More practical advice from Paul ...

Colossians 4:2-4 (the message)
"Pray diligently. Stay alert, with your eyes wide open in gratitude..."

5-8 "Use your heads as you live and work among outsiders. Don't miss a trick. Make the most of every opportunity. Be gracious in your speech. The goal is to bring out the best in others in a conversation, not put them down, not cut them out."

Words to Live By

This struck me this AM while reading Colossians 3 in "The Message":

~v5-8 "... make sure it's all gone for good: bad temper, irritability, meanness, profanity, dirty talk.

*ouch!*

and

v12-14: "... dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline. Be even-tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive an offense. Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave you. And regardless of what else you put on , wear love. It's your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it." (It's like American Express:never leave home without it - gh)

and

v15-17: "Let the peace of Christ keep you in tune with each other, in step with each other. None of this going off and doing your own thing. And cultivate thankfulness. Let the Word of Christ-the Message-have the run of the house. Give it plenty of room in your lives. Instruct and direct one another using good common sense. And sing, sing your hearts out to God! Let every detail in your lives-words, actions, whatever-be done in the name of the Master, Jesus, thanking God the Father every step of the way."

Was God bored?

Or lonely?

I'm talking about before he created the universe. Think about this in human terms. What if "you" was all there was. No other people, no "stuff".

Talk about claustrophobia!

That would actually be my definition of hell. Nothing else existing but me. Of course, I'm speaking from a human perspective.

But then why did God create? Maybe to relieve the endless boredom and loneliness, he extruded himself into this universe of diversity where he could get lost in the drama and forget once in awhile about being all there is.

Maybe it's like a kid playing with toy soldiers (army men, we called them) only ones he imbued with free will and the ability to function independently of himself.

People question endlessly about why God permits evil and injustice. Really, if I made a pot out of clay and decided I didn't like it and broke it up and threw it back into the scrap bin to be reconstituted into usable clay, would you question my right to do it? I paid for the clay, I created the pot and it was my time that I expended. It's not as if I broke somebody else's pot. I'm not saying God does the evil. But I'm thinking, he set the stage, introduced the players and now he wants to see what's going to happen.

Christians I know talk a lot about wanting to be in God's will. There's this concept of God's perfect will versus his permissive will. I personally think that's a bunch of hogwash. As if God's playing a guessing game with us. If we pray (beg) him to tell us what his perfect will is, maybe he'll tell us. But he's not going to make it easy. If we don't figure it out and do the wrong thing, maybe he'll give us a pass. That's his permissive will.

I mean, we're not talking about right versus wrong here. We're talking about "Should I take the job at the car wash or stay at Burger King."

Rather than saying "let's see if he can figure it out", I think God is saying "let's see what he will do". Then when we pick something, even if it's disastrous from a human point of view, I think God says, "Yeah, I can work with that." Everything is all coming back to him no matter what anybody does. Hitler, Pol Pot, Charles Manson, Hurricane Katrina, World Wars. It doesn't matter. God can and does use everything but he doesn't do everything. He left some of it for us. That's the point.

So anyhow, in the realm of permitting evil to exist, if it's all God's anyway, and he'll more than make it right after we die at least, who are we to question? That was God's response to Job: "Who are you to question me? Did you create all this? Do you sustain it?" Even if he were to try to explain it to us, we could never understand it.

I realize this is all very glib talk when faced with the suffering of innocents but that's how I see it right now from the comfort of my living room.

Brainstorming

Ok. Here are some ideas for what could happen here.
1. Guys could post here. They would have to sign up for a free blogger account.
2. We could print a monthly newsletter based on the blog contents to distribute in church both for the benefit of guys that are not comfortable using the internet and new guys that are not aware of the mens group or the blog.
3. give a class or classes in how to use the blog and/or email and/or internet
4. i could print up/email information on how to use the blog or put up a post right here on how to use it.
5. keep it simple, stupid

Restart

OK. This blog is back by popular demand. But first, one ground rule: There are no rules... yet!
I discontinued posting to this blog because it had become a chore for me and not achieving my intended result which was to foster more discussion and interaction among the men of the men's group between Saturday meetings.
A couple weeks ago, I was talking to Dikart and John K. who told me that they missed the blog and would like to see it start up again.
They had some good input which I will get into at some point but for right now I just want to throw this thing open to you guys. What do you want out of this? What are your ideas? As for me, it has to be a joy not a job so I'm just going to post what's on my heart (Christianese for mind) rather than a formal summary of what went on at each Saturday's meeting. I'm done for now. I'll post some ideas later and if you want to do some brainstorming with me, leave a comment.

The New Man Report: Men Need Men

The New Man Report: Men Need Men

An Undivided Life - April 21st

For today's meeting, we read from Chapter 11 of John Ortberg's The Life You've Always Wanted, titled "An Undivided Life: The Practice of Reflection on Scripture." The problem, according to Ortberg, is double-mindedness. In spiritual terms, wanting to follow Jesus and wanting to follow the "world" too - to have it both ways. He quotes Jack Palance's character in the movie "City Slickers": "The secret of life is pursuing one thing." Similarly the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard defines our problem as "...the failure to achieve simplicity - to have a life that is integrated, that is focused on one thing." Or as Jesus said, "seeking first the Kingdom." Ortberg goes on to define multiplicity and duplicity, the enemies of simplicity. Multiplicity is being pulled in opposing directions, eg. we want to be generous but we want to hoard our money, we want to give our time to some charity but we want our time for ourselves. Duplicity, on the other hand, involves dishonesty. We say or do something with an overtly noble intent but in reality our motives are not so pure. What comes to mind is the story of Ananias and Sapphira. They intended to appear more generous than they really were for the sake of what others thought of them.
By contrast, in simplicity, "The motives we appear to have are the ones we really have." (Clifford Williams).
So how do we do it? Ortberg says one way is to have our minds re-formed by immersing them in scripture. This means meditating on it not just reading the words. This is how our minds are "washed by the water of the word" and purified.

Next week we will continue with The Life You've Always Wanted series. Same time, same place: Sat. 7AM (yes, that's AM) in the lounge in the old building.

Please leave a comment on the blog and let BCCMan know you're out there!