Uncategorized

Yesterday stirred up in me a return to research on A.B. Simpson, founder of the Christian and Missionary Alliance.  Here is an interesting excerpt from his magazine “Living Truths” (a magazine that ran for a few years in the early 1900’s).

Practical righteousness is a fruit of life, but it is not life, and to cultivate it apart from union with Christ and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is just as unsatisfactory as it would be to try to cleanse a foul river by putting disinfectants into the body of the river rather than the fountain head.

Morality may exist without life, but life cannot exist without morality.  There is a good deal of reform abroad today without spiritual power, just as we fear there is a good deal of religion without righteousness.  Both are wrong.

Living Truths, Vol 7, No. 3, March 1907, p. 122.

Five years have passed since the passing of my wife, Jill. 

I constantly remember.

Her laugh and love of life

Her music from the heart

Her love for family and friends

Her food for body and soul

Her love for me

I sometimes forget.

How quickly life passes

How grief is seasonally adjusted

How friends are precious

How God’s love is huge

How heaven is just around the corner

Well, I feel like I’ve been away from my blog site for a considered time.  I would consider it about a few weeks!

I’ve just finished reading through Bernie Van De Walle’s book RETHINKING HOLINESS.  Good read.  In fact I would go so far as to say a great read.

I’ve been thinking along the same lines as Bernie (a professor at Ambrose University).  We are living in a day and age where many people are trying to figure out holiness.  They may express it as a desire to do what is right, or they want to be better than they are or . . .

Bernie makes the point that holiness is not morality but rather the wellspring of morality.  Holiness is a way of being.  

Our world is currently assailed by many moralities (moral pluralism) which cause division, death and defeat.  Stretch your thinking and you come to the conclusion that holiness is rooted in God alone.  Life requires us to have only one focal point for holiness – Almighty God – if we wish to live in harmony (OK, that’s getting off into my own pet peeve, but I think Bernie would agree).  Finally, Bernie makes the point that holiness is grounded in union with Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.

The 151 pages of readable text fill in the gaps.  And yes, Bernie, this is good Alliance theology.  A.B. would be proud of you – he might even have published this as a series of articles in his magazine!!!!

The article I was reading said moral relativism is dead.

The extreme of moral relativism is the statement – “Do your own thing.”  There is no guilt attached to whatever you do, whether helping the old lady across the street or killing your next door neighbour for being obnoxious.  You are your own god and make your own rules.

Doesn’t work too well!  I’m not so sure you can do whatever you want and claim what you did is right!  Otherwise we will all live in fear!

So then groups of people decided that the “tribe” could determine what was right.  And terrorism soon reigns.

And that leaves us with having to live by faith that there is a god who has a set of societal rules that we can all live by.  That god must be good, just, loving.  That god must have an overall sense of creation (better yet if that god created us creatures).  That god must have the best in mind for us as humans!

I believe our society is looking for that god.  As the USA states – in God we trust.  As Canada states – God keep our land. 

There seem to be many answers put forward – and thus we have moral pluralism.

The question is, which god is the God over all gods?

And now you know why Christians make the claim that God, as revealed in Jesus, is God over all gods – not because they are arrogant but because they believe that there must be an Almighty God.