Month: May 2011

My Country Music Confession

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I have a confession.

I like Country Music.

There, I said it.

Maybe it’s just me, but I think there’s definitely a stigma attached to Country Music. There is the perception that the music is quite hokey and that every song is about how the singer has lost his woman, his pickup truck, his favourite horse and/or dog.

A while ago, a girl whom I was rather rather sweet on, unashamedly declared that she really liked Country Music. For this, of course, I mercilessly teased her. In fact, that reminds of a joke…

Q. What happens when you play a country song backwards?
A. The guy gets his wife back, his truck back, stops drinking, and his dog comes back to life.

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Then End Is Nigh

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It’s now less than a week until Judgement Day. Well, it is if you believe a chap called Harold Camping. Camping is the president and founder Christian Family Radio and asserts that Judgement Day is going to be this Saturday, May 21st. You may have seen the billboards or commercials around:

I hadn’t come across this group until Ι first visited San Diego when one of their leaflets was given to me Downtown by a street evangelist. Later that day, over an ice tea, I read the leaflet from cover-to-cover (I always try to read the stuff that guys like that give me). It didn’t contain anything about the end of the world, but did give me an introduction to the group’s rather “unique” way of interpreting Scriptural prophecy.

I remember that, through interpretation of some of the writings of the prophets, the leaflet asserted that the “Church Age” had now ended and that true believers should now leave their local congregations, study the Bible on their own and, as you might expect, listen to their radio station.

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Husbands, *love* your wives

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Before we leave the Easter season,  I wanted to share with you something that stood out for me during the last days of Lent leading up to Easter Sunday. It was a slightly odd thing for me, being that it was the subject of marriage….

crown

How did I manage to get to the subject of “marriage” from the Easter celebrations? Well, what was running through my mind throughout the Easter liturgy was the last part of Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians:

“Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

“Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.” – Ephesians 5:21-27

Now, without a doubt, this is a passage that has been abused over the years.  It has certainly been used for the subjugation of women and the preservation of tyrannical husbands. In response to this, many have rejected the entire passage out of hand. I don’t think either of these two positions is acceptable, since both reactions ignore the passage’s context and miss the important imagery being used by Paul.

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Word Of The Day: Paroikia

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I’m currently preparing the next document we’re going to be reading in the JP2 Group: “The Martyrdom of Polycarp”. Polycarp was a 2nd Century Bishop in Smyrna about whom I’ve written before. I’ve got a lot to do, so I need to get back to my books soon, but before that, I just wanted to share with you something rather cool I’ve just found…

Stranger On The Shore

The account of Polycarp’s martyrdom begins with a covering letter:

“From the Church of God which resides as a stranger at Smyrna, to the Church of God temporarily sojourning in Philomelium, and to all the congregations of the Holy and Catholic Church in every place: may mercy, peace, and love from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ be yours in abundance”
– The Martyrdom of Polycarp (Greeting)

The author, a chap called Marcus/Marcion, describes Smyrna’s church as “resid[ing] as a stranger” and Philomelium’s church as “temporarily sojourning” in that city. This concept often comes up in the writings of the Early Church (Clement, Ignatius, …) and draws from an idea we also find expressed in Sacred Scripture:

“Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, …”
– 1 Peter 2:11

The early Christians were keenly aware that they did not permanently belong on this earth, but rather, were citizens of heaven, temporarily away from their homeland. As someone with a blog entitled “Restless Pilgrim”, who has traveled quite a bit and is currently living away from his native country, I find it quite easy to relate to this viewpoint.

Strangers temporarily staying in a foreign land

Paroikia

So, in the martyrdom’s introduction, the author is simply expressing a deeply ingrained, Early Church mindset – that we reside here temporarily. However, what makes this really cool is that I’ve now seen the Greek. The noun which is used here is  “παροικια”, or, in our alphabet,  “paroikia” (pa-roy-kee-a) and it literally means “a sojourning” or “a  dwelling in a strange land”.

“So what?” I hear you say.

“I’m glad you asked!” I reply.

“Paroikia” is the root of the word which was later used by Christians to describe the local assembly and its location:  “parish”… This etymology tells us a profound spiritual truth. Particularly if you haven’t moved around much, it’s easy to think of your parish as your “home” – we even refer to our “home parish”. To an extent, this is true, but really, our parish, our “paroikia” is only a temporary dwelling, an outpost of Heaven.  One day we will  have to leave and head to our true and everlasting home.

“Christians are not distinguished from the rest of mankind by either country, speech, or customs; the fact is, they nowhere settle in cities of their own… They reside in their respective countries, but only as aliens. They take part in everything as citizens and put up with everything as foreigners. Every foreign land is their home, and every home a foreign land… They spend their days on earth, but hold citizenship in heaven.”
– The Epistle To Diognetus, 2nd Century

Happy Slapping Thursday

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This Thursday, a friend of mine received the Sacrament of Confirmation at a parish here in San Diego…

“Now when the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent them Peter and John, who went down and prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Spirit, for it had not yet fallen upon any of them; they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then they laid hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit” – Acts 8:14-17

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The excuses we make

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I’m starting to fall significantly behind with my blog. I have a large number of posts in draft, but very few have recently been published.

Anything Worth Doing…

G. K. Chesterton said “Anything worth doing, is worth doing badly”. I think the point he was trying to make is that if something is important, it’s worth giving it a go, rather than endlessly procrastinating. There is a temptation to leave a task until some undefined, almost mythical, point in the future when you finally feel qualified to attempt it.  “Perfect is the enemy of good” might be another way of expressing the same sort of idea. Given my personality, there’s a real danger that all the entries currently sitting in my “drafts” folder will remain there, forever to be tweaked and tinkered but forever found unsatisfactory and remaining unpublished.

I’ve therefore resolved to be a bit braver and to publish more of my thoughts on this blog, even if they’re not formed to my level of satisfaction.

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