Month: March 2021

My wife came home with the words that every man wants to hear.  “The car is making a strange noise when I turn.”   Now being male, (just by genetic endowments all men immediately know what is wrong with a car) I headed for the garage to check the power steering fluid level.  To my disappointment it was fine.  So the next thing was to drive it so I could hear the noise and then make my instant diagnosis.  Men are good at that.  However, I turned this way and that and could hear nothing wrong.  So she rode with me and said, “There.  Don’t you hear it?”  Only then did I hear a slight creaking sound.  It was not what I was listening for.  I was so predisposed with my analysis without evidence I could not hear what she heard.  I was listening for something else.

So there it was.  I was like the rest of humanity.  I allowed my preconceived ideas to interfere with reality.  We do it all the time.  We come away from a situation and say, “Did you hear the nasty thing she said?”  And our partner says, “No.  I never heard that at all.”  We run our religion and our politics and our relationships with others through our biased filter.  We hear the things we want to hear and are deaf to what we don’t want to hear.  If we don’t hear what we want we alter the truth to make it correspond to our preconceived notions.

I have had people accuse me of saying things in a sermon I know I never said.  But they were so sure.  They heard with their own ears.  But I still never said it.  When Jesus said, “Let him who has ears hear.”  I think He was talking about dispensing with the filter.

Written by Roger Bothwell on Masrch 7, 2013

Spring of Life Ministry, PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574

Rogerbothwell.org

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I have never been to the Holy Land.  Through the years I have resisted the urging of friends to accompany them on a tour of walking where Jesus walked.  It is a desire to allow my imagined vision of Galilee and Jerusalem to remain intact.  Bible stories have been a part of me for as long as I can remember.  I have elaborate mental pictures of Jesus in the temple, on the sea, dining with His friend Lazarus, walking amid the street vendors and tax collectors.  I don’t want them replaced with Jerusalem’s present day McDonalds and Kentucky Fried Chicken fast food outlets.  I don’t want to see the building that is now atop the stable in Bethlehem nor see Fords, VWs or Mercedes traveling the streets where Jesus walked.  I am aware that I can be accused of living in a fantasy world that denies reality but I like my fantasy and do not desire to have it polluted with modernity.

Imagination is one of the greatest gifts God has given us.  We are made in His image and His entire creation is the fruit of His imagination.  Before there was anything there was Idea culminating in “Let us make man in our image.”  Birds, fish, and mammals with their great displays of variety must have given Him great joy to bring His fantasies into reality.  Alas, His dream quickly turned into a nightmare but He was not caught unaware.  Even this He had imagined and He quickly made provision for His new human family to come back.

Crucifixions were common in the Roman Empire.  How many times did Jesus walk past men nailed to crosses?  Surely His imagination chilled His spine and elicited the prayer, “Father, help me.”

Written by Roger Bothwell on March 8, 2013

Spring of Life Ministry, PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574

Rogerbothwell.org

Can you believe it?  I was ten miles away from home and I threw away my car keys.  I had not eaten since breakfast.  No, it wasn’t 9:30 A.M.  It was 3 P.M.  I was driving past the Taco Bell where we usually ate lunch when teaching at Atlantic Union College, so I stopped.  I put my car keys on my tray and unwrapped my burrito.  Not thinking about the keys I unconsciously covered them with paper wrappings and napkins.  The next time I thought about keys I was in the parking lot.  While going through the ritual of checking every pocket I realized what had happened.  I groaned as I thought about going back to the trash bin and sorting through half-eaten burritos, smashed tacos, yucky chicken bones (It is also a KFC.) and cups of soda that had been dumped.  This wasn’t going to be pretty.  Can you imagine the electronic key being saturated with diet Pepsi?

While digging deep into other people’s trash I thought about Jesus doing this on a daily basis.  In the yuck of earth He and the Holy Spirit continually rummage about seeking lost souls.  This is so much more important than me looking for lost keys.  Actually they weren’t lost.  I knew where they were.  I just had to soil my hands to retrieve them.  It’s the same way with Jesus.  People aren’t really lost.  He always knows where they are.  He just has to convince them there is a better life waiting for them.

I like the idea that no one is ever lost.  God isn’t careless.  In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus speaks of His Father knowing about the death of a small bird.  How much more does He know where we are.  Always!!

Written by Roger Bothwell on March 8, 2012

Spring of Life Ministry, PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574

Rogerbothwell.org

There is something very tempting about completely adopting a completely logical frame of mind that only relates to that which can be proven scientifically.  For several hundred years the scientific method has served us well; with it we have unsecreted knowledge and built modernity.  Our cars, our planes, our homes, our medical care, our computers, our phones, our weather forecasts are a product of an ongoing quest to learn more and more about our world.   Science serves us well; thus the allure to think it is the end all.  But when all is said and done, there remains an emptiness in the human soul that science cannot satisfy.  It is no accident that existentialism is the prevailing philosophy of the twentieth and so far the twenty-first centuries.  Prior to WWI it was rare for people to ask “who am I” or “why am I here” or “where am I going.”

There is the temptation to assume that people have always thought as we; not so.  The world had a blanket of comforting mythologies that soothed all such inquiries.  However, modernity and science have stripped away much of what was, even though mistaken, reassuring.  The problem for us is we can throw away the baby with the bathwater.   Amidst what we no longer regard as relevant truth was relevant truth.  Paul’s incredible letters to the Romans, Ephesians and Galatians are eternally true.  We are the children of God.  We are here to be redeemed and bear witness to His love.  And we are going to grow more and more with Him forever becoming what Paul said, “something far more than we could ever think or dream.”   Science has served us well but it is not, and I repeat, it is not the satisfier of the angst of the human soul.

Written by Roger Bothwell on March 7, 2012

Spring of Life Ministry, PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574

Rogerbothwell.org

 

There was an inscription on the inner wall of the temple forbidding any other than a Jew to pass inside on the pain of death.  Jewish midwives were forbidden to aid any woman but a Jew lest they were responsible for bringing another gentile into the world. Once we begin to grasp the incredible depth of enmity between Jews and the surrounding nations we gain a much clearer picture of the revolutionary Jesus and one of the reasons He was so hated by the establishment.  Not only did He feed 5000 Jews in Galilee, He also feed 4000 gentiles on the east side of the Jordan.  He healed the child of a Canaanite woman.  He asked a Samaritan woman for a drink.  He healed a Roman’s servant. This was way beyond eating with publicans.  At least publicans were Jews.  I am often amused that conservative Christians seem to think they have a monopoly on Jesus’ values.  It was the conservatives who killed Him.  Jesus was a radical.

The Gospel of Matthew closes with a message so radical that it took years before the disciples began to heed to it.  “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: . . .”   Peter had to have a special vision of the animals in the sheet before he would accept an invitation to a Roman’s home. (Acts 10)   After Saul was knocked off his horse and became Paul he still needed years of prayer and visions before he was up to taking the Gospel to the gentiles.

Dare I say, can I be brave enough to venture, that until we see beyond our “kind” we are not yet like Jesus?

Written by Roger Bothwell on March 6, 2012

Spring of Life Ministry, PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574

Rogerbothwell.org

 

 

There are three different values for your home.  There is the market value; for how much can you sell it.  This is based on the selling prices of the other homes in your neighborhood and the size and condition comparison with those homes.  Then there is the tax value.  This is set also in relationship to the market value but usually is lower.  That gives the community room to raise your taxes if they are in dire straits.  Finally there is the replacement value of your home based on square footage and how much per square foot it would cost to rebuild.  That is usually much higher than the first two and for which we should insure.

The question arises how much are you and I worth?  There is market value.  Since we no longer sell each other at slave auctions we could say nil.  There is our tax value.  In America we do not have a head tax but in many countries that does exist.  When we lived in Africa each year I had to pay a “poll tax” even though I did not qualify to vote.  It was a head tax for breathing Ugandan air.   I was worth seven dollars a year.  Finally there is replacement value.  What would it cost to replace you or me?  This is a life insurance issue for a man who wants to be sure his family is cared for if something bad happens.  How much money can we earn in a year and how many years do we have a wife and children to care for.  That number can get very high.

But wait there is a fourth value.  It is related to eternity.  Satan says we are worthless. Human life is dirt cheap for him.  However God says, “Wait a minute. My child (you or I) is worth everything.  They are worth the cross.”  Awesome!

Written by Roger Bothwell on March 5, 2012

Spring of Life Ministry, PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574

Rogerbothell.org

It is difficult to find a more powerful passage in Scripture than Ephesians 2. “God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we  were dead in sins. . .”  Somewhere in our youth we lose our innocence.  Does it happen at birth, or when we first disobeyed our parents or at puberty when passion rages through our almost every thought?  I don’t know.  That is a theological debate filled with theory and isms.  For those of us who are adults it doesn’t matter when it occurred, what we know is we are not innocent.  Just as God cares for us so he will care for children; with buckets of mercy.  The point is we were dead in our sins.  We earned death.  We cannot compensate for our behaviors and attitudes.  The only answer for us is grace; lots and lots of grace.

Grace removes our guilt.  God looks at us as if we had never sinned.  However, as wonderful as that is we still remember our sins.  It is fascinating that we remember things God doesn’t remember.  I haven’t yet figured that one out.  But I rejoice in the fact. God declares us innocent but our brains are not yet erased.  The feelings, the emotions, the memories are all still there.  And they stay there until as Paul tells us in I Corinthians 15, “this corruptible shall have put on incorruption . . .”

One of my students told me he often deliberately sinned because he knew God was a God of mercy and would forgive him.  Really?  Well, that’s another discussion. My concern was that even if in God’s great love He did forgive him, the fruit, the scars, his lost innocence would mar the rest of his life on earth.  He would not be the man he could have been.

Written by Roger Bothwell on March 2, 2012

Spring of Life Ministry, PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574

Rogerbothwell.org

 

It finally snowed here in New England.  We’ve had barely a flake from November first until now.  It’s a heavy snow and the city snowplow built quite a barrier across the end of our driveway.  Grabbing the snow shovel I headed out to the barrier to do battle.  As I was digging in for that first heavy load a man with a pickup outfitted with a plow saw my task.  “Wait,” he called.  “Don’t kill yourself. I’ll be right there.”  In a few moments all was clear.  Needless to say I was grateful and even more so when he adamantly refused any money.

I wanted to pass this along just for the sake of saying not all is bad with the world.  The news is usually so gruesome.  We hear all manner of horror from self annihilating walking bombs to weapons powerful enough to destroy our planet.  Murders, robberies and rapes fill our evening news broadcasts.  It’s the bad stuff that makes the news while everyday millions of good people do millions of good things for others.

The Golden Rule has not been lost in the mire of humanity.  The Silver Rule says, “Don’t do to others what you don’t want them to do to you.”  That’s not bad at all but the Golden Rule is so much better.  “Do to others what you want them to do for you.”  In Romans 12:13 Paul tells us to be “inventive in hospitality.”  We should not just wait for an opportunity to do something nice.  We should be creative and make opportunities.

The world isn’t totally bad.  Who knows maybe he did save me from killing myself.  As we all know old guys shouldn’t be shoveling heavy snow.

Written by Roger Bothwell on March 1, 2012

Spring of Life Ministry, PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574

Rogerbothwell.org

We have a flock of gold finches that are just tanking on our thistle feeders.  For days now they have devoured so many Nyjer seeds we have to refill them every day.   While I am happy to provide sustenance to these lovely creatures I fear we might be doing more harm than good.  If we were not feeding them they would be foraging and thus getting a variety in their diet.  What we are doing is allowing them to stuff themselves on something that is good for them but it seduces them into a one item diet, which I am not so sure is healthy.

I once had a church member who would not read anything except his Bible.  That is a pretty hard thing to condemn without looking like a pagan but I worried about his balance.  He knew very little about current events.  He was not conversant in things that were for most of us just common knowledge.  Perhaps I am the one in error but I think we need to care for the whole person, mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually.  God made us multi-faceted beings and each requires our attention if we are to be healthy. Every good parent wants their children to be healthy and God is a good parent.

I once heard a committed vegetarian say, “I would die before I would eat a piece of meat.”  Obviously she was not a vegetarian for health reasons because the last time I looked it seemed that eating a piece of meat and staying alive was healthier than dying.  Alas, it can be difficult to strike a right balance in life, but I do believe it is a quest God desires and expects from us.

Written by Roger Bothwell on February 29, 2012

Spring of Life Ministry, PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574

Rogerbothwell.org

 

This morning I watched a 7th grade math teacher instruct her students how to solve a ratio/proportion problem using an algorithm.  At the end of the lesson, after the students were gone, I mentioned that there is a much easier way to solve the problem.  She laughed and agreed.  She explained that the algorithm was for students who didn’t know what they were doing.  It is a menu.  Do a logical step-by-step process and one will get the correct answer. However, she said, “Some of the students look at the problem and know how to solve it without the algorithm.  I give them credit for that.”  Good for her.

Through the years I have sat through some very complicated, complex presentations on righteousness by faith, sanctification and justification, predestination, free will, etc.  My conclusion is these presentations are akin to algorithms.  They are explanations for people who just don’t get it.  Or perhaps it’s the presenter that doesn’t really get it.  And just what is “it?”   “It” is the simplicity of the Gospel. Jesus created us and took responsibility for us when we failed.  His righteous life, death and resurrection makes it possible for us to be adopted into the family and receive eternal life.  We are no longer under an obligation to the law but instead are obligated by love to be as much like our Savior as we can.  The only real mystery here is why He loves us so much to do this for us.

No algorithm needed.  Perhaps there is another mystery and that is how come something so simple can sometimes sound so complicated?  Perhaps the fault is in the old saying, “If something sounds too good to be true.  It is.”   But “it” is true!

Written by Roger Bothwell on February 28, 2012

Spring of Life Ministry, PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574

Rogerbothwell.org