April 2010 Archives

For my blog for this week, I am choosing to write about Horace Bushnell and his writing "Every Man's Life a Plan of God." Bushnell lived in the early 1800's and spent much of his life as a pastor in a Congregational church in Connecticut. He was an especially gifted theologian and preacher, and was a supporter of the early Sunday School movement. In this reading, Bushnell argues that God has a perfect, intricately designed plan for everything in His creation, even a tiny grain of sand.

It is important first to evaluate this claim. Horace states, "On grain, more or less, of sand would disturb, or even fatally disorder the whole scheme of the heavenly motions." He goes on to explain how even the most seemingly irregular forces have a purpose, everything from the odors we smell to each individual floating air particles. If any of these things were out of place, it would disrupt the "heavenly motions." (I read a similar argument in Lee Strobel's Case for a Creator. Strobel's argument was that the world is too intricately balanced to be a random occurrence. However, this was based on there actually being a Creator or not, so I digress. I just thought there was a parallel here.) This is a comforting statement for me! Just as Jesus says in Matthew 6 and Luke 12, are we not more valuable than grains of sand or air particles?

God has a plan for each of us, the only burden that many people feel is actually finding what that specific plan is. I am a big proponent of letting life come as it may, but I definitely see how being unsure of plans makes many people uneasy (especially a lot of people in the Honors program). Good for us that Bushnell laid out a easy-to-use seven-step program for finding our calling!

1) Consider God's character and draw a deduction from that.

2) Consider yourself as a creature of God, created in His will.

3) Use your own conscious to interpret his will.

4) Use His law and Gospel as a guide.

5) Observe His Divine Providence.

6) Consult your friends and family, especially those familiar with God's Word. (My personal favorite! Bushnell goes on to say that "they know your talents and personal qualifications better than you do yourself.")

7) Pray!

My project over the past year, along with the rest of the work with Callings, as helped me to realize just what a calling is - anything! If we do anything for the glory of God, we are doing His will. He has a plan for all of us, and that is so comforting.

This week for my blog, I chose to Gerrard Winstanley's "Declaration from the Poor Oppressed People of England." In the mid-1600's, Winstanley led a group of people called the "Diggers." The Diggers were a group of people that dug up the soil on the common land, the portions of land that had been set aside for anyone to use, in order to plant crops there. However, this was a problem with the lords as the common land had become a place for their animals to graze. Winstanley then wrote the "Declaration from the Poor Oppressed People of England" which outlines why their actions were warranted.

The biggest reason that Winstanley feels that they should be able to use the land is because the land is a gift from God himself to all people. He writes, "...the King of Righteousness hath enlightened our hearst so far as to see that the earth was not made purposely for you to be Lords of it...but it was made to be a common livelihood to all." His most biting criticism of the system in place basically says that since the Lords ancestors came about the land through violence, they do not have any entitlement over the land: "And though you did not kill or thieve, yet you hold that cursed thing in your hand by the power of the sword; the sin of your fathers sahll be visited upon the head of your and your children...till your bloody and thieving power be rooted out of the land."

There is a lot of similarities between the struggle for power that Winstanley faced and the one that Shane Claiborne faces today. Though poor people back in 1600s England probably were worse off, both groups are oppressed. Both Winstanley and Claiborne just want each person, no matter where they stand socially or economically, to have a voice. Both recognized that the poor were oppressed, when they have God-given rights to be equal with people who just happen to have more money than them. And both went about it in very similar ways: they both left their own social background to be with with people that they are fighting for.