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Friday, November 25, 2011

Tattoos, they have become a modern status symbol haven’t they?

I got this Jesus tattoo on my wrist when I was 18 because I know that it's always going to be a part of me. When I'm playing, it's staring right back at me, saying, 'Remember where you came from.'
Katy Perry

Tatoos or body marking is not a new endeavour! We know it is not a new custom as Otzi the man they pulled out of the glacier, frozen solid for about six to seven thousand years had many tattoos on his back and legs.

It is thought that people have been marking themselves in Japan for over ten thousand years. Sometimes people use pigments, sometimes they just use scarring in particular patterns.

During the war in the Nazi concentration camps people were tagged by tattooing. Today tattooing is a fad amongst the rich and famous and this is accelerating the usage in the “commoner” population.

What is the bibles approach to tattooing?

There is one reference that says;

"Do not make cuts on your bodies when someone dies. Do not put marks on your skin. I am the Lord.” Lev 19:28 NIRV

This seems very conclusive doesn’t it? Something we should all agree to right?

Well, not so fast, it needs to be viewed in context doesn't it? (Is it talking only after a person dies or not?)

It is part of general rules given by God where he says “Be holy, because I am holy.” (Holy means being dedicated or consecrated to God or a religious purpose)

The text around it also says…

'Do not cut the hair on the sides of your head. Do not clip off the edges of your beard.

Do we follow this also?

or. . .

'Stand up in order to show your respect for old people.

I guess we can see these are God’s advice to us rather than the tough "you must follow" laws.

They are guidelines meant to help us do what is right for ourselves as well as what to do to respect others.

Tattooing is in the same guideline grouping!

It is a simple warning that it is not good to mark yourself in a way that you cannot undo as it could disadvantage yourself later.

In our modern community the rich and famous know tattooing will not impact them as they have sufficient influence. What about us less advantaged people? Will a person with a marking down the center of their face get hired for a customer service job more easily than someone without?

Whatever our opinions of what SHOULD happen in this instance, we know what WILL happen in this case, right?

That is extreme, but remember we all get older and what looks good when young slowly gets loose, sloppy and less pleasant as the skin gets older. So where they go is really important isn't it?

I don’t really think the bible is outlawing tattoos, but perhaps it is making us aware of the potential dangers of doing things that can later disadvantage us.

This is so true of many things we do isn't it? Not just tattooing! I am talking of those things that we think are great at the time. Then later, we often find we have not necessarily made the best decision for ourselves. Those types of things that are so hard to detect at the time they need to be detected!

So, if you are thinking of a tattoo, think carefully, that’s what God wants you to do! I myself am taking the safe route and not getting it done, tempted though I am! You will have to make up your own mind!

Have a great day!

Fri, November 25, 2011 | link Comments

Thursday, November 24, 2011

The pain of inconsequential work, and why we should do it!

"If A equals success, then the formula is A equals X plus Y and Z, with X being work, Y play, and Z keeping your mouth shut."
Albert Einstein

"Inconsequential" is a descriptive word that says something is "not important and not significant". "Work" is that four letter word that means doing some mental or physical task to achieve a specific goal.

So putting the two words together as “inconsequential work” is somewhat contradictory and confusing. Either there is a purpose or there isn’t, right?

Unfortunately often we don’t feel that work we need to do has a “true” goal. Ever been told to do something that you consider a total waste of time? We all have had that happen to us haven't we? There is work that uses our time more effectively and work that seem to waste our time.

However, it’s in the way that we measure effectiveness that we pivot from useful to wasteful on work activities.

Let's look at an example;

Say that today we are asked to spend an afternoon where we could be helping a senior to do some shopping, to instead sit at a bedside and simply hold a person’s hand.

We could perhaps consider that it was more worthwhile to be out helping the senior getting supplies. The goal here being effective use of our time doing something of medium term value for that person.

However, if I now say that the person who’s hand we are holding is our own dying mothers hand. That she has only hours to live! Then our evaluation flips around to considering it to be a more effective use of our time to hold her hand, right?

Our definition of the effective use of our time changes then, doesn’t it?

This shows that we need to be very careful of judging others on how they consider there time usage to be effective or not.

Sometimes we as observers simply cannot tell!

A person walking into the room seeing the person sitting holding someone’s hand and doing nothing else cannot deduce the relationship or why the person is “wasting” their time "doing nothing" can they?

Ultimately, there are only two people who truly know how we are to use our time effectively, and one person is way more accurate in knowing this than the other.

We ourselves are one of those two people!

We generally know if we are truly using our time effectively or not, whether we are doing the right activity or not. Yet even we can be misled by life and inadvertently misuse our time.

God is the other person who knows and he know exactly how our time should be used.

So, to enable our lives to be as effective as possible, generally means opening ourselves to God, “wasting” some time to understand his will for our lives and then doing what he leads us to do.

“I don’t hear audible voices telling me what to do!” is a common retort I hear that needs some response.

Actually, God has already placed his message in a super book that contains the kernels of truth that allow us to see life through the right perspectives. The Bible has these guidelines and reading it to glean it’s global truths (which means reading quite a bit of it), will enable us to decide on how to determine how to use our time.

SO, what does this mean to me today?

It means I must follow God’s truths, try to use God’s guidelines to be effective in my life and in so doing follow his greatest commandments of loving God, and loving others as myself.

That’s the golden measure of effectiveness we can all use with certainty. That way no work is inconsequential because by doing it we are showing love to someone right?

Let’s go do it today!

Thu, November 24, 2011 | link Comments

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Polygamy rules could change in Canada today, but should they?

Polygamy: An endeavour to get more out of life than there is in it.
Elbert Hubbard

    In Canada news is peppered with comments around the court case that is evaluating if a man can be married to more than one wife. This is as a result of the charging of men from a small settlement located in the Creston Valley of south eastern British Columbia, Canada called bountiful with polygamy.

This resulted in the court being asked whether Canada's laws against polygamy are constitutionally valid. Today we find out the answer!

But from a biblical basis, what makes sense?

We know that in the Old Testament men had multiple wives. Biblical greats such as Jacob, David, Solomon and many others had more than one wife. There was even special laws for the multiple wife situation. E.g. the law protecting children from unloved wives, and wives from not being loved.

Deut 21:15 (NIRV) If a man has two wives, and he loves one but not the other, and both bear him sons but the firstborn is the son of the wife he does not love, when he wills his property to his sons, he must not give the rights of the firstborn to the son of the wife he loves in preference to his actual firstborn, the son of the wife he does not love. He must acknowledge the son of his unloved wife as the firstborn by giving him a double share of all he has. That son is the first sign of his father’s strength. The right of the firstborn belongs to him.

So the bible in the Old Testament supports multiple wives.

It is also to be noted the wives were more like commodities than people in their rights. They were directed and ordered around at their husbands whim. Not something modern western society is willing to tolerate now(hopefully).

However, in the beginning, it was a one to one relationship.

See Genesis 2:23
The man said,
    “This is now bone of my bones
   and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called ‘woman,’
   for she was taken out of man.”
  That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.

Jesus reminded us of this again in relation to divorce;

Matthew 19:4-6 (NIV) “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

That said, God didn’t want us to have many wives;

He told a king
Deut 17:17 He must not take many wives, or his heart will be led astray. He must not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold.

Pointing out that wives lead a man astray, (Hmmmm! Don’t think the modern western woman would like that either, right?)

When we get to later teachings of Jesus and Paul they seem to assume one wife;

Luke 18:28-30 “Truly I tell you,” Jesus said to them, “no one who has left home or wife or brothers or sisters or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God will fail to receive many times as much in this age, and in the age to come eternal life.”

Ephesians 5:33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

1 Tim 3: 12 says A deacon must be faithful to his wife and must manage his children and his household well.

Also in 3:2 2 Now the overseer is to be above reproach, faithful to his wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money.

Again the implication is one wife!

We must understand not everything recorded in the bible is approved to be followed as true!

Polygamy originated in the line of Cain, who murdered his brother and disobeyed God. Then Lamech was the first polygamist (see Gen 4:19 Lamech married two women, one named Adah and the other Zillah) who was also a murderer.

The Old Testament law made provision for more than one wife, but it appears that the Bible does not encourage it.

God wants the best for us! The best is for a man to have one wife to love and support and have his children. More is inviting strife and stress into life. Not what God wants!

I hope that our courts realize that in their judgement today!

Wed, November 23, 2011 | link Comments

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Travelling through the well worn puddles of life, going where?

Every been driving out on a wet road under a cloud covered sky, where the gloom is interspersed by winds that jolt our car, forcing our hands to correct our path as we peer through the rain splattered windshield, getting momentary glimpses of the road ahead as the wipers push the torrent aside.

This slows us down! We struggle to remain on our chosen course, sloshing our way through puddles and mud, but always moving on, correcting, moving on, finding the way.

That’s the way it was for me this last Sunday!

I was on the way to a funeral! Life and lack of it was uppermost in my mind as I drove. I considered how the widow and her two children would be struggling with life right now, much the same way I was struggling to drive through these clouds and rain to the memorial service.

Then, as I drove, the sun peaked through those clouds and a beam of light flooded down onto the road ahead. As I neared it, the rain stilled and even the wind seemed to abate.

The beauty of that moment was complete! Dark angry clouds all around, darkened surroundings with rain shrouds drifting down, only served to increase the beauty of the sunlight. That sunbeam intensified the colours and beauty in the area was lit by this powerful light.

Our lives can be dark and beaten about by the suffering rains of life, but what we need to understand is that above this all, the sun continues to shine! Most of the life and energy we all experience and think comes from many sources does in fact only come from one source, the sun. Whether it is yesteryears sun, locked in carbon fuels, or today’s sun released in food, solar cells or evaporating water to form the very clouds that provide the rain, it is the same source. One source, one God!

So with life! We do not always understand in a rainstorm that the sun is shining and even less do we understand that without the sun there would be no rain. We don’t stop to realize that rain is necessary for growth and growth for life, but it is!

In the pain of life, we need to know God is above all and sustains all! No sun for a few days and the earth would be in serious trouble! No God for a nanosecond, and we would cease to exist!

Why does God allow the suffering? Maybe we should ask why there is rain on this earth?

Sometimes it is difficult to understand! All we can do is take the current moment and make the right decisions. We need to keep on the road of life knowing that the rain will not last forever and that sooner or later we will be blessed to see God’s glory for what it is, not cloaked in adverse circumstances.

Decisions are the work of life!

To make them according to the signs God gives us for directing us through our life, is critical to our safety and reaching our destination.

Today, I urge you to decide wisely, spiritually and in accordance with the guidelines of the God that is over all.

Thank-you Jesus!

Tue, November 22, 2011 | link Comments

Monday, November 21, 2011

The modern art of lying

     Notice how many people lie? Before this weekend a client of mine had (what I considered) a need for help by consultants. I offered to organize this help but was told it was not necessary.

Then Sunday I get an email chiding me for the fact that consultants were not responsive enough on the weekend!

Then this morning at 8am they escalated this to my superiors in the company where I consult.

Is that fair, honest and true?

Nope!

But it also doesn’t surprise me as I find that truth today is interpreted as the truth that best meets the selfish liars needs.

I remember that truth is absolute, determined by God and that no matter what man may do and say, God knows the validity of what we say and do!

I like to remember that God says

But I know that God helps me.
      The Lord is the one who keeps me going.
5 My enemies tell lies about me.
      Do to them the evil things they planned against me.
      God, be faithful and destroy them.[1]
People who lie and manipulate others, destruct themselves in the long term. The beauty of it is that we do not have to get in to assist God in any way. He does it all. By simply staying calm and outside of the matter, they will hit a wall and go down. We are not to become angry, vindictive or take the part of responding nastily. We are to pray to the living God and await his will.

I do know that sometimes we do not see the response! Sometimes we don’t even appear to come out of the circumstances with our integrity intact, but it is not for man to see us, but God.

That’s why we as Christians can do right is difficult circumstances!

We know God and Holy Spirit are with us today! Can you say the same?

[1] Psalm 54 NIRV

Mon, November 21, 2011 | link Comments

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