Christian Living

I'm not going to be doing a traditional blog post today, rather the Spirit has given me a different idea. For those that don't know, the Living Bible finds its origins in the 1950's at the hands of a fella by the name of Kenneth Taylor. As the story goes, Mr. Taylor was struggling to teach the Bible to his kids because they were so far removed from the language of the ole' King James. If you've ever read Shakespeare, you know what I mean. So he'd paraphrase the Scriptures in plain English for them. Later, he deemed it appropriate to write these paraphrased Scriptures down ahead of time and that eventually led to the paraphrased, "The Living Bible." Now because it's paraphrased instead of legitimately translated it's not all that popular for Bible study which is why it's essentially out of print. The New Living Translation replaced it with the same idea - easy to understand - but is a legitimate translation.

I actually have two copies of the Living Bible. One is one of the 600k ordered for the Billy Graham Crusades of the 60's and 70's, and the other is a Catholic version. I consider it a version for light reading and it's the version I read strictly for pleasure. I've seen it right though to type out 2 Peter for you today because I completely agree with its message on Christian living. I've decided to type it King James style meaning each verse will have its own line and a space indicates a new chapter.

2 Peter

From: Simon Peter, a servant and missionary of Jesus Christ. To: all of you who have our kind of faith. The faith I speak of is the kind that Jesus Christ our God and Saviour gives to us.

Do you want more and more of God's kindness and peace? Then learn to know him better and better.
For as you know him better, he will give you, through his great power, everything you need for living a truly good life: he even shares his own glory and his own goodness with us!

And by that same mighty power he has given us all the other rich and wonderful blessings he promised; for instance, the promise to save us from the lust and rotteness all around us, and to give us his own character.

But to obtain these gifts, you need more than faith; you must also work hard to be good, and even that is not enough. For then you must learn to know God better and discover what he wants you to do.

Next, learn to put aside your own desires so that you will become patient and godly, gladly letting God have his way with you.

This will make possible the next step, which is for you to enjoy other people and to like them, and finally you will grow to love them deeply.

The more you go on in this way, the more you will grow strong spiritually and become fruitful and useful to our Lord Jesus Christ.

But anyone who fails to go after these additions to faith is blind indeed, or at least very shortsighted, and has forgotten that God delivered him from the old life of sin so that now he can live a strong, good life for the Lord.

So, dear brothers, work hard to prove that you really are among those God has called and chosen, and you will never stumble or fall away.

And God will open wide the gates of heaven for you to enter into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

I plan to keep on reminding you of these things even though you already know them and are really getting along quite well!

But the Lord Jesus Christ has showed me that my days here on earth are numbered, and I am soon to die.

As long as I am still here I intend to keep sending these reminders to you.

[I hope] to impress them so clearly upon you that you will remember them long after I have gone.

For we have not been telling you fairy tales when we explained to you the power of our Lord Jesus Christ and his coming again. My own eyes have seen his splendor and his glory:

I was there on the holy mountain when he shone out with honor given him by God his father;

I heard that glorious, majestic voice calling down from heaven saying, "This is my much-loved Son; I am well pleased with him."

So we have seen and proved that what the prophets said came true. You will do well to pay close attention to everything they have written, for, like lights shining into dark corners, their words help us to understand many things that otherwise would be dark and difficult. But when you consider the wonderful truth of the prophets' words, then the light will dawn in your souls and Christ the Morning Star will shine in your hearts.

For no prophecy recorded in Scripture was ever thought up by the prophet himself.

It was the Holy Spirit within these godly men who gave them true messages from God.

But there were false prophets, too, in those days, just as there will be false teachers among you; they will cleverly tell their lies about God, turning against even their Master who bought them, but theirs will be a swift and terrible end.

Many will follow their evil teaching that there is nothing wrong with sexual sin. And because of them Christ and his way will be scoffed at.

These teachers in their greed will tell you anything to get hold of your money. But God condemned them long ago and their destruction is on the way.

For God did not spare even the angels who sinned, but threw them into hell, chained in gloomy caves and darkness until the judgement day.

And he did not spare any of the people who lived in ancient times before the flood except Noah, the one man who spoke up for God, and his family of seven. At that time God completely destroyed the whole world of ungodly men with the vast flood.

Later, he turned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into heaps of ashes and bloted them off the face of the earth, making them an example for all the ungodly in the future to look back upon and fear.

But at the same time the Lord rescued Lot out of Sodom because he was a good man,

sick of the terrible wickedness he saw everywhere around him day after day.

so also the Lord can rescue you and me from the temptations that surround us, and continue to punish the ungodly until the day of final judgement comes.

He is especially hard on those who follow their own evil, lustful thoughts, and those who are proud and willful, daring even to scoff at the Glorious Ones without so much as trembling.

Although the angels in heaven who stand in the very presence of the Lord, and are far greater in power and strength than these false teachers, never speak out disrespectfully against these evil Mighty Ones.

But false teachers are fools-no better than animals. They do whatever they feel like; born only to be caught and killed, they laugh at the terrifying powers of the underworld which they know so little about; and they will be destroyed along with all the demons and powers of hell.

That is the pay these teachers will have for their sin. For they live in evil pleasure day after day; they are a disgrace and a stain among you, decieving you by living in foul sin on the side while they join your love feasts as though they were honest men.

No woman can escape their sinful stare, and of adultery they never have enough. They make a game of luring unstable women. They train themselves to be greedy; and are doomed and cursed.

They have gone off the road and become lost like Balaam, the son of Beor, who fell in love with the money he could make by doing wrong.

But Balaam was stopped from his mad course when his donkey spoke to him with a human voice, scolding and rebuking him.

These men are as useless as dried up springs of water, promising much and delivering nothing; they are as unstable as clouds driven by the storm winds. They are doomed to eternal pits of darkness.

They proudly boast about their sins and conquests, and, using lust as their bait, they lure back into sin those who have just escaped from such wicked living.

"You aren't saved by being good," they say, "so you might as well be bad. Do what you like, be free." But these very teachers who offer this "freedom" from law are themselves slaves to sin and destruction. For a man is a slave to whatever controls him.

And when a person has escaped from the wicked ways of the world by learning about our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and then gets tangled up with sin and becomes its slave again, he is worse off than he was before.

It would be better if he had never known about Christ at all than to learn of him and then afterwards turn his back on the holy commandments that were given to him.

There is an old saying that, "A dog comes back to what he has vomited, and a pig is washed only to come back and wallow in the mud again." That is the way it is with those who turn again to their sin.

This is my second letter to you, dear brothers, and in both of them I have tried to remind you-if you will let me- about facts you already know:

Facts you learned from the holy prophets and from us apostles who brought you the words of our Lord and Saviour.

First, I want to remind you that in the last days there will come scoffers that will do every wrong they can think of, and laugh at the truth.

This will be their line of arguement: "So Jesus promised to come back, did he? Then where is he? He'll never come! Why, as far back as anyone can remember everything has remained exactly as it was since the first day of creation."

They deliberately forget this fact: that God did destroy the world with a mighty flood, long after he had made the heavens by the word of his command.

And had used the the waters to form the earth and surround it.

And God has commanded that the earth and the heavens be stored away for a great bonfire at the judgement day, when all ungodly men will perish.

But don't forget this, dear friends, that a day or a thousand years from now is like tomorrow to the Lord.

He isn't really being slow about his promised return, even though it sometimes seems that way, but he is waiting for the good reason that he is not willing that any should perish, and he is giving more time for sinners to repent.

The day of the Lord is surely coming, as unexpectedly as a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a terrible noise and the hevenly bodies will disappear in fire, and the earth and everything on it will be burned up.

And so since everything around us is going to melt away, what holy, godly lives we should be living!

You should look forward to that day and hurry it along- the day when God will set the heavens on fire, and the heavenly bodies will melt and disappear in flames.

But we are looking forward to God's promise of new heavens and a new earth afterwards, where there will be only goodness.

Dear friends, while you are waiting for these things to happen and for him to come, try hard to live without sinning; and be at peace with everyone so that he will be pleased with you when he returns.

And remember why he is waiting. He is giving us time to get his message of salvation out to others.

Our wise and beloved brother Paul has talked about these same things in many of his letters. Some of his comments are not easy to understand and there are people who are deliberately stupid, and always demand some unusual interpretation-they have twisted his letters around to mean something quite different from what he meant, just as they do the other parts of the Scripture-and the result is disaster for them.

I am warning you ahead of time, dear brothers, so that you can watch out and not be carried away by the mistakes of these wicked men, lest you yourselves become mixed up too.

But grow in spiritual strength and become better aquainted with our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To him be all glory and splendid honor, both now and forevermore. Goodbye. Peter.

On First Nations Peoples and Abouriginals

I've given much thought to this as of late and have decided to write this under the patronage of St. Patrick.

There is a great deal of intolerance between the English and First Nations. Many of the problems that the First Nations Peoples face were and continue to be caused by the English. The last residential school may have closed in the 90's, but that perverted spirit that the Natives aren't good enough continues to live on. This needs to change, but how?

I firmly believe that the way and life of the First Nations Peoples should be fully restored to them inasmuch as is possible. Drop-out rates and illiteracy rates are through the roof! We the English need to backoff and allow the Natives to learn in their traditional ways. I believe their language should be the primary language learned and English or French should be secondary.

We should restore to them the capacity to enjoy daily their traditional foods and to employ their own traditional medicines and healthcare. They should have their land restored to them and ensure that they have a source of clean water. The Natives should be allowed to police their ownselves and by their own laws. We should merely be complimenting their efforts and not telling them how to do it. They have cared for themselves thousands of years - long before English was even a language! Their own languages, histories and legends should be written down so that their culture can never be forgotten.

I'd like to see parliamentary reforms which would allow each Nation their own Minister of Parliament since the traditional English way of doing things doesn't give them much of a voice. This is their land, so they should have a greater voice. Should the Senate ever be reformed to allow each province and territory two elected Senators, I'd like to see that each Nation also has their own elected Senator.

Doing these things we will likely see the First Nations Peoples come to equal footing with all the rest and perhaps they will be even stronger. We are all brothers and sisters regardless of blood or creed, and I see no reason why these cannot also have a chance at the best. It is what I want for myself and for my children, and so the Natives too should also have this ability.

Hell

I'm not really going to give a hardcore biblical explanation of hell, but an artistic explanation which draws its inspiration from the whole of Scripture.

A lot of agnostics and atheists struggle with the concept of a God who is supposed to loving and merciful sending people to Hell for not obeying Him. At the same time, fundamentalist Christians will convert themselves and others specifically because they fear going to Hell. Both of these interpretations are wrong.

Think of it this way, if you wanted to get married a requirement in order to do so would be to find someone who is willing to love you. Now, you're not forcing them to love you, are you? No, they are freely choosing to love you. So it is with God. The Law of God is summed up in two commandments: love the Lord with all your heart, mind, soul, and love your neighbour as yourself. (Matthew 22:35:40) These aren't arbitrary orders rather on the contrary, these are proper ways we are able to express our love for God. Think of your spouse for a moment. Do they not have boundaries? Do they not have ways you can't speak to them, and things you cannot do? You choose not to do these things that could hurt or upset your spouse out of love and respect. So it is that you keep the Commandments of God.

Why does God send people to Hell then, if it isn't punishment for disobeying Him? Well, if you spend your life not loving God be it through action or through word, or perhaps you don't even acknowledge His existence, then God who loves you anyways will give you what you want: eternity without Him. That probably doesn't sound like Hell to an atheist, does it? Here's the thing; God is Love (1 John 4:8) so an eternity without God is an eternity without Love. God is Peace (2 Thessalonians 3:16; Hebrews 13:20; Isaiah 9:6; Ephesians 4:3) so eternity without God is an eternity without Peace. God is Hope (Romans 15:13) so an eternity without God is an eternity without Hope.

Likewise of Heaven it is said, "See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more..." (Revelation 21:3-4)

This is all fine and dandy, but the Bible speaks many times of fearing the Lord. What do you make of this? How are we supposed to love God if we are supposed to fear Him too? Let's go back to the example I gave earlier about the loving spouse. If you really love this person, then naturally you will fear ever hurting them. This is not a fear for your own safety, rather a fear that is all about them - of the intense pain at even the thought that harm could come to them especially by your own hand. Fear is also used in another way in the Bible as it pertains to judgement. This fear would be similar to that which you would feel if you ever cheat on your spouse. The fear of what could happen if they ever found out that you cheated. This is the fear that those who spend their lives not acknowledging God will experience come Judgement Day. It's also the fear we feel when we find out for the first time that we are sinners and persists until we have been made perfect in love. (John 4:18)

So therefore I encourage you for the glory of God the Father and for love of His son Jesus Christ in the unity of the Holy Spirit; to love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, with all your mind and love your neighbour as yourself.

May the peace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit!