genocide, extermination, Manifest Destiny, internment, disease-infested blankets, Wounded Knee.  Let's call history for what it is.

Book to read - People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn

http://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States-Present/dp/0060838655/sr=8-1/qid=1172157666/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-6777002-0032022?ie=UTF8&s=books

More news:

Racism rampant on college campuses - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6387183.stm

Atrocities abound abroad - US troops in Iraq - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6384781.stm

More of the same - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5105284.stm

Makes you wonder -

(Paraphrase from John Piper) - "Since God is just, he does not sweep these crimes under the rug of the universe. He feels a holy wrath against them. They deserve to be punished, and he has made this clear: “For the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). “The soul who sins shall die” (Ezekiel 18:4).  There is a holy curse hanging over all sin.  Not to punish would be unjust… But the love of God does not rest with the curse that hangs over all sinful humanity.  He is not content to show wrath, no matter how holy it is.  Therefore God sends his own Son to absorb his wrath and bear the curse for all who trust him. “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13)… “Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief” (Isaiah 53:10)."



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