Author: Aaron

After they received the Holy Spirit, the apostles were exuberant. One day, in the temple while they prayed, Peter and John healed a lame man (Acts 3:1-10) and started to excitedly share about Jesus.

They just saw a guy come back from the dead AND they received the Holy Spirit. They couldn’t stop talking about it to anyone who would listen. To top it off, they healed a lame guy. The evidence of what they were talking about showed itself right before them.

The temple authorities rushed to arrest them to stem the gathering interest. It sounded like sorcery and blasphemy. Better to protect everyone from hearing it! However, with the formerly lame man right there and with the crowd size, there wasn’t much they could do. There was too much interest. So, a night in jail and a warning is all the two received.

And to this warning, the two replied, “Whether it’s right in the sight of God for us to listen to you rather than to God, you decide; for we are unable to stop speaking about what we have seen and heard.” (Acts 4:19-20)

They couldn’t stop. How could they, after what they saw?

I’ve long believed that the real crisis in the church is not education, or doctrinal discipline. The text says that Peter and John were uneducated (Acts. 4:13) and they couldn’t stop preaching. No, the real crisis is the lack of encounter with Christ. Manufactured spiritual services, and expectantly dull rote programming, do not make a lot of room for living encounter. And the thing about God is, once you encounter Him, you can’t STOP sharing it with others.

In the past few weeks, the United State of America has broken with significant conventions, the most recent being the longly held stance the Vladimir Putin is dangerous dictator that needs to be contained by the West. What the West is itself is unraveling, as any form of consensus that emerged post war in the mid twentieth century disintegrates.

Whether this is bad or good is beyond the scope of this small piece. More to the point, how we came to believe what is true, or what is good becomes called into question during their deconstruction. That there was any semblance of commonality at all, held together for nearly 80 years is ahistorical. In the mid twentieth century, America and Russia were allies of sorts, against the common enemies on the European continent. That this would shift in a couple of years during the rebuilding shows how remarkably convention shifts. And, because truth is built on consensus, how quickly truth shifts.

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In the late 17th century, the church in the new territory of New France — what would come to be known as Quebec — waged a moral war against the government¹ of said territory over its policy of allowing the sale of alcohol to the aboriginal population. Early governors ignored the implication and devastation that were caused in favor of easy profits and favor with commercial traders.

The first bishop of New France, Francoise de Laval, specifically went to King Louis XIV in order to circumvent what he referred to as “Statesmen who place the freedom of commerce above morality of action”.² The Hurons, Algonquins, and Iroquois had no history of alcohol and it rampaged through their peoples much as the new viruses introduced from Europe.

“There is no species of madness, of crime or inhumanity to which they do not descend. The [Indian], for a glass of brandy, will give even his clothes, his cabin, his wife, his children; a squaw when made drunk—and this is often done purposely—will abandon herself to the first comer. They will tear each other to pieces. If one enters a cabin whose inmates have just drunk brandy, one will behold with astonishment and horror the father cutting the throat of his son, the son threatening his father; the husband and wife, the best of friends, inflicting murderous blows upon each other, biting each other, tearing out each other’s eyes, noses and ears; they are no longer recognizable, they are madmen; there is perhaps in the world no more vivid picture of hell.” ³

I resonate deeply with this. Regularly on our church grounds I have to confront those who have lost families, jobs, houses, and hope because of the drink. With nothing left, and nowhere to turn, they sleep in our corners and micturate on our holy grounds. Most recently I told a man he might stay and rest, if, and only if, he allowed me to throw out the full can he was holding. Sitting in his own urine, he chose to get up and push his walker somewhere else that he might continue in his spiral.

Dead men walking.

I wish and pray for hope and their salvation, but often there is little left to salvage beyond their souls. A moment, some food, and a quiet corner before being told to shuffle off somewhere else. That they ended up here, while their own choosing, is also the consequence of a market that prioritizes profit over conscience. The Christian gospel declares that human will and autonomy is a slave to sin.⁴ Ours, yes, but without God our choices are broken and lead to death and pain. The Christian conscience recognizes this, and mercy helps mitigate those consequences, until it’s too late, in which case charity must care for those poor lost folks.

In either the prevention, or ultimately and far more burdensome the care, they become our responsibility. As such, far costlier for all involved when we avoid our duties to our conscience and to our neighbor.

1. Initially held under the company of Cent-Associés’ (One Hundred Associates), the territory would eventually become a Royal Province under direct Royal rule. ↩︎
2. Leblond de Brumath, A. The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval. Toronto, Morang & Co., Limited, 1912, pp. 39 ↩︎
3. Ibid. 37-38. ↩︎
4. Romans 6:15-23 ↩︎

There’s an old adage that all philosophy breaks down in the extreme. Take, for instance, free speech. It’s a good that we would all defend, but it’s not a universal ideal.¹ Meaning there is no universal good called free speech sitting in the heavens by which everything we do here on earth is contrasted and compared. Freedom in general is only universal inasmuch as it rests in God. So it’s not true liberty in the sense of that we are free from all constraints, but rather freedom inasmuch as it is contingent on God’s limits on our contingent natures.

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There’s a seismic shift happening with our youth, and I don’t think we yet understand it. We saw a part of it with the shifting to the right of our young men during the past election. Perhaps relatedly¹, we’re seeing patterns emerge of young people shifting towards more traditional churches. Not conservative churches, as we’ve seen that conservative Evangelical churches are the fastest declining in the country,² but traditional churches, specifically including the Latin Mass Roman Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox.

There are many opinions about why this happening. Too many in fact and I want to see actual evidence.

After meeting with our own Presiding Bishop yesterday, and his indirect acknowledgement that we are not a church that is benefiting from this trend as we are a tradition in steep decline,³ what struck me about what he said is that our church is struggling with a complete lack of capacity on every level. From the smallest entities to the largest we are barely getting by and lack the resource–volunteer, paid, financial, spiritual, material–to adequately minister to our people. Much of this, I’m assuming, has to do with our eroding social contract with our culture.

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“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus” – Romans 8:1

A therefore in writing indicates a connection to the previous verse or section. In Romans 7, Paul wrestles with the distinction between sin and the desire to obey God that operate within him. His flesh (sárx) wages war against his mind (noús). He doesn’t want to sin, as he wants to adhere to the law (Torah) with his mind, but his body is unable to accomplish his desires.

If we don’t do what we want to do, then there must be something within us preventing us from doing the thing that we want to do. The climax of course, is the distress over not wanting to do the thing that he is doing, and the implication of having to face the consequence, which according to the law is death.

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There’s a scene that has always bothered me about King David. Just after his son Absalom dies, David goes into deep mourning. Understandable of course, but remembering that it was Absalom that led a revolt against his father, split the Kingdom, caused immeasurable harm to David, his wives and to the nation, after much fighting and four years on the run, his people needed something more from him.

In the victory over the would be usurper, they needed their King as a father to the nation, and David wasn’t there. It took David’s ruthless general, Joab, to come in and force him to address the needs of his people.¹

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Two things that I heard today that gave me pause:

Someone wrote,

“I want to go back to a time when my dreams outweighed my fears.” – Anonymous

And,

Someone else asked,

“If you had one day left on earth, what would you do with it?”

“Jesus chose to wash feet with his.”

“To. Wash. Feet.”