Biography, Christian, Christianity, History, Jesus, Religion, slavery, Uncategorized

A Beautiful Life: Amanda Berry Smith, 19th century black female evangelist

October 20, 2012 Vicki 2 Comments

545px-Amanda_Smith Wikimedia commons — Amanda Smith (Wikimedia Commons).

I’ve always wanted to write about Amanda Smith, and here I’ll introduce her. I’m sure she must be known in some circles, but when I first read about her over a decade ago, I was actually shocked. I had never heard of her, even though she was an international evangelist and missionary. Why is that?

Generally, we tend here, in America, to not learn much history, and when we attempt it, it seems all stale and dry, and no one seems to remember much. Otherwise, I think we are still a male dominated culture, no matter what people say or how we can point to how long respect and equality have been taught in schools. Amanda was black and female, and she experienced much prejudice on both counts in this country. During her stays in other countries, including Great Britain, she was treated with respect and without prejudice. Also, religious history and biography are not taught in school much, and churches basically stick to teaching the Bible or their own flavor of doctrine, and ignore historical and biographical lessons. You can find quite a few references to Amanda online, but I read of her in Six Qualities of Women of Character by Debra Evans (Zondervan Publishing House 1996).

But what about Amanda; what is her story? Amanda was born into slavery, in Maryland, in 1837. Thankfully, her family was one that was permitted to stay together. She knew her grandmother and her father, although her father worked so incredibly hard, she probably saw him little until their eventual freedom. Her parents were faithful Christians, and her mother and grandmother prayed for the salvation of their young mistress, Celie. Celie indeed became saved, but soon after contracted typhoid fever and died. Her death bed wish to her parents was to let free her slaves, who were her Christian siblings. Her parents granted her request and Amanda became free at the age of 13.

While she experienced the faith of her immediate family, she felt that she needed a conversion experience. She needed to make a commitment herself. This she did at a Baptist revival meeting in 1856; she was forever changed and strengthened by relationship with Christ that began then. Her life was hard and she needed the Lord’s strength! She married a man at 17, and he turned out to be an alcoholic. Their marriage was full of strife, but it didn’t last long as her husband was killed in the Civil War. She had a daughter by this marriage, Mazie, and Amanda worked hard indeed for her well-being.

Her second marriage wasn’t much better. The man she married tricked her into thinking he was going to be appointed minister in a local church, which Amanda was thrilled about. But after the marriage, she found that he in fact had given up the thought of ministering for Christ. Can you imagine this deception, how it would feel to one who was overjoyed at the thought of being able to serve her Lord fully, and in fellowship with a group of other passionate believers?

After this, desiring affirmation from God, a confirmation of her salvation and desire to be close to God and serve Him, she prayed. She encountered the Holy Spirit twice one night in September 1868,

. . . a wave came over me, and such a welling up in my heart . . . . How I have lived through it I cannot tell, but the blessedness of the love and the peace and power I can never describe. O, what a glory filled my soul! The great vacuum in my soul began to fill up; it was like a pleasant draught of cool water, and I felt it. I wanted to shout Glory to Jesus! . . . . Just as I put my foot on the top step I seemed to feel a hand, the touch of which I cannot describe. It seemed to press me gently on the top of my head, and I felt something part and roll down and over me like a great cloak! I felt it distinctly; it was done in a moment, and O what a mighty peace and power took possession of me! (Amanda Smith, in An Autobiography: The Story of the Lord’s Dealings with Amanda Smith [1894], as quoted in Evans pp 180-181.)

Amanda now felt that the Lord was with her, in control of her life no matter how hard it was, and she prayed constantly and learned from her Lord during the most tedious of times. She talked with anyone she could about Christ, finding it easy after taking the effort to start. While her husband was alive, her ministry was local, but after he died things changed. She began ministering at meetings in New Jersey, and soon found herself being invited to speak and sing at revival meetings all across the U.S. She soon felt God telling her to minister in Africa and India, but she was to go to Great Britain first.

While fearful of crossing the Atlantic, she finally realized that her fear showed a lack of trust in God. She eventually repented and made the watery trek. God had a surprise in store for Amanda, and no doubt a confidence boosting mission it was: the captain of the ship asked Amanda to conduct the ship’s services. Though there was prejudice against her on that voyage, she won everyone over by the time the trip was over.

In Great Britain, she was welcomed with open arms. It didn’t matter that she was black, or female. She had thought that her time there would be about three months, but she preached around the whole of England and Scotland for two years. She met and was respected by those in the upper class, and these helped her in her future work for the Lord. Her daughter’s room and board in America were paid for, so she needn’t worry about that, and her trip to India finally became a reality. The poverty and the very poor treatment of women she saw there “gripped her heart instantly.” The experience made her realize something that affected her ministry the rest of her life–that evangelism must be coupled with the meeting of practical human needs as well.

Next, she ministered in Liberia, touching and influencing many lives there for eight years. When she came back to the United States she worked with African-American orphans and opened an orphanage in the Chicago area. She was able to do this with the funds garnered from her memoirs. In her final few years of life, Amanda was able to enjoy Florida in a donated home. She died in 1915, having lived a beautiful life of giving and loving.

A missionary to India, Bishop James Thoburn, said this of Amanda:

Through my association with her I learned many valuable lessons, more that has been of actual value to me as a preacher of Christian truth than from any other person I have ever met (Evans p 186).

Thank you, Lord, for blessing Amanda and blessing us through her example!

buying a home, Christian, commentary, popular culture, Religion, slavery

America the Greedy: Homes on Land-lease land

October 15, 2012 Vicki 5 Comments

Hello everyone – how are you all doing? It’s been an unusually long time since I made a blog post, but looking for mortgages (loan shopping), looking for properties, taking cars into shops and looking for a new car, etc., surely takes one time up! Since I’ve been in this mode and have learned some new things, I thought I’d pass a little of my new-found knowledge along.

So we are low-income (and recently lost some monthly income) and our rent went up. But we have some funds to use for a down-payment, so it’s time to buy a condo if we can find one. Why? Where we live, it costs less per month to pay a low-end mortgage and homeowner’s association fees (HOA), than it is to rent. Seems silly, huh?

Leaving the vagaries of renting vs paying a mortgage aside, there’s this thing that exists in our country called a land-lease (not all states allow this for condos/houses, apparently, and for good reason). I have read a number of realtor’s comments and articles on this and this is what I have to say: don’t buy into the idea that there are good reasons to buy a condo or house on leased land. Buying a manufactured home in a mobile home park MAY be worth it, but I’m not talking about mobile homes.

Ok, so this came as a shock to me that you could BUY a condo on land you don’t own. The lease tends to be a lot, and they also have high HOAs. So how, possibly, could this help anyone but the leaseholder? But wait, you might say. What if you buy the home and the lease is finally paid up – don’t you own it all then? That would make sense, right? And it would make up, maybe, for paying the lease for all that time (up to 99 years, I’ve seen). But NO, you BUY a condo, but when the lease is up it’s NOT YOURS. This is what I’ve read; this is my understanding. If you buy a condo or home on leased land and you want to sell and get your money back from the investment you made in the property, you might be dreaming. If the lease is almost up, no one in his/her right mind is going to spend their good money on a home that will be “theirs” for only few years!

I saw a condo here recently that was very attractive, very cute, in a nice area (it only had one parking spot, however). They were asking a fairly low price for the condo itself ($139K), but the lease was around $3,300 annually right now (this is actually a low lease), with scheduled increases to $6,814 annually by 2031. The HOA was a very high $584 per month. Another listing didn’t provide either the lease cost or the HOA. Ok, another is one of those deals where the listing agent sucks in unwary people: a nice condo listed for a ridiculously low price (about 25% of comparable ones in the area), with a bit higher than average HOA, and NO mention of it being a land-lease.

Finally, one in the city where I live. An OK looking condo for not all that cheap of a price (in a perhaps an OK area, but not a great area), with $412 HOA and no lease price provided. Let’s say you were able to put down 20% on a mortgage for this place (but good luck with even finding a bank to give you a mortgage for this type of property). The monthly payments would be about $780 per month. Property tax would be minimal. There’s the $412 HOA, and the lease is . . . what? Just for the heck of it, let’s provide a lease that is kind-of average for a mobile home lease in the region: $1,000 per month. That would leave you paying $2192 per month for you basic housing needs.

We’re looking to buy a small regular condo and our monthly costs will be between about $1,025 and $1,420, and that includes property tax. So how does the land-lease option help lower income people, or help to save on monthly costs? It doesn’t; it only helps the landowner. And you will not gain equity in that home. You will be lucky if you get the same amount back for it as you paid. This is what I’ve read from real estate agents and others. One good side to owning, some people try to suggest, is that the place will be better maintained and generally nicer than a cheaper condo or apartment, so it’s better for families. Well. I say don’t throw away your hard-earned cash and be patient, do some more searching, etc. (Build good credit; it’s kind-of astonishing how much of a difference one-half of one percent makes on your monthly payment.) Save that money for your kids’ college education and don’t just throw it at some land-owner who’s sitting back making all kinds of cash off you for simply roosting on his land.

Apologetics, Bible Study, Christian, Christianity, God is good, Islam, Jesus, Middle East, Religion, Women in the Bible

Female Hajj Pilgrims to Saudi Arabia Sent Back Home

September 28, 2012 Vicki Leave a comment

This is from a very short article in Bloomberg online, and there are other articles to be found by googling:

Nigeria has protested to Saudi Arabia’s authorities over the detention of more than 1,000 female pilgrims who arrived in the kingdom for the annual Hajj pilgrimage without male guardians, state-run Radio Nigeria said. . . . Saudi Arabia enforces restrictions that are interpreted from the Wahhabi version of Sunni Islam. Women can’t travel or get an education without male approval or mix with unrelated men in public places.

As a Christian, I am at a loss as to why anyone would voluntarily become a Muslim in the first place, but when I see stuff like this, I am out-and-out flummoxed. So, women must be controlled and herded like lesser beings, AND, they can’t even be in public with other men because . . . why??? Oh, men can’t control themselves. They’ll just start doing some Mardi Gras moves in the street. Really?? Belong to a religion that is so controlling, that seems to acknowledge and even promote the idea that human males are as good as randy rabbits, and that seems to not control its tyrannical and extremely violent members no matter what it does? (And I won’t even get into all the persecution that goes on in the world against Christians at the hands of Muslims.)

Wow. Sorry, but there is simply no comparison between Christianity and Islam. And don’t go whining (atheists) about ancient pockets of “Christian” history (a lot of actual Christians died in trying to get false and violent actions to stop). Sure, there have been wolves in sheep clothing that have done bad things in the name of Christianity. It happens everyday in every area of life – I mean, charlatans seeking power and all of that, using whatever thing people have positive feelings about. What you do is look at the founder of the faith. Is s/he like that (false, after power, money, etc.)? I won’t get into Muhammad here and the history of Islam, but I think it worth looking at Christ and the history of those who actually follow Him and his teachings.

Christ was sin-free and was not married; he didn’t go after multiple wives or even minor wives; he didn’t leave any heirs for everyone to argue about or over. He lifted women UP from their low status at the time He visited us here on earth. Women could follow Him and learn from Him. In fact, He said it was better for a woman to learn from Him, to take the time and do that – as it was more important – than to serve Him or other men!!! Wow!! Why would any woman NOT want to follow Jesus? If you want to know more and discover some pretty cool information that you just don’t hear about all that often, see New Testament Views of Women. You may want to read about the woman at the well whom Christ talked with too.

In the future, I’ll try and post an article about the good in the history of Christ’s true followers, like those who founded hospitals (hospitals that were free) and universities. People seem to have forgotten the parts of Christian history, too, when Christians died in order to stop those who did violence in Christ’s name. In the meantime, if any Muslims come here, don’t go hatin’ on me. Actions are actions, and the action reported on in the press was done and promoted by a whole country, and a whole section of Islam. It’s no secret. If you want to explain how your own sect of Islam is not like that in the comments, go ahead, but know that WordPress comments are always moderated.

Christian, Jesus, Poems, Poetry, Religion

Christian Poems VIII: Nicholson, Aquinas, Priest

September 25, 2012 Vicki Leave a comment

1397939_24543122 saavem sxc.hu — Graveyard crosses (by saavem, http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1397939).

The Burning Bush

by Norman Nicholson

When Moses, musing in the desert, found
The thorn bush spiking up from the hot ground,
And saw the branches on a sudden bear
The crackling yellow barberries of fire,

He searched his learning and imagination
For any logical, neat explanation,
And turned to go, but turned again and stayed
And faced the fire and knew it for his God.

I too have seen the briar alight like coal,
The love that burns, the flesh that’s ever whole,
And many times have turned and left it there,
Saying: “It’s prophecy–but metaphor.”

But stinging tongues like John the Baptist shout:
“That this is metaphor is no way out.
It’s dogma too, or you make God a liar;
The bush is still a bush, and fire is a fire.”

In The Earth is the Lord’s: Poems of the Spirit, H. PLotz, ed. (Thomas Y. Crowell Co. 1965), 57.

_______________

“Adoro te supplex, lateens deitas”
(beginning stanzas)

by Thomas Aquinas

Godhead here in hiding, whom I do adore
Masked by these bare shadows, shape and nothing more,
See, Lord, at thy service low lies here a heart
Lost, all lost in wonder at the God thou art.

Seeing, touching, tasting are in thee deceived;
How says trusty hearing? that shall be believed;
What God’s Son has told me, take for true I do;
Truth himself speaks truly or there’s nothing true.

On the cross thy godhead made no sign to men;
Here thy very manhood steals from human ken:
Both are my confession, both are my belief,
And I pray the prayer of the dying thief.

In The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, W.H. Gardner and N.H. MacKenzie, ed.s (Oxford Univ. Press 1967); Hopkins had translated this Aquinas poem.

__________________

You Wait

by Victoria Priest

God abounds, is all around;
      His love for me endures.
But I, up in the air then on the ground;
      Smitten now, but later all demurs;
      Oh love! How foul am I!
Your love abounds, is all around;
      You yet wait for my return.

Entertainment, Games, gaming, popular culture, review, Video games

I lost the men in my family to DayZ

September 23, 2012 Vicki 3 Comments

In line with encouraging circumstantial thinking, like “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade,” I’m making the most of the video game DayZ by sharing with you its addictive qualities. The men in my family team-it-up in this multi-player online game, and the survival aspect is so intense it’s like they’re literally out in a gorilla warfare battlefield. Consider yourself forewarned if you haven’t played DayZ yet, and I’m assuming that’s the case since if you had, you’d be playing it right now instead of reading this.

DayZ is actually a mod made for the military simulation game, ARMA 2. This mod places the player in an apocalyptic zombie world of survival, but it’s the other online players that are more often the real danger. This game is not anything like shooter zombie games such as Left4Dead. Sure, you shoot zombies if you want to, and no doubt you’ll have to, but they are often slow or relatively easy to deal with. Well, during the day, anyway. Most online players, however, are just really horrible individuals. I say that so generally because as far as I and the men can tell, the vast majority are snipers, bandits, hackers, etc.–we’re guessing 80% to 95% of all players fall into these categories. Most will shoot you on site, which is really a “jerk” (that’s putting it kindly) move since when you die, you lose any of the hard-won items you may have found.

A good little background summary from Wikipedia: “The mod places the player in the fictional post-Soviet state of Chernarus, where an unknown virus has turned the population into zombies. As a survivor with limited supplies, the player must scavenge the world for supplies such as food, water, weapons and medicine, while killing or avoiding both zombies and other players – in an effort to survive the zombie apocalypse.”

When you first spawn, you start out with only a flash light, a bandage, and pain-killers. Wow! Nothing to fight off zombies with. You must scavenge for even the most rudimentary weapons, such as an ax or crowbar. There are of course a whole variety of guns in the game, but you must find ammo too, and unlike many online games, you have limited backpack space. You can become injured easily in the game and require morphine, blood packs, or even hospital care, in order to survive; playing as a team, the men help each other out with drugs, blood transfusions, that sort of thing. You might very well imagine playing the game for some time without really getting too deep into it yet, before some unpleasant fella (gamer, not zombie) murders you.

Which brings me to a well-known YouTube player called FrankieonPC. He’s generally a good guy and has done some pretty awesome stuff, with the help of some friends. He has shown that the game has a surprising range of multi-player capabilities. In one video where he has gotten rid of some bad guys (he, along with some other hero players, rid the servers of snipers and bandits – this really takes skill when the snipers simply bump people off upon spawning) and raided some hacker stashes, he calls all good folk to a church. They arrive on a bus. Can you believe it? There are usable buses in the game, and you can see all the people – online players – riding in the bus. Anyway, Frankie has dumped the weapons from the hackers in the church and anyone is free to take what they want. This is very cool and warm and fuzzy, and then . . . someone bombs the church!

Besides buses, there are helicopters, trucks, cars, ATVs, and even bikes, though none of these are common. Vehicles can be found (or stolen), though they may need to be fixed. Not surprisingly, you will make a desirable target as a vehicle driver. The game is open and huge, and has an awesome markable map available. Servers vary in their difficulty level (there are fewer people on the higher level servers), and they may have other differences, like vehicle spawn rate, day or night only play, and so on.

The men that I’ve lost to DayZ say that what they like most about the game is killing bandits and saving bambis (that is, newb players that are easy targets for the snipers and bandits). They like working together under pressure, helping each other survive, and finding vehicles and fixing them. The difficulties they’ve encountered include hackers with over-powered weapons, fatal glitches (like from doors and stairs), and not being able to see at night, at all, as if it were always a new moon. And, of course, they love the challenge of surviving longer than the average time of 1 hour and 8 minutes, or whatever the current figure is, as kept at the DayZ site.

Apologetics, Biography, Christian, Christianity, Faith, Religion, Spirituality, Theology

C.S. Lewis’s Conversions: Atheist to Theist, Theist to Christian

September 22, 2012 Vicki Leave a comment

121739 — Rare early picture of CS Lewis, on the cover of “All My Road Before Me” — from his early and agnostic or atheistic days.A Christian Conversion Experience: C.S. Lewis

Contemporary apologetics so often focus on the issues of biblical reliability and understanding in relation to science, and on the question of evil, as these are the currently contested concerns. One apologetic that points towards the existence of God, however, is one that is generally not “scientific” enough, and that is a changed life. Not a temporary change, which can indicate a simple excitement of a person’s will, but a permanent change evidenced by the long term. So let’s look at the conversion experience of a well-known person, C.S. (Jack) Lewis. Lewis was an Oxford and Cambridge Professor (English and Philosophy) and the well-known author of both fictional works like The Chronicles of Narnia and of highly valued scholarly works.

To anyone who comes in contact with atheistic thought, what Lewis wrote to his best friend in 1916 (below) will seem quite familiar. What made him come to that conclusion, and what made him change his mind?

“I believe in no religion. There is absolutely no proof for any of them, and from a philosophical standpoint Christianity is not even the best. All religions, that is, all mythologies to give them their proper name, are merely man’s own invention” (Hooper p. 9).

Lewis, or Jack, was brilliant from early age, having been tutored at home until he was nine, when his mother died. As if this great sorrow was not enough, Lewis’ dad sent him away to school, from their home in Ireland to England. Lewis’ older brother, Warnie, attended the very small school with him, but Jack hated it, and with good reason. The headmaster, a Reverend, was abusive and eventually deemed insane. At his next school, Lewis experienced an occultist head matron.

One can see the progression of Lewis’ road to apostasy from his parents’ Anglican faith: God did not heal his mother, one school leader was a cruel and crazy believer, and the other was a non-believing occultist. By the time Lewis attended his third school, he was an atheist. Hating this school as well, Lewis’ father sent him to learn under a distinguished tutor, who happened to be an atheist also. Lewis was superb at languages and translating. As his tutor wrote, Jack had “a sort of genius for translating . . . . He is the most brilliant translator of Greek plays I have ever met” (Gromley p. 36).

He went on to learn and teach at Oxford, with WWI service (and related injury and recovery) sandwiched in. After the war he lived with his adopted family, a much older atheist woman and her daughter.

So what would cause Lewis to stray from his atheism? A couple of strongly held ideas played their parts. One was the concept and experience of what Lewis termed “joy” – a pang of intense bliss and longing, followed by a strong desire to experience it again. The other was his concern, from an early age, that if Christianity were true it could be shown that paganism prefigured it, or that Christianity fulfilled paganism. Indeed, Lewis felt his pangs of “joy” when reading the northern pagan mythologies that he loved so much.

Jack Lewis wanted to be his own man; he did not want to acknowledge a power or diety that demanded loyalty. Through the years, however, seeking truth and being drawn to authors and friends who helped him with answers to his search for “joy” as well as his concern over God’s communication with the pagan world, Lewis’ heart and mind opened enough to hear God give him a choice.

“. . . a fact about myself was somehow presented to me. I became aware that I was holding something at bay, of shutting something out. . . . I felt myself being, there and then, given a free choice. . . . I could unbuckle the armor or keep it on. . . . The choice appeared to be momentous but it was also strangely unemotional. I was moved by no desires or fears. In a sense I was not moved by anything. I chose to open . . . . Then came the repercussion on the imaginative level. I felt as if I were a man of snow at long last beginning to melt. The melting was starting in my back – drip-drip and presently trickle-trickle. I rather disliked the feeling” (Lewis p. 123).

This experience of Lewis’ happened in 1929, and it was “conversion” to belief in God, not in an afterlife or in Jesus Christ. Lewis still thought that parts of Christianity were a kind of myth, yet he wanted to know the truth and to live truth. God gave Lewis many nudges, even via an ardent atheist who thought that it really did seem as though God made the pagan myths come true through Jesus Christ. This atheist’s admission shocked Lewis. Jack’s good friend J.R.R. Tolkien helped him with this issue, too, as did Hugo Dyson, on a pivotal walk in September 1931:

“Tolkien was convinced that myth, such as the Norse myth of the death of Balder, or the Greek myth of Psyche and Eros, was not the opposite of fact. These stories were a way of expressing truths deeper than fact. . . . [Tolkien declared that] not only did the truth in myths come from God, but a writer of myths could be doing God’s work in the world.¹ As Tolkien talked, there was a sudden rush of wind out of nowhere, as if to underline the message. The three men held their breath, feeling the importance of the moment” (Gormley p. 95).

Later that month Lewis had a second, more subtle, conversion experience.

“As I drew near the conclusion, I felt a resistance almost as strong as my previous resistance to Theism. . . . Every step I had taken, from the Absolute to ‘Spirit’ and from ‘Spirit’ to ‘God,’ had been a step toward the more concrete, the more imminent, the more compulsive. At each step one had less chance ‘to call one’s soul one’s own.’ . . . I know very well when, but hardly how, the final step was taken. I was driven to Whipsnade [Zoo] one sunny morning. When we set out I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and when we reached the zoo I did. Yet I had not exactly spent the journey in thought. Nor in great emotion. . . . It was more like when a man, after long sleep, still lying motionless in bed, becomes aware that he is now awake” (Lewis pp. 129-130).

So, finally, Lewis found that myth had become fact (that is, Jesus was “the god that died”) and that the pangs of “joy” had been sign posts to God.

As Lewis had written in Surprised by Joy, “all” is required of a person who acknowledges and worships his maker, and Lewis gave his all. He is considered to be the greatest apologist of the 20th century, having written Mere Christianity, The Problem of Pain, The Screwtape Letters, and more. In addition, he was a very popular layman preacher in Oxford. As a “secular” scholar and author, he wrote poetry, the highly regarded “A Preface to Paradise Lost,” The Discarded Image, and others. Lewis was the president of Oxford’s Socratic Club from 1942-1955; this was a philosophy group that delved into the pros and cons of the Christian faith.

As if the schedule demanded by all that was not enough² – don’t forget that he taught as well – Lewis was kind enough to answer all his letters (as he became “popular” he had the help of his brother, and then his wife). He always helped those in need–in a very personal way when the opportunity arose–and in a more general way through significant monetary giving. His apologetics show a concern and love for the common man, being theological and philosophical explanations open and accessible to all. Jack’s life was one humanly lived and beautifully lived.

_____________

Notes

Indeed, as probably all of you readers know, J.R.R. Tolkien wrote the great “modern myth,” The Lord of the Rings. It’s likely that many fewer are aware of Lewis’ re-told myth of Psyche and Cupid (or Eros) in Till We Have Faces.
Lewis had a truly unbelievable photographic memory, easily quoting pages from books that someone happened to mention. This gift was obviously a very great help to his studies, writing, lectures, etc.

____________

Sources

Gormley, Beatrice. C.S. Lewis: Christian and Storyteller. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Books for Young Readers, 1998.

Hooper, Wlater. C.S. Lewis: A Complete Guide to His Life & Works. New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996.

Lewis, C.S. “Surprised by Joy.” In The Inspirational Writings of C.S. Lewis, by C.S. Lewis, 1-130. New York: Inspirational Press, 1994 (1955).

Christian, Christianity, Jesus, Poems, Poetry, Religion

Christian Poems VII: Donne, Herbert

September 17, 2012 Vicki Leave a comment

P1010558.2 — Heart aflame (Vicki Priest).

HOLY SONNETS (vi)

By John Donne (1572 – 1631)

Batter my heart, three-person’d God; for, you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn and make me new.
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy to me, me should defend,
But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am beroth’d unto your enemy:
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

In The Oxford Book of Christian Verse. D. Cecil, ed. (Clarendon Press 1940), p 87.

___________

LOVE II

By George Herbert (1593 – 1633)

Immortal Heat, O let they greater flame
Attract the lesser to it: Let those fires,
Which shall consume the world, first make it tame,
And kindle in our hearts such true desires,

As may consume our lusts, and make thee way.
Then shall our hearts pant [for] thee; then shall our brain
All her inventions on thine Altar lay,
And there in hymns send back thy fire again.

Our eyes shall see thee, which before saw dust;
Dust blown by wit, till that they both were blind:
Thou shalt recover all they goods in kind,
Who wert disseized by usurping lust:

All knees shall bow to thee, all wits shall rise,
And praise him who did make and mend our eyes.

In The One Year Book of Poetry. P. Comfort and D Partner, ed.s (Tyndale House Pub.s 1999), Feb. 14.

__________

“BUT ART THOU COME, DEAR SAVIOR?”

By Anonymous

But art Thou come, dear Saviour? hath Thy love
Thus made Thee stoop, and leave Thy throne above

Thy lofty heavens, and thus Thyself to dress
In dust to visit mortals? Could no less

A condescension serve? and after all
The mean reception of a cratch and stall?

Dear Lord, I’ll fetch Thee thence! I have a room
(‘Tis poor, but ’tis my best) if Thou wilt come

Within so small a cell, where I would fain
Mine and the world’s Redeemer entertain,

I mean, my heart: ’tis sluttish, I confess,
And will not mend Thy lodging, Lord, unless

Thou send before Thy harbinger, I mean
Thy pure and purging Grace, to make it clean

And sweep its nasty corners; then I’ll try
to wash it also with a weeping eye.

And when ’tis swept and wash’d, I then will go
And, with Thy leave, I’ll fetch some flowers that grow

In Thine own garden, Faith and Love, to Thee;
With these I’ll dress it up, and these shall be

My rosemary and bays. Yet when my best
Is done, the room’s not fit for such a guest.

But here’s the cure; Thy presence, Lord, alone
Will make a stall a court, a cratch a throne.

In The Oxford Book of Christian Verse. D. Cecil, ed. (Clarendon Press 1940), pp 260-261.

Christian, Elder Scrolls, Entertainment, gaming, popular culture, review, Skyrim, Video games

Hearthfire (Skyrim): The Quest for Butter

September 16, 2012 Vicki 6 Comments

Hearthfire image — Original home with main hall being added. http://bethsoft.com/en-us/games/hearthfire

(If you’re looking for more of an overall review of Skyrim, please see this article as well: Christian Parents, Should you let your kids play Skyrim?)

The newest Skyrim DLC is a mini one, called Hearthfire (this review is based on the XBOX 360 game). It allows the player to build up to three houses on property outside of the cities or towns, and to adopt one or two orphaned children. The trailer promised more flexibility in building, in my view, so at first I was disappointed in Hearthfire on that ground. But, after playing it for some time and building all three homes, I am disappointed and annoyed even more. Not totally disappointed, mind you, and I’m not advocating not buying it and trying it out, but I do want to present what is annoying and what needs to be fixed. HOPEFULLY, Bethesda will get around to making some fixes and making some additions to this DLC.

Let’s take a look at adoption first. Instead of simply allowing you to adopt the children already orphaned and being forced to live in the Riften (yuck!) orphanage, you have to decide amongst the four new orphans in the towns and them. There are now more orphans than ever to choose from . . ! No matter what you do, there will always be orphans. When playing Skyrim before, I wanted only to adopt some out of the orphanage, but now there are others – it just never ends and you are not allowed to adopt more.

Anyway, the kids are a nice addition for the most part. (If you don’t want children bugging you to play with them, maybe you should forget about adopting any in the first place, however.) It’s fun giving them things, and they will give you things once in a while, too. One day my son gave me a unique and odd green robe to wear. They love when you give them daggers. You can improve and enchant their wooden swords, and duel wield them yourself if you want a bit of a fun challenge. A problem with giving them items, to me, is that you are very limited in what you can give.

Now, for the building bit – I’ll get to the hunt for butter after this. The three homes you can build are on three specific pieces of property you can buy from the Jarl’s or their stewards. One is near Whiterun, although it’s part of Dawnstar hold. Another is outside of Solitude, with a view of the land bridge that is that city, though it is a part of Morthal hold. The third is close to the lake south of Riverwood – a beautiful area that is like having a vacation home in the woods – and is a part of Falkreath hold.

I am not going to go through all of the addition choices, but will mention a few that give notice for some reason. You can build what is in a provided list for each room/addition, but you don’t have alternate choices within the list. You don’t have a choice between a bed and a table for a certain spot, for example – there’s is only one thing designated for that spot – you can only add it or leave it open. And, you cannot demolish a wing later in case you change your mind about the kind of house you want.

All the homes start off with a small starter room (home!), and in order to add the specialty wings, you must build the main hall attached to the first starter room. The starter room has a bed and fire pit in it, and so it is livable as is. However, if you hire a steward – very advisable since not all the mill owners will sell you wood, as the add-on claims – then where do both of you sleep? This is actually more of a problem later.

You will have the ability to add two small beds and a double bed in the main hall for you and your spouse, and your kids (forget “choice” – there is no other options for this area, nor any other, in these Hearthfire houses). However, the steward and housecarl always sleep in the beds that are for the kids, or one of them may sleep in your own bed. This is a problem with the game. If you choose to build the bedroom wing, this is not a problem. But if you choose to build a different wing and use those main hall beds, then good luck! The problem is only compounded by the fact that there is only one bed left in the original building for both the steward and the housecarl. This obviously was not thought through by Bethesda, and I find it quite astonishing.

The storage room was a very major disappointment. Seriously, Bethesda couldn’t spring for a dragon claw holder and some other holder for specific items – like the various named jewelry you can find – especially since everything always pops out of display cases and off of shelves? This really fries me! Come one, Bethesda . . . really!?! Give us something for the money. The cellar is a bit interesting in that way: you can build a shrine holder and all the shrines to the gods. But a storage room that doesn’t store all those specialty items? Wow and weird.

The homes do not incorporate anything from the Dawnguard DLC. It seems like the ability to add new plants and new creatures, like from the Soul Cairn and the Vale, at least, should have been designed into this new DLC. It becomes obvious that this add-on was planned from the beginning. Skyrim had orphans and they asked to be adopted, yet you could not adopt them. There is no Dawnguard content in Hearthfire, except for one thing: you can give your child an armored dog from Fort Dawnguard (a nice surprise). So, why wasn’t this simply part of Skyrim to begin with? My “other half” is really into the Elder Scrolls, though Morrowind specifically. He told me that in the past, an add-on such as this would’ve been free. It seems Bethesda held some of the content out in order to make some more cash, while providing a not so great product.

Which brings us to the butter quest. There’s not a formal quest for butter, of course, but there is an actual one. Butter is as hard to find as gold- if not harder – as far as I can tell. You will want butter if you build the kitchen wing (it probably has the best looking wing interior), which has an “oven” for baking. Butter is an 0ft-needed ingredient, but good luck finding it!!! You can’t make it, even though you can own cows now and there is a butter churn in the kitchen. So far I have only received one butter out of the churn. I have searched high and low for butter, looking to find it in various places, and to buy it. I never find it (it isn’t laying around like soup or stew), and have been only offered it to buy about three times from various vendors. Wow. Who knew baking could be so hard?

So if you want to have something new to do in Skyrim before the next big DLC comes out, and you like having children, then Hearthfire would be worth the $5, in my opinion. But otherwise, the choice is of course up to you, especially if you want to bake but don’t feel it worth hours of your time in a quest for butter!

November 9 Update (XBOX): After months, the churn finally had a new bowl of butter in it. BUT, within a short time, it had butter in it again. Perhaps there was an update that loaded that we didn’t notice, or perhaps it’s very random! Also, the best places I’ve noticed to buy butter are from the town stands, from the vendors selling vegetables and other foods (that is, the dark elf in Riften and the two humans in White Run and Windhelm).

9/11, Christian, Christianity, Islam, Middle East, politics, Religion

The 9/11 Attacks and Protests in Libya and Cairo

September 12, 2012 Vicki Leave a comment

Very briefly, since I’m leaving for work soon, the current US administration’s immediate response to the violent protests in Libya and Cairo was not only extremely lame, but anti-US law. In an article I read last night, which I can’t yet locate this morning, administration officials said that such a film that sparked the violent events should not have been made and that American freedom does not extend to criticizing other religions too much.

Whaaa . . . . ?!?!?! They didn’t use the words “too much,” but it was the diplomatic way of saying the same thing. If this is so, then why, of why, have I had to experience militant atheists condemning Christianity and Christians – often in very vile and childish ways – for a number of years now. Not long enough for the fascist government to locate them?

In a newer article this morning I see that the administration is doing some back-up and corrections. Former President Clinton is saying that there is no excuse for the violent acts that happened yesterday. Finally!!! Our government needs to defend us, not militant Muslims. We have freedom here. We have freedom to investigate something and say what we think about it. We even have the freedom here to make fun of that thing. American government – please start defending us and stop making yourself out to be mega wimps to these people!

This wasn’t just about the film! Has no one noted that these events took place on 9/11, yet the film has been out a while (the film being the Innocence of Muslims)? People, please wake up. These were not spontaneous acts, but planned acts. And I bet the governments, or at least factions in the governments, knew about them.

Anyway, I simply couldn’t believe what I read last night. If I find those quotes from US officials later today or tomorrow, I will publish them. If America implemented what they said, we’d all be in trouble, and they also show the bizarrely weak and misguided spine of our government. Thanks for reading.

Apologetics, Christianity, Jesus, Religion, Theology

God’s Compassion: the Ninevites and the Canaanites

September 11, 2012 Vicki Leave a comment

Nineveh_Adad_gate_exterior_entrance_far2 — Adad Gate, Nineveh (northern Iraq). Partial reconstruction of one of the 15 gates into ancient Nineveh.

“The atheist has it almost right: humans regularly do make gods in their image. Yet the biblical God isn’t the kind we make up. He refuses to be manipulated by human schemes. He makes us all—including his true devotees—uncomfortable, which in the end is what we truly need to overcome our self-centeredness. ‘Whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it’ Matt. 16:25)” (Copan p 193).

Many today find fault with the God of the Old Testament (OT) because they read of the violence He commanded, or they read and accept unlearned and biased commentary about it. Yet they ignore all that God presents about Himself, the contexts of the situations, and the hugely over-riding context of God’s benevolent plan for mankind. If the critics used such thought processes with their family and friends, they would have no relationships! Their assertions and arguments are unscholarly and simple, stemming from an ideology that seeks to eliminate God.

Is God mysterious and some of His ways unknowable? Yes. But is God compassionate? Can we discern that He is compassionate by what is presented in the OT (since God’s compassion is very clear in the New Testament, we are focusing on the OT here) without being accused of only wishful thinking? Yes, and we can know that God’s compassion was not for the Israelites only. Perhaps the most obvious example of God’s love and patience outside of Israel involves the Ninevites, since a whole book—Jonah—provides the evidence. (This book also foreshadows Jesus and His work.)

Now, Jonah is a fun book, especially if you take the time to imagine what is going on and maybe do some research in commentaries. The gist of the story is that Jonah is called by the Lord to go and convey to the Ninevites—a cruel people and bitter enemies of Israel—that God has seen their evil and it has gone on long enough. Judgment is coming. Jonah, knowing that God might be compassionate towards them (instead of destroying Israel’s enemy), ran from the Lord’s calling; “you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity” (Jonah 4:2b).

Indeed, after Jonah finally gave the Ninevites the message of God, the Ninevites repented and God did not harm them. Jonah was so upset about this that he told God that he wanted to die. This represents man’s view. But God answered with His view: “Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?” (Jonah 4:11).

At least some of you came here thinking, “OK, but how can the Canaanites be an example of God’s compassion?” After all, God commanded the Israelites to destroy many of the Canaanite groups: Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites (Deuteronomy 7:1-5; they were to leave alone Moab, Ammon, and Edom). God commanded this through Moses, prior to Joshua leading the Israelites into the “promised” land around the Jordan River.

This command of God’s seems out of character to many people. The God of the New Testament would not command such a thing . . . would he? Jesus’ disciples understood that God had made judgments in the past, and when a Samaritan town would not help them at a certain time, they asked, “Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?” “But Jesus turned and rebuked them, and they went to another village” (Luke 9:54b-56). Jesus provided another example about how, during this new era, God’s judgment is postponed. As part of His instructions when sending out his disciples, Jesus said: “If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake the dust off your feet when you leave that home or town. I tell you the truth, it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town” (Matthew 10:14-15).

As we saw earlier, the sin and cruelty of Nineveh had gone on long enough when God decided to judge them. He sent Jonah beforehand, however, to preach to them God’s thoughts, and the Ninevites actually repented. God therefore held off judgment. A far different example is that of Sodom and Gomorrah, as mentioned above by Jesus. God knew those towns were devoid of righteous people, and so they were eventually destroyed because of their overall wickedness. Yet another example commonly known of is the great flood. God found the people evil and corrupt, so he gave Noah 120 years to build the ark before the flood waters came. In all that time, the earth’s inhabitants did not repent. God is very patient and longsuffering, and does not execute judgment until He knows the point of no return has been reached.

Which now brings us back to the Canaanites. Way back before the Israelites even traveled to Egypt and subsequently became slaves, God knew of the Canaanite’s evil ways. While God was making his covenant with Abram (later called Abraham), He told him this prophecy:

“Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. You, however, will go to your fathers in peace and be buried at a good old age. In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites ¹ [Canaanites] has not yet reached its full measure” (Genesis 15:13-16; emphasis added).

The Exodus out of Egypt took place around 1446 BC, and they entered Canaan round 1406 BC. To be clear, Israelites were not being given the land around the Jordan River because they were righteous, but because they were to be an instrument of judgment and because they serve an ultimate future purpose (Deuteronomy 9:5). Also, since Israel did not keep a standing army and did not pay any soldiers, God was proving to the other nations that He is God and more than able to overcome their “gods.”

But what did the Canaanites do that was so bad? They did those things God forbade in Leviticus 18: incest, sodomy, bestiality, and sacrificing children (by burning them alive) to the god Molech. The Amalekites had done additional damage by murdering the slower persons at the end of the Israelite line while they traveled from Egypt; the Amalekites had acted wickedly and purposefully worked against God’s reputation. It should be noted that God did not order the destruction of any people for a lack of faith in Him, but for horrendous moral behavior (see Amos 1 -2 for more on God’s thinking).

The judgment of God against the peoples of Canaan had at least two purposes, and His purposes have compassion. One is that, sooner or later, evil needs to be dealt with and justice served, and the Canaanites were given plenty of time to change their ways. A great deal of wickedness was removed from the earth, or would have been sooner, if God’s commands were actually carried out. A great compassion, as I see it, is that God was trying to put a stop to the systematic and torturous murder of innocent children. Second, God’s compassionate plan for the redemption of all willing humans rested on the survival of Israel. God warned again and again that if the Canaanites were allowed to survive, and if Israel intermarried with them, that they would sin and turn from God. This indeed happened often, as God said.

It is mentioned above that not all Canaanites were killed, even though God commanded their destruction.² This is where it becomes imperative that God’s word is read carefully. While God commanded the destruction of seven Canaanite tribes in Deuteronomy 7:1-5 (and other places), a bit further down in Deuteronomy God said: “The LORD your God will drive out those nations before you, little by little. You will not be allowed to eliminate them all at once, or the wild animals will multiply around you” (7:22). Indeed, archaeological evidence shows that Canaanite culture and religion were nonexistent in Israel by 1000 BC, about 400 years after Israel entered that land.

To conclude, God is the God of all and God loves all, not just Israel (or Christians). However, He is also just and knows of the suffering people experience from evil. In Old Testament times God pronounced prophecies and judgments, oftentimes with warnings. In the case of Nineveh, the people repented and God did not execute judgment. At other times, Israel itself committed evil, did not repent, and God judged them. In the case of the Canaanites, God saw their evil ways and also foresaw their lack of repentance; He used Israel as His instrument of judgment against them. In this Christian era (the beginning of which depended on the survival of Israel), God seeks to save the lost prior to His judgment and eventual renewal of the whole earth. Since Adam and Eve fell from grace, God has been working on His plan of redemption for all willing humans and even nature itself. His periodic elimination of evil historically, and His compassionate interventions otherwise, all work toward drawing His rebellious but beloved creation back to Himself.

Notes

Amorite and Canaanite are basically interchangeable, referring to peoples that lived in the “land of Canaan.” Canaan was a son of Ha, who was a son of Noah. Amorite could more specifically refer to those dwelling in the hills, while Canaanites were those in the valleys.
So what do we make of the book of Joshua, then, where in contradiction to other biblical passages, it is claimed that Joshua destroyed the Canaanites? Bible scholar Nicholas Wolterstorff has studied Joshua and it’s relation to other biblical passages that clearly indicate that Canaanites survived Joshua’s attacks (Flannagan 255-286), and came to a number of instructive conclusions. Foremost is that Joshua is hagiographic and includes hyperbolic war language that is basically identical to that used by other regional nations, and thus should not be taken literally. When reading Judges and other books that mention the Canaanites, books that read like regular history, we can take them literally as opposed to Joshua’s military claims.In addition, the words used for “destroy” and “drive out” are interchangeable and perhaps confused. The same language was used of Adam and Even being driven out from the Garden of Eden; obviously, they weren’t destroyed (other similar passages involve Cain and King David). Leviticus 18:26-28 also mentions the driving out of the Canaanites, not their destruction. Yet another consideration is what the bible says about the Amalekites. In 1 Samuel we read of God ordering the utter destruction of the Amalekites, and then King Saul carrying that order out. However, later in the same book (!), we read of King David running into living Amalekites–there was even an Amalekite army! It becomes obvious that the bible contains the exaggerated war rhetoric of those times. However, while these explanations serve to placate critics over issues of God-ordered genocide, they seem to overly dismiss God’s legitimate role of all-knowing judge.
This article was edited at various times and expanded in January 2015. It was originally published by the author at Examiner.com.

Sources: Copan, Paul, Is God a Moral Monster? (Baker Books 2011); Flannagan, Matthew, “Did God Command the Genocide of the Canaanites?” in True Reason: Confronting the Irrationality of the New Atheism (Kregel Publ.s 2013, pp 255-286); Kaiser et al., Hard Sayings of the Bible (InterVarsity Press 1996); The Bible (NIV 1984). Image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nineveh_Adad_gate_exterior_entrance_far2.JPG