Got Peace?

October 21, 2011 1 Comment

Got Peace?

This past weekend Wink and I traveled up North to family farm and an event my High School class was hosting…  It happened to turn out that a first cousin, once removed of mine on the Hinkle side of my family, Mary Bowers, had died at the age of 91 years and we were able to go to her funeral that Sunday afternoon…. In Salem, Indiana. (Salem means Peace)

We always enjoyed speaking with Mary and would visit her in her home and later in her Assisted Living Facility when we were close to the area.  She was the last living relative who knew a lot about my Hinkle side of the family, excepting Earl Hinkle Jr. who told me he does not know nearly as much as Mary did.  My Grandmother, Florence Hinkle, was her Aunt.  She was a kind and gracious woman….  We have heard her stories, seen and heard her cry, and we shared what each of us knows about our ancestry….  People who know me know of my concern for Peace, Nonviolence, and Social Justice….  I am particularly fond of telling of my Great Great Grandfather, Alexander Hinkle who was a cabinet maker, (in my possession is a chest he made out of Cherry with hand cut dovetails) as I am…  He was also a conductor on the Underground Railroad, the North Salem route, (there was also a South Salem Route) and he would put up runaway slaves in the home he built himself, in which Mary lived as a child, hauling them to the next Underground Railroad stop in his wagon underneath the stacks of loose hay…  I am particularly proud of his concern for Social Justice, and that of the Quaker community on both sides of Salem in those years….  I am not so proud of my Great Grandfather, Calvin Hinkle, who ran away underage at 16 years old to fight in the Union army….

Both my Great Great Grandfather, Alexander Hinkle, and my Great Grandfather, Calvin Hinkle as well as other relatives are buried at Crown Hill Cemetery in Salem, IN…

http://cityofsalemin.com/burialdatabase.html

You can look them up on the link above, as well as others in the Hinkle and Bowers family….

Now, so is Mary Bowers buried there also…..

I am a Christ Follower and what I believe about Peace is based upon the ethics of Jesus firstly and primarily….  At the funeral I was thinking about the Scripture, about In Him we live and move and have our being….  And, about how the whole world and ALL things, physical and spiritual, was created by and for Him…, meaning Jesus…  I was thinking about how mankind is all, everyone, created in God’s image…

I was thinking about how we are created to function as God designed us, of the Genesis account of creation in functional, not literal scientific terms, and how God desired to rest in His temple on the 7th day, and from a New Covenant perspective how we who believe in Him believe He has come to rest in us also and indwell us….  Also, how He, if one believes that Jesus is God, asks us to come to Him, and He will give us rest….

I won’t bore you with all the Old and New Testament references to support this position and bog this down right now… If you want to know, Let’s talk….

All of the ideas above would take a book to explain, and years to explore, eternity, actually…..

One thing though, when we die, we are at rest, we are at Peace…..  Got that?  Got Peace? Want Peace?

I believe we can get Peace while we are alive also….  Mary had Peace with God while she was alive, and definitely has it now….  There is nothing she can do to fight anymore against flesh and blood, there is nothing people who are flesh and blood can do to fight against her….  She is not at war… She is at Peace…, whatever you may believe, even if you are an atheist….

Mary talked a lot about Jesus… She expressed to me how she wondered why she lived so long and expressed in the same sentence that she did talk a lot about Jesus…., and share her faith with others…  I talk about Jesus a lot, the Prince of Peace… I have even been rejected by some of my friends, even Christian friends, (essentially disfellowshipped, actually) because of my radical beliefs in the Gospel of Peace it seems to me so few Christians can understand in our Post Christian culture….  It is so sad, to me…  I pray a lot about it…

I firmly believe one can get Peace while still alive…  It seems we all get more of it as we age and attempt to bear fruit that will last into eternity… Not just Christians get it…  I have seen Christians of all persuasions get it, I have seen Jewish people get it, I have seen Muslims get it…. I have seen so called Atheists get it…  I really do not think the Spirit of God can be limited in time and space by one’s religion.  He can enter into and give Peace to anyone He wants to….

The Gospel of Peace proclaims God is no longer at war with mankind..  God offers us Peace…. He has already absorbed all Evil into Himself when He died on the cross…. Good has already defeated Evil… The Myth of Redemptive Violence taught us form birth by the Prince of another Power is defeated…. God has entered into His Temple, His rest, His Peace, and offers us the same, if we will only believe…  He will enter into us…

Mary Bowers Believed…

She Got Peace…

Grace AND Peace,

John Cooper

http://tuscaloosacirclesofpeace.blogspot.com/

Filed under Christian, Grace, Nonviolence, Peace, Uncategorized Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Whose Business is It?

October 8, 2011 1 Comment

Whose Business is it?

This is a plea to our President, and others whose business it is assumed to be….

Whose business is it?

Is it your business to deliver us from Evil? Is it your business to enlist us in preemptive wars to kill and defeat our perceived enemies? Is it your business to spend our monetary resources of past and future generations by going into indebtedness to conquer Evil? If so, how is it working out for you?

I am reminded of an ancient prayer, now nearly 2,000 years old, spoken by those to whom many Christians declare their allegiance, primary allegiance, one would hope….

“Deliver us from Evil….”

It is a simple prayer, indeed, addressed to the one God of the universe to whom the allegiance of Jews, Christians, and Muslims all alike respect and claim to serve…

“Deliver us from Evil…”

Yes, we say this prayer, but do we really believe the God of the Universe has, or will actually “Deliver us from Evil”?

Do we not, by our actions, say and prefer to deliver ourselves from Evil? Do we not prefer to prepare our own guns, nuclear arsenals, and our minds steeped in our world’s influences, to deliver ourselves from Evil? If not, why spend Trillions of dollars and other monetary currencies in such preparedness to deliver our own selves form Evil?

At this time, August 19, 2011, the world apparently teeters on the brink of financial disaster, not being able to pay its debts to the future…. Can we ask this simple question?

In whom do we trust?

The United States has actually printed trillions of times, “In God we Trust”…

Really?

Is God the one in whom we trust?

If so, how about trusting Him to: “Deliver us from Evil”

The Christian proclaimers of the Kingdom of God, NOT of this world, would all hopefully agree in unison with our fellow Jewish and Islamic human beings, and all others created in God’s image, even including our enemies….

God, “Deliver us from Evil…”

God, we trust that you have already, do presently, and will in the future, “Deliver us from Evil..”

Some sensible people, although some would say, not so sensible, cry out…

“Whose business is it?”

It is God’s business to deliver us from Evil…

Some will say that God helps us to deliver ourselves from Evil, that we are to use our own logic and everything in our power as well as trust God to “Deliver us from Evil…” I cannot argue with that, and one would have to set one’s own limits of how far we might go in protecting ourselves and our families, but whatever the decision for oneself, and one’s community, for one”s city, for ones State, and for ones respective nation, and for the whole world, for that matter, we must come to the point eventually, do we actually trust God to “Deliver us from Evil”, or not?

If we do trust God, could we possibly reemploy some of our military resources and equipment to deliver food to Somalia, for instance? From a business point of view, would not this be more our business, to feed the hungry, cloth the naked, give comfort to the sick, to dress and keep the earth, and turn our swords effectively into plowshares? Maybe this would help cut the debt of the world if we give up so much trusting in ourselves to protect ourselves from Evil, and trust in God to:

“Deliver us from Evil”

John Cooper

http://tuscaloosacirclesofpeace.blogspot.com/

Filed under Christian, Grace, Nonviolence, Peace, Uncategorized Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

The OMNI Presence of God

September 22, 2011 11 Comments

 

The OMNI Presence of God

I think about God a lot… I was thinking the other day about God and my thoughts went to Jesus on the cross…. Many believe Jesus is God, but how can a God who is one, be a God who is Jesus at the same time? This is a question that many may ask…. God in Jesus and the Holy Spirit is a dividing point between Jews and Muslims who are strict monotheists….

The passage I was thinking of in this regard is:

Eph 2:14-22

14 For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, 15 by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, 16 and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. 17 He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. 18 For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.

19 Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. 21 In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. 22 And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

NIV

NIV

Many who know me know of my inclinations toward Peace…. I am a part of Circles of Peace (http://tuscaloosacirclesofpeace.blogspot.com/) which is an affiliate of FOR, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the oldest Peace and Nonviolent organization still active in the world today… Perhaps my thoughts went to this passage while I was thinking of God, just because that is the way I am, the way I have become, in my journey with God….

Some would say that we are faced with a problem, or more than one, in this passage…. How can Jesus be our peace? How could Jesus just go around making peace like this, by fiat, so it may seem? How can different peoples become one? And, how can we be a dwelling place for God? For that matter, how can One God be alive and ruling the universe, and dead and be Jesus on the cross at the same time, let alone be the Holy Spirit, and be in us too, all at the same time?

How can two be one?  How can God revealed in three persons (hypostasis) Father, Son, Holy Spirit, be one?

OMNI presence, if you will, a way Greeks like perhaps Aristotle and Plato thought about God… A way of thinking about God that has filtered down into our Western concepts of thinking, although do not really understand it, being in only one place and time at the same time….

The Apostle Paul must have thought some about this matter also…. While speaking to the Greeks, he said:

Acts 17:24-28

24 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. 27 God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. 28’For in him we live and move and have our being .’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’

NIV

It seems we are all included… Jews, Greeks, Christians, Muslims, Everyman….. Included in the unfathomable love of God, who died for ALL, who wants to bring about Peace, not only vertically with God, but horizontally between all of us who live and move, and breath, and have our being…..

God, being OMNI present, and all of that stuff, can do it… He can be in you, in me, at the same time, otherwise, we would just evaporate into nothingness…

Then, after thinking of these things, I was thinking of how big a sinner once was, and still am, for that matter, just not quite so big as I used to be, maybe….

I used to be mean… I used to love to fight… In my teenage years I began coming to a greater understanding of the Peace and love of God for all mankind and even became a conscientious objector by the time I was 19 or 20, or so… I think one of the roots of my understanding of God came while I was a boy on our family farm in Illinois… I used to take a BB Gun out and just kill birds for the sport of it… I would take a 22 rifle out to hunt rabbits, just for the sport of it… One day while walking beside a field by burbling creek, I spotted a possum and decided to shoot it…. It did not just die all at once, as you see on TV when someone gets shot…. Nothing just dies all at once… Jesus did not die all at once… He suffered… I shot the possum… I shot the

possum several times… It did not die all at once… I thought maybe it was just playing dead and poked it until I was sure it was dead, taking what seemed to me like quite a long time to kill a possum… Now I did not need to kill that possum… I had no intention of eating the possum… I did not need the food… It gets worse…. I examined the dead body of the possum and found a living litter of baby possums in the possum’s pouch… they would also die.. They had no mother… They had no food… I felt really, really, bad… I still feel bad thinking of it. I can tell you today within just a yard or so of where all this happened… I can take you there and show you…. I am sorry… I was bad, very bad…

In time, I began to quit thinking like a boy, and began to think like a man, but these thoughts will always stay with me…

Now, when I think about God, I think about the life, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus… Who, has made peace with me, and with all mankind, and offered God’s forgiveness for all mankind, if we will receive it… Will some be lost? Probably, for this is a matter of a free choice to choose the peace God wants us so desperately to have, not only vertically, with Him, but horizontally, with all tribes and nations… Some may refuse this Goodness, but I believe with all my heart that it will only be a refusal after hearing the Gospel of Peace, and experiences the Peace we have in Jesus… He IS our Peace…. Let us choose Him…

Grace and Peace,

John Cooper

Filed under Christian, Grace, Nonviolence, Peace, Uncategorized Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

Newer posts →