A Matter of the Heart

This morning I heard a sermon that turned out to be a good explanation of how I feel about three important issues that cause great divisiveness in our nation: marriage, homosexuality, and abortion. Actually, the pastor was talking about divorce, but he touched on the “sanctity of marriage” and same-sex marriage. I generalized his words to include abortion. I happened to be a visitor at his church this morning.

Here’s what he said:

• The Bible tells us to “Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's." That means we should obey our government’s laws.
• We have separation of church and state.
• The government cannot “sanctify” marriage. “Sanctify” means to set apart to be holy; only God through the church can do that. No law can do it.
• Slightly more church-goers than non-church-goers get divorces. There is an obvious problem here.
• The problem is the human heart. As Jeremiah wrote: “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?”
• What we have to do is study scripture and pray and try to change one heart at a time. Only changing hearts will heal our land. Being legalistic and warlike won’t do it.

I have to agree with him.

Large numbers of Christians are almost waging war over these issues. My feelings about those things—and giving voice to those feelings—has brought pressure on me to conform during this Presidential campaign. I’ve had some trouble explaining adequately to my Christian folk who see differently. It's true that I’ve been a bit wishy-washy and unable to get a handle on things; however, I’ve been uncomfortable with the McCain-Palin (especially Palin) aggressive bashing of people who don’t agree. Also, I am uncomfortable with the Obama-Biden views of abortion.

Now I can put it into words, thanks to this morning’s pastor.

A Matter of the Heart

http://connectionsgodandtheworld.blogspot.com/2008/10/matter-of-heart.html

Half Believers

"Light half-believers of our casual creeds."

That’s what British poet Matthew Arnold said about people in the 1800’s in a poem called “The Scholar-Gypsy.” I think it is still a true indictment of us here in America today. We are casual believers. We often act on the Christian beliefs that don’t require a great deal of us and ignore those that do.

Are we too comfortable?

We like to think we control our own lives. We want to do whatever we want to do, and then when things fall apart, we want to take care of it ourselves, deal with it, solve it. We often make a mess of things. We often blame other people for our actions and choices. The Australian—The World has an article about this tendency, as seen specifically in the Mark Foley scandal.

The Bible teaches that we have a choice to give our lives fully to Christ.

What would happen if we really tried to live by the teachings of Jesus?

Half Believers

http://connectionsgodandtheworld.blogspot.com/2006/10/half-believers.html