This mp3 of the rarely heard “But If Not” speech by MLK is crucial to grasp his soaring moral vision and deep intimacy with the Bible. Essential listening for our times. Download the whole MP3 here. The following quote from the speech does it for me (speech begins at 32:32 into the track):

"I say to you, this morning, that if you have never found something so dear and precious to you that you will die for it, then you aren’t fit to live.

You may be 38 years old, as I happen to be, and one day, some great opportunity stands before you and calls upon you to stand for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause. And you refuse to do it because you are afraid.

You refuse to do it because you want to live longer. You’re afraid that you will lose your job, or you are afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity, or you’re afraid that somebody will stab or shoot or bomb your house. So you refuse to take a stand.

Well, you may go on and live until you are ninety, but you are just as dead at 38 as you would be at ninety.

And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit.

You died when you refused to stand up for right.

You died when you refused to stand up for truth.

You died when you refused to stand up for justice.”

(via Boing Boing)

There is something about the Word of God that can make a person just come alive!

Last night I met with two fellow elders of my church and we sat down to open the Scriptures and nut out a theological and ethical issue that has been nagging at us for some time. We were discussing the importance of baptism and it's linkage to church membership.

Nothing heavy :)

Churches of Christ, the denomination I "belong" to has traditionally held to a very strict "no baptism, no membership" policy since it emerged out of the restoration movement. We were taking a fresh look at it because of inter-denominational transfers and trying to reconcile the traditions of other Christian traditions. (I recently wrote a paper on the issue and my college would like me to pursue some post-graduate research on the topic).

All of that is actually beside the point. Before I arrived at the meeting I was still in my morose, disconnected and melancholy but while I was there and engaged with the Word of God I felt alive once more.

The things of God have the ability to excite me even when I am feeling dead in the world, the trick for me is to be motivated to go into the Word when I feel like this which is no easy task.

the things of God excite

 

Just War, just isn't! On the surface, the doctrine of a Just War is a seminal work of ethical reasoning constructed to reduce the incidences of unrestrained aggression and war. War for instance that so horrifically scars the history books of the twentieth century. It was constructed with a noble aim to reduce from flood to trickle the cruelty visited upon our fellow man by narrowing the limits of acceptable aggression and response.

This article seeks to deconstruct the Just War doctrine and rebuke it in the light of Jesus' teachings on war. In it I reference the current "War on Terror", Iraq and try to make us think critically about what our actions say to the rest of the world.

It's also the fulfillment of this post

On the train this morning I was finishing off one of my ethics assignments, this one is about the validity of cohabitation as a pathway to marriage.

It's a very difficult question to answer because of the crossover between sacred and secular views of marriage. The Catholic church insist that marriage has to be performed by a member of the clergy in from to at least two witnesses (the council of Trent) while Martin Luther said that marriage is a secular issue and the church should just stay out of it.

The underlying question for me is how much say can the church have in a secular society. We can not be legislators of all morality (mostly because we abdicated the moral high ground long ago) but at the same time we can be a positive influence on our society guiding them towards a Godly way of living.

After all the foundation of our societies laws are based in Judeo-Christian thought and no one argues that "don't kill" and "don't steal", while going somewhat against our nature are beneficial to society.

That's not the path I went down in my assignment though, I think once people cohabitate they have entered into marriage with each other. Australian law at least recognizes that after a certain amount of time living together you are in a de facto marriage. What we can add to society and people who are considering cohabitating is give them access to pre-marital counseling! And encourage them to make a public commitment of their relationship to their friends and family so they can feel invited to support their relationship together.

When Sally and I were married we could have eloped, had the minimum witnesses and excluded our friends, but by inviting everyone to our wedding ceremony we were saying, join with us on this journey and I think that is something that the cohabitating couples I know are missing out on, the society of friends and family invited to help strengthen a relationship.