Wow! You never what will capture people’s fancy. I’ve enjoyed reading the comments to my last blog and appreciate all who have contributed. I’d like to continue the dialogue with a couple of additional comments:
(1) I agree that the use of judgment COULD be an appeal to guilt or fear. I don’t know how he intended it. However, I didn’t take it that way. By reflecting on it again after Kelly brought it up, I realized that something in my thinking had changed. I have always been bothered by the fact that in the Psalms the creation exults over God’s coming judgment and yet I was taught to live in dread of it. Religion seems to teach us that God’s anger will one day overwhelm him and he’ll rain down fire and retribution with torment upon the world. That’s not how the Pslamists saw it. They saw God’s judgment as his coming to set things right. Who is it that loves him who wouldn’t want that? After the bombings in the UK, the continued war in Iraq and the total sell-out of the world’s powerbrokers to the wealthy, I have long grown weary of the world’s course. I was with a brother yesterday morning when I heard about the bombings in the UK. I heard him whisper under his breath, “Maranatha!” Even so, Lord Jesus, come quickly. His simple expression, more to himself than me, served to refocus my heart as well and breath hope in the midst of such a dire world.
(2) I didn’t read Bono’s comments and think only of how we might reshape our foreign policy. That is far out of my hands. But I did see it as a personal challenge to rethink my spending habits and activities in the face of such overwhelming need faced every day by members of the human family on the other side of the world. Can we truly live with God’s heart and not see beyond our own borders? There are many ways we as individuals can make a difference overseas, even if it is only one person at a time.
