in the news

I read the Yahoo news and Google news this morning and apparently not a lot of great things are happening in the world. Lots of people are murdering lots of people. Rape is still big - and they're setting a new record for West Nile Virus victims in Canada.

I was searching for some good news in the local sections and ran across one possibility. In the article talking about local school's test scores going down, they did mention that some of them are going up...a little.

I know that, "Man not shot while delivering pizzas" isn't really news. I get that people not getting sick or committing horrific crimes doesn't really seem newsworthy...I just fear that some day it might.

I'm not sure that things are getting better. In the news or not, things seem to be slipping...

I know in the faith communities the Christians have rebounded away from the legalistic pharisees and toward Grace so much that they've largely ignored the silly amount of scripture that speaks to holiness, virtue or purity. You can see a pretty solid shift in churches that shun the stodgy graceless faith of so many who aren't authentic. (authenticity = swearing, I've heard)

It's sad how much of a shift I've seen just in the last 10 years. A friend of mine made the point in the late 80's that the religious folks tend to be about 5% ahead of the curve on the morality scale. It's a big scandal when priests are caught with the little ones, or ministers are caught stealing or with the big ones...it's news because it's a little more uncommon.

Well 5% ahead of the curve might very well be 15% behind where the curve was 25 years ago. I know the religious doctrines that these folks follow haven't changed.

I heard about a guy yesterday who wrote a book based on the idea that people should change their lives to revolve around their faith - but instead they've revolved their faith around their lives.

On some level it's certainly easier to fly the banner of what Dietrict Bonhoeffer calls "cheap grace". You can shut up some people in conversations by ignoring the facts and simply saying, "you're a racist" "you hate women" "you obviously grew up rich" "you're a homophobe" or "you're just being legalistic"

A friend of mine in Northern Kentucky lives out a faith on a level of intimacy that I can only hear about at this point. As a result of that faith...as a result of that deep understanding of grace...his life is different. You can say, "set apart" (it's actually in the Bible) You could say he's living a "holy life" (also in there...even though it's not a popular description) I know that it's genuine. I know it's authentic.

I get that faith and grace isn't based on works. It just creates them...