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Monthly Archives: November 2016

Can I see some I.D. please?

18 Friday Nov 2016

Posted by michael schinker in Election 2016, Jesus Christ, labels, religion

≈ 5 Comments

I am so weary of all the slander, name calling, lying, and the literal and verbal rock-throwing back and forth in what has become a shameful, self-perpetuating “their side versus my side” news media frenzy. These days, because both rational and emotionally driven sentiments are so sharply at odds, one cannot in good conscience sit on any kind of a fence. You have to take a stand. Actually, that’s pretty much the way the Kingdom of God works. Jesus said you are either for me or against me. You cannot serve two masters. Choose between the broad road to destruction, or the narrow path to eternal life. It’s all very black and white, with no shades of gray to hide in. Pick a side then.

A couple days ago I read a guest post on a politically oriented website I occasionally take a look at. It was an article about the ugly, hateful divisiveness expressed during the long months of campaigning rivalry and especially after the shocking results of the election became known. It was written by Riaz Patel, who characterizes himself as a gay, Muslim, Pakistani-American immigrant TV producer.

“The worst outcome of the election” he said, “is that we have each been reduced to a series of broad labels that no longer reflect who we are. Mexican. White. Republican. Immigrant. Muslim. We may try to look at people as labels but we’ll never truly see them because THEY do not look at their own lives and families as labels.”

I think Patel is right about the accelerated tendency for prejudicial bias, for pinning labels on the fine citizens of these United States, regardless of whether the appraisals are accurate or assumed. trumpclinton3On one side of the political battle fighting to the death you will find liberal elitists — sophisticated intellectuals, yoga practitioners, art lovers, wine tasters, rainbow flag waiving ultra-tolerant, all-inclusive I’m okay/you’re okay Unitarians. Who’s on the other side? Hillary said that Trump supporters were all ”deplorables,” relegated onto a curbside trash heap along with the great unwashed of society — the twelve-pack guzzling, vulgar, trailer park Neanderthal bigots who pick their noses in the check-out lines at Walmart and have to sign their names with a big “X.” Sounds like we now apparently have fabricated our own brand of caste system, like India?

Garrison Keillor of public radio’s Prairie Home Companion fame commented in the Washington Post the fateful morning after the votes were tallied: “Raw ego and proud illiteracy have won out and a severely learning-disabled man with a real character problem will be president. [We] Democrats can spend four years raising heirloom tomatoes, meditating, reading Jane Austen, traveling around the country, tasting artisan beers, and let the Republicans build the wall and carry on the trade war with China and deport the undocumented and deal with opioids.” Wow. Maybe he and those loathing the newly defined four-year future of America should all just retire to Keillor’s fictional retreat at Lake Wobegon for imaginary group massage therapy and lament together over cocktails the demise of an egocentric progressive era the Clintons failed to force on the rest of us. What they believe is mostly make-believe anyway.

So how is it that we are to I.D. ourselves? About those labels . . . it’s difficult to not find yourself in one category or another — Single or married. Male or female. Employed or not — although a small segment of our current culture in decline is making a strong effort to blur those traditional distinctions. I find it interesting that Paul in his letter to the Galatian church writes “There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus.” So does this mean that in a mystically spiritual sense Christian believers are transformed into some kind of science fiction automatons, marching through life on command like mass produced troopers in Revenge of the Clones, except without the weapons?clone-troopers

I’m sure there are many discourses on the theological interpretation of Paul’s simple statement. In my opinion, I think it points to the contrast between enmity with and separation from God as a consequence of Adam’s disobedience, and our reconciliation with and acceptance by God as a result of redemption through the saving work of Christ.  As a part of Adam’s natural lineage, without Christ I was defined as a fill-in-the-blank sinner, with a broken mindset, doomed to a propensity for falling short of God’s standards and marked by every sort of human fault. But now by faith in Christ, I am found in Christ, in whom there is no division. The fracture is healed. I’m not defined and separated by my gender, my job, my social status, my family heritage, and not even by my pre-salvation past. Rather I am who God says I am: a warrior, an over comer, forgiven, a new creation, holy, victorious, a beloved child of the King. In Him all believers are united, as one, without human distinctions, but also without surrendering the personal uniqueness that makes each of us, well – unique. There’s only one me.

I will, of course, continue to mark the appropriate boxes on surveys and applications, identifying myself for a pertinent piece of the big demographic pie. And I will always without hesitation acknowledge my particular station in life as a husband, father, grandfather, retired senior citizen, Caucasian male and a devoted disciple of Jesus Christ. So are those labels, or actually just part of my exclusive name tag? Let me introduce myself.

HELLO, I’m . . . so much more than just words.

Super Duper Moon

15 Tuesday Nov 2016

Posted by michael schinker in Super Moon

≈ 2 Comments

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Super Moon

Last night I took the dog out for our usual after dinner walk. It was chilly, in the mid-forty degree range. Of course the most distinct feature of the evening’s outing was the much-publicized Super Moon. In a scientific sense, it was “super” because it was the closest a Full Moon has been to Earth since January 26, 1948, and it will not match that proximity again for another 18 years. Visually, it was estimated to appear about 14 percent larger than usual, but what I saw Monday night around nine o’clock was more than super. It was spectacular.

Emma and I headed out on our regular route for a couple blocks and then on a path up a hill into and through the neighborhood park. There’s a bench at the top of the incline. I’m usually a little out of breath by then so often we just pause there for a few minutes. But last night I was so captivated by the natural beauty of the moon in its glowing whiteness, I had to just sit a while and take it in. The sky’s customary black canopy was washed out by the amazing spotlight brightness of that ashen sphere some 223,000 miles distant from my little dog and me. Mars was twinkling red in the west and diamond shimmering Venus was still prominent, just about to dip below the southwestern horizon. But overhead only the blinking lights of an occasional 747 and a couple first-magnitude or better stars were visible. I had to strain and squint to find the North Star.

There was such an atmosphere of peace, there on that cold metal park bench, saturated in pure moonlight. The folks in neighborhoods all around me were undoubtedly about their regular household affairs, getting ready to call it a day. But at that moment in time, in my personal center of the universe, it was just me, the dog, the Super Moon – and God, the One Who long ago spoke the cosmos into being and Who arranged like some epic musical composition a unique astronomical event last night just to reveal His awesomeness to me. On the way home, I kept looking back over my shoulder. moon2_0Through silhouettes of bare maples and even thick spruce trees the view was hauntingly majestic. I thought about Psalm 19 where it says, “The heavens are telling of the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” Last night that reality couldn’t have been more obvious.

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