Do you tell White Lies?

This story is from http://www.jesusorsquirrel.com/ 

Have you ever told a white lie to make others think better of you?

Alice Grayson was to bake a cake for the Baptist Church Ladies' Group in Tuscaloosa, but forgot to do it until the last minute.

She remembered it the morning of the bake sale and after rummaging through cabinets, found an angel food cake mix & quickly made it while drying her hair, dressing, and helping her son pack up for Scout camp.

When she took the cake from the oven, the center had dropped flat and the cake was horribly disfigured and she exclaimed, "Oh dear, there is not time to bake another cake!"

This cake was important to Alice because she did so want to fit in at her new church, and in her new community of friends. So, being inventive, she looked around the house for something to build up the center of the cake.

She found it in the bathroom - a roll of toilet paper.

She plunked it in and then covered it with icing. Not only did the finished product look beautiful, it looked perfect. And before she left the house to drop the cake by the church and head for work, Alice woke her daughter and gave her some money and specific instructions to be at the bake sale the moment it opened at 9:30 and to buy the cake and bring it home.

When the daughter arrived at the sale, she found the attractive, perfect cake had already been sold. Amanda grabbed her cell phone & called her mom. Alice was horrified - she was beside herself! Everyone would know! What would they think? She would be ostracized, talked about, ridiculed!

All night, Alice lay awake in bed thinking about people pointing fingers at herand talking about her behind her back.

The next day, Alice promised herself she would try not to think about the cake and would attend the fancy luncheon/bridal shower at the home of a fellow church member and try to have a good time. She did not really want to attend because the hostess was a snob who more than once had looked down her nose at the fact that Alice was a single parent and not from the founding families of Tuscaloosa, but having already RSVP'd, she couldn't think of a believable excuse to stay home.

The meal was elegant, the company was definitely upper crust old south and to Alice's horror, the cake in question was presented for dessert!

Alice felt the blood drain from her body when she saw the cake! She started out of her chair to tell the hostess all about it, but before she could get to her feet, the Mayor's wife said, "what a beautiful cake!"

Alice, still stunned, sat back in her chair when she heard the hostess (who was a prominent church member) say, "Thank you, I baked it myself.."

And Alice smiled and thought to herself and said, “God is good!”

How I understand prayer

This week I attended a lecture by Metropolitan Kallistos Ware in which he gave one of the best definitions of prayer I have ever heard. He told it in the form of a story that he had heard as a child of only ten years old. In this story a man goes to a church for a long time every day and spends time in the sanctuary. After this practice continues for some time his friends confront him and ask. What are you doing there in the church every day, what are you up to. The man simply replied, "I am praying." The friends wondered at that and one of them said to the man, "you must have quite a lot to ask for to go into the church so often." The man replied, "no, I don't ask for anything." The friends were now curious, and asked the man, "so what do say?" The man answered them, "I simply sit and look at God, and God sits and looks at me." I feel this is as good a definition as any that I can give to prayer.

Although it is difficult to define prayer, it is probably even more difficult to explain how it is to be done. Each person has a unique relationship to God, and therefore will relate to God in a unique way. However there are some keys to communication that I think are relatively universal. In all prayer there should be a regular space that is created, and in that space there should be an active act of listening.

I would love to hear what ways God speaks most readily in your own life.

 For me that generally revolves around the praying of the Church hours, the recitation of prayers close to my heart throughout the day with prayer beads (The Lord's Prayer, the Jesus Prayer, Beatitudes, Psalms, Canticles, and Creeds), and praying in tongues (yes I am a charismatic). Although I do try to incorporate other forms of prayer as well, these three prayers are the foundation of my daily prayer life.

I grew up as a Lutheran in a mostly Catholic ecumenical community and because of this I have always felt very comfortable with the forms of liturgy. I also grew up amidst charismatics which meant that there was plenty of free form prayer flying about as well. I can honestly say that there are few forms of prayer that I find difficult, but the form I think I love the most is the Psalms. Psalms incorporate ancient liturgy, human struggle, and holy scripture in one place. They connect me with the prayer book of the church, and of Jesus Christ himself.

Recently I have begun trying to incorporate my hymnals as part of my prayer life. Many of the songs of the church are unfamiliar to me. I tend to stick to the ones I know. However this week I have been trying to read the Hymns as new Psalms. I don't need to know the melody to use them. For some I have tried to sight read the music, but for most I have simply let the poetry of their lyrical content pass through my heart.

What has God been doing in your prayer life recently?

Election and Liberation

This week I read an interesting article by George Pixley and Clodovis Boff called "The Option for the Poor in the Old Testament". It was part of a collection of essays in the book Voices from the Margin: Interpreting the Bible in the Third World. In this essay Pixley and Boff look to see how the story of the Exodus. They are interested in finding ways that this ancient story can find contemporary resonance, and seek to address how the oppressed in the world today should view the Biblical story of liberation

Pixley and Boff believe that the exodus story of liberation has continuing significance for the oppressed of the world today, that it is not just a story about what God did, but in someways points to what God is doing today. They believe that the God of the Bible is Characterized by a preferential option for the oppressed, and that this option is not just for the children of Israel, but for all the oppressed in all times. The idea that God was the God of Israel because of God’s relationship with the Patriarchs in the past, in their view, was added latter. The original reason God intervened in their life was actually because they were oppressed. In fact God is constructed in this article as a “voice from the east” which enlightens the minds of the Israelites in Egypt to class conciseness.

Pixley and Boff go so far as to say that because the way God becomes the God of Israel is connected to his liberation of the Israelites in the Decalogue THEREFORE people today must unite with those who are celebrating liberation in order for THE LORD to be their God.

This is a perspective I have heard from many corners of the "Liberation Theology" camp before, and I think they make a good point. The main thing that seems to be missing in this is a respect for scripture holistically. Pixley and Boff parse up the scriptures into different camps, but have no real way of knowing where and when certain parts of scripture came into the final redaction of the Genesis story we have today. They make assumptions about the text they simply don’t have the information to come to a conclusion on and in essence craft a text in their own image.

I think that the interest of Pixley and Boff is very helpful to the conversation on how the church is to move forward on issues of oppression, but their methodology is so subjective it leaves me very little that I can actually learn from. My questions at the end of the day are simple.

1) In what ways can we read the canon, not just the early traditions, and still find the message of liberation?
2) How does the doctrine of election, which is cast aside by Pixley and Boff, inform our understanding of the Missio Dei?

100 Christian Books That Changed the Century by William J. Peterson

Here is a list of the top 100 Christian Books That Changed the Century by William J. Peterson

They are listed by publication and decade, not in order of importance, so they are listed in order from 1899 through 1995.

How many have you read?


1. In His Steps by Charles Sheldon
2. The Evangelization of the World in This Generation by John R. Mott
3. Quiet Talks on Power by S.D. Gordon
4. Up from Slavery by Booker T. Washington
5. The Crises of the Christ by G. Campbell Morgan
6. Hurlbut's Story of the Bible by Jesse Lyman Hurlbut
7. Power through Prayer by E.M. Bounds
8. The Scofield Reference Bible by C.I. Scofield
9. Missionary Methods: St. Paul's or Ours by Roland Allen
10. War on the Saints by Jessie Penn-Lewis
11. International Standard Bible Encyclopedia by James Orr, General Editor
12. The Fundamentals by A.C. Dixon, Louis Meyer, and R.A. Torrey, General Editors
13. Christianity and Liberalism by J. Gresham Machen
14. Halley's Pocket Bible Handbook by Henry H. Halley
15. Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton
16. Streams in the Desert by Lettie Cowman
17. The Christ of the Indian Road by E. Stanley Jones
18. My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers
19. The Basis of Christian Faith by Floyd E. Hamilton
20. Religion that Works by Samuel M. Shoemaker
21. Who Moved the Stone? by Frank Morison
22. Prayer by Ole Hallesby
23. A Diary of Private Prayer by John Baillie
24. Church Dogmatics by Karl Barth
25. Worship by Evelyn Underhill
26. The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
27. The Witness by Grace Livingston Hill
28. If by Amy Carmichael
29. The Mind of the Maker by Dorothy L. Sayers
30. The Robe by Lloyd C. Douglas
31. The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis
32. The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism by Carl F.H. Henry
33. The Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton
34. Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
35. The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer
36. The Archaeology of Palestine by William Foxwell Albright
37. Peace of Soul by Fulton J. Sheen
38. Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther by Roland H. Bainton
39. The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
40. A Man Called Peter by Catherine Marshall
41. Christ and Culture by H. Richard Niebuhr
42. Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
43. The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale
44. Your God Is Too Small by J. B. Phillips
45. The Daily Study Bible by William Barclay
46. New Bible Commentary by F. Davidson, A.M. Stibbs, and E.F. Kevan
47. Peace with God by Billy Graham
48. The Household of God by Lesslie Newbigin
49. The Christian View of Science and Scripture by Bernard Ramm
50. The Bridges of God by Donald Anderson McGavran
51. The Burden Is Light by Eugenia Price
52. Second Thoughts on the Dead Sea Scrolls by F. F. Bruce
53. Through Gates of Splendor by Elisabeth Elliot
54. The Meaning of Persons by Paul Tournier
55. Stride toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story by Martin Luther King Jr.
56. Basic Christianity by John Stott
57. The Gospel Blimp by Joseph T. Bayly
58. The Psychology of Counseling by Clyde M. Narramore
59. The New Bible Dictionary by J. D. Douglas, Organizing Editor
60. The Company of the Committed by Elton Trueblood
61. The Genesis Flood by John C. Whitcomb and Henry M. Morris
62. Man: The Image of God by G. C. Berkouwer
63. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
64. Living Letters by Kenneth N. Taylor
65. The Cross and the Switchblade by David Wilkerson with John and Elizabeth Sherrill
66. They Speak with Other Tongues by John Sherrill
67. Spiritual Depression by Martyn Lloyd-Jones
68. The Kingdom of the Cults by Walter R. Martin
69. The Taste of New Wine by Keith Miller
70. Know Why You Believe by Paul E. Little
71. Christy by Catherine Marshall
72. Move Ahead with Possibility Thinking by Robert H. Schuller
73. The God Who Is There by Francis Schaeffer
74. Dare to Discipline by James Dobson
75. The Meaning of the City by Jacques Ellul
76. The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey with Carole C. Carlson
77. Eighth Day of Creation by Elizabeth O'Connor
78. The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom with John and Elizabeth Sherrill
79. Evidence That Demands a Verdict by Josh McDowell
80. The Wounded Healer by Henri Nouwen
81. The Total Woman by Marabel Morgan
82. Knowing God by J. I. Packer
83. The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
84. All We're Meant to Be by Letha Scanzoni and Nancy Hardesty
85. Born Again by Charles Colson
86. Joni by Joni Eareckson with Joe Musser
87. The Battle for the Bible by Harold Lindsell
88. Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger by Ron Sider
89. Celebration of Discipline by Richard J. Foster
90. Telling the Truth by Frederick Buechner
91. Where Does a Mother Go to Resign? by Barbara Johnson
92. Out of the Saltshaker and into the World by Rebecca Manley Pippert
93. With Justice for All by John Perkins
94. Worship Is a Verb by Robert Webber
95. This Present Darkness by Frank Peretti
96. The Man in the Mirror by Patrick M. Morley
97. Experiencing God by Henry T. Blackaby and Claude V. King
98. Disappointment with God by Philip Yancey
99. Left Behind by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins
100. The Purpose-Driven Church by Rick Warren