Circumcision And Other Cutting Edge Issues by Zhuping
Cicero's first rule of public speaking was, "render your audience benevolent". We preachers tend to follow that rule by opening our sermons with a joke. But what do you do when the passage you're preaching on includes a statement from St Paul such as the one we find in Galatians 5:12:"I wish that the people who are upsetting you [with their talk of circumcision] would go all the way and castrate themselves!" Where do you go from there? No opening joke seems necessary! Paul's risque barb is best left to stand on its own, I think, for the only jokes that come to mind are hardly appropriate on a Sunday morning! So instead of sharing a joke with you I'm going to share an email that I received yesterday. It comes from a member of our online community who lives in the USA: The state of Arizona here in the United States has passed a strict anti-immigration law which will give local law enforcement in that state to act as immigration officials and arrest, detain and deport any one deemed "undesirable".That has created tensions in this country between ethnic groups and prejudice in particular towards Muslims and Hispanics Even though I'm not Muslim and I'm now Anglican, even so, I'm ethnically still Hispanic and even though people can change their religion, no one can ever change their ethnicity. In spite of the fact that I was born and raised in America it hurts to see when even people who I thought were my friends change towards me and not for the better either. The prejudice seems to be perpetrated by the white and believe it or not Rosetta Stone Spanish Version 3
black American community. My family and I are considering leaving the country in order to get away from the prejudice and perhaps the possibility of the persecution to come. Before I was standing up for Muslims but right now I've been too busy lately standing up for myself, my family and my ethnicity. A couple of days ago, My dad, my brothers, a friend and I were eating at a restaurant. My father was speaking to a waitress friend of ours who is also Hispanic and they were talking in Spanish. Well, this elderly white couple said, "Speak English!" and I said, "This is a free country and we can speak whatever language we choose!",the lady retorted, "This is America!" and I said, "That's right!" and she said, "Go back were you came from!" and I told her, "You too!". Now that's a brief and rather depressing insight into the life of one of our online friends who paints a grim picture of the way things are developing in his part of the world. And I'm sure that you (like me) find this story most concerning. What might have you puzzled though is what possible connection this story could have with Paul's letter to the church in Galatia, but there is a connection and the connecting point is this.
About the Author
Rosetta Stone,Rosetta Stone Spanish,learn spanish,language software, language learning
BLACK MUSLIM MAN- USA VS. THE MUSLIM LANDS
Tags: black muslims usa