Does God Need Us To Pray?

There's a question for you.  Does God need us to pray?  Yes and no.  Don't you love answers like that?  There are a lot of role playing games out there, many online, but the classics as well, like Dungeons & Dragons.  I remember reading one that defined a very interesting relationship between humanity and deity.  It went like this:

There is this divine realm beyond the human realm.  It is made up basically of compartments of all the different religions, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, etc., etc.  The divine realm is of a finite size and the relative sizes of each religious 'zone' is relative to the number of believers the religion has.  So, back when Christianity was young, it contended with very large sections devoted to Mt. Olympus and to Asgard.

In that vision of the natural and the supernatural, God would certainly need our prayers.  If we produced our 'gods' out of collective conscious (or unconscious), prayer would be the fuel on which the divine ran.

Thank the Lord it doesn't work that way!  To assume it does actually mocks God.  As the all-powerful Sovereign Lord, there is nothing that is beyond God's knowledge and determination.  There is no request that we can put before the Lord that will come as a surprise to Him (I have trouble going gender-neutral on the All Mighty).  So, in one sense, does God need us to pray?  No, She doesn't (Fair is fair!).

But in another, more fundamental way, God indeed needs us to pray.  Not for His/Her sake, but for our own.  God is all-powerful, we are all-broken.  In the gospels, Jesus does not even include himself in what he defines as "good" when he speaks to the Rich Young Ruler.  None of us is "good".  All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  Praise God that Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life!

Now consider this: God needs us to pray so that we stay focused on the things of God.  A prayer could be said along the lines of "Heal all the sick people everywhere" or "We pray for all the missionaries" but that is so abstract as to be meaningless as a prayer. 

When we pray for Mr. X who has cancer, we are investing ourselves into their healing process.  We are remembering him, we are giving a d**n about him, God's Spirit is working in us to connect to him as our neighbor.

When we pray for Missionary Y in deepest darkest Illinois, once again, we are investing ourselves in their ministry.  The more specific our prayers, the more time and inclination we have taken to specify our prayers, the more we will care about the ministry we are interceding for, and the more our own lives will change-perhaps along the lines of that very mission work.

People complain to me that they don't know how to pray, as if their lack of ability will be offensive to God.  My response is to remember your multiplication tables.  Remember how we had to drill those things, 1x1 through 10x10 (the 11 and 12 times tables came later).  We drilled them until they became second nature.  So it is with prayer.

Don't know how to pray?  God needs you more than anyone to pray.  Because when you pray, I mean really pray, not simply come to God with your Christmas list, but are willing to listen, willing to look for answers, willing to let Him work in you, you will change.  God needs you to pray so that you will learn that change, achieve that change, and become more like our Lord Jesus Christ.  And for our God in Heaven, that is something She would appreciate very much.

“Does Our Church Thunder? Or Does It Clatter?”

September 15, 2013

Sermon Text: I Corinthians 12:27-13:7

SERMON:  “Does Our Church Thunder? Or Does It Clatter?”

Rev. Peter Hofstra

            As we begin to interact with the ideas from the Journey, our time together is going to consider things that get in the way of the church carrying out its vision in joy and wonder.  As we become aware of them, can we find, in Scripture, Jesus’ leading to overcome what gets in our way.

            Here is the hypothesis: “We come to church and church activities weary, rattled, and empty from hectic, out of balance lives.  We come with little left to give.  We are free to choose in every area of our lives, but what we fail to realize is that our choices then bind us.  Often our choices block meaning participation in the church.”

            One church’s self-description expands from this idea.  They are “overwhelmed, over-committed, and burnt out.  We have learned from our culture that all our time must be filled with activity.  It seems the church adds to this problem by demanding more of our time and energy.  We no longer take the time to listen and discern how God would have us full our time.”

            Very quickly, the governing council of the church responded by asking “How can we get more members to do the work of the church?”  Instead of recognizing how overwhelming the demands are on the lives of our members, instead of recognizing that the role of the church is to provide an oasis in the midst of the chaos of life, this response treats the problem of being overwhelmed as a symptom of an operational problem to be solved, looking for ways to enlist more volunteers in order to relieve the overburdened few that carry the load.

            The members of the church community suffer from a mindset of scarcity.  “I just don’t have the time.”  And the Christian life gets pushed to the margins, an hour a week when “we go to church.”

            Here are the questions based on this hypothesis.  Do these paragraphs describe our church, in your estimation?  Do you have a ‘for instance’ that you can share?  Secondly, what forces in the culture around us do you feel this church is contending with as it seeks to be faithful to its ministry and mission?  The questions are up on the screen and there is room for them to be written in to your connection card.

Now, a biblical response, so here is our Scripture reading once again:

“Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. ²⁸And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers; then deeds of power, then gifts of healing, forms of assistance, forms of leadership, various kinds of tongues. ²⁹Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? ³⁰Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? ³¹But strive for the greater gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way.

13If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. ²And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast,^* but do not have love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant ⁵or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; ⁶it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. ⁷It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

            There are two pieces of Scripture here that not usually joined together in preaching.  The more famous is 1 Corinthians 13, the exposition of love.  It is the most selected passage for weddings and its power is undeniable, fundamental to the lives of all Christians.

            The verses from Chapter 12 are also very important to the life and structure of the church.  In talking about the body of Christ, Paul is explaining to the people of Corinth that there are many gifts from the Spirit, there are many roles for people in the church, it is the diversity of a church that is being explained.

            But, in fact, they connect in a very fundamental way.  The first verses are about what goes into the creation of the body of Christ, apostles, prophets, teachers, power-doers, healers, the list goes on.  And the warning is to respect the diversity of gifts, is to know and understand that there is a place for everyone and there is work to be done by everyone.  The church is charged with figuring that out.

            But then, as we go into chapter 13, there is something even more at stake for those of us who know and love Jesus as our Lord and Savior.  You can have faith ‘to move mountains’, you can have all wisdom and knowledge, you can speak in the tongues of mortals and angels, but if you do not have love, you have nothing.

            When I started preparing for this sermon, when I started to reflect on these words, I thought Paul was warning against those entering into the work of the church going in with a big ego, or grand personal ambitions, or the desire to be numero uno.  The warnings seem to fit.  Don’t go for the top job, do the job from love. 

            But the more I reflected, the less certain I became.  Consider how people move into the work of the church.  It begins at their loving relationship with Jesus Christ.  Each person comes to a place where they know that Jesus loves them, loves them so much that he gave up his life for them on the cross at Calvary. 

            Coming to a church home is the next natural step in that process, finding fellow Christians around whom you can build a loving community that is in God’s image, not the image of the world around us.  From that community, as experience grows, so does involvement.  As involvement grows, the words of Paul take on better meaning.  What are we called to do in the church?  How do we participate in its growth, drawing more of God’s power to ourselves against a world that would seek to tear us down?

            I believe Paul is speaking to us about people who have their roles in the church, who have been working at it for so long, that they have forgotten why they began.  I think Paul is talking about burn out, just doing the job because that’s what you’ve always done.  But even if you are the best in the world, world-moving, if you don’t have love, it means nothing. 

            And if the hypothesis is to be believed, we come to church and church activities weary, rattled, and empty from hectic, out of balance lives.  Is that your truth?  Is that your reality?  Has the schoolwork overwhelmed you?  To my people in school, you have been in class for a week, anybody feel like they are already three weeks behind?

            Or how about those of us who work?  How many of you who have a whole new week of work to look forward to next week wouldn’t trade places to be back in the classroom in a heartbeat?

            And I will not forget those of us who are retired.  Most of you are busier now than when you held down jobs.

            The purpose of church is not to add to the burden and time demands.  This is the place of relief.  You come here on a Sunday to worship because of what Jesus has given to you.  You take the rest of the tools out into the week with you, prayer, Scripture, measuring in your life how the Lord would want you to act, helping others when and where you are able, to build upon the spirit of the Living God found here.

            This is the place where we are reminded that love is patient; love is kind, that love ⁷bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  We are reminded that these are not just abstract platitudes, nice things to say because Christians are nice people. 

            We are given the living example of love in the person and life of our own Lord Jesus Christ.  We see him in his ups and downs, in celebration and persecution, in times of joy and times of sorrow.  It was his life, his teachings, his leadership, his faithfulness unto death, even death on the cross; this knowledge of Jesus is what Paul writes from.

            So the church is not about filling the jobs because we have to.  It’s not about setting the agenda of what a church is ‘supposed’ to do, then endlessly worrying and begging and pressing for people to get the work done. 

            The agenda that we set, the jobs we seek to fill, what church is supposed to do, is to bring us into the love and grace of our Lord Jesus, to be an oasis in the world that surrounds us with its demands.  Here is where we are anchored to live the life of love out there.

            So go back to the questions.  Do we come here weary, rattled, and empty from hectic, out of balance lives? Secondly, what forces in the culture around us do you feel this church is contending with as it seeks to be faithful to its ministry and mission?  Finally, are you willing to work with this body of believers, to take this journey, to overcome what stands in our way that we may live the love of Jesus Christ in our neighborhood in God’s kingdom?

            I invite you to answer those questions for yourselves.  If you wish, include them on the connection card and return them to us when we receive those cards in the offering in just a few moments.

Amen.

“Do You Know What the Church Is Called To Do?”

Sermon from Sept. 8, 2013   First in the Missional Context Series

Text: Matthew 28:16-20

            Here is the checklist for doing church:

1.      Are we worshipping Jesus with joy and wonder? ___

2.      Have we spelled “Presbyterian” right? ___

3.      Do we have a clear and compelling vision statement for the church?  ___  Is it easily remembered?

4.      Do we have a plan for church-wide response and implementation ?

There, I think we have gotten stuck.

It is time for this church to begin its Journey to implement our vision.  Step one is to discover our ‘missional context’.  That is technical jargon for how a congregation “does church”.

             Our church has been participating in the Jeremiah Journey process with sister churches in our Presbytery.  The first portion of that Journey was done more behind the scenes, setting up a team, getting to know one another, considering where this church comes from.

That culminated in our church’s “conference on the past”, conducted at our 210^th anniversary celebration.  Generations of church members have strong affection for their time as youth in this church, from our current group on back.  Best memory: Shirley Petersen calling the Session members the ‘bully boys’.

Now, our Jeremiah Journey is going to become far more visible in the life of the church.  JJ comes out of the Center for Parish Development, an organization doing the best work today helping churches do what God is calling them to do.

Our aim is to take their materials, connect them to Scripture, and consider seriously where we are and what our context is as we take the next step on our checklist. 

            Using the JJ definition, a church comes together to do its work out of ‘common view’, a ‘collective understanding’ as Christians.  The challenge is trying to define that common view when we, as individuals, come out of such divergent backgrounds.  Is the Biblical ‘bottom line’ that we are called to work from?   

            I believe it is the Great Commission, Jesus’ final words to his disciples in the gospel of Matthew.   He begins, “All authority on heaven and earth has been given to me.” His disciples work in the earthly to make disciples of all nations by 1. Baptizing in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  2. Teaching obedience to Jesus.   

            That is the Bible’s “common view” of the church, its “collective understanding” for the church.  Each individual church is then challenged to figure out how to do that work in their own context.  Different people, with different backgrounds and differing needs, they come together in a church environment, they unite to achieve something bigger than themselves.  Achieving this unity is a common human experience.

            This kind of unity can happen on a grand scale, organized and spread across nations.  Remember the Cold War? US vs. USSR?  Before we were enemies, we united against the greater evil of Nazi Germany in the Second World War.

            This kind of unity can be spontaneous and organic.    Remember the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid?  The Soviet Union was the power house hockey team, built on soldiers, therefore ‘amateurs’, but full time hockey players.  And the Red Army Team was consistently one of the five best hockey teams-including the NHL-in the world.   Then came along a team of true amateurs, young men from the United States, who took those Russians to school American-style, and took the country along with them.  

            This kind of unity can bring together the strangest bed-fellows.  In the last months, when reports of how the National Security Agency is conducting broad-based spying operations on American citizens went public, Liberal Democrats and Conservative Republicans joined hands, to protest. 

            This kind of unity can simply be people reacting to a situation.  I am thinking of how Miley Cyrus’ onstage antics at the MTV Video Music Awards united people in disgust and distaste.

            Now, come back to church.  This unity is brought to us by Jesus.  Each of us is called into a personal relationship with him, each of us coming to the foot of the cross, each of us surrendering our lives to him, each of us born again into new lives of grace and salvation in Him.  

            Then, as a congregation, we reach out with the gift of grace and salvation to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey all Jesus’ commands.

            This is the Bible’s common view, the bible’s collective understanding of what it means to ‘do church’.  The next step is to figure out how to do that.  And we start with our vision, ‘being a neighborhood in God’s Kingdom’.  Now, back to our checklist.  What’s next?  JJ encourages us to figure out where we are.  What’s our context?  There are questions we have to answer.  

            “Who do we say we are?”  What is our particular identity as the First Presbyterian Church of Perth Amboy, New Jersey in September of 2013.

            “What is going on out there?”  We do not live in a vacuum.  There are particular challenges and circumstances going on in the community around us, in the nation around us, in the world around us that affect who we are and how we react to things.

            “What is going on in here?”  We are the church.  What are we, in fact, doing or failing to do at this time in this place?  What attitudes, what fears, what hopes, what expectations, what stuff, mental and emotional and spiritual, do we bring to the table?

            These are the same questions the disciples faced when Jesus commissioned them.  They too needed to know who they were and needed a plan to move forward.

            Seen the movie, “The Avengers”?  Captain America and Iron Man have a crisis.  Cap is thinking ‘team’, thinking united effort.  “We need a plan of attack!”  Iron Man replies as the lone sentinel, the solo hero, “I have a plan…attack!”  But in the end, Captain America is right.  They need the team and they need a plan to win the day.

            Here at the giving of the Great Commission, the disciples are the team.  These words are their Vision.  And when they receive the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, they will have their plan to carry out Jesus’ vision.

            We are the team of the First Presbyterian Church of Perth Amboy.  We have a Vision.  And we are going to use the Holy Spirit to inspire us with the truth of Scripture as we test these best practices for a church to discover its missional context laid out in the Jeremiah Journey.  We will take what God gives to us, and discard the rest.

            And don’t be scared, because we are not alone.  Jesus’ final words to us are a guarantee.  “I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Amen.

 

 

 

Contemplation: "The Last Templar" by Raymond Khoury

I love historical conspiracy books, especially when the Templars are involved.  "The Last Templar" opens with a scene of four men, mounted on horseback, dressed as Templars, riding into the Met to raid a special Vatican exhibit.  In the exhibit is a Templar encoding device, which allows ancient documents to be deciphered that could lead to a treasure that would turn Christianity upside down.

Who could ask for anything more?

There are enough gaps in our Templar knowledge, mysteries unanswered, oddities strewn about to fill in with a grand imagination.  Raymond Khoury does that wonderfully.

I didn't read this one by eye, but by ear.  Richard Ferrone brings the narrative to life.

What interests me the most about thrillers of this sort is their take on the Christian faith and what could be so huge as to undercut the entire Church-although for some reason it is usually the Roman Catholic Church that fills the role for the entire body of Christendom.  I guess they are more fun to pick on than Presbyterians.

"The Da Vinci Code" is the measure against which such historical conspiracies are measured.

As a book, there is much to strain credulity, some details that didn't exactly line up, some harsh treatments of the Christian church, but on the whole, I enjoyed it.

SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If you are at all planning to read or listen to this book, stop right now!  I am not a reviewer, I want to measure popular culture's take on my faith.  So I am going to do that starting now.

The Templers were supposed to have, in their possession, a journal, a gospel, written in the hand of Jesus himself that outlines his life, not as the Son of God or the Miracle Worker, but simply as a man, a reformer, and a radical at the time of Caesar Augustus.  All the rest of it, Christmas, Easter, the healings, the raisings from the dead, the casting out of demons, walking on water, the piling on of divine status, all of that is the result of the next generations of leadership deciding to create the religion we have now as the grand fiction piled on top of this historic figure.

And it was so convincing that it allowed the Templars to blackmail the Church for two centuries.  And the hidden references to it in the Vatican library are so compelling that the Vatican will conspire with the world to keep it hidden.  There is a Monseigneur hit man playing a villainous role throughout.

This idea of Jesus as simply a teacher is nothing new.  People from Thomas Jefferson to Albert Schweitzer have sought to strip away the miraculous, the eschatological (end-times stuff), and the divinity from Jesus.  The ethics of Jesus, forgiveness, love, and justice, seem to make up the core of what is left to the teacher-human.

My response is that if you do away with all the miraculous stuff in the gospel accounts and base your interpretation solely on the words of Jesus, you get a madman!  Jesus claimed all kinds of crazy things about "I and the Father are one", the temple of his body being destroyed and rebuilt in three days, right on down the line to presuming to be an expert at fishing, telling the disciples it is better to fish at midday.  Or, if one side of the boat has been bad for casting, try the other side!

Now I am being deliberately provocative.  People who want to draw lines around Jesus to tuck him into a certain cubby hole have the best reasoning about what parts of the bible should be left behind and what parts might be true. 

The premise of the novel is that there is another gospel, authored by Jesus, which debunks all the rest of the New Testament (or is there?).  The author does not stray into giving us any quotes or examples from this gospel manuscript on what is different, and I think that is wise.  It would never be a good idea to try and outwrite the bible.

There have been other gospels that have been recovered in the historical record that have caused a stir.  The Nag Hammadi library is referenced in the novel and is the largest cache of these 'other' holy books.  There hasn't been enough in them yet to upset the balance of Holy Scripture.  Bible believer would point to God's preservation of His holy Word.  Nay-sayers would point to book-burning, power hungry religious types.

Could such a gospel really exist?  Could it force the opening of the Canon of Scripture?  Could it force us to re-examine the basics of our faith?  Could it be at once so dissimilar to the presentation of Jesus in the current gospel accounts and yet be faithful enough to the time and place to convince people to believe it?  Could it have survived down to the present age without seeing the light of day?

To me, that presses me to consider what would I have to see or read to be convinced that the New Testament as we have it is a falsehood.

I don't know what that would look like.  Because here is what I believe.  I believe the Bible as a whole shows a division of two things.  There is the perfection of God and the brokenness of the world.  When these two are put side by side, it is always to point to the perfection of God, brokered to us by Jesus in his sacrifice for us, and instilled in us by the Holy Spirit.

What humans have done with the Bible since that time, the wars, the pogroms, the inquisitions, the slaughters, that is a whole other issue, at least for me.  My religion has much evil to answer for in its history.  My faith seeks to overcome those evils with good for the next generation.

Lawsuit Over The 9/11 Cross

I was watching a news report on the 9/11 museum slated to open.  One of the displays is going to be a cross, two pieces of structural steel that became this symbol of the Christian faith and a symbol of hope to many of those working at Ground Zero.  And it was the subject of a lawsuit to prevent it being displayed.

According to the Christian Post online, "New Jersey-based American Atheists Inc. filed a lawsuit in 2011 against the planned presentation of the cross-shaped beam, arguing it will impose religion "through the power of the state." "  Somehow, this is to "Christianize" 9/11, the argument goes on to say.

Now, these reports were back in March and April, the news report today said the lawsuit was still open, I could not find more recent articles after a very cursory search of  "Google."

Usually, I am a person to accommodate the questions and arguments of people who disagree with or speak against my faith.  The purpose of this blog, in part, is to talk about how the faith is portrayed in the popular media.  It takes a lot to make me angry.  This makes me angry.

This is like the "keep Christ in Christmas" argument that shows up every year in some form or other.  This is like the lawsuits to keep  a crèche off public property or strip the Ten Commandments away from legal institutions or God knows what else.  Most of the time, I can dismiss such things because, frankly, there are more important things that I have to put my energy into.  But 9/11 occupies a unique place in my faith and my psyche.

What I take offence to is in the presumption that my faith is seeking government power to expand its  presence and control in this country.  Thomas Jefferson, in his Presidential inaugural address, said "And let us reflect that, having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions."

We have the FREEDOM of religion in this country.  That was the answer of our Founding Fathers to the religious intolerance, persecutions, and wars of Europe.  The answer was NEVER to sideline religion, to stick it in a corner, to allow a secular mentality to force it to the margins.  That is the message that we should be celebrating.  That is the story that this cross from Ground Zero should be telling. 

We have gotten very paranoid as a nation about religious extremism, and with good reason.  There are violent Christian-avowing extremist groups in our nation, including the KKK and any number of 'militia's.  There are Christian leaders who see the use of political power and influence as valid tools of evangelism and the extension of a blended Christian-American religio-nationalism.  I accept that some leaders in our nation support the nation of Israel in an attempt to move us to the End Times as outlined in the Book of Revelations.  (I consider their theology to be arrogant to the core that they can somehow force God into Armageddon).

But the way to address these dark forces of the Christian religion in the American culture is NOT to suppress our freedom of expression.  Rather, it is to embrace it.  Our Christian Founding Fathers (and don't try to water down their faiths by calling them 'deists') created a nation where all religions were welcome because the Christians of the countries of Europe were slaughtering each other.  Our Christian Founding Fathers found in the words of Jesus the concepts of peace, love, justice, and truth.  And they were willing to let the truth of Jesus go toe to toe with the truth of any other faith, including faith in humanity itself, freely and protected by the government.

The Christians who put on the collar and the gothic black clothes (Medieval Gothic Black, not modern gothic black) and went in as chaplains at Ground Zero did not go in to 'convert the unbelievers' in their time of weakness.  They did not go in to extend the power of the state to set up Christianity as the State Religion.  They went in to help any person they came in contact with to muster their own spiritual and emotional resources to overcome the Great Evil of that day.

And many of them are suffering and dying from the same illnesses that have afflicted the First Responders and workers at Ground Zero.

That cross properly symbolizes the Christian faith as one best practiced when men and women of faith are helping other, healing others, serving others, counseling others, and loving others because that is what Jesus would want them to do.  That is the message of our faith that will transcend those who would try to subvert the Christian faith for their own purposes.  That is the message of our faith that should speak to those people who brought their lawsuit to ban the cross from the museum.  That is the message of our faith that was enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of our great nation. 

God Loves, Man Kills

A couple is having their first child.  Preeclampsia is diagnosed.  The mom's health is not the strongest and the doctors recommend, to save her life, she should have an abortion.  The couple consults with their religious leader who invokes "Thou shalt not kill."  In the case of an unborn child, their religious leader asks "What if the child were one year old?  One month old?  Would you give your life for the child then?"  The couple decides against an abortion and instead, 'to trust in God'.  The wife dies of complications and the baby dies, its lung undeveloped.  The husband will NEVER trust God again.

The member of one church discovers that their co-worker attends a different church.  In what I guess is a test of orthodoxy, the first church member asks what their co-worker believes about homosexuality.  This question about belief comes with the assurance from the church member that the Bible-and God-do, in fact, condemn homosexuality without exception.  The co-worker chooses to remain silent about their beliefs rather than face condemnation from someone they consider could be a friend.

Church colleagues discuss whether or not the United States should militarily intervene in Syria in the wake of chemical warfare.  People of faith hedge their bets, give generic answers, go into political arguments.  Biblical or ethical arguments are avoided, as is the unspoken subtext questioning how a loving God could permit humans to use Sarin gas on one another.

Anybody who claims to speak for God is putting themselves into such a presumptuous, vulnerable position. 

There is a bumper stick that reads "The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it."  It SHOULD read "God said it, I believe it, that settles it."

How many words do we put into the mouth of our God in heaven?  How many times do we, the humans, cause pain and injury and suffering because we are arrogant enough to be God's prophet?  It is bad enough when a human is self-serving when they seek to invoke God's authority.  It is more painful, for me at least, when the human invoking God's name really thinks that hurting someone else is God's will.

Wonder why people either find the church, as God's thing, at best irrelevant, and, at worst, culpable, for the evils that happen around us?

Where do we start?  My suggestion is to measure anything that anyone ever claims with Godly or Biblical or Churchly (Ecclesial) authority against the one Biblical measure that is the foundation for all the rest.  "God is Love."

If love isn't there, I believe there is a problem.