The Lord’s Prayer Commentary 4

4. “Provide for our needs today.”

* Again, this doesn’t say, “Provide for my needs today”, though I used to think of it that way in my mind, as you may have as well. Are your needs not being met? It probably isn’t because God isn’t providing—God has provided enough—it’s because someone isn’t sharing (make sure it isn’t you!).

* Also, it doesn’t say, “Fulfill all our wants today.” God knows and plans to take care of our needs, but not necessarily give us everything we want. Additionally, we usually think we need more than we actually do (especially in our culture).

* Furthermore, it doesn’t say, “Provide for our needs for the month/year/rest of our lives,” etc. We pray simply for today, concerning ourselves primarily with Continue reading →

The Lord’s Prayer Commentary 3

3. “We want to see your nation established here, your desires to become reality in our world.”

* We are not just waiting to go to heaven and be saved ourselves. We so love God and his ways that we want to see them lived out presently, right here in our world. Again, in so requesting this, we also must be living it out in our lives insomuch as it is possible for us to do. In other words, it is not a mere passive request which we make and then sit back and hope happens (to everyone else). It is a request we make as we are striving to see it happen.

The Lord’s Prayer Commentary 2

2. “Your are so incredible, people should be in awe at the mere mention of your name.”

* We recognize how good he is, but beyond that, we want others to recognize this as well. In saying this, we take on the responsibility to make this happen though our actions, as we bear his name.

The Lord’s Prayer Commentary 1

1. “Father, you are father of us all, and above us all.”

* We address God as our father (or elsewhere even “daddy”), because he has chosen to have an intimate, familial relationship with us.

* He is not just my father, but our father. Throughout the entire Lord’s prayer, the singular pronouns “I, me, my, mine”, etc., are never used. Rather, it is always the plural “our, us, we”, etc. which is used. This teaches us that the world is designed as a community, not just as billions of individuals.

* Our father is “heavenly”, not mortal. He is supernatural, not created, not flawed, but perfectly and wholly good.

The Lord’s Prayer – Modern Paraphrase

Several years ago I was at a retreat which focused on “the Lord’s prayer”. I believe I had already begun to pray through it regularly, but either way, it made me want to rewrite the prayer in modern language. I have continued to pray through this prayer regularly, and have learned from it by meditating upon it. Yet I never got around to rewording it—until now. I share it here in full presently, and over the coming days I plan to post my commentary on each section.

Father, you are father of us all, and above us all.
Your are so incredible, people should be in awe at the mere mention of your name.
We want to see your nation established here, your desires to become reality in our world.
Provide for our needs today.
Forgive us for our Continue reading →

The Problem With (some) Christians: Funeral Illustration

Today I attended a funeral with my friend Dan. The funeral was for the cousin of a friend of ours, who had committed suicide. Funerals are generally tough anyway, but this one was just downright painful in ways it shouldn’t have been. This mainly had to do with the minister who was “doing” the funeral. From almost the moment he started speaking I didn’t feel good about it. He started off reading a couple of passages of scripture, but it seemed more like he was just going through the motions of what you’re supposed to do and say at a funeral, rather than actually seeming to empathize and attempt to bring encouragement. After he spoke for a couple of minutes, people from the family got up and offered their eulogies.

Following this, the Continue reading →

Church, Inc.

There is a reason that The Office, Office Space, and Dilbert are so popular. A large percentage of people work in a corporate environment, but there are some real quirks and issues with it. People have many honest complaints, and they are expressed in the previously mentioned media. My view of corporate culture, and why I don’t like it, is this: while behind the scenes things may be a complete mess, horribly mismanaged with ridiculous policies, etc., the cardinal rule is that you have to act like everything is completely normal, and the most important thing is to keep up appearances. Put aside for now the fact that this may be deceptive and deceiving.

This expectation on a corporate level filters down to the individuals who work for a Continue reading →

Narcissistic Church

Starting with my last blog, I am intending to do a short series on issues with church. The last blog was about churches not seeing or being honest about what they are really about in practice. This blog is about one of these issues. One problem most churches fall into is being almost entirely self-focused. Churches say that they are focused on God and his plans, but too often that’s not really a primary focus at all. Most of what churches do have to do with themselves, keeping themselves going. If you look at the money spent and what the staff spends their time on, you’ll find that the large part of the resources are spent are running programs, keeping the building up, etc. Now all this is done because people think that by doing these Continue reading →

Blind Church?

I was involved in a discussion tonight, which made think about the following. It seems like many churches (and some christians too) are semi-blind to what they are. People seem to have this idea that if you’re honest about a problem, your somehow insulting the Son of God. If we’re not honest about problems, we can’t and won’t begin to fix them. But the problem is, there are far too many people who think we’ve basically have it right already. This is true especially in doctrine, but in practice as well. If asked, most christians can recite all of the negative ways in which we are, more often than not, perceived by those “outside”. But a lot of these same christians are at a lost to understand why we’re perceived that way, may think the Continue reading →

Alyosha

In The Brothers Karamazov, I identify the most with Alyosha.