https://www.completerehabsolutions.com/blog/02i79ih I will be writing on Wisconsin and some objections raised by a fellow priest today or tomorrow. My schedule has been a bit crowded lately. So, let me leave you with two quotes.
Order Xanax Cheap The two quotes below are from a Southern Baptist pastor named Michael Spencer. He was the original InternetMonk (go to http://www.internetmonk.com). He died last year in his early 50’s. Among his many talents, he was an university chaplain, so he was not isolated from what the current generation is saying. He is also a book author, and his blog became one of the top Christian blogs in the nation. It won awards several times for its fine writing, warm heart toward the Lord, and reasoned discussion. Yet, he could be quite emotional on certain subjects, but please understand that I mean emotion in the best possible sense, not in sense of an uncontrolled person, but of a person whose emotions reflected his desire to follow Jesus.
https://aiohealthpro.com/opxop8n1 I offer you these quotes, not with a desire to one-up anyone. Rather, though Pastor Michael was addressing Evangelicals, yet much of what he said could easily apply to many Orthodox with but a slight change of wording. I offer these quotes as part of my Lenten reflection on what it means to be a Christian in America nowadays.
https://eloquentgushing.com/yqz9hfdievw …what is called American Christianity is actually some sort of American Gnosticism, a religion of direct human experience with God that has no need of the Bible, the Gospel or Christ and the Cross in the classically Christian sense. We are apparently such basically cool people, that we can get in touch with God our little ol’ selves if we just tune in the right way. Today, we have a Bible that is described as a “love letter,” a Gospel of manipulated and self-generated feelings and experiences (complete with band), and a Christ who is a whispy, feminized, dispenser of hugs and life management principles and no-cost/no discipleship salvation. Of course, this is the appropriate religion for people whose only actual concerns are feeling good about themselves and having it all without feeling guilty. Sinners seeking a remedy for the righteous wrath of God need not look into modern Christianity for any help. …
https://polyploid.net/blog/?p=71lure92 Confessionalism, as I’ll call my strange interest, stands in contrast to the prevailing mood in evangelicalism, which could best be called doctrinal invisibility. Contemporary Christians want to go high-profile in every conceivable way except in saying what they believe. In doctrinal matters, the best most can do is a kind of generic “Jesus is Lord-ism,” and the worst is to declare war on confessional Christians as divisive bigots harming the Body of Christ and driving away seekers. According to the latest reports, my team, though playing respectably, is not winning this contest, and soon we can expect evangelicals to anathematize anyone who insists we endorse the Apostle’s Creed. …
…So Christian publishers will market a Joyce Meyer or a T.D. Jakes or a Tommy Tenney or a Rick Joyner or a Benny Hinn to all of evangelicalism with few clues that these teachers have doctrinal deficiencies that would have kept them far from the pulpit of most non-Pentecostal (and some Pentecostal) churches just a generation ago. Once these men have become best-sellers, then the commercial interests dub them as anointed by God and sent by the Spirit with messages all Christians must hear and honor. Those whom the Reformers would have excommunicated (or worse) have become the voices all evangelicalism must listen to. All because we have abandoned confessional Christianity and become “Know Nothings.”
We have Orthodox varieties of some of what is named above, it just looks somewhat different. For instance, we do have Orthodox who major on the “beauty” of our worship and go into ecstasies over the incense and the brocaded vestments, while forgetting whom it is that we worship. We do have Orthodox who tell others about Orthodoxy based on its antiquity and its being pre-denominational, etc., but sometimes forget to say that Orthodoxy is about Our Lord Jesus Christ and his claim on our lives and our obedience. And, yes, we have a few monks in this country that have been elevated to the status of our version of superstars, even though–or perhaps because–they go around criticizing our hierarchs and almost claiming that the Orthodox Church in this country is not fit to call itself Orthodox and her priests are really not true priests.
https://homeupgradespecialist.com/okmna035e This Lent, let us return to Our Lord Jesus Christ and to His Church. But, let us keep in mind that Our Lord Jesus Christ is the Head. The Church is critical to the Christian life, because it is His Body, but remember Our Lord is the Head and the Reason and the Life and the Resurrection and our Peace with God.
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