God Story Versus Our Stories

God's Story vs. Our Stories What is the gospel? For many Christians today, the gospel is the good news about how I got saved-in other words, my conversion experience. But is that the way that the New Testament uses the term "gospel" or good news? Not at all. The apostles refer to the gospel as a message concerning God's Son, Jesus Christ: God made flesh, fulfilling all righteousness in our place, enduring our sentence on the cross, and being raised on the third day as the source of eternal life. Where are you in that definition? Where am I? Nowhere!!! That's why it's good news. The gospel is the good news about who God is and what he's done in spite of who we are and what we've done. The gospel is good news for us precisely because it isn't about us.

It's striking that we know practically nothing about the personal piety of the apostles. In fact, we know more about Peter's misunderstanding of the gospel and cowardice before the resurrection than we learn about his godliness afterward. The whole focus of the Scriptures is on God's salvation of the ungodly, the helpless, those without any hope of saving themselves.

That's not to say that there's no place for telling friends and neighbors about the difference that Christ has made in our lives or telling them how we came to faith through the gospel, as much as that mysterious work of the Spirit can be identified. But we shouldn't assimilate Christ's story to our own. What happened to us is the result of the gospel, it isn't the gospel. The gospel is what happened to Jesus Christ. It is his life story, not ours. And precisely because of that fact, our lives can be grafted onto his. We die to ourselves and "the show about nothing" and are made alive in Christ by the Spirit.

As we consider how we can be effective witnesses to Christ in a post-Christian culture, it's vital that we recover the clarity and confidence in the gospel as the good news concerning Christ that is, for precisely that reason, good news for all of us

 White Horse Inn - October 20th. 2013

Precisamos mesmo tomar dois litros de agua por dia???

Beber oito copos ou dois litros de água por dia é um conselho conhecido. Mas o médico britânico Chris van Tulleken pergunta se há alguma base científica para essa afirmação no texto abaixo. Você já viu anúncios afirmando que uma pequena queda na hidratação pode afetar muito a performance e, por isso, você tem que se manter hidratado com aquela marca de bebida isotônica especial que eles estão vendendo?

Eles parecem muito científicos. Homens em aventais, atletas com eletrodos presos ao corpo e muito mais. E não é algo difícil de se vender, pois beber líquidos faz a pessoa se sentir bem - então se você está com calor e suando, repor os fluidos deve ser benéfico.

Mais cedo neste ano, cientistas australianos fizeram uma experiência que não havia sido realizada antes e que foi descrita na edição de setembro da revista especializada British Journal of Sports Medicine.

O grupo de pesquisadores queria descobrir o que acontece com a performance depois da desidratação. Eles pegaram um grupo de ciclistas e os submeteram a exercícios até que eles perdessem 3% de seu peso total em suor.

O desempenho deles então foi medido após três formas de reidratação: 1) nenhuma, 2) líquido suficiente para voltar ao nível de 2% da perda de peso ou 3) reidratação total.

Até aí nada de mais. A diferença em relação a estudos anteriores é que os ciclistas aqui não eram capazes de saber seu grau de reidratação, pois o fluido foi recebido de maneira intravenosa.

Isso era vital porque todos nós, e especialmente os atletas, temos uma relação psicológica íntima com o consumo de água.

O resultado foi a inexistência de qualquer diferença na performance dos ciclistas completamente reidratados daqueles que não receberam nenhum líquido.

Esse estudo fez parte de um movimento crescente conhecido como "beba quando tiver sede", que espera persuadir atletas para não se hidratar de forma exagerada para evitar o risco de diluir seu nível de sódio.

SEM SURPRESAS

Talvez o resultado não devesse ser tão surpreendente. O ser humano evoluiu fazendo exercícios em ambientes de extremo calor e baixa umidade.

Somos capazes de tolerar a perda de água relativamente bem, mas a hidratação demasiada pode ser muito mais perigosa. Em termos simples: ter água em excesso no corpo é tão ruim como o oposto.

Mas e como fica o resto de nós que não estamos andando de bicicleta em um deserto na Austrália?

Há uma ideia muito bem aceita de que devemos beber cerca de oito copos de água por dia (dois ou três litros) além da comida e das outras bebidas que já consumimos normalmente.

Estamos inundados com mensagens positivas sobre as propriedades de cura da água e como ela é boa para praticamente todas as partes do corpo, desde o cérebro até os intestinos.

Daí a pensar que uma falta de água é ruim para você não é nada mais que um passo lógico - assim como a ideia de que a hidratação deve ser boa, purificando, limpando seus órgãos, desintoxicando. Ela certamente melhora sua pele, te ajuda a pensar, reduz o disco de desenvolvimento de pedras nos rins, torna sua urina com cor límpida de champanhe se comparada à calda cor de laranja fétida que produzimos em um longo dia, quando não foi possível tomar uma quantidade suficiente de líquido.

Então eu encontrei um artigo dizendo tudo isso e muito mais. Foi escrito por um grupo de médicos respeitados de hospitais americanos e franceses e apoia claramente a crença de que você deve beber dois a três litros de água por dia.

Afirma que as pessoas com um elevado volume urinário têm menor taxa de pedra nos rins, que a ação de lavagem da água pode reduzir o risco de infecção do trato urinário (especialmente em mulheres após o sexo).

Talvez o mais importante, os autores fazem referência a um estudo surpreendente que mostrou que, paradoxalmente, o aumento da ingestão de água eleva o risco de câncer de bexiga. Mas só se for água da torneira. Mas há um porém ainda mais importante.

Uma nota de rodapé no final do artigo explica que o que você pensou que era um texto científico em uma revista científica é na verdade um suplemento patrocinado por um grande fabricante de água mineral. Todos os autores receberam honorários desta empresa, que também prestou assistência teórica. Portanto, esta não é uma pesquisa, mas uma peça de marketing.

E essa é uma das razões pelas quais nós ainda estamos discutindo isso - porque cada vez mais a água potável não vem gratuitamente de nossas torneiras. É vendida pelas mesmas pessoas inteligentes que nos vendem iogurtes com bactérias que provavelmente não nos fazem tão bem assim. E estas empresas são bastante consistentes em recomendar dois a três litros de água por dia.

ORIGEM DO NÚMERO

Então, de onde é que esse número vem e qual a razão para pensar que é correto?

Bem, o grão de verdade é que as pessoas que vivem em climas temperados e que não estão fazendo exercício físico precisam de cerca de seis a oito copos por dia, que podem estar contidos nos alimentos, bebidas alcoólicas ou bebidas com cafeína.

Sim, cerveja e café não desidratam em qualquer medida visível (há uma boa pesquisa na qual alguns estudantes de medicina beberam um monte de cerveja e depois tiveram sua urina estudada). Não há provas de que a adição de oito copos de água a tudo o que você bebe vai fazer algum bem.

Mas a grande vantagem é que, assim como um atleta de alto nível, você não precisa se preocupar com essa exigência sobre o total de água diário, porque seu corpo vai resolver tudo isso por você.

Se você beber demais, vai fazer xixi demais. Se você beber muito pouco, vai ficar com sede e urinar menos. É tudo extraordinariamente bem controlado, da mesma forma que o consumo de oxigênio é bem controlado.

Dizer que você deve beber mais água do que seu corpo pede é como dizer que você deve conscientemente respirar mais frequentemente do que você respira naturalmente, porque se um pouco de oxigênio é bom, então, mais deve ser melhor.

Como a maioria das coisas na vida há um ponto de equilíbrio, uma quantidade não muito pequena nem muito grande.

Happy 4th. of July!!

The "Real" Church

The world today is laughing at the church, laughing at her attempts to be nice and to make people feel at home. My friend, if you feel at home in any church without believing in Christ as your personal Saviour, then that church is no church at all, but a place of entertainment or a social club. For the truth of Christianity and the preaching of the gospel should make a church intolerable and uncomfortable to all except those who believe, and even they should go away feeling chastened and humble.

Martin Lloyd-Jones

Martin Luther King Jr.

 

The King Philosophy

TRIPLE EVILS 

The Triple Evils of POVERTY, RACISM and MILITARISM are forms of violence that exist in a vicious cycle. They are interrelated, all-inclusive, and stand as barriers to our living in the Beloved Community. When we work to remedy one evil, we affect all evils. To work against the Triple Evils, you must develop a nonviolent frame of mind as described in the “Six Principles of Nonviolence” and use the Kingian model for social action outlined in the “Six Steps for Nonviolent Social Change.”

Some contemporary examples of the Triple Evils are listed next to each item:

Poverty – unemployment, homelessness, hunger, malnutrition, illiteracy, infant mortality, slums…

“There is nothing new about poverty. What is new, however, is that we now have the resources to get rid of it. The time has come for an all-out world war against poverty … The well off and the secure have too often become indifferent and oblivious to the poverty and deprivation in their midst. Ultimately a great nation is a compassionate nation. No individual or nation can be great if it does not have a concern for ‘the least of these.”

Racism – prejudice, apartheid, ethnic conflict, anti-Semitism, sexism, colonialism, homophobia, ageism, discrimination against disabled groups, stereotypes…

“Racism is a philosophy based on a contempt for life. It is the arrogant assertion that one race is the center of value and object of devotion, before which other races must kneel in submission. It is the absurd dogma that one race is responsible for all the progress of history and alone can assure the progress of the future. Racism is total estrangement. It separates not only bodies, but minds and spirits. Inevitably it descends to inflicting spiritual and physical homicide upon the out-group.”

Militarism – war, imperialism, domestic violence, rape, terrorism, human trafficking, media violence, drugs, child abuse, violent crime…

“A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war- ‘This way of settling differences is not just.’ This way of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

Source: “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?” by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; Boston: Beacon Press, 1967. 

SIX PRINCIPLES OF NONVIOLENCE

Fundamental tenets of Dr. King’s philosophy of nonviolence described in his first book, Stride Toward Freedom. The six principles include:

1. Nonviolence is a way of life for courageous people. It is a positive force confronting the forces of injustice, and utilizes the righteous indignation and the spiritual, emotional and intellectual capabilities of people as the vital force for change and reconciliation.
2. The Beloved Community is the framework for the future. The nonviolent concept is an overall effort to achieve a reconciled world by raising the level of relationships among people to a height where justice prevails and persons attain their full human potential.
3. Attack forces of evil, not persons doing evil. The nonviolent approach helps one analyze the fundamental conditions, policies and practices of the conflict rather than reacting to one’s opponents or their personalities.
4. Accept suffering without retaliation for the sake of the cause to achieve the goal. Self-chosen suffering is redemptive and helps the movement grow in a spiritual as well as a humanitarian dimension. The moral authority of voluntary suffering for a goal communicates the concern to one’s own friends and community as well as to the opponent.
5. Avoid internal violence of the spirit as well as external physical violence. The nonviolent attitude permeates all aspects of the campaign. It provides mirror type reflection of the reality of the condition to one’s opponent and the community at large. Specific activities must be designed to help maintain a high level of spirit and morale during a nonviolent campaign.
6. The universe is on the side of justice. Truth is universal and human society and each human being is oriented to the just sense of order of the universe. The fundamental values in all of the world’s great religious include the concept that the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice. For the nonviolent practitioner, nonviolence introduces a new moral context in which nonviolence is both the means and the end.

SIX STEPS OF NONVIOLENT SOCIAL CHANGE

A sequential process of nonviolent conflict-resolution and social change based on Dr. King’s teachings. The Six Steps of Nonviolence developed by The King Center include:

1. Information Gathering – The way you determine the facts, the options for change, and the timing of pressure for raising the issue is a collective process.
2. Education – The process for developing articulate leaders, who are knowledgeable about the issues. It is directed toward the community through all forms of media about the real issues and human consequences of an unjust situation.
3. Personal Commitment – Means looking at your internal and external involvement in the nonviolent campaign and preparing yourself for long-term as well as short-term action.
4. Negotiation – Is the art of bringing together your views and those of your opponent to arrive at a just conclusion or clarify the unresolved issues, at which point, the conflict is formalized.
5. Direct Action – Occurs when negotiations have broken down or failed to produce a just response to the contested issues and conditions.
6. Reconciliation – Is the mandatory closing step of a campaign, when the opponents and proponents celebrate the victory and provide joint leadership to implement change.

We often view the Six Steps as a phases or cycles of a campaign rather than steps because each of them embodies a cluster or series of activities related to each of the other five elements.

THE BELOVED COMMUNITY

“The Beloved Community” is a term that was first coined in the early days of the 20th Century by the philosopher-theologian Josiah Royce, who founded the Fellowship of Reconciliation. However, it was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., also a member of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, who popularized the term and invested it with a deeper meaning which has captured the imagination of people of goodwill all over the world.

For Dr. King, The Beloved Community was not a lofty utopian goal to be confused with the rapturous image of the Peaceable Kingdom, in which lions and lambs coexist in idyllic harmony. Rather, The Beloved Community was for him a realistic, achievable goal that could be attained by a critical mass of people committed to and trained in the philosophy and methods of nonviolence.

Dr. King’s Beloved Community is a global vision, in which all people can share in the wealth of the earth. In the Beloved Community, poverty, hunger and homelessness will not be tolerated because international standards of human decency will not allow it. Racism and all forms of discrimination, bigotry and prejudice will be replaced by an all-inclusive spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood. In the Beloved Community, international disputes will be resolved by peaceful conflict-resolution and reconciliation of adversaries, instead of military power. Love and trust will triumph over fear and hatred. Peace with justice will prevail over war and military conflict.

Dr. King’s Beloved Community was not devoid of interpersonal, group or international conflict. Instead he recognized that conflict was an inevitable part of human experience. But he believed that conflicts could be resolved peacefully and adversaries could be reconciled through a mutual, determined commitment to nonviolence. No conflict, he believed, need erupt in violence. And all conflicts in The Beloved Community should end with reconciliation of adversaries cooperating together in a spirit of friendship and goodwill.

As early as 1956, Dr. King spoke of The Beloved Community as the end goal of nonviolent boycotts. As he said in a speech at a victory rally following the announcement of a favorable U.S. Supreme Court Decision desegregating the seats on Montgomery’s busses, “the end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the Beloved Community. It is this type of spirit and this type of love that can transform opponents into friends. It is this type of understanding goodwill that will transform the deep gloom of the old age into the exuberant gladness of the new age. It is this love which will bring about miracles in the hearts of men.”

An ardent student of the teachings of Mohandas K. Gandhi, Dr. King was much impressed with the Mahatma’s befriending of his adversaries, most of whom professed profound admiration for Gandhi’s courage and intellect. Dr. King believed that the age-old tradition of hating one’s opponents was not only immoral, but bad strategy which perpetuated the cycle of revenge and retaliation. Only nonviolence, he believed, had the power to break the cycle of retributive violence and create lasting peace through reconciliation.

In a 1957 speech, Birth of A New Nation, Dr. King said, “The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community. The aftermath of nonviolence is redemption. The aftermath of nonviolence is reconciliation. The aftermath of violence is emptiness and bitterness.” A year later, in his first book Stride Toward Freedom, Dr. King reiterated the importance of nonviolence in attaining The Beloved Community. In other words, our ultimate goal is integration, which is genuine inter-group and inter-personal living. Only through nonviolence can this goal be attained, for the aftermath of nonviolence is reconciliation and the creation of the Beloved Community.

In his 1959 Sermon on Gandhi, Dr. King elaborated on the after-effects of choosing nonviolence over violence: “The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community, so that when the battle’s over, a new relationship comes into being between the oppressed and the oppressor.” In the same sermon, he contrasted violent versus nonviolent resistance to oppression. “The way of acquiescence leads to moral and spiritual suicide. The way of violence leads to bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers. But, the way of non-violence leads to redemption and the creation of the beloved community.”

The core value of the quest for Dr. King’s Beloved Community was agape love. Dr. King distinguished between three kinds of love:  eros, “a sort of aesthetic or romantic love”; philia, “affection between friends” and agape, which he described as “understanding, redeeming goodwill for all,” an “overflowing love which is purely spontaneous, unmotivated, groundless and creative”…”the love of God operating in the human heart.” He said that “Agape does not begin by discriminating between worthy and unworthy people…It begins by loving others for their sakes” and “makes no distinction between a friend and enemy; it is directed toward both…Agape is love seeking to preserve and create community.”

In his 1963 sermon, Loving Your Enemies, published in his book, Strength to Love, Dr. King addressed the role of unconditional love in struggling for the beloved Community. ‘With every ounce of our energy we must continue to rid this nation of the incubus of segregation. But we shall not in the process relinquish our privilege and our obligation to love. While abhorring segregation, we shall love the segregationist. This is the only way to create the beloved community.”

One expression of agape love in Dr. King’s Beloved Community is justice, not for any one oppressed group, but for all people. As Dr. King often said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” He felt that justice could not be parceled out to individuals or groups, but was the birthright of every human being in the Beloved Community. I have fought too long hard against segregated public accommodations to end up segregating my moral concerns,” he said. “Justice is indivisible.”

In a July 13, 1966 article in Christian Century Magazine, Dr. King affirmed the ultimate goal inherent in the quest for the Beloved Community: “I do not think of political power as an end. Neither do I think of economic power as an end. They are ingredients in the objective that we seek in life. And I think that end of that objective is a truly brotherly society, the creation of the beloved community”

In keeping with Dr. King’s teachings, The King Center embraces the conviction that the Beloved Community can be achieved through an unshakable commitment to nonviolence. We urge you to study Dr. King’s six principles and six steps of nonviolence, and make them a way life in your personal relationships, as well as a method for resolving social, economic and political conflicts, reconciling adversaries and advancing social change in your community, nation and world.