HippieMommy

always learning

You are here: Home / Archives for Christianity / Faith

Faith

God’s will be done

by 1 Comment

Last night I had a terrible nightmare that included one of my children being hurt.  The thought of my children hurting is a million times worse than the thought of my own hurt.  Even if I consider the possibility of my own death, the part that pains me the most is the pain that my children would feel.

So I awoke from my nightmare and started praying a drunkenly-tired prayer, which came out all wrong and only upset me more.  I am terrible when I am sleepy.  I know that lots of people do their best prayers at night, but I usually fall asleep trying.  I try to tell myself that it is like drifting off asleep on the phone with someone you love, but I still feel a twinge of guilt for falling asleep to the almighty King.  I checked on the kids and kissed them on their cheeks.  Then I came back to bed and asked Joe to pray with me.  My feeble attempt at a prayer had basically been one of protection.  Joe started praying, and his was all about the will of God.  I was struck by how his life experiences, including the death of his sister, have obviously given him a more mature perspective on prayer.  He also prayed that God protect the kids, but his focus was just so different than my focus.

After his prayer, I fell asleep easily (and wasn’t crying anymore).  I woke up this morning and decided finish Facing East by Frederica Mathewes-Green.  I have learned so much from this book, and it has been great to get an insider’s view of orthodoxy.  I’m still not convinced that it would ever be a fit for me, but I view orthodoxy very differently than I did before I started.  I can also see how the desire for something more rooted and historical could lead a person to an Eastern Orthodox church.  For me this desire has led to my Jewish roots, but I think that the basic desire for depth is the same.

In one of the chapters that I read today, she talks about what she will pray for in the upcoming year,

As C. S. Lewis says of the Christ-figure Aslan in the Narnia tales, “It’s not like he’s a tame lion.”  All over the world, millions of times a day, people are praying, “Thy will be done.”  And I think I can dispute that?  Like, “Oh, I’m an exception.”  If I’m stubborn enough, I can get my will done instead?

Isn’t it interesting that I was just thinking the same thing earlier today?  It really is humbling.  The truth is that if my dream were God’s will, then I’d have to accept it.  I think I can get really sucked into our whole name-it-and-claim-it inspired brand of Christianity that does not reflect the truth of God’s character at all.  I know many earnest Christians who did not want to die or be hurt and yet it still happened.  Desire doesn’t change it.  At least I can rest knowing that God knows best and that I do not need to fear.  Letting go is a tough lesson though.

Pin It
Email

Wicca’s Charm

by Leave a Comment

In the future, I hope to write a critique of this work, but I think I’ll save that until I’m done ) I think I see some weaknesses and flaws in the author’s writing, but she may very well prove my wrong by the end.

I am in a book group that my friend, Candice leads. The group is sponsored (is that the right word?) by CBE aka “Christians for Biblical Equality”. This month’s selection is Wicca’s Charm by Catherine Edwards Sanders. I was really drawn to the concept of this book. In both my bellydancing and my college classes, I have noticed that practicing Wiccans / witches are becoming more common, or at least more vocal. I am very intrigued by what I see happening around me.

As I’ve started reading, I think I’ve pinpointed that part of my intrigue is based on the fact that I think that I would be very drawn to Wicca if I were not more secure in my faith. In general, Wicca empowers women, embraces environmental causes, and aligns more with where I stand on social issues (compared to the traditional church). I think that there is a HUGE group of women who are turned off by the church because they are demoted to being second-class citizens who can’t fully participate. They can’t lead, they can’t teach (except to children), they often can’t even vote. Its no wonder that women would be drawn to a religion where they would be both welcomed and honored. It sounds kind of nice, actually P

Ms. Sanders addresses this same facet in her preface and then goes on to talk about how much Christians were turned off when they heard that she was writing a book on Wicca. She goes on to say:

Despite these varied reactions, I took comfort in the story of the apostle Paul at Mars Hill in Athens in ancient Greece. He waded into the pool of pagan thought and religion. And he spent time there. He complimented the religious zeal of the pagan Athenians as he walked by their temples and idols. He knew their literature. His words and actions were so intriguing to the pagan Greeks that they invited him to speak at Mars Hill, a place of honor where new ideas were exchanged and challenged. Paul knew Greek literature so well that he quoted a line from their own pagan poets to explain the gospel. The line that Christians know–“In him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28)–is straight from the mouth of the pagan poet Epimenides who lived in Crete in the sixth century BC. This would have been very familiar to Paul’s audience.
This scriptural account of Paul in Athens enables us to freely embrace truth in any form, wherever it is found. Paul’s precedent of quoting pagan poets empowers Christians to do the same and indicates that morsels of truth and insights from general revelation can be found in non-Christian sources. If you were to follow Paul’s approach when talking with a Pagan teen today, for example, you might quote a line from the well-known neo-Pagan Wiccan writer Starhawk. But it takes time to read Starhawk’s The Spiral Dance and see how her yearnings can be met by a relationship with Christ. How astonishing that seems: An ancient equivalent of Starhawk was quoted in the Bible!

I didn’t realize that about Paul, but I looked it up, and sure enough, Wikipedia confirms:

Epimenides’ poem Cretica is quoted twice in the New Testament. In the poem, Minos addresses Zeus thus:

They fashioned a tomb for thee, O holy and high one—
The Cretans, always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies!
But thou art not dead: thou livest and abidest forever,
For in thee we live and move and have our being.

The “lie” of the Cretans is that Zeus was mortal; Epimenides considered Zeus immortal. The second line is quoted, with a veiled attribution (“a prophet of their own”), in the Epistle to Titus, chapter 1, verse 12, to warn Titus about the Cretans. “Cretans, always liars”, with the same theological intent as Epimenides, also appears in the Hymn to Zeus of Callimachus. The fourth line is quoted without attribution in the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 17, verse 28.

The “prophet” in Titus 1:12 is identified by Clement of Alexandria as Epimenides (Miscellanies, chapter 14). In this passage, Clement mentions that “some say” Epimenides should be counted among the seven wisest philosophers.

So that has given me something to think about )

Pin It
Email