Morality vs. Sprirituality, Round 1

Did you realize that morality and spirituality are different? I just learned the difference in an old book I picked up at The Salvation Army: Questions Non-Christians Ask by Barry Wood.

Morality means right relations with your fellow man. Morals refers to ethics on a man-to-man, person-to-person level. Morals denotes our horizontal relationships.

Spirituality means right relations with God. Being a spiritual man involves a daily walk with God. It's a vertical relationship -- man to God and God to man.

Morality is not spirituality. Just because someone has good morals, does not mean they are spiritual. Just because you are on the in's with people, doesn't mean your on the in's with God.

However, every spiritual man will be a moral man. The story of Nicodemus in the book of John illustrates a moral person who was not right with God. A good example of someone who is spiritual and moral, is the story of Jesus of Nazareth.

Have a moral day, I mean, spiritual day!

His name is Jesus?

If you are interested in the history of the name of Jesus Christ, here are a couple of good sources:

Jews for Jesus article

Yeshua.com

My Record is Broken

Maybe I'm sounding like a broken record -- maybe not -- but my thought on the way to work this morning is: There are so many things about God that are confusing -- so many things that are debated about God not only between Christians and other faiths -- but also within Christianity. I think when you look at the story of Adam & Eve eating from the tree of knowledge of good & evil it makes sense why we have the confusion. It's the first time that they were told that they could be like God -- they could know learn on their own without God's help -- they could be their own God. Since man from the time of Adam has had this obsession with figuring things out on their own -- and when man tries to figure out the infinitely higher and wiser God -- there is going to be a lot of frustration and confusion. My worldview lately has been that of the analogy that we have all been poisoned by sin. We all have this poison inside of us -- Adam and Eve were infected by the poison and they've passed it down from generation to generation all the way to us.

We have these ideas that if we learn enough, if we keep on studying, we'll get it figured out. We will know who God is and how he thinks and how everything works. I'm not turning into a relativist, because I do believe there are some fundamental things about God that are knowable when you look throughout history how God has made Himself known, but I also believe that God doesn't leave some things a mystery for some reason. I believe that some things about God we just can't comprehend with out little human brains.

My theory is that we have so many varied beliefs about God -- different religions -- different sects of Christianity -- because we hold on so tightly to our human understanding and our obsession with study and knowledge and getting it all figured out. We all have pride in what we think we know is the truth. When we rely on our own reasoning to figure out God we can end up with really bad human reasoning and understanding. When we yield to God and plead and beg for him to show himself to us, I think we are at a good place to study and reason to learn more about him. I know that I'm guilty of this -- I love to read, study, contemplate etc. My favorite form of worship is reading and learning about God. I don't spend enough time in prayer and/or asking God to show me truth about him as I study and seek Him.

Please pray for me and for those you love that we can all give our questions, confusions and frustrations to God, and that we ask him to sort them out for us instead of obsessing about doing it ourselves. One promise that I hold on to in the Bible is that if we seek God, we will find him.

Mother of the Year

People I'd like to have dinner with this week

C.S. Lewis

Rob Bell: Teaching downloads or podcast @ iTunes, or books

Greg Boyd: Teaching downloads or podcast @ iTunes, his books or get his blog

Rick Warren

Josh McDowell, the guy I'm reading right now

Am I wrong?

I have a friend (I can't prove it) who has a website where he talks about Christian stuff and he gets Christians and non-Christians posting comments etc. I'm kind of jealous. The thing is, as you know, that I love a good discussion/debate or whatever you call dialoging about debatable things. It challenges me, and I suppose there's that little person inside of me that needs to feel like I know what I believe and why. Also, I sell radio ads, so I spend a lot of time selling, negotiating and persuading and it tends to come out in my non-work life.

Here is my formal request to please challenge me on what I believe. My passion in life is studying, following and telling others good news, I mean, THE Good News. Have I told you yet? 2000 years ago God came to the earth as a human, named Jesus. His Hebrew name is Yeshua, which would be Joshua in English speaking countries (I just learned that - pretty interesting, huh?). Jesus came to offer his life as a sacrifice for our sins so that our souls can go to heaven and be with our creator -- because we are too messed up to ever do enough good to make up for the bad we do. The conscience we have that we especially notice when we do something wrong comes from God. The fear of death and our desire for eternal life comes from God. The Good News is that we don't have to worry about doing more good than bad to live forever with God. The Good News is that Jesus paid for our sins (our past sins and future sins) by giving up his perfect life for us. God chose to live the most lowly, humble and persecuted life as a human and die a horrible death so that we would be reconciled with him forever. All we have to do is live for God -- acknowledge that we are not the ruler of our lives and acknowledge that God is. Accept his sacrifice and stop trying to "work our way to heaven".

This sums up what I believe to be true... it's an oversimplified, stream-of-conscious "statement of faith" but I think I'm saying enough to fire up any dissenters out there.

18-21The Message that points to Christ on the Cross seems like sheer silliness to those hellbent on destruction, but for those on the way of salvation it makes perfect sense. This is the way God works, and most powerfully as it turns out. It's written, I'll turn conventional wisdom on its head, I'll expose so-called experts as crackpots.So where can you find someone truly wise, truly educated, truly intelligent in this day and age? Hasn't God exposed it all as pretentious nonsense? Since the world in all its fancy wisdom never had a clue when it came to knowing God, God in his wisdom took delight in using what the world considered dumb—preaching, of all things!—to bring those who trust him into the way of salvation.

1 Corinthians 1:18 (The Message) The Message (MSG) Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson

The Resurrection Hoax?

I encourage everyone to read a book on proof of the resurrection sometime -- it's pretty interesting and faith building. Here's an article online I just read that is a succinct version of proof of the ressurection. Otherwise, check out The Case for Easter, or, I am eagerly awaiting The Jesus Legend by Greg Boyd and Paul Eddy - a nice and beefy 512 page book that comes out in August. Happy Easter!

Love that Rick guy

Newsweek featured a debate between well known Christian author Rick Warren (The Purpose Driven Life -- incredible book) and athiest Sam Harris. I recommend reading it here.