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Childlike Faith and Spiritual Maturity in the 23rd Psalm

November 9, 2010 By Randy Olds Leave a Comment

The last week or two I’ve spent some time studying the contrast between the childlike faith that Jesus urges to have in passages such as Matthew 18:3 and the childishness that Paul and the author of Hebrews chide their readers for in 1 Corinthians 13:11 and Hebrews 5:11-14. In my own walk with God I have realized that there are still elements of my faith that are immature, but at the same time I have struggled to maintain the childlike faith that I began this journey with. How does one grow up spiritually yet still remain as a little child?

I have shared my ruminations with a couple of close friends on the subject and have intended to write on this for the last few days but the clarity that I’ve sought in this matter has eluded me. It has seemed that putting it all together has been right on the tip of my tongue, but I haven’t quite been able to grasp onto it. Last night I spent some time with another friend in our weekly Bible study and once again the topic came up. Something that my friend said about holding onto memories of times where faith was easy and simple and where we received gifts from above with a childlike awe struck a memory of something I read a couple of years ago that pulled it all together for me.

During a study of the Psalms a couple of years ago, I remember the surprise that got when I found out that most of the theologically adept believe that the 23rd Psalm was written by King David not when he was a young shepherd boy, but instead an aging man in the twilight of his life. The imagery of a shepherd boy leading his sheep beside still waters and reflecting how the LORD was likewise leading him had always been in my mind and I had simply assumed that it was the young David in his teens who had penned this Psalm which has comforted its readers for thousands of years. The childlike faith exhibited in this Psalm surely couldn’t have been written by an old man jaded by a lifetime of war and family difficulties, or could it?

After reflection, I realize that the spiritual maturity reflected in this Psalm simply could not have been written by the boy shepherd. The teen-aged David had never really spent any appreciable time walking through the “Valley of the shadow of death” as the aged King who had hid from Saul and Absalom as they sought his life had been forced to do. It took massive failures in his personal life as was exhibited in the Bathsheba debacle to come to the realization that it was God and God alone who was leading him in the paths of righteousness and restoring his soul. It was the as a result of reflecting on a lifetime of instances where the rod and the staff of the LORD had comforted him and led him by still waters that the aged King was able to put those words onto the parchment.

Maintaining childlike faith quite often requires spiritual maturity and the ability to look back to times where we know that God was at work in our lives. It is not that He is not working in the here and now, but sometimes we can get nearsighted and are not be able to see God at work in the present day. It is much easier to look back at the tapestry of our lives and realize that that the LORD has been restoring our souls and leading us along the path of righteousness for His names sake all along. If He was doing it then, surely He is doing it now, and surely goodness and mercy will follow us all of the days of our lives.

That is why we are to “count it pure joy when we face various trials”, knowing that these trials will give us the perseverance that leads to maturity. That spiritual maturity is what enables us to hold onto that childlike faith that Jesus said was essential to enter the Kingdom of God. Not only that, but the faith building experiences of having God lead us out of the valleys and back to the mountain top are times that we can look back on later and once again realize that one day we will live in the house of the LORD forever.

The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.

Filed Under: Christian Living, Faith, Psalms, Suffering, Trials and Tribulations

The Untouchables of The Abrahamic Religions

October 18, 2010 By Randy Olds Leave a Comment

Many of us living in the western societies of North America and Europe are appalled when we learn of how those in the lower castes in countries like India are treated by their countrymen of the upper castes. Indeed those who have the misfortune of being born into one of the lower castes are still often referred to as the “untouchables” and are relegated to a life of poverty and are sometimes viewed as being “less than human” by their upper-caste counterparts.

Many of those who hail from the Abrahamic faiths of Christianity, Judaism or Islam might tend to look at the caste systems as being backward or even abominable and might even point out how our faith does not allow for such a system of prejudice. But is that a true statement? Are there individuals that Christians or Jews or Muslims seperate as being “less than human” and therefore untouchable?

I’m sure that many Christians living with the aftermath of 9-11 are aware that extremist Muslims consider non-Muslims as “infidels”, but are they aware of what the term “infidel” even means or that the term originally was one that Christians used for non-Christians? The actual term that the Islamic clerics tend to use is “Kafir” and in some of the more extremist forms of Islam anyone who does not believe in Allah is a kafir and is not only ritually unclean but is considered to be less than human. Therefore killing a kafir or infidel is not considered to be murder in some Islamic circles. I must point out that not all Muslims believe this way.

Orthodox Judaism has their own form of infidels who are often called goyim. In some Talmudic and Kabbalist literature, non-Jews are referred to as having animal-souls and are therefore not afforded even basic human rights. The Kabbala goes so far as to call Jesus and Mohamed ‘dead dogs’ and as recently as recently as 2005 Rabbi Saadya Grama of New Jersey made a statement to the effect that Jews and non-Jews were in fact two different species and that goy were inherently evil. Again, I must point out that not all Jews believe this way.

But what about Christians? Surely there are no Christians who consider no-Christians as sub-human, right? Although Christianity has thankfully moved past the dark ages of the Inquisition, it wasn’t so very long ago that Catholics and Protestants were busy gunning each other down throughout Ireland and viewed each other as less than human. And there are a number of Christian hate-groups who hang out on the fringes, such as those associated with groups like the Christian Identity as well as hyper-Calvinist fundamentalists like those of Westboro Baptist Church.

But what about the moderate Christians? We don’t think of non-Christians as untouchables or sub-human, right?

Even moderate Calvinists will plainly tell you that Jesus Christ only died for the elect, it’s part of the TULIP of Calvinism: Limited Atonement. In other words, God created two types of humans at the beginning of time; those predestined for Heaven and those predestined to Hell. Of those predestined to Hell, no amount of Grace will ever reach them. In fact, some Calvinists will say that the reprobates misery in Hell is supposed to add to the enjoyment of Heaven for the elect. If that is not dehumanization then I don’t know what is.

Although non-Calvinist Christians will affirm that Christ died for all, there is still a tendency for some to limit God’s grace and power to certain people. I have seen some Christian bloggers who like to post what they call Total Depravity articles. In these articles they will scan the headlines to find an individual accused of some perversion and label them as Totally Depraved. To me, it’s the same thing as saying that these individuals are beyond the reach of God and cannot be saved or healed. This bothers me as I see it being no different than any other form of dehumanization.

If we have relegated any individual or group of individuals to whatever hell that we might believe in, isn’t this the same thing as saying that they are beyond the help or love of God and therefore should be shunned and shamed? Are these people not untouchables? What moral reason do we really have to extend the love of Christ to someone who we believe is already damned?

Even among the more generous and liberal minded Christians, is the specter of the existence of hell enough to cause us to deem some of those that we come across as being an untouchable? When we see in the headlines a mugshot of a person convicted of a perverse sex-crime or the image of a Taliban waving an automatic weapon do we automatically relegate that person as among the already damned? What about a Hindu woman in India or a Buddhist monk, do we view them as having already received their sentence to Hell?

As I pointed out for the Muslims and Jews, most Christians do not de-humanize those who they might see as unsaved. Most Calvinists will even point out that they do not know who is among the elect and therefore do not dehumanize anyone. Still though, I find myself wondering about how we look at those who we determine are not “of the faith”. Do we not tend to dehumanize them, if only in our own mind? As long as we have doctrines of hell and total depravity, isn’t dehumanization a fact of life? Is it not possible that God might indeed be bigger than hell and total depravity? I wonder…

Filed Under: Calvinism, Christian Living, Hell, Predestination, soteriology, Worldviews

Yoga and Christians: Slipperly Slope or Harmless Exercise?

October 11, 2010 By Randy Olds 4 Comments

When I first heard about Albert Mohler’s recent strong stance that Christians should not practice yoga, I rolled my eyes and thought, “Oh boy, more fundamentalist sanctions against a harmless practice…what a crock!”  After reflecting on it for for the last week or so and engaging in a couple of conversations with other Christian bloggers on the subject, I have subtly reconsidered my initial reaction.

Now I want to say that I believe that the vast majority of Christians who participate in yoga do so simply as a form of relaxation and exercise and never cross over to the “Dark Side” of yoga, which is of course the Hindu religious aspects of yoga or the syncretism which can lead to New Age spiritualism. However, as someone who at one time investigated some of the components of New Age spiritualism, I can see how some might slip down the slippery slope and attempt to  incorporate aspects of yoga into their Christian life.

Some readers might be surprised that I would make such a statement, as I am normally pretty liberal and open-minded. Not only that, but I normally react harshly against anything that I think sounds remotely like fundamentalism. But please give me a minute to explain myself.

When I was in my teens I was very involved in Tae Kwon Do under the instruction of a fifth-degree black-belt who was a born-again Christian, but was also involved in some aspects of New Age spiritualism. As I progressed in my studies, I eventually got to a point where I was encouraged to participate in contemplation and mental concentration exercises much like those to be found in some of the more advanced forms of yoga. The fact is that Tae Kwon Do, like many other martial arts, is simply an extension of Korean religion, which is rooted in Buddhism. The goal of more advanced martial arts is to be able to perform acts beyond normal human control, much the same as yoga. In Tae Kwon Do, as with many other martial arts, this is to be achieved through unity with the divine through perfect self-effacement and impassivity.

While I didn’t become a Buddhist or Taoist as the result of my involvement in martial arts, in later years I recognized some of those same elements in the New Age movement. Many years later, and before I became a Christian, I did some investigation into Gnosticism, which in reality the New Age movement is a form of. More recently, I had to spend a large amount of time and energy convincing my teen-aged daughter that Buddhism and Christianity were not compatible. This was after one of her High School teachers, who is a New Age advocate, told her that Buddhism was in fact not a religion and that the two could be practiced together.

While I believe that most Christians who participate in yoga or martial arts will never slide into the syncretism that is prevalent in the New Age movement, I can see where the young and naive, or possibly those who have not studied the scriptures sufficiently to be able to recognize Gnosticism when they see it might be tempted to add the spiritual elements of eastern mysticism into their Christianity. I like to think of this as “spiritual steroid” abuse. There are many Christians who are not pleased with the pace of their spiritual growth and seek to add “something more” to speed the process up. For some, the seduction of looking for the “divine spark” within by means of the contemplative elements of yoga or other forms of eastern religion seems very appealing.

So what is wrong with this? First is the fact that this denies the power of the Cross, and instead of seeking spiritual growth through Christian principles and the leading of the Holy Spirit, one seeks to unlock the secret power of mystical inner knowledge. The ultimate goal of some forms of yoga is to unite with the divine, which in pantheism would mean the entire universe. This is very similar to the gnostic goal of achieving gnosis, which is a distinct category of mystical experience beyond the physical or psychic levels of being. Christians who attempt to syncretize their faith in this way are much like those warned about in 2 Timothy 3:5 and are often holding to a form of religion but denying its power.

I think that the biggest danger is the fact that the vast majority of Christians are simply ignorant of the dualism that is so strongly warned about in epistles like 1 John, and really have no idea what gnosticism is. The fact is that John goes so far as to say that the Gnostics of his day were antichrist (1 John 4:2-3) For those who do not know what the Bible teaches about this danger, and do not realize that many elements of New Age thought are are simply a form of New Gnosticism, it might very difficult to discern when they have in fact crossed over the grey area into syncretism.

With that said, I think that for most Christians, yoga and martial arts is a completely reasonable form of exercise and relaxation, and I personally would have no problem participating in either.  My advice for those who are involved in yoga would be to become educated about gnosticism and New Age religion and read what the Bible has to say about these forms of false teachings, so that you are able to discern where the line lays between harmless exercise and eastern religion. I think that proper education, discernment and moderation in all things is the key when it comes to yoga.

So, I suppose that I have to say that although I agree with Mohler in principle, I think that a blanket prohibition is far too reactionary. For most Christians, practicing yoga is simply a form of exercise and is in all actuality quite benign. For a small minority, however, I can see how yoga might lead to an interest in elements of eastern religious practices that could indeed become a slippery slope.

Filed Under: Christian Living, Gnosticism, Jesus Christ, Uncategorized Tagged With: , ,

Bloom Where You’re Planted

September 1, 2010 By Randy Olds Leave a Comment

A few days ago I was complaining to my wife about a variety of factors in my life that I’m simply not very happy about.Some of the things about my job that I don’t like, our continued monetary problems, the neighborhood that we live in, some of our family members that continue to be thorns in our sides as well as this seemingly everlasting and oppressive Texas heat. I told my wife that as soon as our sixteen year old graduated from High School that I wanted to pull up stakes and move somewhere cooler, somewhere farther away from some of the folks around here that get on my nerves and find a job or career that I’d be happier in.

My wife replied, “Honey, you just need to work harder at blooming where you’re planted.”

“What?!?”

As someone who thought that I had heard every colloquialism invented in these United States, that one was a new one for me. Turns out that “bloom where you’re planted” is an expression that has been around for some time, and although it is not uniquely “Christian”, there is a lot of Christian truth to be had there, especially for a “the grass is always greener on the other side” type of person like me.

A good biblical passage describing this principle can be found in 1 Corinthians 7:7-24. Paul exhorts each to remain in the place where he or she was called. He talks about being called while circumcised or uncircumcised, married or unmarried, slave or free and then in verse 19 Paul says that none of these things matter but what really matters is keeping the commandments of God.

In the parable of the soils, Jesus talks about the different soils of the heart as what determines the fruit that is produced, not the soils of our environments. So whether we live in an agreeable environment or one that is troublesome, we are still called to bloom where we are planted and bring forth good fruit.

St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622) once wrote “Truly charity has no limit; for the love of God has been poured into our hearts by His Spirit dwelling in each one of us, calling us to a life of devotion and inviting us to bloom in the garden where He has planted and directing us to radiate the beauty and spread the fragrance of His Providence.”

I have to remember that God loved me when I was unlovable (and can still be!) and called me into His Kingdom right where I was at. Perhaps He may one day bring me somewhere cooler and place me among more like minded people in a career that is more to my liking, maybe even with a view of my beloved mountains.  Then again, maybe He won’t.

I once heard a quote that has been widely attributed to Mark Twain that said, “A man is about as happy as he makes up his mind to be.” There is much truth there, although I believe that it is the peace of Jesus Christ that enables us to attain that happiness. And in attaining that peace and happiness through the Comforter, it is then our responsibility to spread that peace and joy to those who may take shade in the blooming vine that God has called us to be.

What I must seek to remember is that even if we are planted in a barren wasteland with trouble and persecution on every side, what God wants from us is to do our part in transforming that wasteland into an oasis of God’s love. If we seek to take our nourishment from the Holy Spirit and sink our roots deep into the Word of God and place our faith in God for all things, that tiny mustard seed that we are can bloom and grow and make green pastures of even the most desolate place on earth.

Filed Under: Christian Living, sanctification

Heaping Fiery Coals on Your Enemies Heads

August 29, 2010 By Randy Olds Leave a Comment

Among the many startling instructions that Jesus gave during His ministry here on earth, there were few that probably raised more eyebrows than His admonition to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:43-44).

In fact, reading throughout the Old Testament in general and the Psalms in particular we are continually finding examples of prayers for the utter destruction of many of the enemies of God’s people. One of my personal favorites is King Davids words in Psalms 3:7; “Rise up, Lord! Save me, my God! You strike all my enemies on the cheek; You break the the teeth of the wicked.”

Yea, that’s it; eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, or better yet how about a whole mouth of teeth busted out. And while we’re at it, how about heaping some burning coals on top of their heads to boot. Doesn’t the Bible say something about that as well? As a matter of fact, it does…twice!

The idiom of “heaping fiery coals on [your enemies] head” is found in Romans 12:20 where the Apostle Paul is quoting Proverbs 25:21-22;

“If your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink. For in doing so you will be heaping fiery coals on his head.”

I have heard people translate this verse as to mean that you are to “kill them with kindness”, but further study on this passage taken in context and then put together with Jesus’ words enjoining loving your enemy in Matthew 5:38ff don’t seem to indicate that. No, it appears to me that we are to seek to genuinely love our enemies and actually seek to demonstrate that in our words and actions towards them. Whereas “killing ‘em with kindness” normally indicates treating someone who you may not care for very much with a false sweetness in an attempt to even madden them more, this passage in Romans seems to indicate that we are to seek to show the same love for our enemies that God has shown to us.

In reading through numerous commentaries looking for the meaning of this “fiery coals on his head” passage, I have come across several possible translations. While the original meaning of this expression is in fact unclear, it would appear to be associated with one or more customary practices from ancient times.

The most widely held assumption regarding this phrase is that it originates from a form of penance carried out in ancient Egypt. The penitent would carry coals in a clay pot upon their head in an act of contrition. Another possible explanation could be the custom where a person to carry coals from their still-burning fire in a clay pot on their head  to their neighbor in order for them to relight a fire that had burned out…an act of brotherly love. I also ran across a few other commentaries that suggested that a pot of hot coals on ones head would redden their face as in a simulation of shame.

Whatever the original meaning of the phrase, the idea of being nice to your enemy with the hope of something bad happening to them as the result is obviously NOT the intent of the scripture when taken in context. Feeding our enemy and giving them a drink of cool water before heaping a more than likely fatal load of burning coals on their head would kind of like offering a last supper to a death row inmate prior to his execution. In fact a few verses prior to the passage that we were looking at in Romans, Paul writes that our love must be without hypocrisy (Romans 12:9) and another verse in Proverbs tells us not to gloat when our enemy falls or to rejoice when he stumbles (Proverbs 24:17).

It seems to me that when the Bible tells us to love our enemies, it is not indicating a hypocritical, “I’m going to kill them with kindness” love, but instead a genuine love, an agape love.

So why are we to love our enemies?

I think that at least part of the answer might be found back in Romans, albeit a little further back than where we were looking before. In Romans 2:4, Paul writes about God’s kindness, patience and restraint toward us and how His kindness towards us is what brings us to repentance. It is the same type of kindness, patience and restraint that we are told to direct toward our enemies.

As Christ’s representatives here on earth and in line with Christ’s instructions for us to be “salt” and “light” (Matthew 5:13-16), it is through our actions that people are supposed to be attracted to the Kingdom of God. And when we are able to show the same kindness, patience and restraint to our enemies that God has shown to us, that is when our enemies may begin to realize that there is something different about these Kingdom of God people. Thus our genuine loving actions directed towards those who persecute us is intended as a means not so much to bring them to repentance towards us (although that could sometimes be a nice side effect) but rather bring them to repentance towards God.

This is another one of those areas in my Christian life where “I’m not there yet.” Although I have moved passed taking out personal vengeance  on those who may have wronged me and have even gotten to the point where I can pray for my enemies, I can’t say that I demonstrate true love and genuine kindness towards them the way that Jesus and Paul seem to be instructing in these passages. If anything, I am probably guilty of demonstrating the “kill them with kindness” hypocritical fake smiles and niceties than I am of living up to what I know that God asks is asking from me.  And I also must admit that I still take pleasure when I see someone “getting what they have coming to them.” But coming to the realization that this is not what God wants gives me reason to seek even harder to move past this.

In 2 Peter 3:9 we read that God doesn’t want anyone to perish, but for all to come to repentance and of course Jesus tells us in John 3:16 that God loved the world so much that He sent his only Son to die for all. And going back to our passage in Matthew 5, we read in verse 45 that “He causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain both on the righteous and the unrighteous.” Through these verses as well as many others, it becomes clear that God loves all of his creation and expects those of us who are His adopted children to do the same.

It seems to me that the command to love your enemies may be one of the more difficult commands that our Lord gave us, but He did not give us the liberty to pick and choose which of His commands that we were going to obey. The one comfort that I can find in this difficult command is Jesus’ words at the end of passage about loving our enemies. In verse 48 of Matthew 5, Jesus finishes with “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” God knows that none of us is going to be able to carry out the instructions to love our neighbor perfectly while we are still constrained by our fleshly bodies, but all the same it is what we should strive for, as difficult as it may seem. One footnote to Paul’s words in Romans 12. In verse 21 he adds;

“Do not be conquered by evil, but conquer evil with good”

Filed Under: Christian Living, Forgiveness, The Bible Tagged With:

Balancing Theology with Devotion – A Contrast

July 29, 2010 By Randy Olds Leave a Comment

This is a post that I’ve been toying around with in my mind for a good while now. The bulk of my Internet excursions are normally spent meandering around the faith-based blogosphere reading what other Christians of all sorts write about. When I initially decided to dedicate my life to living for God through His Son, I had a great many questions about what sort of things were expected of me from God and became a prolific reader not just of the Bible, but of other Christian writings as well as of Christian blogs.

Because of the huge amount of theological misinformation that I had received as a child growing up in a religious cult (see Armstrongism), followed up by a number of years in various forms of Christian fundamentalism, the bulk of my early readings after committing my life to Christ involved theology. I read a lot of heavy books in an attempt to dispel the ghosts of my cult childhood and fundamentalist youth. I also spent a great deal of time on a large number of Christian websites and blogs, especially those of the more respected theological folks. I wanted to try to ascertain which branch of Christianity and which theologians had the most valid arguments for Biblical truth so that I could try and shape my Christian worldview correctly.

Along the way, and really only in the last few months, I have discovered a curious anomaly in my readings. Instead of reading only those blogs by the theological types who, by the way, are about ninety percent male, I have started browsing a variety of other Christian blogs. A number of these blogs are by various women bloggers who I have loaded in my Google Reader. At the same time, I have read through a couple of excellent books of a devotional nature by Catherine Marshall (A Closer Walk: A Spiritual Lifeline to God and Something More). Additionally, I recently began reading “The Imitation of Christ By Thomas a Kempis”. Most of what I’ve been reading lately barely touch on deep theological matters, but are more of a devotional type of writing.

What I have found is a whole lot of Christian writers who could care less whether or not Paul wrote the Pastorals or if the Pericope Adulterae was in the original transcripts. They are not concerned one way or another whether Calvin was right or if it was in fact Arminius. These writers might be aware of the Young Earth Creationism/Evolution/Creative Design debate, but they simply focus on practical ways to live out their Christianity rather than worry about how old the earth really is.

Instead of worrying about all of these debatable things, they simply write about loving God, loving neighbor, and trying every day to try to be just a little bit more like Christ.

I’m not quite sure why, but the majority of these “devotionals writers” tend to be women. I find myself wondering if women are perhaps more “wired” to see things that way than we men are. I am finding that many women are simply more accepting in their faith than a lot of us men and don’t feel the need to ask a whole lot of questions that in the long run really don’t matter much.

Also, I think that as men, many of us (I am speaking for myself here) are nuts-and-bolts types of people. We often want to take things apart to see how they work. Many women on the other hand often seem content just to enjoy the beauty of a thing, not really wondering what is behind the beauty or how it got there, they just know and enjoy it for what it is.

My wife is that way. When she is reading her Bible, she is seeking for God to speak to her. She finds scriptures that give her strength and hope, and is not so very concerned about what the context of the scripture is about. She is not trying to figure out if we Methodists are more right than the Baptists down the road, or if our charismatic friends ought not to be talking in tongues. In fact, although I know that she has come to love the Methodist Church (after growing up Southern Baptist), she recently told me that she could really worship just about anywhere (except the cult that I grew up in!). Quite often I wish that I could have her simple faith instead of questioning everything as I do.

Of course, I know that writings of a devotional type is not an exclusively “woman” thing. My current book, “The Imitation of Christ” by Thomas Kempis, is definitely not a theological tome. To be sure, he tries to be theologically true to his beliefs, but by and large, the thrust of the book is of a devotional nature. Instead of writing about theology, he focuses primarily on how to practically apply the teachings of Christ in an attempt to be more Christlike…to “imitate Christ.”

Now, I am not discounting Theology or theologians. And there are also some fine women theologians that I have encountered, both professional as well as lay(women). There always has been and always will be a need for people who dedicate their lives to studying the Bible in an attempt to apply doctrinal truth to our ever changing culture.

However, as I continue down my path of trying to imitate Christ my own self, I am beginning to realize the need to balance my search for theological truth with a quest for ways of practically applying that truth. Head knowledge will only take you so far. There has to be heart knowledge as well. As Thomas Kempis puts it, “An humble knowledge of thyself is a surer way to God than a deep search after learning.”

I’m sure that I will continue to ponder after theology and my Amazon Wishlist will continue to grow and grow. However, I’m beginning to realize that I need to add more balance to my readings. Another quote that I ran across in my Kempis reading comes to mind;

“If my knowledge embraced the whole of creation, what good would it do me in God’s sight? It is by my actions that He will judge me”

I consider myself an egalitarian, and believe that God has equal use for men and women in His Kingdom. With that said, I am also seeing how we (men and women) quite often complement each other in our spiritual walks. I am coming to realize that instead of constantly attempting to gain knowledge and dissecting my faith, there are times that I should be taking my wife’s lead and simply admire the simple beauty of it and seek ways to incorporate that beauty in my day-today life.

Filed Under: Armstrongism, Christian Living, theology
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