Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write from the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Thursday, June 11, 2020

A Christian Eschatological Ethos of Love


Cornell West Speaks to the Meaning
of George Floyd's Death



George Floyd protests: America is at a 'turning point',
philosopher Cornel West says
Jun 4, 2020

In an interview with FRANCE 24, Harvard University professor Cornel West said the protest movement unleashed by the killing of George Floyd had brought America to a "turning point". He said he was elated by the quantity, the intensity and the diversity of the protests, noting that it had brought people together from every ethnic and religious background. West said the choice was now either the ushering in of "non-violent revolution" to address systemic racism, or the "American fascism" championed by Donald Trump, warning that Trump was playing the race card in order to ignite strife.


The Christian eschatological ethos is to love.
To stand with those who are oppressed.
To stand against those who are oppressing.

- re slater 




What is the meaning of the Kingdom of God?
It is a Kingdom of Love come to humanity.
Reclaiming this earth. Reclaiming by love.

- re slater






A Christian Eschatological Ethos of Love

 by R.E. Slater
June 11, 2020

As the US Congress gathers today to consider creating new laws to promote fairness and equality to the people of America who have endured too long the racism and brutality of their police forces I am reminded of the story of outsiders taking over the passionate vision and hope of the insider.

Too often have I had the experience of forming and promoting an idea to the betterment of an organization I was serving only to see that passion taken over by the leaders, directors, or managers and reduced to skin and bones as a shell of what it could've been.

We've had on display for the past two weeks protest demonstrations against America's police forces which have not served their communities equally or fairly by institutionalizing racism and inequality against the black citizens of America. With the racist deaths of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd the fuse was lit and policing injustice was served on a hot plate of anger around the world.




The protesting voices are the people with a vision and hope for equality and justice. It is their own vision and hope that the outsider, such as the US Congress among many others, who will now pretend to take over and try to fix. Whose organizations will create a few laws, implement a few policies, and say "There, you are free now. There, your equality has come."

But I'm sorry to say passion cannot come by establishing more laws or more "to do items" on the whiteboard of societal ethos. No. All the actions created by the outsider has only dulled the real needs of societies by making a law, or creating a committing, or reforming this-or-that. What it will fail to do is to instill that inner drive within the human breast to live and act out equality and justice in everyday lives of bitterness and racism.

I know of no law on racism that can truly stop the human heart from expressing it. There can be no law, no ruling, no acts by committee, which can ever replace the passion in the hearts of those who cry out for social justice and equitable relationships between one another. It must be a "law" written on the human heart. A law to love. This Jesus has given to us through His atonement and by His indwelling Spirit. That of the love of God which conforms our racists hearts to that of God's love of healing and goodness to one another.


As such, I submit now, that by whatever an organization does or doesn't do - whether by enacting congressional laws, or disbanding and reforming police precincts; whether by business or organisational endeavors of any sort, that it will never be enough. Outsider laws, rules, and common orders of juris prudence is only the beginning of vision and hope but never the end of learning to love one another of all colors, creeds, genders, cultures, ethnicities, and things that make people, people. We must see the person if we are to see them truly.

Call me crazy but if the Lord does not write His love upon our hearts and souls, minds and body, we simply are living outward lies to the inner souls of our being, wishing to act right without being right. It's this societal fakery and lip service we've given to our "good works" which demeans, and insults, the very purpose of our living. And yes, the white church of America has promoted racism as much as anybody else when overlooking that Jesus spoke to the religious who can be the greatest hypocrite of all.


We are to love God, each other, and creation. To live lives larger than ourselves, larger than our Constitution, larger than our Bill of Rights. To live fully devoted beyond any concept we can imagine or think which might liberate and heal another to become greater than they are when receiving an attitude of love all the time, in every place we go, and in every word and action we commit.

Jesus called out the Scribes and Pharisees for their hypocrisy. He understood the corruption of the soul of humanity's many empires it lives out. He saw the common as the uncommon and named everything a study of God's love needing release through us, His people, as the bearers of God's command to love. 

We cannot legalize it, script it, create creeds and doctrines about it; nor can we live pretend lives mouthing words to it. God's love is what energizes societies to unbearable release and outcome because it must breathe lest it dies.

The message of BLM is that we breathe together as a society that we might live beyond those who would hold hostage our hearts pretending mere words and laws will help us live out what is unwritable, inscribable, uncodeable.

The word love means nothing without extending across our societies in every direction possible even as global protests have expanded this message of equality and justice across the world in vision and hope to live well with one another.

Peace,

R.E. Slater
June 10, 2020




White Evangelicalism At The Protest
Article Link

by Tim Gombis
June 2, 2020


The protest against the brutal police treatment of black people in Grand Rapids Saturday night was a profoundly Christian moment. People came together and walked shoulder to shoulder from across ethnic, racial, and gender lines, and from every social class. They peacefully and passionately advocated on behalf of the powerless to the powerful.

It was the social performance of Jesus’s action in the temple.

As we neared police headquarters, we saw that a street evangelist had set up shop. He stood apart from the crowd by a few feet and had a banner behind him. He was white, maybe 60.

When chants died down near him, he raised his hands to make his pitch. People ignored him and routinely drowned him out with cries of “No justice, no peace!” and “George Floyd, say his name!”

I’d never seen the man before but I know him well. I was raised in the same white conservative evangelical culture that produced him.

He perfectly embodied that culture Saturday night. It’s a culture that encounters Jesus and does not recognize him. It sees the social embodiment of Christian faith and wants to save it. It witnesses the gospel in action and stands off to the side. It waits for the cries for justice to die down so it can make its sales pitch.

Sarah leaned over to me and said she wanted to tell the man that if Jesus were here he would say George Floyd’s name.

Indeed, Jesus was there and that’s exactly what he was doing.

*Tim Gombis. Observations on biblical studies, books, movies, music, sports, culture, and anything and everything having to do with creatively and faithfully reflecting on and embodying Christian identity.





* * * * * * * * * * * * * *



Christian humanism is not a new doctrine but an old observance from time immemorial found in the ancients, the major creeds of religions, the teachings of Jesus, and even today in BLM. It is an attitude, a behavior, a significant and important form of communication with one another. It is built around the word Love.
Too many think of humanism as replacing God. But what if it stood with God in exemplifying divine love and forgiveness? This is what is meant by "Christian" humanism. If religions like Christianity, Islam, and Judaism were to stay to their roots of grace and peace in God one could imagine a far better world of equality and fairness.
- re slater



Christian humanism sees people for who they are, serving where it can to help and aid. Jesus didn't say to hate the world but not to be corrupted by the world, including the corruption which comes with Christian secularity. A corruption which is silent in the face of racism and supremacy. If I was to chose between the world and the church I'd rather go it alone in God's creation than fellowship with false attitudes and doctrines. The church of God welcomes and embraces all. It does not seek to brainwash, strong-arm, place guilt upon, or shout down all who differ from its inhumane silence seeking power over God's love and weakness.
- re slater


Christian humanism regards humanist principles like universal human dignity, individual freedom and the importance of happiness as essential and principal components of the teachings of Jesus. It emerged during the Renaissance with strong roots in the patristic period.
- Wikipedia


Equitable justice is the right of every man, woman and child.
If this cornerstone of civilization is removed
there will be nothing left save anarchy.

- re slater


US Supreme Court: "Equal Justice Under Law"




Mark 12:30-31 [New American Standard Bible (NASB)]

30 and you shall love the Lord your God with all
your heart, and with all your soul, and with all
your mind, and with all your strength.’ 

31 The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor
as yourself.’ There is no other commandment
greater than these.”





Wednesday, June 10, 2020

A Christian Eschatology of Love


Amazon Link


I would like to take Jonathan Moo's discourse on "Continuity, Discontinuity and the Eschatological Hope of the New Testament "and twist it a bit away from its rightful emphasis on an "environmental ethos" which asks of churches, together with science, in re-initiating its responsibility to care for the earth.

Alongside of this discussion, if I simply substitute another kind of ethos, that of social justice, or a societal ethos of love, in place of an environmental ethos emphasizing God's love for not only creation of all kinds, but mankind as part of creation, who is likewise made in God's image even as God did the environment, than we will get a wider appreciation for our responsibilities as Christians  not only to this earth but to our fellow humans as well.

Not only this, but importantly as it relates to the Christian hope of the eschatological future in whatever form we think it may take, to understand (or add) to our hope God's love as an eschatological ethos. Importantly, and specifically, this Christian hope is to entertain the Love of God through Jesus Christ within its present day context of worship of God so that as pertaining to Christians especially, we love, and love intensely, all humanity, till that day comes of God's realized eschatology in Christ.

The completion and fulfillment of heaven and earth is that God becomes all-in-all by His vision and patient guidance of creation (including mankind) of, by, and through love always as its centering eschatological motif.

And being that under the New Covenant of Christ, and the expanded import of the Old Testament into the New Testament to continue God's love both through His Remnant of the OT and His disciples of the NT (notice how I did not say explicitly Israel or the Church?) by examples and deeds of many sorts to care for both the earth and its elements, and its people and their societies, by God's guiding, grounding, partnering examples and deeds of love through His people by their own words and deeds.

At the last, God's love is the centre of all Christian social and environmental action. And indeed, at the center of any eschatological discussion or envisioning. Whatever the future holds, we are called to love and care for the world as we encounter it. As Stephen Williams has said,

"The NT’s theology of creation is inescapably eschatological, and the wideness of biblical hope can provide both a strong impetus as well as the necessary context for the exercise of Christian love and charity."

With God's Love as the biblical center for all doctrines, including it's eschatological center of God's heart, today's turmoils between politics and real-world problems must ever be met and performed in , by, and through God's love. It resolves our strifes and conflicts; calls out those who are disobedient to God's example; and demands a higher calling to care for all people in all ways over any lesser concerns for money, power, or conscripted misuses of human sinful passion.

In this way a God of Love has always asked His remnant to follow and act in His love and loving actions in all they say and do. God's Love will be no less a theme in the future.

Both past and future are inflected by our efforts of our present context to continue God's image and practice of love. From all that flows from the past, to all that flows into the promise of the future, without interruption of that flow as expressed into our present age, God's Love is what holds all timeful events of being and becoming together.

Simply, our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope.

R.E. Slater
June 10, 2020

* * * * * * * * * * * *


Jonathan Moo

Creation Care: A Biblical Theology of the Natural World
by Jonathan and Douglas Moo



Amazon Link
Amazon Link
   


CONTINUITY, DISCONTINUITY, AND HOPE
The Contribution of New Testament Eschatology
to a Distinctively Christian Environmental Ethos

by Jonathan Moo

"My emphasis on NT eschatology is not meant to imply that it is only here that the biblical tradition has something to contribute to a Christian environmental ethos. Stephen Williams has reminded us that love must always remain at the centre of Christian social and environmental action—and indeed, at the centre of any discussion about eschatology.8 Whatever the future holds, we are called to love and care for the world as we encounter it. Nonetheless, the NT’s theology of creation is inescapably eschatological, and the wideness of biblical hope can provide both a strong impetus as well as the necessary context for the exercise of Christian love and charity.

"This essay seeks, then, to develop somewhat further than is often done the exegetical basis for a distinctively Christian perspective of the future that has important implications for how we understand our task in and for the created world. I propose that the diverse ways in which the NT portrays the future of the earth, taken together, provide an indispensable resource for the development of a Christian environmental ethos...."


Book Blurbs

Let Creation Rejoice: Biblical Hope and Ecological Crisis Paperback – June 2, 2014

"Let all creation rejoice before the LORD, for he comes." Psalm 96:13 The Bible is bathed with images of God caring for his creation in all its complexity. Yet in the face of climate change and other environmental trends, philosophers, filmmakers, environmentalists, politicians and senior scientists increasingly resort to apocalyptic rhetoric to warn us that a so-called perfect storm of factors threatens the future of life on earth. Jonathan Moo and Robert White ask, "Do these dire predictions amount to nothing more than ideological scaremongering, perhaps hyped-up for political or personal ends? Or are there good reasons for thinking that we may indeed be facing a crisis unprecedented in its scale and in the severity of its effects?" The authors encourage us to assess the evidence for ourselves. Their own conclusion is that there is in fact plenty of cause for concern. Climate change, they suggest, is potentially the most far-reaching threat that our planet faces in the coming decades, and also the most publicized. But there is a wide range of much more obvious, interrelated and damaging effects that a growing number of people, consuming more and more, are having on the planet upon which we all depend. Yet if the Christian gospel fundamentally reorients us in our relationship to God and his world, then there ought to be something radically distinctive about our attitude and approach to such threats. In short, there ought to be a place for hope. And there ought to be a place for Christians to participate in that hope. Moo and White therefore reflect on the difference the Bible's vision of the future of all of creation makes. Why should creation rejoice? Because God loves and cares the world he made.

Creation Care: A Biblical Theology of the Natural World (Biblical Theology for Life) Paperback – February 27, 2018

From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible reveals a God whose creative power and loving care embrace all that exists, from earth and sky and sea to every creeping, crawling, swimming, and flying creature. Yet the significance of the Bible’s extensive teaching about the natural world is easily overlooked by Christians accustomed to focusing only on what the Bible says about God’s interaction with human beings.

In Creation Care, part of the Biblical Theology for Life series, father and son team Douglas and Jonathan Moo invite readers to open their Bibles afresh to explore the place of the natural world within God’s purposes and to celebrate God’s love as displayed in creation and new creation. 

Following the contours of the biblical storyline, they uncover answers to questions such as:

  • What is the purpose of the non-human creation?
  • Can a world with things like predators, parasites, and natural disasters still be the ‘good’ world described in Genesis 1?
  • What difference does the narrative of the ‘Fall’ make for humankind’s responsibility to rule over other creatures?
  • Does Israel’s experience on the land have anything to teach Christians about their relationship with the earth?
  • What difference does Jesus make for our understanding of the natural world?
  • How does our call to care for creation fit within the hope for a new heaven and a new earth?
  • What is unique about Christian creation care compared with other approaches to ‘environmental’ issues?
  • How does creation care fit within the charge to proclaim the gospel and care for the poor?

In addition to providing a comprehensive biblical theology of creation care, they probe behind the headlines and politicized rhetoric about an ‘environmental crisis’ and climate change to provide a careful and judicious analysis of the most up-to-date scientific data about the state of our world. They conclude by setting forth a bold framework and practical suggestions for an effective and faithful Christian response to the scriptural teaching about the created world.

But rather than merely offering a response to environmental concerns, Creation Care invites readers into a joyful vision of the world as God’s creation in which they can rediscover who they truly are as creatures called to love and serve the Creator and to delight in all he has made.



Tuesday, June 9, 2020

Black Lives Matter All the Time




When I say I am a Christian
by Unknown Author
(a rearrangement of Carol Wimmer's original poem)


When I say ... "I am a Christian"
I'm not shouting "I'm clean livin'."
I'm whispering "I was lost,
Now I'm found and forgiven."

When I say ... "I am a Christian"
I don't speak of this with pride.
I'm confessing that I stumble
and need Christ to be my guide.

When I say ... "I am a Christian"
I'm not trying to be strong.
I'm professing that I'm weak
And need His strength to carry on.

When I say ... "I am a Christian"
I'm not bragging of success.
I'm admitting I have failed
And need God to clean my mess.

When I say ... "I am a Christian"
I'm not claiming to be perfect,
My flaws are far too visible
But, God believes I am worth it.

When I say ... "I am a Christian"
I still feel the sting of pain.
I have my share of heartaches
So I call upon [Jesus'] name.

When I say ... "I am a Christian"
I'm not holier than thou,
I'm just a simple sinner
Who received God's good grace, somehow

- Author Unknown


Black Lives Matter: It must be said | The Princetonian


BLACK LIVES MATTER ALL THE TIME

by R.E. Slater
June 9, 2020


Healing speaks to Black and White communities alike.
Without love for one another we cannot enter a
Promised Land overflowing with milk and honey.
- re slater


Its disingenuous of people who have actively supported societal injustice to then be mad because the larger portion of us have had enough of their white worlds of God, bible, and politics. When we say, as Americans, we welcome all blended societies of color into all our lands of fullness and beauty we truly mean this. We wish to share but have failed to share.

America is an internationally blended society whose Constitution vouchsafes equality and justice to every man, woman and child under its juris prudence regardless of race. It is why America is considered that City on Hill whose shining beacon beckons home all nations wishing to share in the democratic institutions of liberty for all, justice for all, and opportunities for all.

As that City on a Hill, America assures all foreign refugees fleeing homelands of cruelty and injustice that they are welcomed as they are; respected for who they are; and may find a new homeland which desires equality and liberty to become their reality.

That here is a nation built upon democratic laws of compassion and respect against all other forms of oppressive discrimination and bigotry. America, Land of the Brave, Home of the Free.

Sadly, historically, America has always struggled with its assumed understanding of itself just as it has failed in appreciating the greatly diverse cultures within its democratic structures, banners, and mottos. Instead, it has acted more like a post-colonial institution struggling to recognize the true beauty of its people and the great society they are trying to make together.

When groups like Black Lives Matter (BLM) demonstrates against racial inequities it presents to white America an uncomfortable option towards becoming more democratic  than it thinks it is. Known as White Flight, White populations abandon their school districts, churchs, and communities, as other people groups move in. They call it property valuations, and better schooling and opportunities, greater safety and even reinforced cultural mores.

But the hard facts are these secularized segregations of society have left the incoming masses with poor health care, education, poverty, police brutality and racism, and political corruption. White Flight has comprised the equity and justice expected by all of America's people when assuring itself only of valuation without sharing its hard-earned benefits of wealth and knowledge. Forgetting its generations once despaired and fought in similar systems of betrayal and abandonment.

BLM is the completion, or end-cap, of Martin Luther King's (MLK) rallies of the Civil Rights movement from 1954-1968. Similar to the British American War of 1812-1815 which ultimately ended Britain's festering loss of her Colonies in the Revolutionary War of 1775-1783. Each first movement needed a finishing movement to solidify the completion of what was started. So here we are today, sixty years later, in 2020 massing around foundational human rights, fighting for breath and life as even George Floyd himself breathed out his rights.

BLM's goals is to bluntly create a more perfect union in America which is less subservient to white culture. Infused with blended cultures of all colors. Sharing differing ideas of racial perspectives. Offering racial solutions where none have existed before - or barely hinted at in many communities. To go even further by recognizing the rights of all including gays, transgenders, and alt societal-types. Purposely blending many races and many cultures into one societal admission of fairness and equality for all. Its the completion of the Civil Rights rallies of the 1960s.

For white Christians, reading the bible one way, in a racially white way, says we must live by law and order and to judge one another. But reading the bible in another way, in a non-racially white way, means we embrace and respect one another for our differences. That we learn to love one another, fellowship with one another, care, help, and aide one another.

If God is a God of love then He loves all the way across. Not just some of the way across. Nor in one specifically accepted cultural understanding. The bible says God loves all the world. This means that He loves all races, all people, all nationalities, all genders. In imitation, a blended, open democracy accepts all, works fairly and equally with all, strives to improve human relations with all, including the economic wellbeing and social safety of all.

If I, as a white Christian, am angry, its because I am angry with white Christian hypocrisy. It's because I, and many others, are tired of not seeing America become a better version of itself with each succeeding presidential election, or new generation, or new societal decade. We didn't go through the Vietnam and Civil Race Wars of the 60s only to see them repeated again-and-again in gutless policies of biased betrayal and bigotry.

In truth, our actions have shown we have given lip service to demonstrations of integrity and honesty. It shows we have implemented what we thought were fair policies without giving any personal or community investment of ourselves behind those policies. That when we cry "law and order" what we really mean is that non-white culture submit to our standards of racial insensitivity.

At the last, I'm less concerned about undemocratic and disingenuous white anger and much more concerned about the anger of my brothers and sisters who must deal with white rascism in all its forms every single hour of their lives. Either the white culture lives up to its rants of "Making America Great Again" (MAGA) or, it repents of its fake mottos, repents of its racism, and tries to get its act together.

White American shouts of injustice only sees injustice as defined by their majority group. We live in the 21st century. Its time America, along with all racists nations around the world, grow up to become globally interconnected nations of fairness and equality instead of fighting and hurting one another for cultural icons of servitude and bondage. Amen

R.E. Slater


* * * * * * * *



Students portray Black Lives Matter movement in US and Brazil ...


7x7 Anger
by R.E. Slater

Dealing with Coronavirus.
Staying-at-home. Locked-in.
Scared. Mad. No money.
Kids. Anxieties. Fears.
No diversions. No Outlets.
No sports, bars, groups, work.
Just panicked helplessness.

No leadership.
Lying. Slandering. Blaming.
More lies. More anger. More madness.
What's hidden comes into 20/20.
Climate change not addressed.
Trump making war with the world.
Dividing everybody sane.

Pulling America apart.
Some demented dream of greatness.
A perfect storm forms.
And where's the church?
The real church is out marching.
Not the institutional church.
It's created all the disasters.

Where is America today?
And its white church gospel?
A gospel which victimizes.
Which plays the victim.
Which has harmed so many.
At the Southern border lands.
On the street lands of America?

Unobtainable health care.
Empty pockets. No wages.
I'm told Jesus followers heal.
They bless. They serve. They Aide.
That they bleed for the oppress.
Times of disruption give clarity.
They also give anger at Injustices.

Anger to assess.
Anger to make things right.
Anger of not having.
Anger of living in ruins.
Anger of being left behind.
Untended. Uncared.
Unwanted. Unloved.

I'm told America's Heartlands,
Greenlands, Urban Spaces,
Coastlands, Mountainlands,
Plains States, Hinterlands,
Beats with one heart,
Beats for all together,
When does it start for me?


R.E. Slater
June 9, 2020

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications
all rights reserved



How Is the Black Lives Matter Movement Organized? | HowStuffWorks




Monday, June 8, 2020

A Peace Child Brings Healing to the Nations


Marind people - Wikipedia
A Marind tribe sharing a southern border with the Sawi tribes of Papua, New Guinea

The Sawi, or Sawuy, are a tribal people of Western New Guinea, Indonesia. They were known to be cannibalistic headhunters as recently as the 1950s. They speak the Sawi language, which belongs to the Trans-New Guinea language family.
Sawi, or Sawuy, is a language of the Sawi people of the Trans–New Guinea phylum spoken in sago swamps in the southwestern parts of the Indonesian province of Papua. Of the neighboring languages, it is most closely related to the Awyu languages to the east.
Sawi is an inflecting language and uses both inflections of the stem and suffixes to indicate person, number, and tense.

Awyu-Dumut languages.svg








The Peace Child: A Night With Don Richardson
A peace child offering among the Sawi tribe of Papua, New Guinea

Journey into the Unknown

I remember reading Don Richardson's story of Peace Child either in my late teens or early twenties and thinking how wonderful his use of the cultural elements he lived within to communicate Jesus not by his own Western standards but by the tribe's own standards whom he had befriended.

Yet in another sense I also remembered how the Sawi tribe was "fattening him and his family up" with good fellowship and tribal affection as they were preparing Don, his wife, and youngest child Steve, for a rite of death. Though Don never mentions this in his journal the tension was evidently there by his recounts of what he was witnessing. The Sawi tribe he was living amongst were a Papua, New Guinea tribe of Indonesia well know for their cannibalism.

It was through a cannibalistic incident between the Sawi tribes where Richardson first saw a glimmer of how to share the deep relevance of Jesus to his machiavellian hosts which might bring a deep spiritual meaning to upsetting both the human soul and tribal practices of a culture devoted to premeditated murder upon one another. And it was through this biblical form of typology that opened blinded tribal eyes to see the atonement of Jesus between God and man.

But rather than ruin or spoil the import of Richard's story I'll leave it to the reader to pick up an old copy and re-explore through Don Richardson's missionary eyes the perils he and his family had entered into amid the discoveries they had made having survived their first Sawi encounters. Peace Child reads simply and quickly, but within the words of the page lies a deep sublimity providing a transitional context between people and tribes of unlike cultures looking to find common ground with one another.

Context

Which brings me to my last thought of the day. Context. If, like Don Richardson, we are seeking a way to share the gospel of God's love through Jesus in a meaningful way, it is by listening and learning from within whatever cultural context (of community context) we find ourselves in. This is where an evangelist or missionary, pastor or discipler, might begin. It will never be obvious at first but with time and insight it might become obvious.

The key to Richardson's insight was that he came to live and work within the Sawi tribes. When he did, he found God's insight into a deeply formative tradition held within the very cornerstone of the Sawi tribes. An identity heightened by lies and deception before killing of another human being. It was this very cornerstone of their tribal identity the Lord reveal to Don that he might use it's same evil to share God's love.

Had Richardson brought his own culture into the tribe he might never have exposed himself to its hazards and reality. Further, Richardson could have recited the "law and order" sections of the bible's Hebraic traditions and simply forced his own Christianized Western culture upon the Sawi. But by proceeding through love and fellowship he exposed himself to the very evil lying resident among the tribes of Papua needing redemption. If he had not done this, the gospel wouldn't have been anything more than window-dressing added to craven human behavior and customs.

Context? Context is everything. Isn't it?

R.E. Slater
June 8, 2020

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Mind the translation gap – Hektoen International

Never The Same:
Celebrating 50 Years Since Peace Child

Pioneers USA
Dec 12, 2012

The Sawi were headhunters and cannibals when a young couple named Don and Carol Richardson arrived in their village carrying their seven-month-old boy Steve—and a message that would change the tribe forever. The year was 1962, and Steve—and later, three more children—spent their youth among the Sawi, learning the language and embracing the culture in ways that would shape the rest of their lives. Their story was immortalized in the best-selling book Peace Child and a feature film of the same name, inspiring a new generation to take the gospel to the remaining isolated tribes of the earth.


Fifty years later, Steve joins his father, Don, and two brothers, Shannon and Paul, to visit the Sawi village where they grew up. What is the state of the church they planted among the Sawi? Are the friends they played with still alive? Will anyone remember the mark their family left on the tribe? Journey with Steve as he travels to the swamps of Papua, Indonesia, to introduce you to the Sawi, and explore the impact of the gospel among a previously unreached people group.
Music Credits
  • "A Beautiful Tale" and "Revival" by Ryan Taubert © 2012 SHOUT! Music Publishing Courtesy of SHOUT! Music Australia
  • "O My Soul", "The Introductions" and "Moving Frames" by Adam Taylor, used with permission
  • "The Father's Heart" by Tony Anderson, used with permission
  • "The Ladder" by Drake Margolnick, used with permission


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Never The Same: Celebrating 50 Years Since Peace Child



Missionary Visits Cannibal Tribe 50 Years Later


Moira Brown speaks to Don Richardson about his life's
work as a missionary and the impact it has had worldwide.

Don Richardson-Author / Conference Speaker

Books: "Peace Child" & "Eternity In their Hearts"

To Get Your Copy:


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Amazon Link


DVD Link

In 1962, Don and Carol Richardson risked their lives to share the gospel with the Sawi people of New Guinea. Peace Child tells their unforgettable story of living among these headhunters and cannibals who valued treachery through "fattening" victims with friendship before the slaughter. God gave Don and Carol the key to the Sawi hearts via a redemptive analogy from their own mythology. The [Sawi's] "peace child" became the secret to unlocking a value system that existed through generations over centuries, possibly millenniums, of time. This analogy became a stepping-stone by which the gospel came into the Sawi culture and started both a spiritual and a social revolution from within. With an epilogue updating how the gospel has impacted the Sawi people, Peace Child will inspire a new generation of readers who need to hear this unforgettable story and the lessons it teaches us about communicating Christ in a meaningful way to those around us.