Foxhole

Rev. Dr. Drew Sams

Bel Air Presbyterian Church,

Los Angeles, California

Dear Rev. Sams,

Thank you for your TV teaching ministry every Sunday morning. This Sunday your message was on the Kingship of Jesus as the leader of our lives here on earth.  This is all well and good but I have a question that you artfully seemed to avoid.  Are we talking about personal piety or national politics or both?  This listener got a mixed message, whether it was intended or not.

When Jesus rightly directed us to love our enemies, does that mean we should no longer love our friends or our country?  Hopefully, we can love selflessly both relationships but this world, at times, makes it highly unlikely.  The difficulties multiply when the Christian gives into the bullies of this world, claiming some higher or more creditable spirituality.  The bullies will always want more. 

As you know, Rev. Dietrick Bonhoeffers found himself in this dilemma.  How can I love the Jews who were being roasted in the ovens of Nazi Germany, my homeland, and still live according to the words of Jesus?  Is love passivity?  Rev. Bonhoffer made the decision to participate in a plot to kill Hitler.  The decision was agonizing.  Every self-righteous scheme to qualify our spirituality will be tested in our world and found to be dust.

Preaching the love of God in the whirlwind of our California environment must be difficult but trying to remain neutral in the face of evil is impossible.  Sure, when we take sides, it will be costly but how can we look the other way in the face of evil? 

The new Democrat Party under King Joe Biden and the radical left present the exact same choice that faced Bonhoeffer. The evil of this Democratic cabal has killed seven million people worldwide with the covid virus. Hitler exterminated seven million Jews. The Hunan lab in China that dumped the man-made virus on the people was partly financed with our taxpayer money.  Dr. (Mengele) Fauci, the deranged bureaucrat of our NIH, who, knowing that this kind of research was dangerous and illegal, found a way around the law by funneling the money through a non-profit entity.

And the evil just keep on coming. King Joe’s open border has dumped tons of illegal drugs, fentanyl being the most dangerous, killing over 100,000 Americans. King Joe’s Democrat supporters in Michigan are shouting “Death to America”.  Crime is only a social disease not to be controlled. King Joe has weaponized our legal system to ruthlessly take down anyone who has the courage to speak the truth.  There is now no place for honesty in America. God has been replaced by the power of our own government.

Do you believe I am exaggerating our national disgrace?  It is past the time to pray for our country but pray we must. Personal piety is a worthy topic that we all need but when it is only a foxhole, we shall all answer for our misdeeds.

Respectfully,

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca

        

 

    

 

 

Why Not?

God created our world and all the galaxies.  Our world was created just as God had planned and wanted to happen, ours is the planet of dreams and disunity, the green spot of boundless dreams and fractured reality.  Designed and gifted with freedom from this creative process, we are here to experience the price of that freedom, irrecoverable or irreversible disunity.  Salvation, then, is the acceptance of this divine order and the undertaking of an eternity search that will be unifying. Evil is merely the under side of the two sided coin of freedom. 

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca  

 

Disunity

Sin is disunity.  We can invent a host of other definitions for the word sin but all seem to be religiously or culturally bound. The definition of sin as disunity seems to have a much broader reach and it still fits the biblical story.  God is in a covenant (written) relationship with we humans and that relationship, from God’s angle, has a dual focus. The agreement is to be worked out with the individual and the covenant becomes a promise to all that God will accomplish pure unity for the human species. As God sees it, there can be no exceptions. Unity is total inclusion.

What must 100% pure unity feel like?  Who knows?  We only know personal, religious, political and cultural disunity.  Ours ancestors will never live in a sinless world. Like it or not, every relationship on this earth is fraught with compromise, therefore, we shall ever be a ship out of the water.  This qualifies as a pessimistic understanding of who we are and the truth does hurt, however, let us buckle up and take it like a man (adult).   

Could it be that we will never recognize Unity until we have experienced disunity?  If this be the case, God has created just the right environment here on earth.  Welcome aboard.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca

 

 

Picking

St. Mark’s Gospel says that Jesus became God at his baptism as he begins his earthly mission.

St. Matthew’s Gospel says that Jesus became God at his birth cementing the new Jesus gospel with the historic Hebrew divine revelation.

St. Luke’s Gospel says that Jesus became God at his resurrection opening the non Jewish world to also hear the Jesus good news.

St. John’s Gospel says that Jesus was and is the always God.

Pick your poison, can they all be true?

G. Goslaw

Landers, CA

 

 

Sin

Sin is disunity, our fractured reality. How does it work for you and yours?

G. Goslaw

Landers, CA

 

Mixers Stew

Some people accept as truth just what they are told.  Some people accept as truth nothing they are told. Then there are the mixers, those of us who find the ingredients everywhere, mixing them together with a little heat to cook a hopefully tasty truth stew.  These are the interesting people but they tend not to fit our popular labels.  It is so with Jacob Boehme, medieval mystic theologian and cobbler who found God in everything.

G. Goslaw

Landers, CA

Unity

“The Key, or Clavis & Confessions”, Jacob Boehme, 2018, p.7. 

“He (God) is the eternal unmeasurable Unity.” God is the only original.

If all things began in Unity and if this Unity is all powerful, does it not follow that all things will be eternally united again?  Unity is the very definition of eternity. May it all be so. (Jacob Boehme does not project to this possible eventuality) gg

G.Goslaw

Landers, Ca