What's Love Got To Do With It!

I wanted to share some thoughts I had after performing a wedding last week. I entered this in my journal.
"I was reminded tonight of the thing that is closet to God here on earth, love. Love in all its simplicity and complexity is the closet thing that we have in this world to the very being of God. Love, like God, cannot be scientifically proven, we can't taste love or see love but we can sure feel it deep within our souls. I performed a wedding tonight, it was an outside wedding with just a few guests. This was no extravaganza to say the least. The wedding took place in a backyard, decorations were few and it was low on hype. There was Celtic music playing in the background and the breeze was gently working its way through the trees as it brushed against my skin. It was such a peaceful moment, as if nature itself had paused to acknowledge human love. As I stood there, minister's manual in hand, I did not want this moment to end. My own stress was escaping and my weary tattered frame was finally relaxing. Then the bride came marching forward and when her eyes met with the groom's eyes it was as if heaven had settled down right in our midst. The moment was so honest, so holy, that I was rendered speechless. I clumsily stumbled over a few lines of the ceremony until I regained my composure. Love, the closet thing to the very being of God."
I wanted to share this reflection. Some may disagree theologically with my assessment, yet there is something about love that is pure and holy. Love, both giving love and receiving love, is one of the few things that we have on this earth that resemble what heaven may be like.

Blue discussion

I have finished the first few chapters of the book and would like to have some discussion around some of the themes. Don Miller says that we are all self absorbed and that contributes to much of the evilness in the world. What do you think are we born with a bent toward being evil? Are we born evil or is it something that we learn early in our lives?

My thoughts are as follows: I do not embrace the concept of "original sin" as I once did. Because I do believe that Jesus was born without sin I am hard pressed to say that every human is born into sin. I think that this concept of original sin has caused us to develop theologies such as "age of accountability" and infant baptism, which are hard to maintain from scripture and this causes us to rush children to make some sort of commitment to God. I believe that Miller is right on track when he says that we desire to do evil. Evil is very much present in this world and I think that we succumb to the pressure of evil early on in our experience of this world. Evil is so natural because it is visible and so enticing, we are self absorbed people because that gives us satisfaction. We do have animalistic instincts but that is not necessarily evil or sinful, yet this can led us to commit sin. Indeed we are born with the instincts that led us to choose evil but I have come to believe that this is something we are influenced in rather than born in.

Our book for discussion. Can be found at either Amazon.com or at Barnes and Noble, both in store and on web.  

This is a group photo outside the chapel at Samford University. We just got back from the Baptist Women in ministry confrence held in Birmingham AL. 

Blue Like Jazz

I recently purchased the book "Blue Like Jazz" and would like to have a discussion on its contents. If you have read or you are reading the book lets talk. I will list the chapter number for discussion and then we can blog away!