The RZCC Blog

Peggy Noonan, a columnist for the Wall Street Journal has written an article here about the Ashley Smith experience in Atlanta. She is the young lady who was taken hostage by the man who escaped from a courthouse after having killed a judge and a court reporter. It is an interesting story.

You may or may not have heard about the movie "Million Dollar Baby." It is an Academy Award winning movie starring Clint Eastwood. In it a female boxer who ends up as a quadriplegic and asks her coach to kill her rather than face life as a quadriplegic. Well Chuck Colson on the Breakpoint website relates what may in fact be the true story about the boxer in this article. If you plan on seeing the movie, or just want to know more, you might want to check it out.

I recently read an article on the Breakpoint website discussing the relationship between love and the law. The article makes some good points about the mark of a Christian being love for God and love for our neighbors. Thus the distinguishing mark of the Biblical worldview should also be love. The author states that "People with whom we consort should be able to recognize that they have entered the hot zone of Biblical worldview by the love they experience in our presence."

The author then goes on to discuss the law, and specifically the ten commandments and its relationship to love. My question for anyone who wants to discuss it is how do the ten commandments relate to love? My initial reaction is that there is a relationship because the Bible is in harmony with itself and that God doesn't change, so that the God who gave the ten commandments is the same God who said he would replace those commandments with a law written on our hearts.

Then, as I thought some more, I realized that part of my resistance came from immediate pictures in my mind of people I have known who were quick to point out to everyone who would listen that someone (else) was breaking one of the ten commandments, and how terrible that was. I realized that if you grew up in a church you learned "thou shalt" a lot. What we sometimes failed to learn was that "thou shalt" was supposed to be God speaking to us, not us "thou shalting" someone else. It always seems that the people who showed up for all of the "thou shalt" lessons were absent during the "log in your own eye" lessons.

So, once I got past some of my own hangups, I tried to look at things a little more objectively. On a personal basis, how important is it for us to prioritize the ten commandments? Will it help in remaining true to our first love?

I would like to know what other Red Zoners think. What are your experiences? What kind of emphasis should be placed on the ten commandments, if any?

Its easy to comment. Just click on the "comment" button and it will take you to a page where you can discuss this with others.

We have been studying "The Passion of The Christ" at RZCC for the past couple of months. Has this changed in any way the way you look at the movie? Does it help to talk, or at least listen to someone else talk about it at all? Does it make it seem old, instead of enhancing how you see it?

I would look forward to hearing anyone's ideas on this topic. Not only will it help me and possibly the other "talkers", prepare each week, but it will also help as we plan for future topics.