onehandclapping
I saw this on the emerging lives community blog and thought it was interesting…
“An atheist, Mr. Hemant Mehta, started an unusual auction on eBay. Up for bid? Mehta’s attendance at a Chicagoland church of the highest bidder’s choice. Off the Map was the winner and they’ve asked Mehta to attend a number of local churches and report back on what, from an atheist’s standpoint, the hits and misses were at each. He was at Willowcreek last night. Go here to track the eBay Atheist blog.”
So there is this movement to name seven official new wonders of the world. Of the Seven Ancient Wonders only the Pyramids are still in existence. This group has been working for the last six years to make a list of what could be considered present wonders of the world. They now have 21 finalists. In my opinion, some are obvious (like the Great wall of China), others (like Stonehenge or Easter Island) are more mysteries than wonders, and others (Eiffel Tower or Statue of Liberty) are more cultural icons. Before the final seven are chosen there will be tv specials on all 21 (great fun for us history buffs). The public is being asked to vote for the final seven. The catch is right now you have to vote by phone by calling an international number (stinks for those of us who don’t have international calling on our phones), but they are considering adding other national numbers. I think the whole thing is pretty cool. You can see the final lists at their site here
Update – you can now vote online
So I was reading in 2 Kings the other night and read the part about Josiah discovering the book of the law. Here was a culture that claimed to follow God, but they had essentially lost the scriptures as they collected dust in the temple. So of course they had let in all kinds of strange ideas and interpretations of following God. One thing that I found interesting about this passage is who they had to go to to explain what it was they had found. The priests no longer knew what the law was about, so the King found a prophetess named Huldah the wife of the grandson of the keeper of the wardrobe. So in all of Jerusalem only a young woman knew enough about the supposed faith of the people to explain it to the King and was the prophet appointed by God to deliver the message about what he was to do now. Interesting.
So Huldah basically tells the King that God will bring disaster on his people and stuff. Then Josiah read the book of the covenant aloud to all the people and renewed the covenant. Then he went about clearing out the idols from the land and from in the temple. He removed the idols to Baal, Asherah, and the starry hosts from the temple and tore down the quarters of the male prostitutes that were in the temple.
Jerusalem still got their butts kicked by God, but this event should have some implications for today. Many in the emerging church are attempting to read the scriptures anew and to see the idols we have let creep into our faith. The call is to do what we can to remove those idols (while humbly acknowledging that there will always be lenses of our culture through which we view the faith and therefore give us a proclivity towards idols).
So what idols do we worship in the church? Besides the ubiquitous greed/consumerism/capitalism that is the bane of the American church – I see dangers in upholding reason above God and faith, in pledging worship to a flag of a political entity in our church (or schools for that matter), and in pursuing power and not caring for justice, mercy, and humility. Just a few thoughts here… anyone else care to comment or add to the list?
The comments Bono gave at the recent Nation Prayer Breakfast plead our government to acknowledge the biblical call to justice. Many,including Bono himself, have questioned his right to make such a call. But too often those of us who live in a country of wealth and democracy forget that millions in this world have no voice – they need as loud as a voice as possible to speak for them. And in this day and age a rock star fits the bill. I appreciated his reminder that a country can make laws but that God’s law is higher. I highly recommend reading the prepared (apparently there was some ad-libbing) transcript of what he said here .