the loss of a sense of vocation

i think part of the evangelical tradition's emphasis on "saving souls" has been its loss of a sense of kingdom and therefore vocation. we have lost Kingdom of God language--partly from the Romantic movement and subsequent theology of Schleiermacher and some strange warmings of the heart. we have made Kingdom a heart thing...rather than a world thing. as a result we have made vocation all about ministry of the heart--or soul, rather than about Kingdom.

"are you called to ministry?" heck yes, i am. am i called to be a pastor? still working that out. people passionate about the reign of God in Jesus have been funnelled to pastoral ministry--even if lacking gifts of leadership and administration; even if loving geography and criminology. for this reason i am glad i have friends called to economics, geography, criminology, and even pastoral ministry. they have grasped vocation as something bigger than professional ministry. vocation is about Kingdom...and Kingdom is as big as Romans 8 let's us think it is (the cosmos, btw). may God (continue to) call workers to astronomy and foreign affairs; to computer science and literature; to shoe stores and High Schools.

the fate of Canada...

is at stake. but it's more than just the toppling of the Liberal party (which is sure to happen and how thankful we are about it). it's not at stake in electing the next party, which i'm hopeful and optimistic to be the Conservative Party--even for the sake of the Liberal Party (but that's another discussion). it's at stake in how and why whatever the party that is elected is elected. have we become convinced that electing a political party is how we "unite" our country; how we show that we're really "not that different;" that there is a "centre" and "unity" to political (read, communal) thought in our country?

if it takes electing a political party to do this, then our future is already sunk. if a political party is the source of national identity (whether it be Liberal, NDP, or Conservative), then communal identity is not something this generation has discovered and subsequently added to, but something it has made from its own creativity. evidence is one of the national parties that simply exists for separation. the Bloc Quebecois gives space for a separatist identity in the House of Commons and becomes the federal **identity** of Quebec's disenfranchised. if there is more than one identity in a nation, then can it be a nation? (this is a bigger question than just about Canada, but about the nation-state in general.)

there has to be something deeper to form a national identity. there has to be something pre-political (political in the more recent liberal sense), otherwise, Canada is simply a social experiment and bound for disintegration into what appear to be genuine communities: Alberta, Ontario, Quebec, the Maritimes (I am not as familiar with B.C. and the rest of the Prairies--if they have an identity similar to one of the regions mentioned above or their own). this doesn't mean that there is always agreement in these regions. these places are not defined by the answers they come up with, but by the questions they ask. (e.g., i am Quebecois in a way that many of my non-Quebecois friends are not simply that asking the question of separation is one I have lived my entire known life with, whereas they have not. In other words, I share something with separatist Quebecois that I do not with nationalist Ontarians.) is Canada a nation of people who ask different questions? methinks....perhaps.

i stink at blogs--but these guys don't

i stink at blogs. i have no computer programming skills. anyway, two sites that i found: one via caleb (www.caleblapointe.com): www.jesuscreed.org, and one via that one www.theocity.blogspot.com.

interesting article

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051122/lf_nm/religion_megachurches_dc

i don't know how to do those cool links, so this will have to do.

favourite quotes

i love quotes. below are some of my favourites (some are paraphrases):

1. the line between good and evil is not drawn by tanks and battle lines, but down the centre of every person's heart. ~Aleksander Solzhenytsin

2. how can you help somebody unless you know the right story to tell them? ~Jack Cash, fr. "Walk the Line"

3. pop had all the wrong dreams. ~Happy Loman, fr. "Death of a Salesman"

4. "Rather, [God] brings this or that neighbour to the head of the line, and demands our best attention for him. And at another moment, perhaps, he closes the wicket, sends the whole line away, and demands to inspect our books." ~Oliver O'Donovan, re: loving neighbours

5. God did not forgive God; he crucified him. ~C.S. Lewis

only i am me

and how thankful i am. recently, someone got hold of my credit card number and began surfing the web with AOL, using electricity in Florida, and even tried to support the struggling company DirecTV by buying some hardware. not sure how it happened; pretty steamed that it did; afraid that they had more info than just my CC#. fortunately, after some telephone calls yesterday, it seems like they have not stolen my identity. no credit cards, accounts, or anything opened up that i didn't know about. praise God.

i guess MSN really means it when they say don't give out your CC# over a conversation. who knew?

justification

justification means not having to explain to God why we sinned. i often tend to explain sin in confession--whether to God or to a brother. but it seems to me that that explanation is the greater sin. first, it makes God's forgiveness conditional--as though certain reasons make the sin forgiveable. second, by doing this, it lowers the intensity and seriousness of sin. third, it lessens God's gift of grace. if sin is made something excuseable (giving reasons for sinning; explaining sin), then grace is not the radical gift of God, but the rational doling out of sin-passes.

confessing sin without following through on the intense need to explain it lets me rely more of grace. "all of grace" ...someone said that once.

missing the boat

it's sad that on a day meant to honour those who showed hope in hopeless times, i blog about the lack of hope. sometimes i just don't get it.

the slow death of faith

if faith is being sure of what we hope for, then i think we lack faith. we don't hope anymore. we don't hope for resurrection, but for a heaven beyond the clouds; we don't hope for the world's redemption, but for our being saved from it; we don't hope for God's effective work in bringing people to himself, but proclaim that the local church is the hope of the world.

spiritual listiplines suck. preaching without hope sucks. giving me something more to do, well, sucks.

this is a rather ambiguous post. i think i more needed to put it in front of me to get it off my mind.

confession of a poor pietist

well, here's the blog i was going to do before. i am a terrible pietist. this is a hard thing when you have grown up with pietist parents and work for a pietistic denomination. i don't read the Bible devotionally very much; i don't pray on a scheduled basis; i surely don't practice many spiritual disciplines except study... i have found that being a person tending to introspection does not lend itself to being a good pietist. it either leaves me looking far too much at myself or defeated when not being the good pietist i'm supposed to be. so, i think, for the most part, i've given up my pietism. not intentionally...as though i'm starting today, but unintentionally neglecting piety over several years has brought me to where i am. and i don't think i mind it....except for my besetting sins.

irony: a person complaining that pietism leads to too much self-awareness, and then blogging about their rejection of it.