Month: June 2008

Acts 29 Retreat Reflection

Our trip to Vail, Colorado for the annual Acts 29 Pastors & Wives retreat was outstanding. Robie and I were refreshed by the scheduling of generous personal time, as well as by the nourishing relationships with other planters and wives. We discovered that A29 is not only a network but a family. Gary and Betsy Ricucci led two session on marriage, which were honest, gospel-centered and helpful.

Each morning I enjoyed a walk along Gore Creek, which was more like a rushing river, nestled against the base of the Vail mountains. It was here that I experienced significant, personal renewal, as the Creator reminded me of his lavish love and grace that constantly flows towards us and through us in Jesus. I found myself singing “The Deep, Deep Love of Jesus,” a hymn that seemed to give words to the watery images around me:

Oh the deep, deep love of Jesus vast unmeasured, boundless free
Rolling as a mighty ocean in its fullness over me
Underneath me, all around me, is the current of thy love
And it lifts me up to glory, for it lifts me up to Thee (listen here)

Our Worst for our Kids Best?

Children need to see the best and worst of marriage in order to understand not only the depth of sin but also the luminescent glory of conviction, repentance, grace, reconciliation, and celebration. Otherwise relational darkness will be known but not named. And it will poison the hope of healing. ..Whenever parents fail to grow as human beings, we also refuse that growth opportunity for our children. We cant take our children any farther in life, relationahip, and love that the point we have chose to progress on our own and in our marriages…True redemption involves being struck dumb by the enormity of our failure and then struck even dumber by the enromity of the heart of God that cancels our debt.

~ Dan Allender, How Children Raise Parents, p. 94, 102, 104

Google – Determiner of Obscenity?

Who’s to determine what is obscene these days, especially on the web? Do we need a morality handbook for website filtering or should we just rely on our collective conscience? Or perhaps Google can make the call? In a court case in Florida, where operator of a pornographic web site is being tried, the defense lawyer has summoned Google data to show that the Pensacoloan community prefers sexual content in their web searches, that they are “more likely to use Google to search for terms like “orgy” than for “apple pie” or “watermelon.”

The argument that follows is if most of the community wants it, why should anyone stop it? It appears that, in Pensacoloa, the greater good is less virtue, not more. This, of course, relativizes morality based on community, a real postmodern turn. But this communitarian ethic is moving from cultural postmodern mores to actual legal practice. I wonder how Pensacoloans really feel about this, about their burgeoning sex-charged reputation? This might not attract the kind of tourism the city wants!

Trial date is July 1. NY Times reports that: “In the last eight years, the Justice Department has brought roughly 15 obscenity cases that have not involved child pornography, compared with 75 during the Reagan and first Bush administrations…” Supreme court decisions explicitly rely on “contemporary community standards,” along with two other key factors, which seems to beg the case for a greater standard of morality. After all, if the contemporary community standards move from celebrating pornography to endorsing adultery, how are 50% of the spouses going to feel about that? And what if murder gets popular? The slippery slope of communitarian ethics seems to point beyond the community to a need of a greater judge, a greater, divine community who can offer impartial judgments; however, the identity of such a being or god rarely reaches a community-wide consensus.