Ragged Faith

Pages taken from the journals of one exploring the Way

A New Standard

by | Dec 27, 2010 | Uncategorized

“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”

James 1:27
I have a problem. I look up too much and down too little. I look up to what other people have and attain, but rarely do I look down to what others have lost. I desire to step up to the higher standard of living while ignoring the gift of living more simply. I grow anxious as I think about ways to increase my financial security so I feel like I always have enough but miss the joy found by those who have less.
It is quite easy to be polluted. In our world pollution is a value. We are polluted by greed, security, and opulence. Living within your means (or living below your means), using things till they’ve lost usefulness, and identifying with the poor on not even on the radar of our world’s value system.
But they seem to be the values Jesus shows His disciples.
How then will we live and with what values will our lives be guided by? We have the choice to be mindless as we absorb the polluted value system of the world in which we live, or we can set new standards based on the example of Jesus and the call to love and value all humanity. We can live these values and demonstrate the joy that comes with them.
Who’s in?

A Poem

by | Oct 24, 2007 | Uncategorized

What is, therefore, the task of the preacher (or the church) today?
Shall I answer: “Faith, hope, and love”?
That sounds beautiful.
But I would say – Courage.
No, even that is not challenging enough to be the whole truth.
Our task today is recklessness.
For what we Christians lack is not psychology or literature,
we lack holy rage.
The recklessness that comes from the knowledge of God and humanity.
The ability to rage when justice lies prostrate on the streets…
and when the lie rages across the face of the earth –
a holy anger about things that are wrong in the world.
To rage against the ravaging of God’s earth,
and the destruction of God’s world.
To Rage when little children must die of hunger,
when the tables of the rich are sagging with food.
To rage at the senseless killing of so many,
and against the madness of militaries.
To rage at the lie that calls the threat of death and the strategy of destruction – Peace.
To rage against complacency.
To restlessly seek that recklessness that will challenge and seek to change
human history until it conforms with the norms of the Kingdom of God.
And remember the signs of the Christian church have always been –
the Lion, the Lamb, the Dove, and the Fish…
but never the chameleon.

Danish pastor Kaj Munk