Spiritual Ponderings

I looked up all the passages I could find in Scripture that use the phrase, vengeance is mine , and what I found was very fascinating. It is often very easy to apparently vindicate typical views of a vengeful, retributive, violent God if one is predisposed to cling to that view. I do wonder many times though, what vested interest people might have in clinging so tenaciously to such dark views of God. But in this study, what surprised me a little was how many clues there are in these passages that reinforce what we have been exploring about a God of consistent non-violence. That is not to say there is never any violence involved in interactions between God and humanity, but what has been a problem is that God's people have not understood Him very well in this regard. Yet mingled throughout the descriptions of vengeance and wrath even in the Old Testament are clear references to the true meaning of wrath spelled out in Romans 1 as abandonment rather than attack. Also found in thes...

Last night my wife and I attended a spiritual small group in someone's home. We have never been there before and this group pretty much had known each other for a number of years at the least. It grew out of an experiment by the leader a couple years ago who desired to try to replicate something along the order of what is described in 1 Corinthians about New Testament church life. There were about a dozen people there and they were quite relaxed, at least with each other. None of these people were familiar with our church or beliefs. That meant that we felt mostly like an observer there, though we too have a longing to see the true body of Christ connecting more intentionally no matter where they come from. My thoughts and feelings on relating to people outside my denomination on a spiritual level has changed considerably over the past years, but I still only feel comfortable connecting better with people who have at least considerable understanding and sympathy with what I...