This is the 3rd in a five-part series on a class I’m taking at church called “S.H.A.P.E Workshop.”
Just to recap, there are five basic components that make up who a person is - that make up your “S.H.A.P.E.” They are:(click on the links for previous posts) -
S - Spiritual Gifts (Week 3)
H - Heart/Passion (Week 1)
A - Abilities (Week 2)
P - Personality (Week 4)
E - Experiences (Week 5)
This week I’m going to be covering spiritual gifts. Admittedly, I’ve been a bit worried at how this one will be received, so please take it in the spirit it is intended. This is what is being taught in one particular Christian class, and I happen to subscribe to this belief structure. My goal is simply to convey the information, logic and theories as best I can, and hope it helps you understand better the madness [wink wink] we Christians subscribe to. :) Read the rest of this news item »
I wondered whether to write about the 7th July London bombings or not. Today marks the third anniversary of those events and for many still far too recent. I’m guessing that for Americans the London bombings echo too closely the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon or for the Spanish the train bombings in Madrid. 7/7 killed 52 commuters, 4 suicide killers and injured over 700 people. They were horrific attacks against unarmed and uninformed civilians.
Why did these events occur? is a question that I’ve asked myself many times. I thought to blame religion, after all al-Qaeda officially took responsibility for the attacks. Al-Qaeda is a fundamentalist Sunni Islamic terrorist organisation. Except that it isn’t really an organisation at all, it’s more an approach, a way of living. Al-Qaeda cells generally seek an end to foreign influence in Muslim countries and the creation of a new Islamic caliphate. As such they hold a philosophy that is fundamentally religious.
I’ve come to understand that the Islamic faith believes in the same deity as that of the Jews and the Christians albeit in different forms. Muslims attacking Christians or Jews and Christians attacking Muslims to me, the atheist, it seems no different from Protestant attacking Catholic and vise versa. A pointless and futile attempt to prove who is right about their holy book. I’m generalising, of course, not every Muslim is a crazed jihadist just as not every Christian is a bigoted fundamentalist. In fact these represent a tiny, unpleasant minority in the faiths.
I’ve never believed in God but I became an atheist following the attacks in New York in 2001. I starting to speak out against religion after the attacks in London in 2005. It’s been a little over a year since I came to realise that attacking religion is just another “pointless and futile attempt to prove who is right”. I think I’m right, you think you’re right. As long as we fight about it none of us are ever going to win.
I hope that we can put aside our differences and try to remember that before religion or race, before creed or colour we are human beings and citizens of the same world. I’m learning things all the time about Christians and atheists by contributing to this site and to several others. Whenever I learn something I win a little or at least I don’t lose. Whenever someone learns something from me there are two winners. Nobody loses.
Posted in Atheist/Christian Dialog, Jason | 11 Comments »This is the 2nd in a five-part series on a class I’m taking at church called “S.H.A.P.E Workshop.” I wrote an intro and explained the class last week, so I’ll refrain from that here. Suffice it to say that there are five basic components that make up who a person is -
S - Spiritual Gifts (Week 3)
H - Heart/Passion (Week 1)
A - Abilities (Week 2)
P - Personality (Week 4)
E - Experiences (Week 5)
This week’s class was on abilities, and how we all have certain abilities that God has provided us with. In a spiritual context, your abilities may indicate what you will do when you serve in ministry - but not necessarily. In a non-spiritual context, your abilities are the things you could do well for others - if you wanted to.
That language is intentionally *soft* (may and could) - just because you have certain abilities doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s what you should spend your time doing, especially if you don’t enjoy it and/or it doesn’t fulfill you. But it’s a good possibility that utilizing your abilities (working within your strengths) is a good way to maximize your ability to help others. For example, I have pretty strong technical abilities, but just because I’m good at it and I make my living with those abilities, that doesn’t mean that’s what I should do in my spare time. Does that make sense?
One statistic that was provided was that each person has between 500 and 700 abilities. And while many of those may be insignificant (the ability to hear, for example), you can pretty much rest assured that everyone has something that they are good at that they could use to help others.
Have you seen the movie, Searching for Bobby Fischer? It’s the true story of Josh Waitzkin, a 6-year-old chess prodigy who picked up the game by watching men play in the park. A clip from that movie was used to illustrate an example of someone with an obvious natural ability (his happened to be playing chess). Anyway, it’s a great family movie if you’ve never seen it and are looking for something to do with your kids.
Now we can start to put the pieces together (we have two so far - heart/passion and abilities) to see how a person’s personal make-up is being revealed. For example, if someone had a passion for protecting the innocent (like Jason - children and animals) combined with an ability to make/raise money, they may do fundraisers for causes near to their heart. On the other hand, someone with the same passion for the innocent combined with an knack for public speaking may be better suited for rallying supporters for those causes. Do you see how the pieces start to work together?
Next week will be the sticky one - Spiritual Gifts. I realize I won’t have a lot of support for this element, but in the interest of completeness and discussion, that one is on tap for next week.
Posted in A Cacophony of Posts, Mike O | 1 Comment »