Neither Conservative Nor Liberal

Yesterday, Dr. Lee Camp presented a sermon at the Otter Creek Church of Christ (where I'm a member). Here is a portion of that sermon. I transcribed it, so if there are any typos or bad punctuation, that's my fault.

Here's a link to the audio of the whole sermon.

"[W]e need to be a church, it seems to me, that is neither right nor left. Neither conservative nor liberal.
"We do not need to be a conservative church because we know that the status quo of the world does not need to be conserved. For the status quo and conventional wisdom often opposes the will of God. We cannot be a conservative church for there will be, even this hour, even today, there will be somewhere in the world, lots of places in the world in which a mother grieves the death of a starving child or one more child that dies of diarrhea because they didn't have clean water. We cannot be a conservative church that seeks to preserve that status quo. We cannot be a conservative church because today in Nashville there will be another young girl who sells herself to some more empty and broken man, himself. We cannot be a conservative church because there are still young men and young women who are sent off to wage war. We cannot be a conservative church because bullets still tear through inner-city homes. We have nothing at stake in conserving any of that. We cannot find our identity in being a conservative church because we don't want to preserve the margin, the gap between rich and poor. We don't want the continued marginalization of women. We don't want an idolatrous trust in swords and tanks and weapons of mass destruction. We do not wish to be conservative as such. Only until the Kingdom of God has come, in its fullness, can we ever be conservative as such.
"And yet. We cannot be a liberal church. We cannot be a liberal church that plays these games because we know that the way, THE truth, THE life has already come in the midst of human history. We know that THE way, THE truth and THE life has granted us all things needed unto life and godliness. We cannot be a liberal church because we have something better than tolerance: we have hospitality. The world doesn't need more tolerance; the world needs more hospitality. The world needs more people who will sit down at the table with people who have no one to sit down at the table with, and eat meals with them, to break bread with them, to drink wine with them, to share with them the goodness and the wisdom of God. We cannot be a liberal church because secularism will not save the world. Rather than humanizing the world in all of its arrogant conceit, secularism has simply taught us to demonize the other. Secularism has taught us how to slaughter the unborn and to slaughter men, women and children with an industrialized efficiency never dreamed of in the history of the world.
"We cannot be a conservative church because the Kingdom of God has not come. We cannot be a liberal church because we've been given the Way, the Truth and the Life in Jesus of Nazareth. We've been given this incredible calling to be the Body of Christ."

Amen.

Wish I had it on video

This morning I was driving on 440 East. Traffic was moving significantly more slowly than usual because of the rain. Understandable. Up ahead I saw that there were a few cars off the sides of the road - maybe a fender bender. Traffic slows for rubber necking, of course. Then. I saw a car - maybe two or three cars in front of me swerve off the left side of the road. Huh. Then the driver got out before the car stopped moving. Huh. He proceeded to run with the car as it swerved back into traffic - probably going 6-8 mph at this point. Evidently, we were going down a slight hill because the car picked up speed, but Mr. Driver did not. There was an unmanned car careening down the road at about 10-15 mph. Obviously, we all stopped to watch for a number of reasons. Eventually, the car swerved off to the right and struck a road sign. Mr. Driver catches up with the (now wrecked) car and calmly pulls out his cell phone. Perhaps I should've stopped to see if I could help, but I didn't. There were probably a half-dozen other cars already stopped right there anyways - not sure why.

Weird start to the day.

P.S. I tried to fit this into a 140-character twitter post. Wasn't happening.

Music

I love playing guitar. Not like I love baseball or love going to the pub. It is a romantic love - like being in love. On my way home from work, I daydream about playing - I can't wait to get there. When I'm finally there - just me and my inanimate friend making music together - I feel less lonely - like the angels are gathering to watch another creation. Love and music (and probably other things I haven't experienced) are like that - there's something entirely "otherly" about them that is a beneficial addiction. I really can't get enough.