Jeffrey Davis

Powerful storms are on the horizon of Nashville this evening, and I am quite glad. I have always loved the rain, but I have loved thunderstorms even more. Personally, I’ve always been most aware of God through nature, yet do not know why. It is not that I see “evidence” of God in nature, but that something in or about it stirs the spirit/life/essence of God, that is Love, within me.

When I was in college at MTSU (but one of my many universities…whilst never actually earning a degree) I had an experience that brought this love of storms to my conscious awareness. I was cramming for finals late one spring night when the campus was rocked by the worst storm I can recall. At that point in my life I primarily connected with God vicariously through the stories in the Bible, and found myself relating to a similar experience Moses is told to have had.

I sat on my bed, looking out my window and saying something like this to God [parallel it to Moses on Mt. Sinai before receiving the ten commandments]: “God cover my window as if it were the cleft in a rock on Mt. Sinai and pass by, removing your hand that I may catch but a glimpse of your glory…for I know I cannot see your face and live.” At that moment, lighting struck a transformer across campus and lit up the sky. I took that as “an answer to my prayer” and realized my increased awareness of God through nature, specifically in thunderstorms.

I know now that though my ideologies and concepts of God were skewed and off course in those days (as they are in many ways still), but as I think God often does, he saw that my heart was in the right place…and related to me there.

In what ways do you connect with God or find the deep parts of your soul stirred to their very depths?

(Post title is a quote from the movie, V for Vendetta)

Technorati Tags: lightning, weather, God, spirituality, nature, Jeffrey Davis

“Your grace is enough, your grace is enough, your grace is enough for me” is the chorus to a “worship song” I recently heard. My wife and I accompanied some friends to their church service as that is important to them, hence was important to us, and I found myself unable to sing some of the “worship songs” that were played.

The irony lay in the fact that I used to freely sing those very songs when the institution of the church was still important to my wife and I, and we were members of and served in one. This time, however, I found within my spirit a conflict with many of the lyrics in their songs. Why?

Looking back over my experience in the institution of the church, the songs that stirred the love of Christ within me were songs proclaiming and adoring the Love of God, not, however, his “salvation”, “forgiveness”, etc. Do you think the simple truth that God is Love exists deep in the spirit of every human and is stirred from time to time by music, kind words or actions, etc?

I also wonder, as in the above mentioned lyrics, do those in an institutional church give thought to the words that they are singing or do they sing them semi-mindlessly because they are so familiar with the words? “Your grace is enough” is a huge and weighty declaration. How might someone’s life look different if that truly were their belief?

Technorati Tags: worship, music, church, Jeffrey Davis

Have you ever noticed that most “Christians” seem to really be Hindu, or maybe even Buddhists? They may not call themselves such, but behind the label they give themselves is a belief system that says otherwise. I began thinking about this (again) after reading a post at Kyle, a blog bud in Vancouver’s, place.

What is this belief that Christians and Hindus (and Buddhists, and Taoists, and Muslims, and Jews) all share alike? It is Karma. “Do good, do good, do good.” You might refer to it as the “moral law”. You know what I mean, the idea that “what goes around comes around”. If you’re a Christian, you may find yourself snipping, “I don’t think that, that’s ridiculous” or something of the sort. But wait, isn’t that line of thinking essential to “Christian” thought? Of course it is. If you do the right thing, i.e. “accept Christ”, you “get into Heaven”. If you do the wrong thing, not “accept Christ”, you burn in “Hell”. Cause and Effect. Karma.

So what separates “Christianity” from any other religion? Perhaps the more accurate question would be, “what is supposed to separate Christianity from any other world religion?” How can “Christians” say that, “God is love”, yet say that if you mess up He’ll condemn you to Hell? How could an unconditionally loving God divvy out blessings and curses based on the “right” or “wrong” choices a person may make? What if they made that/those choices out of ignorance?

Christians do say they believe something different than “other” religions, but the doctrine is the same in the end, don’t you think? They say that God is love and He loves everyone unconditionally, but in the end, it’s still Karma. Does that duality bother anybody?

Technorati Tags: Christianity, Hinduism, religion, Love, Karma, Jeffrey Davis

My friend Rick blogs on his MySpace and has a running series, currently on number nine, of “splinters in his mind”. Here’s a sample:

Splinter VII

Where do you connect with God in your relationship with Him? Where is God when you think of him, talk to him? When he’s communicating to you, where does his communication come from?

A. The sky (heaven, clouds, outer space)…a ’sky God’ of sorts (i.e. like the folks in babylonia demonstrated by building a tower to reach ‘up’ to him or like people do in church services reaching ‘up’ with their hands).

or…

B. Within you (i.e. Jesus comes to live in your heart or the mystery of the gospel is Christ (God) in you, the hope of glory – Col 1:27 & 3:4)?

or…

C. Everywhere and in everything?

or…

D. None of the above (your thoughts)

Splinter VI

How do you reconcile God who can’t look on sin, who’s holiness is repulsed by it

with…

Jesus (God as man) who hung around whores, alchoholics, tax collectors (the greedy), the demon possessed and many other ’sinners’?

Splinter V:

A sermon given to a million people.

A cup of water given to a thirsty person.

Which has a greater impact in the kingdom of God?

Again, there’s several more splinters to hash out there as well. Look for more splinters in the mind of Rick (and everyone else on the face of the planet) at his MySpace blog.

Technorati Tags: Spiritual Living, Rick Harris, spirituality, questions, religion, philosophy, Jeffrey Davis

Living green is so much more than just combating (or debating) global warming. It can save you money, contribute to physical health, aid others around you, and…it can be FUN! I’ve begun blogging at The Fun Times Guide to Living Green, my own site in the wonderful The Fun Times Guide network of sites. This network of sites is owned and operated by Jim and Lynnette of Jim and Lynnette’s Fun Times Guide, the original site in this network.

This in no way means I’ll cease to blog or blog any less here, this is just a different blog with a niche topic. I’m not an expert on living green, but this is a unique place for others to share their ideas and journeys into living green, as well as follow my own. Maybe some will even find a few shreds of helpful information there from my own experiences of beginning to live green. Come by and visit if you’d like, http://Green.TheFunTimesGuide.com.

Technorati Tags: living green, going green, the fun times guide, Jeffrey Davis

In my inbox this morning was a note from Sam Davidson, president of CoolPeopleCare.org, informing that this initiative he and a friend started just eight short months ago has extended beyond the Nashville area and is now statewide! From Sam’s blog today:

“Today, we’re adding calendars and partners for Memphis, Chattanooga and Knoxville. We’ve had thousands of visitors come to the site to find out ways to get involved in their local communities. More and more of these people are from outside of middle Tennessee. We want to meet this demand, so we’re growing.”

Head over to Sam’s place for the rest of the news. Also stop by CoolPeopleCare.org and its Events section to find an event with cool people who care near you…if you’re in the state of Tennessee, that is.

Technorati Tags: Cool People Care, Sam Davidson, Tennessee, Nashville, Memphs, Chattanooga, Knoxville, Jeffrey Davis

Below is a guest post by Sam Davidson, president of CoolPeopleCare.org. His post is related to the Jesus, as Much God as You and I? post from January 23rd. You can read more by and about Sam samdavidson.blogspot.com and www.coolpeoplecare.org.

~Jeffrey

****************

Most Christians’ understanding of Jesus as divine is an amalgam of theology, history, doctrine, and nearly 20 centuries of thought, talk, heresy and opinion. For most, the question is a simple one, with a short justification: Yes. Jesus was divine because only a divine (which for many means sinless) being could save the non-divine from their sins.

Yet, for early Christians, there was a fundamental and very necessary question of how. How did Jesus get his divinity so that he could save humanity?

For Arius, Jesus was born as human as you or I. But, he never sinned. Because he was able to always choose correctly, he was rewarded with divinity. Therefore, by deliberate choice and consistent action, Jesus was able to save those of us who chose unwisely and sinned.

However, this was not good for Athanasius, who wrote several years later. For him, Jesus came to earth as divine. This had to be the case, because the risks of daily living made it possible for Jesus to sin. Humanity by nature was corrupt; Jesus could have no part of this because then he, too, would be corrupt and unworthy to die a salvific death.

Interlaced with these questions in a complex maze of salvation specifics, among them:

• What are humans saved from?
• Are humans saved through baptism, the Eucharist, pure belief?
• What exactly is the Word of God?
• Is Jesus different than God?

In other words, only several months spent reading old guys will provide a comprehensive understanding of how all this fits together. Suffice it to say that ever since the beginning, folks were trying to figure out if/how/why Jesus’ humanity mattered.

Add the Gnostics into this and you end up confused and crying on the floor in the fetal position due to the immense amount of prototypical ideas.

For us, the question is simply one of identification. Can we more deeply identify with the role of Jesus in our lives today if we understand his humanity better in relation to our notions of divinity we place upon him? If so, run with it. You won’t be the first (or last).

What is the first thing that springs to mind when you hear the phrase “born again”? Have you never considered those words together before? Do you think of dogmatic Christians? Do you think of religion? Do you think of freedom? Family? Something else entirely perhaps? For me, the first thing that comes to mind is the evangelical belief that a person must “accept Christ as their Savior” to be re-born into the family of God…lest they burn in Hell for all eternity. This belief comes largely from a verse in the Bible, located in John’s Gospel. In chapter three, verse three, “…Jesus declared, ‘I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.’” Two verses later in verse five, Jesus says again, “I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit.” This of course begs the great question of “what is ‘the kingdom of God”? For now, ponder that on your own, that is for another post and another discussion.

Here, in this post, I’d like to deal with the idea of being “born again.” My friend Rick recently sent me a book called Sophie’s World. It is a novel about the history of philosophy and is an INCREDIBLE read! A very brief summary of the plot is that a fourteen year old girl named Sophie begins receiving letters in her mailbox, unstamped and without return address, asking some pointed questions. The first letter simply says, “who are you?” and the second reads, “where did the world come from?”. The proceeding letters contain short three or four page documents introducing Sophie to the world of philosophy. I’d like to share a paragraph from one of those letters with you here:

“The only thing we require to be good philosophers is the faculty to wonder. Babies have this faculty. That is not surprising. After a few short months in the womb they slip out into a brand new reality [emphasis mine]. But as they grow up the faculty of wonder seems to diminish. Why is this? Do you know?”

I can’t believe I’ve never viewed the above mentioned Bible verse in this way! Most evangelical “Christians” adhere to the previously mentioned interpretation of this verse, but what if it simply means that like a new born baby, the awareness of the perfect love of Christ within us is like being born again into a brand new reality? Maybe it has nothing to do with whether you’re “part of God’s family” or not. Do you think Jesus is speaking of a new realm of existence and a new way of seeing altogether, of which the awareness of Christ’s Love is the catalyst??

Technorati Tags: Sophie’s World, Jostein Gaarder, philosophy, born again, religion, Jesus, love, Jeffrey Davis