https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-cxbg7-18cdbf9
We speak of God’s wrath and what it means, we speak of justice, and we speak of the cross of Christ as his place of victory of the powers of darkness
The Gathering of the Outcasts, episode 5
https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-xjkcm-18b9b9f
We discuss the presence of God and reflecting God’s love in the brokenness of the world
Filed under Uncategorized
Love wins
For four hundred years, white Christians have twisted the Bible and bullied, threatened and lied to hold onto the idolatry of white supremacy.
God will not hold them guiltless.
But it isn’t Christianity. They’ve actually been persecuting Christ and his people, and have been since the time of Christ.
Many thousands of us have been hounded out by arrogant supremists masquerading as the people of God. But they are known by their fruits.
Power, supremacy, money and status are the pursuits of anti Christ and their passion is lit by the fires of hell.
They will not succeed, no matter how much they preen and boast.
Those who practice hate, contempt, racism, misogyny, blasphemy, lies, fornication and adultery will always crushed under the feet of the Lamb, and those who follow the Lamb, with the courage to love, and the faith to practice peace will rest with him in this world and the world to come.
Babylon will have its last hurrah, and they will be blown away by the breath of God.
These are the those who cheer when the George Floyds and the Emmit Tills are tortured to death;, but their blood cries out from the earth to the ears of the Living God.
So give voice to the voiceless, speak for the cast out, embrace the broken, feed the hungry, rebuke the racist, be intolerant to the sexist, hug the trans kid, and don’t lose heart.
These guys don’t win. Hate always loses.
Take heart. Love wins.
Profit and loss
Last summer I was walking through a grocery store and overheard two elderly gentlemen in a discussion. They were talking about the felony convictions of 47. They didn’t doubt he was a criminal felon. They talked about his rapes and they didn’t doubt them. They talked about his narcissism and psychotic tendencies.
And then I overheard one of them saying something I won’t forget.
“Well,” he said, “I’ll probably still vote for him. In the end I reckon he’ll put more money in my pocket than the other guy.”
That made me sad, and I thought about it.
The argument resonated with me because I was born and raised in those circles, so I’ve heard it before.
Cut taxes. Lower prices. Leave more money for all of us.
We were eventually tricked into thinking that this was the whole of the human experience.
I’m all for cutting waste and spending money wisely, but I think we need to remember what Jesus said over and over again.
What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his soul?
I don’t think he was thinking about Grecian metaphysics, with a dichotomy between spirit and body. That was a bit of a foreign concept to Jewish thinking.
Soul meant something more profound. It could be translated “life”, or “breath”. Jesus could have been talking about death. What will it profit a man to gain everything this world has to offer and then die.
And that is true. Solomon had the same insights in Ecclesiastes.
But I don’t think that even that exhausts what Jesus is talking about. Because to the mind of a first century Jew, psyche meant something even more than that. It means everything that makes a human a human. It means the self, the part of humanity that was created to reflect God.
Living through these days, I think I am starting to get a glimmer.
If your whole life is consumed by profit, and the whole of your morality is who will leave the most money in your pocket, soon you will lose your very soul.
The music and the dancing. The part that plays with the cat.
The song and the poetry. The art and the novel.
Empathy for the outcast. Love for the neighbor. joy in colors and art and expression.
The glint of a rainbow on the tear of a shepherd, the rapturous joy in the final moments of Beethoven’s fifth symphony.
The chills of the entrance of the trombone in Prokofieff’s third piano concerto; the astounding skill of Caravaggio and the brilliance of Poe.
The perfect pairing of wine with each course of dinner. The beauty and joy of the embrace of love.
The first kiss. The first time someone spoke to you with respect. Your first time making love. Your first embrace.
The first time you found someone and realized that you were wanted and loved.
Standing in the middle of a lonely highway in Wyoming singing Mahler at the top of your lungs after one too many…(not that I have EVER done this).
Growing your hair long, or cutting it short. Wearing an earring, getting a tattoo.
Or having a conversation and sharing a glimpse of your soul in safety, without fear. It took me too long to realize the joy of that. I longed for that and never knew it.
And we forget beauty and freedom and love and joy – because we are afraid.
Egg prices get high. Gas gets high. Somebody is different than I am and wants to come to my church.
And all of the sudden you are afraid that you won’t be good enough or pure enough or strict enough to earn God’s favor because you did something wrong somewhere, or you accepted and loved a sinner, or were friends with a sinner on social media, so now God is going to remove his blessing.
And somewhere along the line, you forgot – Your blessings, your “money in the pocket” doesn’t come from a politician or from making the right choices, or from working hard or running faster or having stronger will power…
It comes from the uncontrollable, unlimited, incredible love and goodness of God.
As my pastor said this morning, “It’s God’s party, and he can invite who he wants.”
And that blows the mind.
Because the love of God is free. His love and blessing for you aren’t dependent on how well you perform. He delights in you and delights in your personality and your dancing and singing. He created you to laugh and sing, even though there are times when we weep and mourn – the laughter will come again. If we don’t crush it out of fear.
And when you know and feel that love of God given so freely to you, suddenly love becomes far more important that how much money is in the pocket. And then you might see that God’s resources are unlimited. There is enough for everyone. But God is calling us to step away from our vaults and our counting machines and our investment portfolios and our fear and learn to dance again.
Cast your bread upon the waters, For you will find it after many days. Give a serving to seven, and also to eight, For you do not know what evil will be on the earth. (Ecclesiastes 11:1-2)
Paul and Silas sang in prison. We can sing with expensive eggs. Maybe that is the lesson God is showing us. That the price of eggs isn’t worth the price of the soul.
Sing, dance, paint, write a poem. And more importantly than even that –
Let your neighbor draw, sing, paint, write and dance. His enrichment might actually enrich you.
It certainly won’t make you poorer.
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DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearlyI grieve
I am grieving, and have been for years.
In 2010, I had my world shattered with the reality of abuse, and the apparent inability of the Reformed world to address it.
I thought it was an anomaly; I thought that my colleagues would love to be trauma-informed and study with me how to better serve their neighbor.
Instead, they ignored me. They whispered their insults and names, and thought that I didn’t hear them. They started passing my blog around among themselves and shaking their head sadly.
I persisted.
In 2016, when Trump won the primary, I changed by party affiliation. I thought that the accusations that the GOP was racist, misogynist, abusive and greedy were simply slanders – and then they elected Trump and I realized that it wasn’t a slander. They said then “We’ll we don’t like a lot about him, but we can’t have Hilary, so we have to hold our nose of vote Trump.”
I watched my beautiful country and my beloved church become hard, contemptuous, hateful, divisive – and I realized that they didn’t vote Trump in spite of his revolting wickedness, but because of it. They liked it.
They liked his railing, his lies, his contempt, his hatred.
And then in 2020, on January 6th, I said, “Now they will see.” And they didn’t.
I watched my former friends and my former circles reject every single bit of morality that they preached about for years.
They twisted themselves into knots justifying everything he did.
“Let Trump be true, and every man a liar” became their motto.
He consistently and brazenly bragged about breaking every single commandment of God, and the evangelical, reformed world shouted AMEN.
I believed my church was concerned about morality. I was wrong.
I believed my country would wake up with the mountains of evidence piling up. I was wrong.
And here is why I am grieving now.
I now see that my country is Babylon. We used to side with the beautiful, the downtrodden and the oppressed.
Now America sides with the oppressor, the tormentors, the rich, the violent, the immoral, those who give and receive bribes.
We are no longer great. We are now Babylon, and the fall will be tremendous.
Every single characteristic of the beast and the false prophet given in the scripture matches our country and its religion to a tee.
And I am grieving the loss. I am weeping at the destruction to come.
And I can’t get over the fact that it was the “conservative church” that that enabled every step.
I grieve that what could have been such a powerful force for good sold its soul to an orange con man who can’t even string a complete sentence together coherently.
I grieve that the blindness is complete and now there is no one at the gate.
I grieve.
I grieve and I still write for the same reason that I started in 2010 – to give hope to the oppressed, that God sees and God judges and he will return in glory to bring back beauty once again.
The Gathering of Outcasts – Episode 4
https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-ht3ti-18a57a5
We discuss unity with Christ, the word “head”, how language works, and the theme of Ephesians.
Filed under Uncategorized
The Gathering of the Outcasts, episode 3
https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-h9xtu-189b662
We talk about the law of God, dominionism, theonomy and what the law revealed about God. We talked about the difference between the law and the gospel and how the gospel forms a marriage that is quite different than the authority/submission model of the Greco/Roman world, which is being brought back as “biblical” marriage.
But it is contrary to the gospel and contrary to love.
Filed under Uncategorized
The gathering of the outcasts – Episode 2
https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-ghscr-18907e0
The order of creation; is there order in the Trinity? What about submission?
Filed under Uncategorized
Love and Hate
I don’t think that republicans were either stupid or mislead in November. Trump’s character wasn’t a hidden secret. I think that they were motivated by hate and contempt. The hate of Maga had been fanned into flames for years on Fox and right wing radio, just like Rwanda in the 90s.
And they found someone who hated the same people they hated. And that was that. It didn’t matter that he had no character, no morals, no ability, no leadership, and no ideas. Hate was all that mattered. Now we reap the results.
But here is what bothers me. I fear for the future of our country. I fear for the immigrants, the women, the minorities, the children. It will continue to be a hateful, ugly mess for years to come. It might even destroy us unless someone stops it.
I have been fearful of that, and that is reasonable. But I’m starting to fear something else. I am starting to fear that those whose eyes are opened to this frightful mess will become hateful and contemptuous themselves, and the cycle will never end.
I see it in my own soul. I see the hatred blinding those who used to be friends and I get angry. Is my anger turning to hatred? I don’t know. I don’t think so. But I worry about it and pray about it.
I think maybe I need to spend less time following the dumpster fire. Not that it isn’t important to be involved and know what is going on. Social media has a very important role to play. Outrage can change politics and force action.
The question is how to express that outrage without becoming that which you despise…I don’t know if I have the answer.
But maybe after the outrage we should turn off the computer, pet the cats, watch the birds, have a scotch, read a poem, smile and wave towards the neighbors.
What good does it do to save humanity if we lose our humanity trying to save it?
I think that might be the lesson of the Republican Party. They became driven by hate for others and Donald learned how to tap into that hatred. It is all that matters.
But what good does it do to gain the whole world and win elections when you lose your soul doing it?
Now they cut art and music and libraries and healthcare, and help lines. As long as it is only the people they hate that are dying, they don’t care. It isn’t about budgets, it is about ugliness and contempt and revenge. The hatred that I have watched in the churches is now being acted out on the national stage.
So many conservative churches preach about the hatred of God for people they don’t like. They will preach on John 3:16, but the sermon is usually mostly about how it doesn’t mean what it says.
And it fires me up. Blasphemy and hatred and hurting image-bearers makes me really angry.
But in my anger, I need to remember beauty. That the one I am angry at is also an image-bearer of God. I want them to stop the hatred, but I want them to turn and learn about beauty and love.
But it isn’t easy, especially when those you love are being hurt, when children are separated from parents, when foreigners are targeted and criminals are celebrated and we live in the upside down.
But I think the only way to show the world that the country right now is upside down is if we refuse to be upside down ourselves.
So protest – but don’t forget beauty.
Picket – but feed your neighbor.
Withdraw from your MAGA congregation – but don’t let their evil consume you.
Learn to brush the dust off of your feet and not bring the uncleanness of the devil’s kingdom into your own home. You walk on holy ground.
I think this might be what Paul means when he said, “Be angry, and sin not.”
Don’t let the dust consume you.
Remember that there are always more with us than there are with them. There will be weeping for a night. There will be helplessness and hurt and pain and sorrow. There will be indescribable injustice. And who knows when God will deliver us from this evil time.
But the church has frequently been in hiding, so in hiding we might go. That’s OK. Jesus goes with us. It is the nature of this age. Resurrection comes, glory comes – but only after crucifixion.
Revelation 12:10–12 (NIV)
10Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say: “Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Messiah. For the accuser of our brothers and sisters, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down.
11They triumphed over him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.
12Therefore rejoice, you heavens and you who dwell in them! But woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you! He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short.”
His time is short. That is why he is so angry. Be patient. Protest, protect, picket – but be patient.
The funny thing will be all the people who will respond with fury, contempt and hatred trying to convince me that they are not full of fury, contempt and hatred. Funny how that works.
Filed under Encouragement, Hope, Patience
This isn’t about Politics
It’s about good and evil.
I agree with the sentiment that we shouldn’t let politics divide us.
Politics is about whether this group or that group should receive federal funds, whether to make a treaty with this country or that country, what is the best way to promote life and safety to the vulnerable population, and what the duties of the federal government are and what the duties of the states are..
There are historically sharp differences of opinions about politics. And there was a time when we could talk about them
But what we are experiencing now isn’t about politics.
I actually don’t expect anything different from the kakocracy we are living through now. They’ve been racist, sexist, criminal, felonious covenant breakers their whole lives and they continue to be so.
This isn’t about politics. It is about our soul. It is about the evangelical right wing and the continuous justification and hoops they have to jump through to continue to support this evil regime.
I cannot believe that we are having discussions about what constitutes a concentration camp.
I cannot believe that the White House can change their story completely within hours and everyone will still justify it.
I cannot believe that the felon in chief lies with the same ease that he breathes, and is still considered God’s Messiah.
I cannot believe that he isn’t in prison.
I cannot believe that every single one of the amendments to the constitution (except the second, go figure) have been threatened, ignored and broken, without consequence.
I cannot believe that the church I loved has become a haven for covenant breakers and a place of safety for molesters and robbers and thieves.
I cannot believe that those who profess Christ would rather send a transgender person to a death camp than remove a rapist from the White House.
If I have unfriended you, it isn’t because of politics. It is because I have seen what kind of a person you are, and don’t want any part of it.
The slaughterhouse in El Salvador isn’t a secret. The fact that none of those who were sent there had a trial isn’t a secret. The fact that Trump lies as he breathes isn’t a secret. All you have to do is compare what he says today with what he says tomorrow.
The fact that he is promising to send everyone who disagrees with him or stands up for the prisoner to a death camp isn’t a secret.
What bothers me more than anything is that the religious right isn’t blinded anymore. They actually WANT death camps, dictatorships, and slaughter.
Are you still saying “Well, he exaggerates” when he is actually doing what he said he would do?
Are you actually still talking about Hunter’s laptop, when American Gestapo are boarding trains asking for papers?
Are you still angry about Hillary when fathers are dragged away to die in foreign gulags “by mistake”?
Please ask yourself this: What if what you hear on Fox is actually wrong?
What if Jesus was right when he said, “You will know them by their love”.
Seems to me is it one or the other.
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1Joshua Buttler
Filed under Good and Evil
My Only Comfort 