Jpm123's Blog

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Joe — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 19:34:10 +0000

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Hello world!

Joe — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 19:12:40 +0000

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!

America has decreased Abortion rates in the Past..

Joe — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 13:12:17 +0000

Ok, I wanted a catchy title to get your attention. I ran across this post at a professor's blog today. I have copied and pasted the entire post here for your perusal and discussion. There is some interesting food for discussion here.

Marvin Olasky shares some key findings from his book, Abortion Rites: A Social History of Abortion in America (Crossway) in the current issue of World magazine. You may read his provocative article here: http://www.worldmag.com/printer.cfm?id=14857.

Olasky’s
surprising discovery is that the rate of abortion relative to the
population was higher in America on the eve of the Civil War than at
present. Olasky asked what made the abortion rate drop from the middle of the 19^th century until the 1960s, and this is what he found.

1.
The number one cause for the decrease in abortions was churches and
Christian organizations who educated and cared for pregnant women and
their babies. This is noteworthy today, as both
Democratic and Republican Christians seem to be increasingly aware that
providing shelter, adoption, and better choices for pregnant mothers
will do the most to end abortion. Olasky’s article demonstrates that this approach worked before, and it may well do the job again.

2. More controversial, Olasky found that while laws against abortion were not the main focus of the 19^th century prolife movement, yet they did assist in the effort. Contrary
to pro choice advocates who argue that laws against abortion will
require us to throw many women in jail, Olasky discovered that 19^th century anti-abortion laws were “almost never” used to prosecute women and only rarely the person who performed the abortion.

So why have the laws in the first place? Olasky argues that anti-abortion laws educated the people. They “did send a message of right and wrong. They forced abortionists to advertise in code, bribe policemen and politicians, and hire lawyers. Laws
could not end abortion but it could reduce the butcher’s bill, just as
laws against drunken driving today cannot end the practice but can save
lives. Today,
it’s still worthwhile to pass laws restricting abortion, but time and
money spent on providing and promoting compassionate alternatives saves
more lives.”

Here is my question: Should
we work to pass anti-abortion laws with the intent to enforce them only
against those who perform abortions, those who perform and those who
have abortions, or like the 19^th century, should we work to pass anti-abortion laws for their educational value, with little to no intent on enforcing them? Or should we forget about passing laws altogether? (not my preferred option).

On a personal note, I am grateful to Marvin Olasky for giving a shout out to Don’t Stop Believing in his review of recent books (p. 20 of the current issue of World). He included Don’t Stop Believing with William Craig’s new apologetic, Reasonable Faith (Crossway),
under the heading, “Some books are always in season, because the poorly
informed about Christ we’ll always have with us.” Amen to that.

I say Intimacy and you think…

Joe — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 10:53:31 +0000

I just heard intimacy defined as "feeling known." What do you think of that definition? What is your definition? How many people in your life do you really feel know you and that you really know?

Living in the Tension: House Church and Change

Joe — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 23:16:11 +0000

This post is part
of an indefinite series of posts that I am doing called, Living in the
Tension. For the rest of the series click here.

A group of people who are purposely doing life together has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? In theory and reality it often is. Almost everyone I talk to in my house church and people in other house churches, talk about it being like family. Now, to me that is always a peculiar analogy. I think it’s an apt one, but peculiar nonetheless. I mean, how many people really want to do life with their family? Most people when I press them have all sorts of stress with their family.

The most interesting thing to me about house church is the messiness of it. This is where the tension comes in. How do you do House church well? Our house church is a perfect example. For the most part, we all get along fairly well. I mean in any group, you always have your friction points, but for the most part we all enjoy being around each other most of the time. Still, we have some difficulties. We have about an even split on whether or not we should have a Bible study time and even what that Bible study time should look like. So, that brings up some interesting questions. Some people just check out during that time, and others don’t. Some love it and I imagine some hate it. What do you study? How do you study it? How do you handle disagreements? How do you handle/divide teaching responsibilities? In other words, typical house church issues.

On top of that, we have an issue of distance. We live out in the country. I mean quite a few miles from where the majority of the res of the group lives. We’ve had a run where many of the activities ended up in our house. This has caused some interesting thoughts and conversations. One of the girls in our house church pointed out that “Hey, we don’t live in Lowell, we live here in GR.” Technically, we don’t live in Lowell, either but her point is taken. Have we created a rift in the house church by moving so far out of town? The truth is, I don’t know. In life, it’s often the unintended consequences that sink the ship so to speak. The problem seems that there no matter what alternative we take to rectify this issue, someone (or multiple someone’s) will be put out. But I wonder, is that bad? I mean on some level, our house church coming together, and sacrificing in order to meet should be good, right? Someone today made the statement,

There are people in the world who would risk their life to be able to meet with three other Christians in their town.

Her point was that community is something we have to work at. Taking that thought a little farther community is something that changes you. It changes me. Even the things about it that I hate, that I have to wrestle with change me. Community by its nature creates change. It has to, or its not community. But we, as humans, hate change. That’s the interesting thing about house church, and community. The very things we want from it. Those things that every pastor stands up and tries to use to sell his congregation on why they should join a small group or a house church are produced by the very thing we hate the most; change. Of course, he or she will leave that part out but that’s another post.

Our house church is at a crossroads. Six months from now, we won’t be the same. One way or another we will all be different. We’ll wrestle with how to best handle the issues we face and we’ll be changed from the wrestling. Engaging the thing we hate to maybe experience the thing we long for; community. One year from now, who knows what our house church will look like? Until then we’ll all live in the tension.

Yeah, I was like 15 or 16 I think

Joe — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 20:31:09 +0000

I have no idea but I was young. The early 90's were a weird time. But there is proof that I was once a fit person.

The above picture is from a skit about a video game. The one below is from a canoe outing. I'm in the lower right hand corner eating something…

Some Questions We Will Be Looking at in House Church

Joe — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 20:23:08 +0000

1.    What do you expect out of your relationship with God?
2.    What does God expect out of your relationship?
3.    How have you formed your expectations of your relationship with God?
4.    What role does the Bible play in your expectations of your relationship with God?
5.    Is there one thing in your life that when you think about it, you have anger?
6.    Do you believe God cares about every aspect of your life?
7.    Do you believe that God wants control over every area of your life?
8.    How did you come to your answers for #6 and #7
9.    How do you interpret the Bible?

Is Fear Normal?

Joe — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 10:45:49 +0000

Is fear normal? Is it just part of life? Can you change fear or do you just have to cope with it?

An Athiest Makes the Case for Why We Should Share Our Faith

Joe — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 13:31:55 +0000

Watch this video. At about the half way point he makes this remark, "How much hate do you have to have to not share your faith?" That's a paraphrase, but I'm close. Tell me what you think.

From Crackle: A Gift of a Bible

Reframing: God Bringing Change to Life Near You

Joe — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 22:33:16 +0000

If you’ve read any organizational leadership books, you’ve probably heard about something called “reframing.” Reframing is a technique for change (both corporate and personal) that utilizes a new perspective. That is to say, you look at a situation from a different angle; same object, different view. It occurred to me this week that is what the Bible is about on almost every page.

God "reframes" all of life for us. Think about it. What is stressing you out right now? What scares you right now? What is driving you crazy right now? Have you ever wanted revenge? Have you ever felt alone? What’s interesting to me is this is how Satan works too. Look at Satan’s interaction with Eve; he reframes the issue by asking her, “Did God really say…?” Once again he's counterfeiting what God has created for his own end.

This is what makes God so radical, and so relevant for our day. He’s always reframing your life. Think about His command to love our enemies! Come on, be serious, that’s nuts! Forgive those who hurt you! Be kind to each other! Love one another; submit to one another, the list of crazy reframing goes on and on.

Now, this is where I’m going to get myself in trouble. I wonder if the reason we don’t see much change in the church today, in fact I wonder if the reason we don’t see much difference in those who claim to follow Christ and those who don’t is because we fail to allow God to reframe our life for us. When we hold onto our hurt, seeking revenge, we are willfully choosing to go our own way. We are choosing to live life our way. I wonder if the reason most of the world has stopped listening to us is because we’ve decided to put down our Bibles and pick up our “political rights.” We’ve exchanged time on our knees in prayer for time on our feet in protest marches. We’ve exchanged trust in a God who has promised to meet all of our needs for trust in a political system. We’ve laid down our greatest identifying marker (love for one another) for theological wars. We’ve traded in faith, hope and love for name-calling, castigation and witty titles. We’ve traded in forgiveness for grudges.

So I want to ask you, what is in your life right now that God is trying to reframe? What are you holding onto? What are you saying, “God you can have all of this, but not that!” What action/thought/belief do you want to change but can’t because you won’t let God reframe it for you.

Please understand, I could do a follow up post about the many things in my life that I struggle with, this post is not intended to make you feel guilty, or bad about yourself. This post is meant to remind you, change can happen. God can change you. He can reframe your hurt, and bring you the change you’re desperately seeking. I know he has done it many times in my life and many times in the lives of others. I’ll leave you with I Peter 5:7. Talk about reframing…

Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you
~Peter