Willohroots

Does x mark the spot?

Most of us are familiar with  the bell curve. [ I believe it is named after our friend and willohroots blog poster The Eclectic Christian,  but I am not serious about that.]  The curve is a way of showing graphically that the largest number of a given group is in the middle but out on the ends there are extremes, but in lesser number.  With my Psych background, I am most familiar with IQ plotted in this manner.  Intelligence Quota,  or as measured, how successful one is at taking an IQ test,  can be shown in a population as most in the middle being an average, and some with genius on the right side, and a roughly corresponding number of the  less intelligent on the left.

Let us say a bell shaped curve was drawn not to show intelligence in the population, but to show Christian beliefs.  Say we got some data from the Barna group.   Barna is the Christian Gallop.   Here is an example of a recent poll.

/www.barna.org

• One-third of all adults (34%) believe that moral truth is absolute and unaffected by the circumstances. Slightly less than half of the born again adults (46%) believe in absolute moral truth.

• Half of all adults firmly believe that the Bible is accurate in all the principles it teaches. That proportion includes the four-fifths of born again adults (79%) who concur.

• Just one-quarter of adults (27%) are convinced that Satan is a real force. Even a minority of born again adults (40%) adopt that perspective.

• Similarly, only one-quarter of adults (28%) believe that it is impossible for someone to earn their way into Heaven through good behavior. Not quite half of all born again Christians (47%) strongly reject the notion of earning salvation through their deeds.

• A minority of American adults (40%) are persuaded that Jesus Christ lived a sinless life while He was on earth. Slightly less than two-thirds of the born again segment (62%) strongly believes that He was sinless.

• Seven out of ten adults (70%) say that God is the all-powerful, all-knowing creator of the universe who still rules it today. That includes the 93% of born again adults who hold that conviction.

I am not about to address the findings of that survey,  that is a different post,  today I am asking, because I wish I knew, How far out from center can you get and still be a Christian?

Are the 7% of born again Christians who believe in a God who is not all powerful, all knowing , are they really Christian?                                                      Are the 38% who believed Jesus was a sinner really ‘saved’?                                   The 53 % who work to earn salvation?

Let us look at this behaviorally.  How far out can you get not only in your beliefs but in your practices. This one is chewing me up today.  Are the men crawling around on all fours barking, claiming the Holy Spirit is involved in this asinine behavior Christians?  Are the people who pantomime drinking and then fall around as drunk Christians?  Are people who ‘Toke on the Ghost   and then act stoned Christians?  I really don’t know, but it sure makes me wonder.  A perfectly nice fellow here in town, invited me to his church, where , he explained, you can plunge your head into a basin of holy water and come up speaking in the tongues of angels.  I missed that in my bible, and have no desire to do such a thing.  Where do each of us fall on the graph?

Lets look at people who hold up signs that say “God hates America”  are they too far out on one side or the other to be called Christian?  What about women preachers who marry Gay ,Lesbian, Transsexual, Trans gender Couples? Are they on opposite sides of the bell?  How far out are they?

What would be measured?  Adherence to  doctrine?   Toleration for others? number of baptisms?  Love?

They way the bell curve is viewed by many in the Christian blogosphere, is the X marks the spot.  X of course, is where they are at.  They define themselves as the pivot of the Faith. To the left,  not saved, to the right, in danger of Hellfire.  It is obvious to them that they are right, Saved, justified, logical, and to be emulated.  Maybe they are right.  They can’t all be right as they are certain that the other guys are all wrong, so who is in the center of the curve? Does being in the center of the curve make you correct, or just popular?

I have no metrics to plot my faith, no measuring stick other than Scripture, which is the same gauge that the others, some of whom I consider real wackos,  say they use.  I am no longer sure the group called Christian would plot out in a bell shape.  There are times I feel far out numbered by the kooks, hard-hearts, blasphemers, apostates and swindlers.  If  I am the x on the graph, these guys are so far out in left and right extremes that I can’t see them.

I do not think X marks the spot, I think the spot is marked with a cross.

It is possible to be very wrong, even when you are right.

Every once in a while, when I feel tough enough, I  peruse  the other side of the blogosphere,  the atheists.  I do not do it to find someone to argue with,  I don’t feel you can argue someone  to the Lord,  I do it to hear their arguments, and see what they think of us.  Mostly it seems,  they think we are idiots  and sometimes I think they are right.  Not because of our faith, but because of the witness some of our little families show to the world.

Look at the young fellow in the picture above.  Is that the Gospel?  Is that the Good News of Jesus Christ?   Do you see hope for redemption on his sign.  I was once many of the things listed on his ‘go to hell’ placard, and at times can slip back towards a few of them, yet I am not in danger of God’s  Judgement.  That is the Good News.

This will pack them in.  Everyone is welcome to everlasting punishment.  Great.

This one ticks me off!  Sure God was the one who said water would not  be compressible, but He never said to build  hotels on the sand.  Actually I remember something about the solid rock.  Anyway,  If I just lost a loved one to AIDS I would not go here for comfort.  Aids  is spread primarily through behaviors God does not approve of.  Look at the spread of heterosexual AIDS in Africa,  adultery kills.   I have not heard of God starting a war  in the last few thousand years.  I thought dictators and politicians start wars.   Don’t blame God for man’s sins.  What sort of ego do you need to put words in God’s mouth?  I have a fear factor that just would not allow me to do that.

Now there’s a reason to come to the Lord.

I have nothing to say on these two that does not speak for itself.    It is not just church signs.

I don’t know what they are protesting on the top picture, but whatever it is they are really advertising  for it.  The guy on the bottom gets credit for using the word salvation, but salvation is not a right,  AIDS is a plague not a right, and Hell is not mentioned as a right in Romans.   There is a really bad attitude showing here.  This is not   “Come let us reason together.”

Update… This is a spoof picture,  but they did such a good job, people took it as real!  See Chris’s comment below. Sorry Mark O. First of all, maam,  where in scripture do you see the Lord crying over dance. And you sir, I have been married 30 years, I like to dance with my wife, and I can testify with truth that dancing does not lead to sex.  Not always, and in my humble opinion, not often enough.  Using the technology hidden in the basement of stately Willohroots manner I was able to enlarge the book the man is holding.

This could explain a lot.

You put this on a billboard?  Really?  I read about the challenge, and my wife and I actually participated in ‘The One Day Challenge’ [ hey we are old and busy]  I hear what you are saying, but people judge you by your signs!   This is ridiculous!  You want to challenge the world, try this, challenge them to go without sex for 30 days to discipline the body and honor God.  Might not bring in as many people, you think?

If no one else has noticed, 50% of America is Democrat.  Win an election, lose some souls.  Fair trade?   Somehow I doubt it.

Ah the bumper sticker crowd!  Don’t you love it when they cut you off, or park in three spaces?    I believe I believe  the way this person believes but I bet I get to talk to more people.

Well for all that , these signs are not all that bad,  I would much rather live in a country where I see these things listed above,,,,,,,,,  not the one below.

What was missing from the night sky?

The impact of the morning of 9/11/01  was emotional and disturbing.  I was out in the yard on a beautiful day smacking golf  balls for the dog. [ I do not golf ,  I smack balls  for the dog, he brings them back.  I fear for his life if he ever learns that we live next to a golf course,  such behavior is not universally appreciated. ]  It was a great blue sky day. We were going into work a bit late that day as we had evening appointments . there was no big hurry,no rush, life was fine.  My wife,  who was at the time a Fox news junkie,  came out and said,”  Will, you’ve got to see this ,  a plane hit the Twin Towers.”   My first thought was that a Timothy McVeigh  wanna be  in a Piper Cub  made a statement, and that Christians would be demonized.   I came in to watch and saw the second plane hit, ” live and in action”.

It is an amazing age we live in.   I saw The Challenger disaster ‘live,  I  saw the Twin Towers  attack,  live.  I fear what else I see in the future.  I wonder how the ancestors of the Faith interpreted Rev. 11.

⁹Those from the peoples and tribes and tongues and nations will look at their dead bodies for three and a half days, and will not permit their dead bodies to be laid in a tomb.”

As a modern Christian, I see a ‘live feed’ of the bodies laying in place broadcast around the world.  Billions will see them arise at the Call of God. ‘Live and in color’.

As horrible as the impact of the hijacked jets was,  the collapse of the towers was the emotional ‘coup de gras’.  I looked at  my wife and said,  “I just lost a couple hundred brothers.”  I was off by a bit,  in mere moments we had lost 341 firefighters and 2 paramedics,  23 NYPD, and 37 PA cops.  I know  the estimated death toll was 6000, a horror for each family,  but I relate to the emergency responders on a different level.  We are family.

We never did go to work that day, we watched Fox and MSNBC , searching for information, prayed for Firefighters and their families, and were generally stunned.  It was a day of sadness and defeat.  Somehow however, it was all two and a half hours away, [that  is how we measure distance around here, in drive time] and was slightly unreal,  as if you could go to bed that night, and wake up to a new reality, finding it all just a nightmare.

It came home, and touched me where I  live,that night.  There is a lovely night sky at stately Willohroots manor, with just a hint of light pollution to cloud the sky in the East from the city of Scranton,  the darkness of the night sky  above Appalachian chain here in the Endless Mountains of Pennsylvania, at an altitude of 1500 ft.  provides a wonderful observation deck for the canopy of stars and planets above us.  some people have a prayer closet, and if that works for them fine, but I have found I need as little material separating me from God as possible.  I have a prayer yard.  Looking up at the wonders of the heaven, knowing it was all created by God, and that He knows the stars by name and put each in the right place and that the light from some of them have been on the way to my eyes for millenia, and yet God is no older now than when He created them, well, it all combines to quell even my giant ego and put me in the proper mood to pray.  I was in need of prayer that night,  fearful of our future as a nation, of reprisals, frustrated that I had nothing to offer to help my fallen brothers, emotionally drained and looking forward to the embrace of my God.

As i looked up into the clear sky, something struck me as very wrong.  It took a few minutes to process,  but there were no aircraft.  I live under a fly zone, a highway in the sky.  Wilkes-Barre Scranton  Airport is used as a radio beacon for fly over traffic, and is relatively busy on it’s own.  That night , and for a few nights after,  for the first time in my life, there was no air traffic.   I looked up at the sky as did Abraham, Issac, and Jacob.  I looked at a sky devoid of modern travel, I looked at the sky as Jesus and the Apostles did,  nothing up there of man,  only what God hath wrought.

So every night, as I take the dogs out and look up,  I  count two to five aircraft, most way to high or distant to hear, and I remember 9/11/01.  Each evening is a reminder that it will take very little to wipe the tracks of man from the world,  very little to change our way of life permanently. Every night I think of the  war radical Islam is bringing against us,  the horrible casualties thereof, and the uncertain future of my children.

I know God is everywhere,  but above the circle of the earth,  above the atmosphere we use for life and air travel,  outward of the globe of strife and conflict where Satan is, for a time,  allowed to act as a rogue Prince,  is a universe, imagined,  designed,  built, and maintained by a God of Mercy and Order.  It is so good to know that He will eventually ,  in His good time,  bring Order and Justice  to reign in peace here, on our little dot spinning round at the edge of the Milky Way.

Every time I look up now at the night sky I say, ” Come quickly Lord!”. Until then, I hope that my children will see planes when they look up at the night sky.  May they fly in peace untill He comes.

Birds of a feather?

While in the deepest, most rural regions of Virginia, we came across a species of bird new to us.   Some sort of turkey on steroids, it is called a Hokie bird.  Beloved by the natives,  it is cheered on by the local populace, and it’s war cry is imitated by thousands.   I hear there is a place in it’s nest for a trophy.

This is an example of one we found in Blacksburg.  [ the one on the left is a Hokie,  the one on the right I am still figuring out after 21 years]   There must be some sort of infectious nature to it all, as I find myself cheering for a guy named Tyrod,  respecting a fellow named Beamer, and saying “Go Hokies!”  I have yet to gobble,  but as the condition advances it may become irresistible.

Go Hokies!

Witnessing Baptism at Dayspring

See this crowd?  They vary in age,  skin color,  gender,  national origin, native language, educational level and economic status.  They  do not vote alike, talk alike,  enjoy the same pastimes, or eat the same kinds of food.  What  in the world that could unite such a diverse collection.?

This is Dayspring Bible Chapel , well some of Dayspring,  at the Baptism last Sunday.  They have a lot in common that you do not notice at first glance.

• They are all sinners
• Their Savior is Jesus the Risen Messiah
• They love Jesus and because of that life changing love they seek to love God ands their neighbor with all the strength of their heart
• They depend on the Holy Spirit to author and grow that love
• They are my family, for whom I would give my all

I look at this picture and feel  a  great responsibility.  It is my calling, as I love my Savior,  to feed this flock.  I must feed them good solid Biblical food,  and attempt to shepherd them with love and the Spirit’s guidance.  That responsibility alone should keep me humble and cause me to pray without ceasing.