Today’s reading caught my interest, not the least of which because Laniak quoted one of my favorite authors and lecturers, Dave Grossman (his quote of Grossman was taken from his website. I wonder if he would have used it had he known it originally appeared in Grossman’s book 'On Killing"). There is a balance here. Someone who “yaps incessantly� ends up being dismissed as one who cries “wolf!�, particularly if no danger ever materializes. I’ve found it more effective just to keep up a steady growl. I’ve got some folks in my church – good folks – who seem to believe that Jesus came to proclaim the gospel of free-market capitalism, and that having anything in common is the doctrine of the devil. I don’t scold, and I don’t exactly bark at them, but when the opportunity is right I point out Acts 4, and the fact that in Revelation 18 the merchants of the earth, as well as their governmental counterparts, are implicated as adulterers with the Great Whore. They get furiously angry. I don’t care. It amazes me that they keep coming. They must the Great Shepherd’s true sheep.
Chip Hammond
Pastor, Bethel Presbyterian Church
Leesburg, VA