Lest Blood Be Shed

About two years ago SJC was involved in a grant that was focused on media delivery over the Internet. To that end, we bought a lot of different cool tools for video "stuff" being process and delivered via a network connection. I guess because I was the "guru" heading up the project I have inherited all of the equipment. So what does one do with a $1500 self-contained streaming video camera? Well setup a webcam of my office of course! Not that anyone will be interested but it feels so wasteful not to use the camera. I have the image set to a smaller size with a medium compression rate... as such it produces images of about ~8kB. The camera will try to deliver the ~8kB images with "motion" quality.

I don't know how long I'll have the camera on my desk but if the camera is not doing anything real it will be showing the office.

One would think that bringing a semi-automatic weapon into a place of religious worship would only happen in countries that are run by tyrants and dictators. Well, maybe that is happening right here in the US? I received the following email from someone at McCormick: "I'm not sure who posted it but it's about a military recruiting evening held in a Baptist church in Lexington, Kentucky. A guy was asked by his father to attend a 'father-son' event and he brought a camera and was really disturbed to see a place of Christian worship being used to promote militarism and warfare. Even though this guy is a Republican and supporter of the war, he was shocked at the visual propagandistic ritual, which reminded him of movies he had seen about Nazi pageantry. Anyway, his account is not the best but check out the photos-you have to see this to believe it."

I was doing some studying for my sermon on Sunday and while I was reading Acts 15 I couldn't help but notice the similarities between the controversy of circumcision back then and homosexuality in the church today. To that end, I've modified the text of Acts 15 to show how close the controversy is and the arguments being used on both sides! It's pretty amazing how close they line up. It really is all about control.

Acts 15:1-35 (revised)
The Council at Jerusalem
Some men came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the brothers: "Unless you are heterosexual, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be a true Christian." This brought Paul and Barnabas into sharp dispute and debate with them. So Paul and Barnabas were appointed, along with some other believers, to go up to Jerusalem to see the apostles and elders about this question. The church sent them on their way, and as they traveled through Phoenicia and Samaria, they told how the Homosexuals had been converted. This news made all the brothers very glad. When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and elders, to whom they reported everything God had done through them.

Then some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said, "The Homosexuals must be heterosexual and required to obey the law of Moses."

The apostles and elders met to consider this question. After much discussion, Peter got up and addressed them: "Brothers, you know that some time ago God made a choice among you that the Homosexuals might hear from my lips the message of the gospel and believe. God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. He made no distinction between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith. Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of the disciples a yoke that neither we nor our fathers would be able to bear? No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are."

The whole assembly became silent as they listened to Barnabas and Paul telling about the miraculous signs and wonders God had done among the Homosexuals through them. When they finished, James spoke up: "Brothers, listen to me. Simon has described to us how God at first showed his concern by taking from the Homosexuals a people for himself. The words of the prophets are in agreement with this, as it is written:
" 'After this I will return
and rebuild David's fallen tent. Its ruins I will rebuild,
and I will restore it, that the remnant of men may seek the Lord,
and all the Homosexuals who bear my name, says the Lord, who does these things'
that have been known for ages.

"It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Homosexuals who are turning to God. Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from fornication, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood. For Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath."
The Council's Letter to Homosexual Believers
Then the apostles and elders, with the whole church, decided to choose some of their own men and send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas. They chose Judas (called Barsabbas) and Silas, two men who were leaders among the brothers. With them they sent the following letter: The apostles and elders, your brothers, To the Homosexual believers in Antioch, Syria and Cilicia: Greetings. We have heard that some went out from us without our authorization and disturbed you, troubling your minds by what they said. So we all agreed to choose some men and send them to you with our dear friends Barnabas and Paul- men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore we are sending Judas and Silas to confirm by word of mouth what we are writing. It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from fornication. You will do well to avoid these things. Farewell.

The men were sent off and went down to Antioch, where they gathered the church together and delivered the letter. The people read it and were glad for its encouraging message. Judas and Silas, who themselves were prophets, said much to encourage and strengthen the brothers. After spending some time there, they were sent off by the brothers with the blessing of peace to return to those who had sent them. But Paul and Barnabas remained in Antioch, where they and many others taught and preached the word of the Lord.

I personally do not use MSN search to do my searching on the internet but I do get a lot of people who do use the engine coming to this site. Unfortunately for them their search string has nothing to do with the content of this page. Say, for example, someone was searching for "free sex movies" or "free gay sex movies" using MSN, my site pops up on the first page (The number 2 most relevant for the latter search string). I suppose the people who use MSN search are the same people who use IE and Windows and have come to expect inadequate performance by their computer tools but my Lord the search is not even close. I'm not saying I don't like the attention but I feel sorry for the people who come here looking for... well... what they are looking for and get my theological ramblings instead.


If you are here because of MSN... use a better search engine!!!

Indiana is trying to do it again. It's trying to legislate hate and make it official as far as the state constitution is concerned. It is really beyond me to understand the reasoning people have for trying to ban same sex marriage. Sure there are quotes from people speaking in the legislature that shed some light but I cannot believe people would be so dumb as to believe such nonsense. For example, here is a quote from someone who is in support of the resolution being before the state senate. "The only way to reproduce is with a man and a woman. Who will take the [lawmaker's] seats here if we are not able to reproduce?" As if allowing same sex marriage would bring an end to heterosexual intercourse and to humanity itself! Maybe that is the root fear that would drive people to marginalize and oppress another group of people; they fear their own death and that thing feared may have little or nothing at all to do with actually causing it. Do we want people who are ruled by fear and scarcity to govern our lives and make laws that rule in our lives? I most certainly do not want to state telling me what I can do if what I do does not harm others! There are more and more laws being produced by these fearful rulers that are being put in place to take away our liberties and I think something needs to be done to stem this tide. But back to the issue at hand: homosexual marriage. Many people base their fear on the bigoted misinterpretations of the bible. These misinterpretations lead people away from the peace and abundance of God's grace and into the fear and scarcity with which they currently live. They do everything that is humanly possibleto protect themselves even killing others to protect themselves from a group that is not attacking them. They will marginalize people and oppress people in a human attempt to protect themselves. At least this is what I have observed from people who would bring to the state these types of measures in the name of "protecting" society. This is not to say everyone who sees homosexuality as a sin is in this state of fear and scarcity. There are many open people who can in a way that does not marginalize disagree on this issue. But this is not the stance of the growing constituency in many states. They are taking their belief in homosexuality and using it to commit another sin, which is oppression and marginalization. Two wrongs will not make society "right."

If we truly seek to "protect" society we must protect it from our own fear and belief that we live in scarcity. All we need do is go to the biblical witness to see what happens to society that are ruled by fear and create, ignore and punish the oppressed and the marginalized. These society have no place in the kingdom of God and rightly so these societies burned from within on their own vain glory. Look at the city of Sodom, God God's self destroyed the city because it would not minister and protect the marginalized. The prophets all speak to the destruction of society because of its lack of justice and righteousness when it came to matters of those whom the society outcast. In Ezekiel (16:48-49) we read of this sin of not supporting the poor and the oppressed pointing directly back to Sodom. In Deuteronomy 32 we read again of what sin the reader's society was committing and again it points back to Sodom and the sin of marginalization in society. There are many other references to this type of sinfulness and (self)destruction of societies that fall into this trap of fear, scarcity and marginalizing. (Wisdom 19:13; Isaiah 1:10-17, 3:9; Jeremiah 23:14; Zephaniah 2:8-11.)

The other side of this coin is the abundance of God's grace and peace in the world. Christ came as a witness to this message of not marginalizing. Moreover, Christ came to call out the rulers of the day and show them the abundance of God and that they no longer need to fear. Christ came and showed peace to all peoples and showed righteousness to all peoples and showed justice to all peoples and called all of us to do the same. The rulers killed him for challenging their fear and rule over the fear of the people. Christ revealed this abundance and thus made God available to all peoples and God did not need to be mediated through the ruling church, the authoritarian church, the legalistic church, the exclusive church, hierarchical church!

So I am calling all people to repent of their fear just ask Christ has and is calling you to live in the abundance of God's grace. Proclaim the Gospel message of love, abundance, righteousness and justice! Call your local representative and stop the Indiana legislature from hurtling this society even further into sin, fear and scarcity!

What a crazy month January has been for this site. In January this site received its highest hit count ever (81660 hits). I've also seen some really crazy searches coming to this site in January. Of course, most of the searches were for some form of tsunami video information but there were others that were just out there. Another cool thing that happened to this site in January was that it was listed on the VoIP Wiki as the site to go to if you want to know how to get asterisk running on an openwrt box. This has raised my google ranking (I think) which has resulted in more click-throughs to the site. At any rate, here are some of the more "interesting" searches of the 266 unique search strings:

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GW Bush last night made the following statement: "The United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else." My question is, what are we doing in Iraq then? Why then did Bush threaten Iran and Syria implying we would spread our form of government to these countries? Bush's foreign policy is one of conquest and empire for the United States. When will people realize?

Bush also said, "They [people who don't think like the US] seek to impose and expand an empire of oppression, in which a tiny group of brutal, self-appointed rulers control every aspect of every life." Again Bush himself is doing the same in this country. Bush mentioned later in the "state of the union" that he would seek to remove the egalitarian social security system from our government. This would further depress those already economically challenged and allow for those who have money to make more. For sure this is a system of oppression trying to be enacted by the government. Another form of oppression inside our own country Bush is seeking is to further oppress and solidify the unspoken marginalizing of homosexual couples. I just don't understand the argument on a governmental level. Are there any good reasons why the state should marginalize groups that seek the same rights of other consenting adults. Hopefully people will realize this is just the same argument the state used when denying interracial marriage. And to top it off, Bush says he will attempt to impose even more facist protections for corporations weakening the power of the people to question the government. Exactly what Bush said he is opposed to, "Our aim is to build and preserve a community of free and independent nations, with governments that answer to their citizens." How can government answer to its citizens when you make it illegal to even bring up the questions Mr. Bush?

Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?