Axwell - Nothing But Love

Came across this on facebook, interesting vid and message to the song.  I checked out some of their other songs/videos and they all seemed to be about how many bikini clad women they could cram onto the set so not very interesting, but I thought this one was a) an interesting example of pop culture using a contemporised Jesus narrative and b) might be a usefull discussion starter for a Bible study/sermon on loving your enemies.  Plus it is a pretty sweet choon. :-)

Sermon on 2 Kings 5, "Don't Put a Price on God's Grace"

A sermon by yours truly can be listened to here, or downloaded from here.  About 40 mins long, preached at Greenlane Christian Centre on the 5th September.

Keywords: Naaman, Gehazi, Elisha, God, Grace, Jesus Christ, manners, compassion for others

Blogging moments

Ben Myers and Darrell Pursiful squeal like little girls about "man church." And cos I'm a feminist, I have to agree.

Jim unveils the most important archaeological discovery ever.

And Lucy gives a moving account of why love is worth barking for.

More on Death and more on Love (being inadequate)

I am always badgering my students to make their reflections rooted in specific events and circumstances instead of the general sweeping statement, Clayboy's reflection on the death of one of his parishoners shows why.

Interestingly Magret Hebron also comes to the conclusion (pace the Beatles and Steve) that love does not equal Christianity, although she is coming at it from a totally different perspective than Hays, her argument ends up being remarkably similar.

Love is NOT all you need

Richard Hays in The Moral Vision of the New Testament, (p202)  gives three reasons why "love" is inadequate as a unifying theme for NT ethics (and by implication why it is inadequate for ethics today).

1.  Mark, Acts, Hebrews, and Revelation "resist any attempt to sythesze their moral visions by employing love as a focal image . . . Despite the powerful theological uses to which the motif of love is put by Paul and John, that motif cannot serve as the common denominator for New Testament Ethics."  Instead Hays suggests "community, cross and new creation."

2.  "What the New testament means by love is embodied in the concretely in the cross."  and so to treat love apart from the cross is to result in "conceptual abstraction, away from the specific image of the cross."

3.  "The term ["love"] has become debased in popular discourse; it has lost its power of discrimination, having become a cover for all manner of vapid self indulgence."  "We can recover the power of love only by insisting that love's meaning is to be discovered in the New Testament's story of Jesus - therefore, in the cross."

So who do you believe, Hays or the Beatles?

I love U

That was the custom number plate on a car that was dawdling in the middle lane of the motorway this morning. As I approached I was feeling mildly irritated by the dawdling but couldn't help but smile when I read the plate. I know I wasn't the object of that sentence but at the same time just reading those words cheered me up. As I passed the car I saw it was being driven by a middle aged lady, who obviously aware that having such a number plate meant many inquiring looks from other motorists, kept her eyes trained dead ahead. In that brief moment I thought of how how the person who gave her that number plate must have loved her. Then, after returning my eyes to the road ahead, I thought about how much she must love him (?) to actually drive around with that plate on her car. The number plate was both an embarrassingly public declaration of love, but also a very public acceptance of that love.

It gave me a warm glow at the time.

Love needs to be public. Somehow a love that we keep to ourselves and hide away from others is not really complete. The public declaration of an internal feeling lends it a substance and reality that it lacks when only a secret. Not only that, but when public that love can benefit others around who witness it. God's love for us was made public in the cross of Christ (1 John 3:16) and continues to be made public when those who God loves take up their own crosses, discipleship. When we live according to the radical demands of the gospel it is not a burden but a gift (1 John 5:3). we don't live in denial of ourselves to show how much we can love, but to show how much we are loved by God and our acceptance of that love. Just like that lady's number plate showed first that she was loved, and only then that she loved back, our lives should show that "We love because God first loved us." (1 John 4:19)

Book Review: Emerson Eggerichs, Love and Respect

This book is essentially a Christian version of "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus." It's central hypothesis is that men and women see the world differently and have different needs and that because of this misunderstanding often causes problems in marriage. (In this way it is also a bit like the five love languages stuff) The solution according to Eggerichs is that men need to love their wives, and women need to respect their husbands... whether or not they feel they deserve it at that moment in time. Eggerichs helpfully diagnoses the "crazy cycle" which is a vicious circle where withholding love or respect from your spouse causes your spouse to withhold the love or respect that you desire which causes you to withhold even more, etc, etc. This book is very practically focused and I have to say the advice is pretty good. A lot of people would benefit from reading this and I will definitely use some of this material in my own ministry. but I do have some significant issues with this book.

1. it is too long and rambling, it needs to be half the length and have a much tighter structure
2. Eggerichs never actually defines what exactly he means by love and respect he just takes it as a given, although we do get some clarity from his examples of what constitutes love and respect, these words have a wide potential range of meaning and it needed clarifying
3. Eggerichs spends far too much time promoting his ministry and conferences, which is annoying
   
4. Eggerichs overdoes how unique and original his teaching is, which is annoying
5. this book is hopelessly stuck in middle America and it would have benefited from being based broader culturally, this limits its usefulness in other contexts
6. the use of scripture in this book is appalling, proof texting, paraphrasing and downright inaccuracy abound, although none of his conclusions are 'unbiblical' as such, he behaves as if the scripture were written directly to address middle class 21st C American marital problems, this made it hard for me to recommend

In giving my final score to Love and Respect I need to take into account the final section, which I nearly didn't reach. This redeemed the book from one I couldn't really recommend to one I feel I can, with qualification. This contains some really good and truly Christian (rather than just pragmatic) teaching, but even that is still rather slap dash and would have benefited from a more theologically critical editing. Overall, some good practical advice, but with significant shortcomings.

[This book review was done under the Thomas Nelson Book Review Bloggers Program, go to http://brb.thomasnelson.com/ for details.]

The two lenses of the Christian life

When Paul sums up the way Christian 'ought to live and to please God' (1 Thes 4:1) he uses only two primary concepts:

"and may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you. And may he so strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless before our God and father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with his saints."
- 1 Thessalonians 3:12-13

Love and holiness are so often played off against each other. You get 'love Christians' who know that all you have to do is love and accept and help people and that is Christianity in a nutshell. And you get 'holiness Christians' who are terrified they might accidentally associate with the wrong type of person, or with someone who holds the wrong doctrine, or even watch a movie that is not quite pure. Living in each extreme is pretty easy. Doing things a much harder way are those poor souls trying to be 'balanced Christians' who recognise the law of love but also the importance of holiness and try to find a mediating position between the two masters as if God is some two headed monster with conflicting personalities to be satisfied! But watching the way Jesus, or Paul went about their business it is clear that the love/holiness thing should not be understood as a tension - or a choice of which side of Christianity should be face up this time; like tossing a coin to see if we demonstrate love or holiness in our next action. Instead holiness is only Christian holiness when it is transformed by love, and love is only Christian love when it is transformed by holiness. Holiness without love is mere religion, and love without holiness is idolatry. They are not two sides of a coin, but two lenses in a telescope that both need to be brought into focus for every activity and together provide a view of the Christian life, of each other, and of all, that neither can alone.

Let me know what you think :-)
(BTW this is my 100th post on this blog!! Thanks for stopping by :-))

God, Worship, and Love: thoughts on 1 John 4:7-12

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No-one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. (1 John 4:7-12)

I must confess, I am becoming more and more frustrated with the songs we sing in church and the songs I hear on Christian radio. Far too many of them focus on our love for God. There is nothing wrong with telling God we love God, or expressing our feelings of gratitude, or even expressing how we want to feel towards God (despite the reality of our cold hearts). But it is depressing all the same. My love for God is pathetic, of mixed motives, and constantly wavering. God's love for me is unlimited, pure, and never failing. Which would you rather focus on? Instead of singing to God "I love you" it is much more amazing to sing "you love me!"

This God of love is manifested as we love each other. Another confession, I would feel awkward to sing songs of love to the rest of my church family. But that is no reason not to do it. This passage of scripture asks us to respond to God's love, not with an introverted spiritual activity where we experience an intimate and loving moment with God "I love you, you love me", but by loving each other "you (God) love me, so I love your people". It is this outward loving (towards each other) rather than the 'upward' love (towards God only) that actually sees the transcendent God living among us completely. We love God as we live through Christ by loving each other. Experiences of Spiritual intimacy are not wrong, in fact they can be wonderful, but neither are they complete experiences of God's love.

Anyone know any songs that combine "God loves me" with "we love each other"?