There's Hope

Good morning class! Reading you guys’ posts is making my morning. While I agree with, and share Rose's passion towards the church re-aligning its focus back to the works of Jesus, I struggle more in the area of realizing and addressing the causes which may have led to the “shift” of focus in the first place. So, this leads me to what Daniella and Moe were discussing about camps. I have had the fortunate misfortune to have a very diverse religious background. Being raised Catholic by well-intended but miss-guided partakers of the faith, along with sprinkles of Baptist ideology from occasionally going to church with friends and family members who were not catholic, to trying to find my own way into the Pentecostal faith, and then finally settling into becoming Baptist; allowed me to visit those camps which are spoken of.  In the end, I realized that it was not about religion, but about relationship with God the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit.

To me camps were created to separate one person’s true agenda from the other. In order to cover up the fact that you have strayed away from what God called have called you to be, you start another camp. Sometimes camps are started because of the cover-ups; members do not want to be a part of it. Whatever the reason, we are losing the war, because the “church” is too busy fighting individual wars, and many are against themselves. My use of the word church refers to page 46 in Rausch’s description of the church being Trinitarian. That’s why the passage in 2 Chronicles 14 (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2+Chronicles+7%3A14&version=KJV), allows us to know that God knew we were going to turn away from one another, so He gave us the solution on how to win this battle against our enemy.

I would like to pose a question… on page 92, the 3^rd paragraph of Dulles’ writings, he talks about the church not being spoken about in the bible as service oriented. If one indeed sees the church as the body of Christ, or Believers of Christ, shouldn’t it be about service? What do y’all think? As for an answer to your question Rose, unfortunately, I cannot think of a community that exemplifies a metaphor of church, because there is always a conflict of interest between God’s way, and the ways of this world (government). I don’t want to seem like gloom and doom. In fact, I am quite hopeful that god’s people will get it together, because the Lord hears the cries of His people. I am going to leave you guys with a little song that cheers me up when I am beat down. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COE6YHIK-pU&noredirect=1)