Hello,

It looks like it’s going to be a beautiful day! 

Just one thing to tell you about: Prayer Study next Thursday, August 7, 4-5pm at the Trinity Centre (continuing our exploration of contemplative prayer – practicing the presence of God). 

Slavery?? You’ll see in the calendar observances below that one Christian – William Wilberforce – strongly advocated against slavery and made a huge difference in that regard. However, while Wilberforce found the teachings in Scripture to necessarily and obviously be against enslaving other humans, there were other Christians who used Scripture to advocate for slavery. How is this possible? We’ve talked before about being able to “cherry-pick” verses from the bible to support just about any position you want to support. It is important to have a strong working knowledge of all of scripture – to know the major themes woven throughout and the overall purpose of our loving God. 

One of the reasons that it’s so important to be familiar with these things is because there are instances in which scripture directly contradicts itself. We actually ran into one of these instances during worship yesterday (Sunday, July 27). In the Hosea reading (Hos.1:2-10) we hear that God is going to punish the house of Jehu for the blood of Jezreel. But, back up to 1 Kings 19:17 and then to the full story beginning at 2 Kings 9, and it seems that God has ordered Jehu to do all of the killing. So, what are we to think? God orders Jehu to kill and then will punish Jehu for killing? That doesn’t make sense, does it? 

God wouldn’t tell you to do something and then punish you for doing it. To put a complex issue a little simply, the Israelites were getting to know their God and this God was very different from the “gods” they were accustomed to worshipping. Sometimes the Israelites thought they knew what God was telling them to do when, in reality, they were wrong – they were mistakenly thinking that God shared the human character traits of the false gods. We see the new Church in Acts realizing that what they had thought God wanted (the separation of Jews from the Gentiles) was in error and they opened their arms to include Gentiles in the Church. 

This is an example of the Church realizing an error in discernment but errors are often not recognized before they cause a lot of damage…the Crusades, wars between Roman Catholics and Protestants, the excommunication of divorced people, women not being allowed to be ordained, and so on… God has chosen to speak through the Church but we must always be aware that this is a huge responsibility and that we sometimes let our own voices get in the way of God’s voice. God is nothing but love and can do nothing but good (a line from my sermon yesterday). As we, together, discern God’s ways in order to work with God toward the fulfillment of his purpose (God’s will and God’s kingdom on earth as in heaven), let’s remember the valuable lesson we’ve learned about getting to know all of scripture so that we can try to discern God’s voice instead of our own – God’s ways are the ways of love, inclusion, and the building of community in right relationship. A tough – and ongoing – task but we can do it. 

For Your Devotions:

Tuesday, July 29th is the commemoration of William Wilberforce, Social Reformer, died 1833. William was a wealthy young politician who did not begin his advocacy for moral reformation in England until he experienced a personal transformation as a Christian. He came to the realization that being a Christian actually meant living differently and so he became more than a “name only” Christian and actively lived his Christian faith. Among other activities, William began a 40 year campaign for emancipation of all slaves in the entire British Empire. This didn’t go over well with rich landowners who relied on slave labour…to read more, check out page 226:    https://www.anglican.ca/wp-content/uploads/ForAlltheSaints.pdf

In the joy of Christ,

Susan