Hopewit

  In Covid Times: If a pin should drop and no one to hear it, would it still make a sound? I serendipitously hit upon a sermon by the pastor (Tim Conway. No, not the one who did all those hilarious sketches on Carol Burnett) of a fellowship church in Manchester, England, and although I am seldom attracted to such YouTube videos, I decided to hear what he had to say. And although he made constant reference to “the devil” as the generator of whatever is foul among us and his repeated references to “knowing the truth” seemed a contradiction to his main point, he did make a point that rang true for me.                 It had to do with balance . He began with passages that seem to contradict each other and suggested that we tend to pick one and ignore the other, resulting in a “this and not that” preoccupation. He used baptism—child, youth or adult—as a relevant example. Believer’s baptism, child baptism, bap...

110 years in Rosthern, Built of Rosthern Brick, no less. I’ve been reading websites dedicated to the conservative/anti-liberal cause, trying to understand the motivation behind their adamant stands.            A 2014 article by Randall Balmer in Politico traces the history of American evangelical churches’ current affinity with a right wing world view. Balmer shows how this Christian adherence to a rigid conservatism doesn’t have its roots in abortion or queer-equality issues, but in the reaction to civil rights. While America was desegregating on paper and on the ground in the second half of the 1900s, separate Christian whites-only schools were being set up, assuming that their income from tuition and their connection with the church would save them from government scrutiny. However, following an action brought by the Treasury Department charging that segregation in separate schools disqualified them from their tax-free status, the Supreme Court ru...

  Rosthern Mennonite Church, 1916 “When Moses approached the camp and saw the calf and the  dancing, his anger burned and he threw the tablets out of his  hands, breaking them to pieces at the foot of the mountain. And he  took the calf the people had made and burned it in the fire; then  he ground it to powder, scattered it on the water and made the  Israelites drink it.” (Exodus 32: 19-20, NIV)                 The legend of the receipt of the Ten Commandments in Exodus illustrates in graphic imagery the perfidy of the people of that time and place. Some might argue that it also reveals Moses’ weak leadership skills; while he was conferring with God on Mount Horeb, the people feared he had gone and had left them leaderless. They talked Aaron—the deputy Moses—into presenting them a new God-leader to guide them on their journey. Aaron concocted a plan to create an idol to satisfy t...

There's got to be a story here. “ Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’” (Genesis 1:26, NIV) This is part II of “mankind in the image of God.” Earlier, I pondered the imagery in terms of the physical—the human body, cuerpo humano . Today, I’d like to consider the implications personality-wise. Is the writer saying that God’s personality and our personalities are alike? Is a similar range of emotion and thought present in God as in us? Genesis 1:26 contains a “so that,” a reason for the creator to have made us this way; how else would we have the ability, skill and intelligence to accept sovereignty over the earth? Most of us, most of the time would likely question God’s judgment in thinking that we are up to the job, but such a conclusion can only be reached, I thi...