February 8, 2005

• B"H

  
  

  Monday February 7, 2005

  
  

  OK. Here we go, here we go. I'm still not over my dilemma of appropriate or acceptable self-disclosure, but I still have a lot that I want to share. I sort of wish that I knew how to organize this stuff into different categories here. The only thing that I have thought of so far is to use the Reviews section to write stuff about books and articles I have read. I'm also going to use that section to post thoughts in  an on-going discussion from the Siddur (The Jewish Prayer Book). I really love the Siddur and hopefully this will be an easy way to introduce it to others.

  
  

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  Rather than reproduce my Testimony here I think I'm going to explore a new method of introducing myself to others. In Hebrew the word L'chaim generally means "to life," but in a technical sense it really means, "to lives." Chai is singular and chaim is plural. Each one of us lives our lives in many different spheres. We have a home life, a life at school, a life at work as well as a life in our congregations. These may or may not be in sync with one another. Whatever the case may be in this regard the point is; I see myself as a variegated person who lives in many differring worlds. I hope the reality of my fragmentation is decreasing over the years, but nonetheless, I still act and think differently according to the situation that I may be in at a given moment.

  
  

  A Life of Greater Nuance

  
  

  As I have grown older, not necessarily wiser, I have learned that things are seldom rightly divided into the neat categories of black and white. Either or, most of the time forces one into error. The best stance in many situations is a moderated position somewhere between two extremes. My friend Pastor DH used to cite a quote which sums this up very well. "It's not either or, but all this and more."

  
  

  In my life I have struggled with several different conflicts or tensions as I like to describe them. On a teaching tape I once heard Derek Prince use this analogy and it has stuck with me ever since. Consider the muscles in our arms. One sets pulls our forearm up towards our shoulder. The other set pulls our arm down parallel to our torso. If we only used either set of muscles at a given time, then there would be no middle position, just one extreme or the other. In order to exercise true control  we need to pull with both sets of muscles at the same time. For me, in pragmatic terms, this has meant blending several emphasis together and not fitting neatly into either compartment. I'll list some of these areas now and over time.

  
  

  Evangelical vs Charismatic/Pentecostal

  
  

  Christian vs Jewish

  
  

  Afro-American vs European-American

  
  

  Afro-American vs African-American

  
  

  Hebrew Christian vs Messianic Jewish

  
  

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  There are many more, but that's enough to give one an idea of things yet to come.

  
  

   

  
  

   

  
  

   

  
  

   

  • 1:10 am
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