Will the West allow Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani to be executed? [UPDATED]

I was alerted to this by a facebook post of Margot’s and a friend of mine Sean Stillman from God’s Squad over in Wales.  I find it barbaric in the extreme for any country to execute anyone for any reason let alone for such a non-crime as changing religions.

Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani

The following article is from HERE

Execution by hanging seems imminent as early as Wednesday for a Christian pastor in Iran who refuses to renounce his faith and embrace Islam instead, according to Christian Solidarity Worldwide.

Christian Solidarity, which advocates religious freedom and human rights worldwide, labels the sentence an outrageous violation of international agreements and is calling for international pressure to halt the execution of 32-year-old Yosef Nadarkhani.

Nadarkhani was arrested in October 2009 for apostasy because he objected to the teaching of Islam to Christian children at Iranian schools. He was accused of apostasy — in this case, abandoning Islam — and of evangelizing Muslims. He was convicted and sentenced to death by hanging a year ago, a verdict he appealed to Iran’s Supreme Court.

In June, the appeal appeared to have been granted, but it was learned later that the ruling ruling actually imposed another brutal choice: Recant-or-die, as Newsmax reported in July.

At that time, the U.S. State Department expressed outrage, with an official declaring: “While Iran’s leaders hypocritically claim to promote tolerance, they continue to detain, imprison, harass, and abuse those who simply wish to worship the faith of their choosing.”

Faced with the choice of renouncing his faith or dying this week, Nadarkhani refused to back down from his principles during court hearings Sunday and Monday, according to Christian Solidarity Worldwide.

He will face demands to recant again at hearings set for today and Wednesday, the organization says, quoting sources within Iran.

If he continues to refuse, he will be executed Wednesday, Christian Solidarity says.

Stuart Windsor, a special Christian Solidarity ambassador, said his group is imploring “key members of the international community to urgently raise Pastor Nadarkhani’s case with the Iranian authorities. His life depends on it, and we have grave concerns regarding due process in this case, and also in that of his lawyer, Mr. Dadkhah.

“The verdict handed down to Pastor Nadarkhani is in violation of the international covenants to which Iran is a signatory, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which guarantees freedom of religion and freedom to change one’s religion,” Windsor insisted. “It also violates article 23 of the Iranian Constitution, which states that no one should be molested or taken to task simply for holding a certain belief.”

Although a lower court ruled that Nadarkhani was not a practicing Muslim adult before becoming a Christian, which seemingly would not amount to apostasy, “the court has decided that he remains guilty of apostasy because he has Muslim ancestry,” Christian Solidarity reports.

“The death sentence for apostasy is not codified in the Iranian Penal Code,” the organization maintains. “However, using a loophole in Iran’s constitution, the judges in Rasht based their original verdict on fatwas by Ayatollahs Khomeini, the ‘father’ of Iran’s revolution in 1979, Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, and of Makarem Shirazi, currently the most influential religious leader in Iran.”

[aparently some news agencies have the wrong end of the stick - the sentence has been overturned, although he still has to go to court in his local town on the charge of insulting Mohammed.  He is still being held in prison and cannot see his family]

The following story is from HERE

Iran: Christian Pastor’s Repentance Required for Death Sentence Overturn, Says Lawyer

Mohammad Ali Dadkhah, lawyer for Youcef Nadarkhani, a Protestant Christian pastor charged with apostasy, refuted reports by some media outlets that his client’s death sentence has been upheld. “Fortunately, on Tuesday, 27 June, Youcef Nadarkhani’s death sentence was overturned by the Supreme Court in Qom and it is on hold until Mr. Nadarkhani repents [i.e. renounces his Christianity]. But still, in this ruling it has been stipulated that in case Nadarkhani does not repent, his case file would once again be sent back to the lower court in Rasht. In a way, a complete overturning of the apostasy verdict depends on Nadarkhani’s repentance,” he told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran.

“Because apostasy is not mentioned in Iran’s penal code, and apostasy is not considered a crime, then the court has to consider Mr. Nadarkhani’s case in the context of [the crime] ’insulting the Prophet of Islam.’ In this respect, since my client has not made any insults, he can tell the same to the court. Anyhow, that is all in the future and has to do with my client’s explanation. I am hoping that the death sentence will never be confirmed,” said Mohammad Ali Dadkhah about his client’s repentance.

Previously, family members and associates of Nadarkhani told the Campaign that officials from the Judiciary and the Ministry of Intelligence tried to force the pastor to repent and renounce his Christian conversion. So far, Nadarkhani has maintained that he has never done anything against Islam and will not renounce his faith. “Pastor Youcef has not budged,” said a close associate of his from Rasht.

Youcef Nadarkhani is a 32-year old pastor who was born to Muslim parents. He converted to Christianity at the age of 19. Before his arrest in October 2009, Nadarkhani led a congregation of about 400 Christians in Rasht. The congregation is part of a nationwide evangelical group called the Church of Iran, many of whose members have been arrested and prosecuted since 2009. On 23 August 2010, Nadarkhani’s apostasy death sentence was upheld by Branch Eleven of the Appeals Court of Gilan Province. Nadarkhani is currently being held in Rasht Prison, where he was able to visit with his wife in March, after having not seen each other in a long time. Ever since he has once again been denied visitation with his family.

Source: Iran Human Rights, July 8, 2011

Can the Christian crusade against pornography bear fruit?

After avoiding talk about sex from the pulpit for years, pastors are now speaking out against porn.

By Ashley Fantz, CNN

Atlanta (CNN) – He is a good Christian, Michael is telling his two therapists. He goes to church most Sundays. He’s a devoted husband and father of two daughters.

“But when I would leave on business trips,” he says, “I knew I was going to get to be someone else.”

“Prostitutes, porn – I took anything I wanted.”

Sitting on a comfortable, worn couch, Michael glances out the window and sees a reflection of himself set against the parking lot of this suburban Atlanta office building. He fidgets, runs his fingers over his closely cropped blond hair and straightens his green tennis polo. He clears his throat.

Above his head hangs a poster covered in words describing feelings – angry, anxious, sad. On it is a big yellow cross.

Therapists Richard Blankenship and Mark Richardson wear solemn but empathetic expressions. Certified counselors and Christian ministers, they tell him they know how to listen and nod for him to continue.

“I’ve had a record of purity since March when I confessed to my wife,” says Michael, whose name has been changed by CNN.com to protect his privacy. “No porn, no masturbation.”

“Awesome,” Richardson says, leaning forward in his chair. “God knows you’re trying.”

This is Michael’s second week at “Faithful and True – Atlanta” a 16-week counseling program that, like dozens of others like it around the country, combines traditional psychotherapy with the Bible in an attempt to treat addictive behavior.

Blankenship, a devout Christian who once struggled with sexual abuse, says his own ordeal has helped him to treat and “graduate” nearly 500 Christian men and women with similar addictions in the last five years.

He says he has helped people achieve what he calls “sobriety,” which means resisting porn and lustful thoughts.

Though controversial in secular circles, much of the evangelical Christian world has been cheering this relatively new kind of therapy. Many believers, including many Christian leaders, consider it a powerful tool for fighting what they say is one of the modern church’s biggest problems: porn addiction.

A crusade is born

Not long ago, it was unheard of for a pastor to talk about sex from the pulpit.

Today, clergy are talking about porn.

30 Gifts to 30 Strangers

Bandidos MC and the Anglican School: a match made in heaven?

The article below grabbed my attention and at first it amused me that an Anglican school had allowed Bandidos MC to escort their students to their formal.  Being an Anglican I know how much it costs to go to an Anglican school (don’t get me started on the hypocrisy of that) and I’m aware of the types of people who send their children to our schools.

What also amused me and got me thinking more about it was in the comments section of the site where I got this story from someone was voicing surprise that a ‘good religious’ school would allow it to happen.  It reminded me of the following from Luke:

"For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and
you say, 'He has a demon.' The Son of Man came eating and drinking,
and you say, 'Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax
collectors and "sinners."'" (Luke 7:33-34)

Here’s the story

Coast school slammed for bikie escort

Robyn Wuth, Melinda Siegmeier and Michelle Lacey   |  September 23rd, 2011

Some Lindisfarne Anglican Grammar School students arrived at the formal escorted by bikies.

Pictures: Lindisfarne Anglican Grammar 2011

SENIOR police have condemned an elite private school for allowing members of an outlaw motorcycle gang to escort students to a school formal.

Eight members of the Bandido Motorcycle Club, in full club colours, escorted students of the Lindisfarne Anglican Grammar School to their formal at the six-star Versace Hotel last Friday night.

One of the students is the son of a high-ranking member of the club.

The bikies parked at the front of the hotel, covering their faces with skeleton bandanas.

They folded their tattooed-arms and posed for photographs with the teenagers before performing burnouts on the hotel’s cobbled entrance.

Senior police said Lindisfarne was sending the wrong message to its students.

“First and foremost there has been widespread publicity and media coverage of the links of outlaw motorcycle gangs to crime,” one officer said.

Lindisfarne Anglican Grammar School principal Chris Duncan defended his school and the students’ arrival at the event, saying the actions of the bikie escorts were “not inappropriate” in the drop-off zone and no one at the formal felt intimidated by their presence.

A quick word from the Wayside

I get these emails from Grahame Long, the pastor of The Wayside Chapel in Sydney’s Kings Cross.  I love reading them and they always remind me of what it actually is that Christianity is meant to mean here on this earth for those of us who already know God through the life, death and resurection of Jesus Christ.  I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did.

Dear Inner Circle,

Walking down toward Wayside from our side alley this morning, I was passed by a woman whose face I know even though we’ve never spoken. “Hallo Darlin” she said as she walked past. It’s a pretty nice way to start the day. This week there has been another guy, who I’ve walked past maybe 6 times and on each occasion he’s said something like, “Don’t look so worried Rev, it’s going to get a lot worse than this.” We engaged in a conversation this morning for the first time and I discovered a well educated, intelligent, well travelled and interesting man, in the grip of a serious episode of depression.

There is a homeless fellow around this week who is morbidly obese. It seems like his skin is almost unable to cover the bulk and so large parts, especially of his legs, are open and weeping. He told me each day this week that he was due to have a leg amputated the following day but he’s still here today with both of his legs. I guess some doctor has told him that amputation is likely and what would frighten most people to action, frightens him to inaction. Most people have such a strong reaction to this guy that you can literally see people’s physical acts of rejection on a minute by minute basis. He was sitting in front of a door this morning that I needed to use and when I asked him to kindly move a little, he cried and seemed unable to move. It’s easy, even for other street people to feel superior to this guy and I struggle too, assuming that my need to get through a door is more important than making connection with the man himself. Aristotle puzzled over the problem of people who know with clarity the right path to take but fail to take it. He called this condition, “incontinence” (I realise the modern use of this word brings to mind a different condition completely) and today I’m grateful because this fellow has given me a gift without knowing it. He reminds me of every book I’ve never read; of every diet I never began; of all the exercise that I never took. This man is not alien to me and a conversation not only revealed a brother to me but it also torpedoed some of my own delusions of grandeur.

The Wayside Warrior of the Week award goes to…(drum roll; opening the envelope), the striking workers at Qantas. While I hate the pain caused, I only hope that some of the members of the Qantas Board feel some pain as last week they granted their CEO a 71% increase in salary while this week they are outraged that ordinary workers would aspire to a 5% increase. I wish there was a way of inflicting pain on all boards that have let executive salaries rocket into the stratosphere while allowing the wages of ordinary people to erode. I cannot understand how a heart surgeon up the road here can earn $300,000 a year while a banker can earn $30 million a year. Most ordinary workers, like tradies, courier drivers and the like, are all subcontractors these days which means that they don’t get holiday pay, sick pay, superannuation etc. I can’t understand how executive salaries are beyond the reach of regulators when we’ve transferred insane amounts of debt from the private sector to the public sector. Our Premier (who is visiting Wayside next week) has acted to restrict salary increases for all public servants (except police) and I’m wondering if you can recall how the financial crisis that nearly brought us all to our knees, was caused by doctors, teachers, nurses and firemen? No, neither can I.

Last night I got talking to a woman who told me that she’d been raped by a friend of her partner just a couple of nights ago. I was honoured that she’d share such pain with me but keen to know if she was going to make a complaint to police or act to protect herself in some way. In a fearful statement of resignation, despair and poor self esteem she said, “He got what he deserved.”

thanks for being part of our inner circle,

Graham

Rev Graham Long
Pastor
The Wayside Chapel
Kings Cross

http://www.thewaysidechapel.com/

Another perspective on homosexual Christians

The Homosexual Christian

by Fr. Thomas Hopko

 

Many gay men and lesbians claim that the Christian faith is the guiding rule of their lives. Some of them hold that their sexual orientation is given by God, that it is good, and that there is nothing wrong or sinful with their homosexual activities. These persons say that the Bible and Church Tradition do not condemn homosexual behaviour, but have been misinterpreted and misused, sometimes unknowingly and other times quite willfully, by prejudiced and hostile people who hate homosexuals. Those who believe in this way obviously want others to agree with them, and many are now working hard to have their views accepted, particularly by fellow Christians and Church leaders.

Other homosexual Christians hold that their sexual orientation is not from God – except providentially, since the Lord’s plan inevitably involves human freedom and sin but derives from human fault. While some of these people are not willing or able to identify the specific reasons for their sexual feelings, though still affirming that they are not good and are not to be indulged; others with the help of what they believe to be sound biblical interpretation and accurate psychological analysis, identify the source of their sexual orientation in faults and failures in their family experiences, particularly in early childhood, and perhaps even before that, which contribute to their sexual makeup. These people hold that they are called by God to struggle against their homosexual tendencies as all people are called to struggle against the sinful passions which they find within themselves, while they work to heal the causes of their disorientation and disease. Those who hold this position look to their fellow Christians, especially their Church leaders, for support and assistance in their spiritual struggle.

The Orthodox Position

Given the traditional Orthodox understanding of the Old and New Testament scriptures as expressed in the Church’s liturgical worship, sacramental rites, canonical regulations and lives and teachings of the saints, it is clear that the Orthodox Church identifies solidly with those Christians, homosexual and heterosexual, who consider homosexual orientation as a disorder and disease, and who therefore consider homosexual actions as sinful and destructive.

According to Orthodox Christian witness over the centuries, Biblical passages such as the following do not permit any other interpretation but that which is obvious.

If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination . . . (Leviticus 20:13)

For this reason (i.e. their refusal to acknowledge, thank and glorify God) God gave them up to dishonorable passions. Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameful acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error. (Romans 1:26-27)

Do not be deceived; neither the sexually immoral (or fornicators), nor idolators, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals (or sodomites; literally those who have coitus, or who sleep, with men), nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God. (1 Corinthians 6:9-11)

Unwilled Sins

According to the Orthodox Church not all sins are willful and voluntary, and not all acts of sin are the conscious fault of those who do them; at least not at first. In a word, sin is not always something for which the sinner himself or herself is necessarily culpable in a complete and conscious way. There are sins of ignorance and passion, sins which “work in our members,” as St. Paul says, even against our rational and conscious wills. (See Romans 6-8) These are the sins referred to in the Church’s prayers when the faithful beg God for forgiveness and pardon of sins which are not only conscious, but unconscious; not only voluntary, but involuntary.

There are sins which are involuntary, unwilled, unchosen; sins which overcome people and force them by irrational impulses and compulsions, by weaknesses of the flesh, emotional drives and misguided desires into actions which they themselves do not want, and often despise and abhor – even when they are engaging in them. These are known traditionally as the sins of passion. The fact that these sins are not freely chosen do not make them any less sinful. To sin means to miss the mark, to be off the track, to deviate, to defile, to transgress . . . whether or not the act is consciously willed and purposefully enacted; and whether or not the offender personally is freely and fully at fault.

Redeemed Sinners

According to Orthodox Church Tradition, Christians are redeemed sinners. They are human beings who have been saved from sickness and sin, delivered from the devil and death by God’s grace through faith in Jesus by the Holy Spirit’s power: “and such were some of you.” (1 Cor. 6:10) They are baptized into Christ and sealed with the Spirit in order to live God’s life in the Church. They witness to their faith by regular participation in liturgical worship and eucharistic communion, accompanied by continual confession, repentance and the steadfast struggle against every form of sin, voluntary and involuntary, which attempts to destroy their lives in this world and in the age to come.

The homosexual Christian is called to a particularly rigorous battle. His or her struggle is an especially ferocious one. It is not made any easier by the mindless, truly demonic hatred of those who despise and ridicule those who carry this painful and burdensome cross; nor by the mindless, equally demonic affirmation of homosexual activity by its misguided advocates and enablers.

Like all temptations, passions and sins, including those deeply, and oftentimes seemingly indelibly embedded in our nature by our sorrowful inheritance, homosexual orientation can be cured and homosexual actions can cease. With God all things are possible. When homosexual Christians are willing to struggle, and when they receive patient, compassionate and authentically loving assistance from their families and friends – each of whom is struggling with his or her own temptations and sins; for no one is without this struggle in one form or another, and no one is without sin but God – the Lord guarantees victory in ways known to Himself. The victory, however, belongs only to the courageous souls who acknowledge their condition, face their resentments, express their angers, confess their sins, forgive their offenders (who always include their parents and members of their households), and reach out for help with the genuine desire to be healed. Jesus himself promises that the saintly heroes who “persevere to the end” along this “hard way which leads to life” will surely “be saved.” (Matt. 7:13; 24:13)

” . . . the Lord guarantees victory in ways known to Himself”

Bibliography on Sexuality

Barnhouse, Ruth Tiffany, Homosexuality: A Symbolic Confusion. The Seabury Press, New York, 1977.

Clark, Stephen B., Men and Women in Christ, An Examination of the Roles of Men and Women in Light of Scripture and the Social Sciences. Servant Books, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1980, 753 pp.

Gelpi, Donald J., S.J., The Divine Mother, A Trinitarian Theology of the Holy Spirit. University Press of America, New York, 1984, 245 pp.

Groeschel, Benedict J. OFM Cap., The Courage to Be Chaste. Paulist Press, New York/Mahwah, 1985, 114 pp.

Johnson, Robert A, He, Understanding Masculine Psychology. Religious Publishing Company, 1974. Harper& Row, New York, 1977,89 pp.

Johnson, Robert A., She, Understanding Feminine Psychology. Religious Publishing Company, 1976. Harper& Row, New York, 1977, 77 pp.

Moberly, Elizabeth R., Psychogenesis, The Early Development of Gender Identity. Routledge & Kegan Paul Limited, London, Boston Melbourne and Henley, 1983, 111 pp.

Oddie, William, What Will Happen to God? Feminism and the Reconstruction of Christian Belief. SPCK, London, 1984, 159 pp.

Payne, Leanne, Crisis in Masculinity. Crossway Books, Westchester, Illinois, 1985, 143 pp.

The Broken Image, Restoring Personal Wholeness through Healing Prayer. Crossway . . . 1981, 187 pp.

The Healing of the Homosexual. Crossway. . . 1985, 48 pp.

Quay, Paul J., S.J., Ph.D., The Christian Meaning of Human Sexuality. A Credo House Book, Evanston, Illinois, 1985, 113 pp.

Stern, Karl, The Flight from Woman. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1965.

Trible, Phyllis, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality. Fortress Press, Philadelphia, 1978, 206 pp.

Vanier, Jean, Man and Woman He Made Them. Foreword by Henri J. Nouwen, Paulist Press, Mahwah/New York, 1985, 177 pp.

Father Hopko is Associate Professor of Dogmatic Theology at St. Vladimir Seminary. We sincerely thank him for his contribution on this difficult subject.

Orthodox Theology

If you would like to get a bit more of an understanding of Eastern Orthodox Theology THIS is a great resource with lots of downloadable texts available for free. Especially good is THIS one; “Dogmatic Theology,” by Fr. M. Pomazansky.

Of special interest is Pomazansky’s section on the dogma of the Holy Trinity as this is in fact oneof the reasons why the ‘great schism’ originally occurred - why we had the split between the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches – the debate around whether the Holy Spirit proceeds just from the father or from the father and the son.

I hope you’ll take the time to read some of these and make some comments.  Very interesting ideas are discussed and you will find yourself with a greater understanding of things you won’t have heard about in your typical protestant church.  Happy reading

Will hell be empty? Rob Bell’s Love Wins

I borrowed this piece from Ben Myers Blog Faith and Theology

 

Here’s a piece I wrote for this week’s edition of the Christian newspaper,Eternity:

Love Wins is a book about God. It raises the question: what kind of God do Christians believe in? That’s an important question in a world where so many of us – both within the church and without – have been hurt by bad theology. Perhaps we were taught that God has two different personalities: God can switch back and forth between vengeance and mercy, so that we never quite know what to expect. Or perhaps we were taught to think of God as a watchful policeman, always ready to hand out infringement notices whenever we step out of line. Or maybe we grew up feeling that God is more ‘pure’ than ordinary human experience, so that parts of our lives – especially those non-spiritual, bodily parts – are disgusting and offensive to God.

There’s nothing trivial about bad theology. A diseased picture of God will inevitably produce symptoms in our thoughts and feelings, in the way we live and relate to each other, in our whole way of looking at the world. Family life, sexual life, friendship, work, leisure, creativity: all these parts of our experience are deeply shaped by the way we think about God. I often meet people who are still nursing wounds from the theology they imbibed as young children, people who are recovering from the worship of a bad god.

Rob Bell is writing for people like that. And his point is simple: Jesus shows us what God is like; Jesus shows us the triumph of God’s love for the whole human race.

Thus Bell raises the question whether human rejection of God might finally be overcome by God’s love; whether hell might turn out to be empty; whether all, in the end, will be saved. The easy assumption that salvation is only for ‘us’, he thinks, is an evasion of the universal significance of the gospel. If Christ’s resurrection doesn’t somehow affect every single human being, then we haven’t really grasped the meaning of resurrection. You might compare it to a legal system: it applies either to everybody or to nobody – it’s not the sort of thing that applies to just some members of a society. In a similar way, Christ’s resurrection is significant either for everyone, or for no one. As Bell puts it, Jesus is ‘as narrow as himself and as wide as the universe’. He is the exclusive way to salvation, yet he includes all humanity within himself.

Some critics have questioned Bell’s orthodoxy – especially his emphasis on the universality of salvation. But the most striking thing about his approach is its deep indebtedness to Eastern Orthodox tradition. The Orthodox churches have always emphasised the universality of Christ’s work – not only his death and resurrection, but also his descent into hell. The Orthodox liturgy proclaims that hell was emptied by Christ: ‘Hell’s gatekeepers trembled before you; you raised with you the dead from every age.’ In another part of the liturgy, Orthodox Christians sing: ‘Rising from the tomb, you broke the bonds of Hades and destroyed the sentence of death, O Lord, delivering all from the snares of the enemy.’

The leading contemporary Russian theologian, Archbishop Hilarion Alfeyev, explores all this in his recent book, Christ the Conqueror of Hell (2009). He shows that, in Orthodox tradition, Christ’s descent into hell has a universal significance. Christ breaks the power of hell and releases all its captives: ‘Christ’s saving of the dead and the exodus from Hades were not one-time events that occurred in the past without significance for the present. These are events that transcend time, whose fruits were reaped not only by those who were imprisoned in hell before Christ’s descent but also by future generations.’

Rob Bell seems to be referring to this Orthodox tradition when he argues that ‘at the centre of the Christian tradition since the first church have been a number who insist that history is not tragic, hell is not forever, and love, in the end, wins.’ Once you see Christ’s death, descent and resurrection from an Orthodox perspective – as something universal, even cosmic in scope; as something that reaches every human being without exception – then the real question becomes: How could anyone ultimately escape the reach of God’s love?

As Archbishop Hilarion argues, the universal scope of Christ’s work doesn’t necessarily mean that all will be saved. But it means that even hell itself is no longer a place of separation from God. Christ has penetrated into the depths of hell, flooding its darkness with the light of love. Hell has become a site of divine activity, a venue of divine love. ‘If I make my bed in Hades, you are there’ (Psalm 139:8). Thus the torment of hell can only be understood as the torment of love. Hell’s power is abolished – but someone might still reject God to such an extent that even love becomes a torment, an unbearable ‘scourge’.

This Orthodox tradition is conveniently ignored by those critics who accuse Rob Bell of heresy. As though Eastern Orthodoxy is not sufficiently ‘orthodox’! As though the Christian creed confesses anything positive about hell – except that Christ ‘descended’ there before rising again!

From the perspective of Christian tradition, I don’t think there are any grounds for questioning the orthodoxy of Love Wins. As far as I can tell, Rob Bell really just presents the gospel: he tells of God’s victorious love, a love revealed in Jesus Christ, a love that is deeper than vengeance and stronger than death.

Karl Barth

The hostile reaction to Bell among North American evangelicals reminds me of the way some people responded to the great Reformed theologian, Karl Barth. Barth placed so much emphasis on God’s grace that his critics called him a universalist. But in Barth’s view, both universalism and its denial are errors. The important thing is to uphold the absolute freedom of grace: if grace is free, then we should neither deny nor affirm universal salvation. It’s not our decision to make – ‘salvation belongs to the Lord!’ (Psalm 3:8). Yet Barth thought the ferocious condemnation of universalism exposed something pathological in the Christian mindset. When he was accused of promoting universalism, he once replied: ‘Strange Christianity, whose most pressing anxiety seems to be that God’s grace might prove to be all too free …, that hell, instead of being populated with so many people, might prove to be empty!’

If that is our greatest anxiety – that God might turn out to be too gracious – then perhaps we ought to heed Rob Bell’s celebration of triumphant love, universal love, a love ‘as wide as the sky and as small as the cracks in your heart that no one else knows about.’

Or to quote one of the great theologians of the Orthodox tradition, St Isaac the Syrian: ‘Like a handful of dust thrown into the sea are the sins of all humankind compared with the mercy and providence of God.’

If that’s true, then we can be sure of one thing: in the end, love wins.

Spiral of Violence Dom Helder Camara

Dom Helder Camara. Archbishop of Olinda and Recife in the underdeveloped North-East of Brazil, has caught the imagination of the world by his description of the situation of the underdeveloped countries. In Brazil he is denounced as a communist for asserting the official teaching of the church and lives in constant danger of assassination.

In 1970 organisations in many countries nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Spiral of Violence is Dom Helder’s symbol for the central problem of today’s world: the violence of poverty which keeps over  two- thirds of the world’s people in a sub,-human condition, the violence of revolt when peaceful demands have no effect and the violence of repression  with which the powerful try to crush the demands of the poor. The only escape from this spiral is to bring about justice, and this book is Dom Helder’s appeal to all men of good wi ll to exercise ‘liberating moral pressure’  to redress the balance between the developed and underdeveloped countries and between the privileged and underprivileged in the rich countries

You can follow this link to get a PDf version of this brilliant book

Affordable Housing? Pahhllease!!!

 

A GROUP of ten squatters have barricaded themselves at St Michael’s College at Sydney University and riot squad officers and fire brigade units are surrounding the building.

The squatters have occupied the building on City Rd for the last 3 months and are resisting attempts to be evicted.

The building, believed to be owned by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney, has been empty for many years.

Police have sealed off half of the campus and one side of City Road.

Witnesses say there are at least three fire engines, eight police vehices, 10 riot squad, 20 police officers, two State Emergency rescue vehicles and crews present.

An officer at the scene refused to comment on a pending investigation.

Hannah Stevens, 23, is one of the protesters inside the building.

She said there is a dispute over who owns the building.
“The Catholic Church owns the propery but the university owns the land,” she said.

“The reason why the Catholic Church has not entered the building is because they need to prove ownership.

“Our legal representative spoke to police and the church to enter the building at 9am today with proof of legal ownership but they don’t have it yet.

“We are not going to leave without a fight – it won’t be a violent fight but we are going to resist.

“This is about the opportinuty for affordable housing in this society.

“The cost of living in this city is ludicrous and for a lot of people this is their only option.”

The protestors have also hung banners from the roof saying: ‘All power to the people’ and ‘Housing is a right, not a privilege’.

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/squatters-barricade-themselves-at-st-michaels-college-at-sydney-university/story-e6frfku0-1226138915385#ixzz1Y5JALDgS