Re-thinking Who We Are as a People of Faith

I am a lifetime affiliate of the Church of God that I refer to as the Anderson Convention. I was born into it. I have enjoyed a heritage at Grand Junction Camp Meeting, the Lester Lake Farm of sixty acres (then) where Warner, Fisher, Byrum, Michels and Company worshipped and celebrated together and evangelized from, after relocating Gospel Trumpet Publishing efforts in 1886 to downtown Grand Junction. That was the place of my spiritual rebirth.

The village of Grand Junction was actually little more than a rural community, burned over via the Chicago Fire. It had no infrastructure such as banks or even something as vital as water. They did have a common water well from which people could carry water to their abodes. The  village also acquired a four-way railroad intersection that prompted the Saints to envision  as to how they could go anywhere in the world from there with their published message. It was primitive at best and you get a good taste of that story in Noah Byrum’s series republished as THE BOOK OF NOAH Stultz/ Welch).
It is so easy to miss much of the beauty of these pioneers of our faith. They were mostly young. They were youthfully zealous. Their message was radically extreme; but, it was clear cut. It separated the sheep from the goats. Warner himself was a master at flailing Babylon, something I never could do well. They berated the denominational world with their “come-out” message that promised an ecumenical unity they sometimes fell far short of. When we view all of that from our contemporary  perspective, it is difficult for us to view them as little more than ultra-conservative radicals with a Gospel agenda.

It is even more difficult in our political climate today to recognize them as the breath of fresh air that they were in actuality.  Several examples quickly become obvious to me, examples that take me beyond the dogma being taught to that of recognizing the transitioning social climate. Professional scholars and historians and their ilk understand this well, but we of non-academia sometimes fail to read well the sign posts along the way.

As I read my current very non-religious book, I picked up at the library; it gives me the history of voting in America--THE EMBATTLED VOTE IN AMERICA by historian Allan Lichtman. I don’t know his faith or his politics but I find him to be a distinguished historian at American University. In reading  Lichtman, I am made to remember that D. S. Warner, a Patron-Saint in my journey of faith, lived in a social climate very different from what I do. This is especially apparent when I read Lichtman's review of women’s suffrage. 

For example, in 1867 the equal Rights Association petitioned a New York constitutional convention to enfranchise women and “abolish the burdensome property qualifications for black men.” Among my favorite stories is that of Sojourner Truth and how she became a women’s rights advocate in Akron about 1851, in addition to already being an Abolitionist and former slave; all of which came out of her journey from being a Sojourner to finding  the Truth—an illiterate but highly effective Holiness Camp Meeting preacher, that held her own among the men during the great Miller revivals of the midcentury that birthed Adventism.

Now Horace Greeley (NY) turned against these ladies, echoing the “the pragmatism that had limited the scope of Fifteenth Amendment protections for black voting.” D. S. Warner lived in this closed, male-dominated society where women had few legal rights, scarcely owned property, and were considered hardly capable of understanding the political affairs of the day. Warner lived in this era of gross inequity between whites and the inferior black slave race while attending a college that led the way in teaching women and equalizing blacks under the holiness teaching of Charles G. Finney Oberlin). 

This calls to my mind the involvement my wife and I experienced when our first-born purchased her first house and the gender-gap she experienced ln Kentucky State Laws as related to women, property rights, and matters of credit (very male dominated) and in my own contemporary time.

Yet; I find Warner and his Company of Saints practicing racial accommodation and equality. I find among those Saints a host of black Saints rejoicing in their newfound freedom and acceptance. I see Female preachers teaching men and publically acknowledged as Spirit-filled leaders and extended equality. Mother Sarah Smith left her husband at home and became the senior member of Warner’s evangelistic party, while doing double duty as supervising matron and keeping everything on the up and up in Warner’s mixed group of evangelistic travelers going about the country in revivalism.

I see these Saints proclaiming an all-inclusive, unifying Message to an exclusive society where denominationalism and racism dominated, where competition ran rampant, and produced hate-filled vitriolic communication. It was not a pretty sight! The Saints offered an opportunity to take a forward step, a very progressive and inclusive step forward to live outside the boundaries of bitterness and rancor and competition, and enjoy unifying Love, Joy, and Peace, in a fellowship where every person God accepted became acceptable.  Competition was out. Cooperation and mutuality was in. The Message was as inclusive as God is and as exclusive as only God can be. And, you need not worry about what the other guy thinks - “man rule.”

Too often we miss the beauty of much of this. We fail to see the liberality and progressiveness of it in comparison to the narrow context in which it was experienced and endured. In many respects, those early Saints were a breath of fresh air. They brought clean air to a polluted society.

It behooves every one of us today to reevaluate our own lives, and the standards we think are proper, and move into our new year with their youthful fervor, their “fresh air” of inclusiveness and equality and racial reconciliation and social concern for people needs that justice and reconciliation and renewal always demand.

From walkingwithwarne.blogspot.com … 

In the political jargon of 2019, the principles within the Church of God message are inclusive,  people-centered, need-oriented, and grace-filled--full of justice, reconciliation. and interpersonal harmony. Twenty-Nineteen is not a time for Pharisaical gathering of our traditions and personal issues, it is a time for emergency action that results in belief and behavior becoming one and the same.  

Count Your Blessings

Counting one’s blessings can too easily become the hapless victim of unanticipated circumstances. Some years ago while living in California’s North Bay Area I had this experience. Mind you, I have always prided myself on being cautious and careful to avoid unnecessary predicaments. On this particular day, I finished my errand and returned to my residence where I casually parked my car in my driveway and strolled mindlessly into the house.

When I returned later; I saw no car safely parked in my driveway. Suddenly, as one reawakened from slumber, I quickly looked up and down our street, surveying the neighborhood for any evidence of my 1970 green Chrysler. I had purchased it new on a very good deal from a nephew by marriage just before moving to the West Coast. I did not relish the thought of something happening to my new automobile.

Scanning the neighborhood with a sharpened eye, I suddenly spotted my car a quarter-mile away, down at the end of our street casually resting against the neighbor’s block retaining wall. Relieved to know I still possessed a car; I was panicked at thoughts of what might could have happened. I quickly walked over to the car, to assess potential damages. Mentally; I was prepared to see the worst possible scenario. Most of all, I feared damage to my neighbor‘s retaining wall.

Investigation revealed no serious damages, other than a very slightly-crimped fender. Stricken with the possibilities of what could have happened, I observed that my Chrysler had somehow wandered down the street on its own and mindlessly meandered across the T-intersection, rolled over the curb and gently rested against the block retainer wall.

Hindsight dictated the facts of the case: I had hurriedly parked, given the gearshift a thoughtless shove, and hurried into the house. It could have been a very costly lesson; yet, it left me with little more than a deep gash in my pride plus a well-learned lesson—“count your blessings.”

In retrospect. my wandering Chrysler could have struck another vehicle approaching our neighborhood. It could have bumped one of the occasional pedestrians walking in our community. It could have just as easily crashed into one of the nearby homes. It could have easily damaged the retainer wall. I knew any of these alternatives could readily have resulted  in a lawsuit for damages of some kind! 

Since I was already in emotional overload with my work and my personal life; my anxiety knew no limits. I needed no additional agenda with which to cope, but when my panic lowered enough for me to calm down, I began to realize just how foolish my anxiety appeared; I began to see just how much worse off I could have been.

I saw how much greater damage my thoughtless action could have created; after all, it was my fault. With that reassessment, I began counting my blessings. I remembered watching the recent retreat of storm clouds and seeing the sun joyfully pop out. I had a good job. I enjoyed free time with my family. My health was good. I enjoyed a comfortable four-bedroom home in a good neighborhood. We enjoyed good neighbors and we loved our church, within walking distance. We were people of faith and we lived without harassment or threat of imprisonment. It was perfectly obvious that God had not abandoned us. We experienced His Presence in our lives and His Word confirmed his loving grace.

A thankful heart looks beyond the circumstances of cloudy days and enjoys the day at hand; cloudy or clear, sunny or partly-sunny. Thus the Psalmist reminded us to “Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will act” (Psalm 37:5 RSV).

Out of his library of personal experience, the Apostle Paul added this thoughtful conclusion: be “joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (I Thessalonians 5:16-17 NIV).

Having now passed ninety mile-markers, I have learned to count my blessings and breathe a quick “thank you, Lord.” When I lost my beloved a year ago, I could neither weep nor ask for more. Our days had already been well seasoned with God’s loving grace. The fact that God had given us seventy years together instead of the three-to-twelve months the doctors had diagnosed for her at twenty, only added peppery zest to my days. 

As I transition through this Christ’s Birthday Season and prepare for the potential new year before me, I understand that valuing those things that last longest and count most is what truly adds the music to my life. There is an inspirational old hymn I have sung throughout my entire lifespan that offers this rousing conclusion to my theme: It suggests,

          When upon life’s billows you are tempest tossed,

                     When you are discouraged thinking all is lost,

          Count your many blessings--name them one by one,

                     And it will surprise you what the Lord hath done.¹

^{_______________}

              1 “Count Your Blessings” by Johnson Oatman, Jr. and Edwin G. Excell, PRAISE! Our Songs and Hymns, edited by Norman Johnson. Grand Rapids: Singspiration Division of Zondervan Corp., 1979, p. 430.

I am

walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com

_____

Finding Hope Inside a Fence

I have long enjoyed Phillip Yancy.  I have found him mature in his faith; thoughtful, sensitive, and authentic. I have long enjoyed Phillip Yancy.  I have found him mature in his faith; thoughtful, sensitive, and authentic. Reared behind the walls of fundamentalism, he has ripened as a mature, fruitful thinker. Yancy described finding God confined inside a barbed wire fence, where he met Jurgen Moltman.

As a youth, the German theologian planned a career in quantum physics, only to be drafted by the German Army at the peak of World War Two . Assigned to anti-air-craft batteries in Hamburg, Moltmann saw others incinerated by fire bombs and was long haunted by guilt. Questions pressed his mind and he wondered, “Why did I survive?”

Moltmann was surrendered to the British Army and spent three years in the prison camps of Belgium, Scotland, and England. Seeing German prisoners collapse from within, lose all hope, and become sick unto death. He experienced his own growing grief while learning the real truth about Nazi Germany. It weighed him down with a somber burden of guilt he could never pay off.

Coming from a non-Christian background, Moltmann brought two books with him into battle: Goethe’s Poems and The Philosophical Works of Nietzsche Finding no hope in either, the young prisoner of war opened an Army-issue New Testament and Psalms given him by an American Chaplain, signed by President Roosevelt.

“If I make my bed in hell, behold thou art there,” he read.  Was that possible; he wondered. The words captured his desolation and disillusionment and convinced him that God “was present even behind the barbed wire—no, most of all behind the barbed wire.”

Reading sparked a tiny flame of hope. Walking the barbed-wire perimeters during the night hours for exercise, he described circling a small hill in the center of the camp, where he found a hut that served as a chapel. In that chapel, he found a symbol of the presence of God in the midst of the suffering that surrounded him.

Transferred to an educational camp in England operated by the YMCA, Moltmann experienced a warm welcome. They brought him food, taught him Christian doctrine, and never mentioned the guilt the soldiers felt over the Nazi atrocities. Moltmann described how he felt better treated there than by his own German Army.

Following the war, Moltmann began articulating this personal theology of hope and how we exist in a state of contradiction between the Cross and the Resurrection. We are surrounded by decay while we hope for restoration—a hope illuminated by the faint glow of Christ’s resurrection. Faith in that glorious future, says Yancy, can transform the present, just as Moltmann’s own hope of eventual release transformed his daily prison-life.

We find two themes: God’s presence within us in our suffering and God’s promise of a perfected future. Had Jesus lived in Europe during the War Years, he likely would have been branded like other Jews and shipped to the gas chambers, observes Moltmann. In Jesus, he found definitive proof that God suffers with us, as he did in the Crucified God.

Today, searching people assume from the suffering seen in Yemen, Syria, and elsewhere that God is neither all-good, all-powerful, or even all-wise. Yet, faith allows us to believe God is not satisfied with this world any more than we are, and he intends to make all things new and right. Thus, Christ’s Second Coming brings the Kingdom of God to the fullness of its intended shape.

In the meantime, we establish our Kingdom Outposts and we continue using the Gospel as our template. While the Old Testament inspires a certain fear, the New Testament fills us with hope, because those authors have already come to know and trust the Lord whose Day it is.

This is walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com

Seeing a summary of our human past, present, and future captured in the sweep of the pen that describes “from Good Friday to Easter,” and knowing as others before us have observed

“God weeps with us so that we may someday laugh with him.”