Caribou Journal

One entry: "Pray for Haiti"
Another entry: "Or actually do something useful about it"
Yet another entry: "Or do both"

The Proper Response

Another natural catastrophe struck Haiti. There is still no word concerning causalities. Their National Palace, parliament, and tax office collapsed, as well as some sschools, and hospitals. Their Arch-Bishop Joseph Serge Miot was among those killed. And in complete disarray, "people wandered the streets holding hands. Thousands gathered in public squares to sing hymns."

"The hospitals cannot handle all these victims," said Dr. Louis-Gerard Gilles. "Haiti needs to pray. We all need to pray together."

I can not give you a great argument for why God allows these catastrophes. I really can not. But I can quote Christ's words in the Gospel of Luke:

There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered them, Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.

"Haiti needs to pray. We all need to pray together."

Wha-oh

Here

And do read most of his posts.

"Hearts on Fire" contest/engagement story in the mix, here's an excerpt from my FINAL Hebrew paper...

In response to the sixth commandment, mankind naturally fails in keeping it. He fails accidentally, as a manslayer, because he lives in a rebellious world ruined by sin. He actively fails in his premeditation, proving the filthy, wretchedness of his own heart. God communicates the warning “You shall not murder,” because he knows what is in all men. Men will kill because they are murderers. Jesus Christ beautifully developed this command in Matthew 5:21 – 26 by attributing hate of one another as equal to murder. Later in Matthew, in response to the rich young ruler’s response to have kept the Ten Commandments, Jesus’ reply points out that the young man was still not righteous (Matthew 19:18-22). Jesus would state that most important command is to love the Lord with all you heart and love your neighbor as yourself. The command against killing is not meant to provide humans with an ethical checklist in the sense of creating their own righteousness. As murder is equal to hate, the point of the command is to drive man in-ward, into his own soul, to arrive at the conclusion that he cannot keep this law, or any law that God demands, perfectly. What is then communicated in the law is the separation of the character of man from the character of God, and this leaves man helpless. Glory be to God, that Jesus Christ comes in flesh and fulfills the entire law, including “you shall not murder” and offers the gift of salvation from bondage of sin to those who would become children of God.

Great Stott!

Man, I've read The Cross of Christ three times now, and it still so good.

On the Last Supper, and the need to appropriate the death of Christ personally:

"Again He took and blessed the cup, but then he explained its meaning as he gave it to them to drink. Thus they were not just spectators of this drama of the cross; they were participants in it. They can hardly have failed to get the message. Just as it was not enough for the bread to be broken and the wine to be poured out, but they had to eat and drink, so it was not enough for him to die, but they had to appropriate the benefits of his death personally. The eating and drinking were, as still are, a vivid acted parable of receiving Christ as our crucified Saviour and of feeding on him in our hearts by faith." (cf. Jn. 6:53-55)

pg.70

Whew

Concerning the parallels of Adam and Christ in Romans:

We may not try to trace parallels in every detail; in the operation of redemptive grace there are factors which far transcend the operations of judgment in our relation to Adam's sin, as Paul observes in Rom 5:12-19. But a parallel to this extent is surely not without warrant, that as representative solidarity with Christ in his obedience unto death and in his resurrection secures and insures subjective renewal in regeneration, so representative solidarity with Adam in his sin involved for posterity their subjective depravity as well as the forensic judgment of their being "constituted sinners."

From Murray's The Imputation of Adam's Sin

"Dogmatics in Outline" insights:

"Christian dogmatics will always be a thinking, an investigation and an exposition which are relative and liable to error…as a science [it] takes about the content of the proclamation in the Christian Church."

(i.e. Thinking through the whole of Scripture, understanding it to be Christ, and the labor of laying down principles as incontrovertibly true THAT the proclamation of Christ would be more pure and more powerful. This is me talking.)

“If we look past [Christ], we must not be surprised if we fail to find God and experience errors and disillusionments, if the world seems dark to us. When we believe, we must believe in spite of God’s hiddenness. This hiddenness of God necessarily reminds us of our human limitation. We do not believe out of our personal reason and power. Anyone who really believes knows that. The greatest hindrance to faith is again and again just the pride and anxiety of our human hearts. We would rather not live by grace. Something within us energetically rebels against it. We do not wish to receive grace; at best we prefer to give ourselves grace. This swing to and fro between pride and anxiety is man’s life. Faith bursts through them both. Of his own strength a man cannot do it. We cannot deliver ourselves from pride and anxiety about life; but there will always be a movement of defiance, not last against ourselves."

"Wisdom is the knowledge by which we may actually and practically live; it is empiricism and it is the theory which is powerful in being directly practical, in being the knowledge which dominates our life, which is really a light upon our path. Not a light to wonder at and to observe, not a light to kindle all manner of fireworks at – not even the profoundest philosophical speculations – but the light on our road which may stand above our action and above our talk, the light on our healthy and on our sick days, in our poverty and in our wealth, the light which does not only lighten when we suppose ourselves to have moments of insight, but which accompanies us even into our folly, which is not quenched when all is quenched, when the goal of our life becomes visible in death. To live by this light, by this truth, is the meaning of Christian knowledge."

And finally,

"Where there is faith, man in his complete limitation and helplessness, in his utter abandonment and folly, possesses the freedom, the freedom royal in all humility, to let the light shine of the doxa, of the gloria, of the glory of God. More is not required of us but that is required of us. This public responsibility of our trust in God’s Word and of our knowledge of the truth of Jesus Christ is the general concept for what in the Christian sense is called confessing and confession."

And breathe...