Despre alcool și țigări

Fiecare vară mi-o petreceam la Răcătău la bunica și unchiul Gobi, loc de taină și de întâlnire cu rubedeniile mele. Bunica și unchiul erau pocăiți, și trebuie să recunosc că au avut o mare influență în educația mea spirituală.
Îmi aduc aminte că nu aveam decât 9 ani și unchiul mă inițiase în etică și cunoașterea Scripturilor, că doar și Timotei le știuse din pruncie.
Îmi pierdeam examenul la „trăire”, fiindcă adesea mă certam cu verisoara mea Alina, pe care nu o sufeream și o șicanam toată ziulica.

Oricum eram sigur pe mântuirea mea, că am un loc în Cer rezervat, fiindcă îndeplineam esența legii:
1) Nu consumam alcool(nici nu aveam de unde, fiindcă nu găseai nici must în casa bunicii),
2) Nu fumam(n-am făcut prostii cu copii, deși mocofan ce eram, rămas singur acasă gustasem chiștocurile rămase de tata prin scrumiere. Eu așteptam să aibă un gust de ciocolată sau ceva asemănător, măcar dulceag; știu că îmi opărisem limba cu gustul de gudron din tigările fără filtru Bucegi și Carpați, ochii mi se bleojdiră, așa cum făcea tata când trăgea un fum, după care când simți gustul amar mi se făcură ca două cepe, scuipând ca un tuberculos tabacul.)
3) Și duminica mergeam la „adunare”, mă pocăiam săptămânal, eram ritos și de nezdruncinat în ritualul meu.

Până în adolescență credeam destul de sănătos argumentul pentru prohibiția fumatului la pocăiți.

De altfel, faptele trupului sunt cunoscute. Acestea sunt :desfrânarea (πορνεια, porneia, de unde și pornografia), necurăția (ακαθαρσια, akatarsia, cu trimitere la curățirile din Leveticul), libertinajul(ασελγεια, aselgheia), idolatria (ειδωλολατρια, eidolatria. Jean Calvin și Martin Luther ne-au lămurit ce însemnează asta: icoanele de pe pereți, moaștele sfinților. De ce să nu-i credem și să mai contextualizăm textul paulinic?), dușmăniile , mâniile,ambițiile, discordiile, dezbinările, invidiile, bețiile ..și cele asemănătoare acestora. Și frații penticostali de la țară, ultraconservatori au inclus aici cu literă de lege fumatul, cravata, nasturii de la sacou, și rochia de mireasă, etc.

Când am crescut mare, am lepădat tot ce-i pueril, și m-am apucat de înfulecat bucate grele pentru digestia intelectului meu.
Am citit Creștinismul redus la esențe de C.S.Lewis, tradusă ieftin pentru buzunarul meu ce zornăia cu gologanii strânși bănuț cu bănuț. Am rămas copleșit, m-am împrietenit pe vecie cu autorul acesta anglican(ce religia o mai fi și asta mă-ntrebam), oricum o fi un popă înțolit în sutana, dar bine scrie. L-am căutat pe internet, și iată ce am găsit:

Poza asta m-a amărât o săptămână, tigara lui Lewis îmi abrutiza convingerile una câte una în săptămâna mea de de doliu în sac și cenușă.
Colac peste pupăză, citisem cartea de medicină internă a unui medic, care indica pacienților o țigară pe zi celor cu hipotensiune din născare.
Bine zice „fratele” Simion din Timișoara, care își lăsa familia de izbeliște, soția plângând , că l-a „chemat ” domnul să ne „trezească” din somnul păcatelor noastre, pe noi de la Cluj. Avea treabă de ce bem din cazanul de smoală de cafea a dracului, că el ne servea cu câte o cafeluță, că ne trimitem copii la școli unde învățăm înțelepciune lumească, și unde lăsăm Egipul să ne pătrundă-n suflete. Educația fetelor doar până la clasa a opta, dupa aceea să se căsătorească , să facă copii, la cratiță și la spălat scutece. The future is bright!

John Stott în cartea lui, Crucea lui Cristos, tot de la Societatea Misionară Română, spunea pe la finele cărții că fumatul nu este neapărat un păcat. Este în unele circumstanțe.
De atunci mi-am revizuit teologia și gândirea.

Medical vorbind, fumatul excesiv, de la peste 10 țigări pe zi face rău întregului organism. Cafeaua în mod excesiv face rău și ea, ănsă unii spuneau că face bine creierului, că acei care consumă 3-5 cofee /zi sunt mai puțin predispuși a dezvolta la bătrânețe boli mintale, boala Alzheimer, depresie, schizofrenie, epilepsie, etc.
Obezitatea,sedentarismul, stresul ,fumatul, consumul excesiv de băuturi alcoolice fac casă bună. Însă cea mai mare pagubă dintre acestea este stresul.

Problemele „gri” sunt delicate, și vă recomand o carte care a inspirat milioane de oameni, și a avut putere de motivare, schimbare, decizie pentru cei care au citit-o. Cartea se numește Adevăratul Preot, sau ce ar face Isus în locul meu? (In his steps, Pe urmele Lui în original) scrisă de o autoare blagoslovită în ale scrisului, C.M.Sheldon.
Lectură plăcută și cu folos vă doresc!

John Stott,The message of 1 Tessalonians

Introduction

When Paul and his companions visited Thessalonica in 49 or 50 AD, it was already a well established city with a long history. It had been founded in the fourth century BC by Cassander, one of Alexander the Great’s army officers. He named it after his wife, Thessalonica, who was Alexander’s half-sister. It occupied a strategic position, for it boasted a good natural harbour at the head of the Thermaic Gulf, and it was situated on the *Via Egnatia* which was the main route between Rome and the East. Thessalonica became the capital of the Roman province of Macedonia. Lightfoot described it as ‘the key to the whole of Macedonia’, and added that ‘it narrowly escaped being made the capital of the world’. Today as Thessaloniki it is the second most important city of Greece.
Luke tells us in Acts 17 how Thessalonica came to be evangelized. It happened during Paul’s second missionary journey, which followed soon after the Council of Jerusalem. Silas was his chief missionary partner from the beginning (Acts 15:40). In Lystra he invited the young man Timothy to join them (Acts 16:1-3), and in Troas Luke was added to the team (Acts 16:11, where Luke begins to use the pronoun ‘we’). So Paul, Silas, Timothy and Luke were the four missionaries who sailed across the Northern Aegean Sea into Europe. After a remarkably successful mission in Philippi, Paul, Silas and Timothy moved on in a south-western direction to Thessalonica (Acts 17:1), while Luke stayed behind.
The Jewish population of Thessalonica was large enough to justify a synagogue, and here Paul preached on three successive sabbaths. Luke describes his approach (Acts 17:2-3). First, he argued from the Old Testament Scriptures that the expected Christ
(i.e., the Messiah) had to suffer and rise from the dead. Next, he proclaimed Jesus of Nazareth to them, doubtless telling the story of his life, death and resurrection. And thirdly, he put his first and second points together, and declared that this Jesus was that Christ. In other words, Old Testament prophecy had been fulfilled in Jesus, so that the Jesus of history and the Christ of the Scripture were the same person, Some of his Jewish listeners were convinced, and joined the missionaries. So did ‘a large number of God-fearing Greeks’, Gentiles on the fringe of the synagogue, ‘and not a few prominent women’ (Acts 17:4). This may mean (as is implied by the reference to idolatry in 1 Thess. 1:9) that the Jewish mission was followed by a Gentile mission and that Paul stayed in Thessalonica several months, rather than just three weeks.
It was not long before opposition arose. Jealous of Paul’s influence in the city, the Jews recruited a gang of thugs and started a riot. Not finding Paul or Silas in Jason’s house, where they were staying, the ringleaders dragged Jason and some other believers before the city magistrates (whom Luke correctly calls ‘politarchs’) and lodged a serious accusation against them: ‘These men who have caused trouble all over the world have now come here, and Jason has welcomed them into his house. They are all defying Caesar’s decrees, saying that there is another king, one called Jesus’ (Acts 17:6-7). This allegation threw the city into an uproar. Jason and his friends were put on bail, and that night under cover of darkness Paul and Silas had to be smuggled out of town (Acts 17:5-10).
They went south to Berea for a short mission. But the Jews followed them there, so that Paul had to continue his southward journey to Athens, where his escort left him. Soon after, at his request, Silas and Timothy rejoined him. But so anxious was he about the situation in Macedonia that he sent them north again in order to find out what was happening, even though it meant that he was again left in Athens alone. Timothy went to Thessalonica, and Silas probably to Philippi. By the time they were ready to return south with news, Paul had moved on once more. So it was in Corinth that their reunion took place (Acts 18:5; cf. 2 Cor.1:19), and that Paul wrote his first letter to the Thessalonian church (1 Thess.3:6). It was one of his earliest letters – his second, in fact, on the assumption that Galatians was written just before the Jerusalem Council.
The apostle responded in this letter to the information he had received from Timothy. On the one hand, Timothy had brought good news of the Thessalonians’ ‘faith and love’, their loyalty and steadfastness under persecution (1 Thess.3:6-8). On the other, he had reported that Paul was being criticized for insincerity and ulterior motives (2:2-6), and for his failure to return to Thessalonica (2:17 – 3:5). In addition, the Thessalonians needed correction and instruction in the areas of sexual morality, earning their own living, preparing for the second coming (*parousia*) of Jesus, and tensions in the fellowship.
In the light of this background, it would be possible to divide 1 Thessalonians into two, naming the first half ‘Narrative’ (looking back to the missionaries’ visit) and the second ‘Exhortation’ (addressing the Thessalonians problems)

Source

John Stott

The way of Christian victory

What must we do to control the lusts of the flesh and to bear the fruit of the Spirit? The brief answer is this: We must maintain towards each the proper Christian attitude. In the apostle’s own words, we must ‘crucify’ the flesh and ‘walk by’ the Spirit.

a). We must crucify the flesh.
The phrase occurs in verse 24: *Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires*. This verse is frequently misunderstood. Please note that the ‘crucifixion’ of the flesh described here is something that is done not *to* us but *by* us. It is we ourselves who are said to ‘have crucified the flesh’. Perhaps I can best expose the popular misconception by saying that Galatians 5:24 does not teach the same truth as Galatians 2:20 or Romans 6:6. In those verses we are told that by faith-union with Christ ‘we have been crucified with him’. But here it is we who have taken action. We ‘have crucified’ our old nature. It is not now a ‘dying’ which we have experienced through union with Christ; it is rather a deliberate ‘putting to death’.
What does it mean? Paul borrows the image of crucifixion, of course, from Christ himself who said: ‘If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me’ (Mk. 8:34). To ‘take up the cross was our Lord’s vivid figure of speech for self-denial. Every follower of Christ is to behave like a condemned criminal and carry his cross to the place of execution. Now Paul takes the metaphor to its logical conclusion. We must not only take up our cross and walk with it, but actually see that the execution takes place. We are actually to take the flesh, our wilful and wayward self, and (metaphorically speaking) nail it to the cross. This is Paul’s graphic description of repentance, of turning our back on the old life of selfishness and sin, repudiating it finally and utterly.
The fact that ‘crucifixion’ is to be the fate of the flesh is very significant. It is always perilous to argue from analogy, but I suggest that the following points, far from being fanciful, belong to the notion of crucifixion and cannot be separated from it.
First, a Christian rejection of his old nature is to be *pitiless*. Crucifixion in the Graeco-Roman world was not a pleasant form of execution, nor was it administered to nice or refined people; it was reserved for the worst criminals, which is why it was such a shameful thing for Jesus Christ to be crucified. If, therefore, we are to ‘crucify our flesh, it is plain that the flesh is not something respectable to be treated with courtesy and deference, but something so evil that it deserves no better fate than to be crucified.
Secondly, our rejection of the old nature will be *painful*. Crucifixion was a form of execution ‘attended with intense pain’ (Grimm-Thayer). And which of us does not know the acute pain of inner conflict when ‘the fleeting pleasures of sin’ (Heb.11:25) are renounced?
Thirdly, the rejection of our old nature is to be *decisive*. Although death by crucifixion was a lingering death, it was a certain death. Criminals who were nailed to a cross did not survive. John Brown draws out the significance of this fact for us: ‘Crucifixion…produced death not suddenly but gradually…True Christians…do not succeed in completely destroying it (that is, the flesh) while here below; but they have fixed it to the cross, and they are determined to keep it there till it expire. Once a criminal had been nailed to the cross, he was left there to die. Soldiers were placed at the scene of execution to guard the victim. Their duty was to prevent anyone from taking him down from the cross, at least until he was dead. Now ‘those who belong to Christ Jesus’, Paul says, ‘have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires’. The Greek verb is in the aorist tense, indicting that this is something we did decisively at the moment of conversion. When we came to Jesus Christ, we repented. We ‘crucified’ everything we knew to be wrong. We took our old self-centred nature, with all its sinful passions and desires, and nailed it to the cross. And this repentance of ours was decisive, as decisive as a crucifixion. So, Paul says, if we crucified the flesh, we must leave it there to die. We must renew every day this attitude towards sin of ruthless and uncompromising rejection. In the language of Jesus, as Luke records it, every Christian must ‘take up his cross *daily*’ (Lk. 9:23).
So widely is this biblical teaching neglected, that it needs to be further enforced. The first great secret of holiness lies in the degree and the decisiveness of our repentance. If besetting sins persistently plague us, it is either because we have never truly repented, or because, having repented, we have not maintained our repentance. It is as if, having nailed our old nature to the cross, we keep wistfully returning to the scene of its execution. We begin to fondle it, to caress it, to long for its release, even to try to take it down again from the cross. We need to learn to leave it there. When some jealous, or proud, or malicious, or impure thought invades our mind we must kick it out at once. It is fatal to begin to examine it and consider whether we are gong to give in to it or not. We have declared war on it; we are not going to resume negotiations. We have settled the issue for good; we are not going to re-open it. We have crucified the flesh; we are never going to draw the nails.

John Stott

The fruit of the Spirit

Here we have a cluster of nine Christian graces which seem to portray a Christian’s attitude to God, to other people and to himself.
*Love, joy, peace*. This is a triad of general Christian virtues. Yet they seem primarily to concern our attitude towards God, for a Christian’s first love is his love for God, his chief joy is his joy in God and his deepest peace is his peace with God.
Next, *patience, kindness, goodness*. These are social virtues, manward rather than Godward in their direction. ‘Patience’ is longsuffering towards those who aggravate or persecute. ‘Kindness’ is a question of disposition, and ‘goodness’ of words and deeds.
The third triad is *Faithfulness, gentleness, self-control*. ‘Faithfulness’ (AV ‘faith’) appears to describe the reliability of a Christian man. ‘Gentleness’ is that humble meekness which Christ exhibited (Mt. 11:29; 2 Cor. 10:1). And both are aspects of the ‘self-mastery’, or ‘self-control’, which conclude the list.
So we may say that the primary direction of ‘love, joy, peace’ is Godward, of ‘patience, kindness, goodness’ manward, and of ‘faithfulness, gentleness and self-control’ selfward. And all these are ‘the fruit of the Spirit’, the natural produce that appears in the lives of Spirit-led Christians. No wonder Paul adds again: *against such there is no law* (verse 23). For the function of the law is to curb, to restrain, to deter, and no deterrent is needed here.
Having examined ‘the works of the flesh’ and ‘the fruit of the Spirit’ separately, it should be even clearer to us than before that ‘the flesh’ and ‘the Spirit’ are in active conflict with one another. They are pulling in opposite directions. There exists between the two ‘an interminable, deadly feud’. And the result of this conflict is: ‘so that what you will to do you cannot do’ (end of verse 17, NEB). The parallel between this little phrase and the second part of Romans 7 is, in my judgment, too close to be accidental. Every renewed Christian can say ‘I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self’ (Rom. 7:22). That is, ‘I love and long to do it. My new nature hungers for God, for godliness and for goodness. I want to be good and to do good.’ That is the language of every regenerate believer. ‘But’, he has to add, ‘by myself, even with these new desires, I cannot do what I want to do. Why not? Because of sin that dwells within me .’ Or, as the apostle expresses it here in Galatians 5, ‘because of the strong desires of the flesh which lust against the Spirit’.
This is the Christian conflict – fierce, bitter and unremitting. Moreover, it is a conflict in which *by himself* the Christian simply cannot be victorious. He is obliged to say ‘I can will what is right, but I cannot do it’ (Rom. 7:18) or, speaking as it were to himself, ‘ye cannot do the things that ye would’ (Gal.5:17, AV).
‘Is that the whole story?’ some perplexed reader will be asking. ‘Is the tragic confession that “I cannot do what I want to do” the last word about a Christian’s inner, moral conflict? Is this all Christianity offers – an experience of continuous defeat? Indeed, it is not. If we were left to ourselves, we could not do what we would; instead, we would succumb to the desires of our old nature. But if we ‘walk by the Spirit’ Verse (16), *then* we shall not gratify the desires of the flesh. We shall still experience them, but we shall not indulge them. On the contrary, we shall bear the fruit of the Spirit.