Non Violent by Jerry Naba Sonji Nkwe

Music influenced by Rene Girard, Introducing the Non Retributive,the non-violent God and the gospel of peace and grace.

Non Violent

lyrics-by Jerry Naba Sonji Nkwe ·

Yeah

the gospel of peace

introcucing the non-violent God

introducing the non-retributive God

grace

allow me let me get in
no Armageddon
gospel of peace, see we going in
wars exist
we say let fire cease
i mean ceasefire
your god of fire
violent God no more
Jesus ain't lord of war
he is prince of peace
he is waters still
greener pastures
the love of our sons and daughters
the hope of the whole world
why are you telling our boys and girls
God will take most to the abyss
down to the grave down to Hades
burn most and fail to save most
that spells no peace
and it’s not my king

chorus
sample speech by rene girard

verse 2
religion says we cursed dudes
lemme say this on verse two
if it be that true
God is just like Zeus
and that God makes me puke
created for fire and destruction
perpetual suffering i call that ISIS
my lord is totally different
loving us all all about us
when religion doubt us
God believes in us
and he lives in us
we exist through him
all we do in him
works for all us mankind
he loved us proven by the cross
inclusive love, the treasure he sought for
humanity his heart beat
what kind of love is this
so great and strong taking all of us in
no outcasts nor orphans of God
the god of peace he is not god of war
he is non violent

Fr Chase Hilgenbrinck - For what are you willing to give all of yourself?

Link HERE to hear Fr Chase Hilgenbrinck's homily for the opening Mass at Alleman High School, 8-16-15

Gospel       JN 6:51-58

Jesus said to the crowds:
“I am the living bread that came down from heaven;
whoever eats this bread will live forever;
and the bread that I will give
is my flesh for the life of the world.”

The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying,
“How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”
Jesus said to them,
“Amen, amen, I say to you,
unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood,
you do not have life within you.
Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood
has eternal life,
and I will raise him on the last day.
For my flesh is true food,
and my blood is true drink.
Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood
remains in me and I in him.
Just as the living Father sent me
and I have life because of the Father,
so also the one who feeds on me
will have life because of me.
This is the bread that came down from heaven.
Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died,
whoever eats this bread will live forever.”

After You Believe - NT Wright

Listen to NT Wright talk of virtue and Christian character development.

After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters by NT Wright

In an interview NT Wright talks of character as a result of habit-forming training:

... we modern westerners – and even more postmodern westerners – are trained by the media and public discourse to think that “letting it all out” and “doing what comes naturally” are the criteria for how to behave. There is a sense in which they are – but only when the character has been trained so that “what comes naturally” is the result of that habit-forming training.

The book’s main target is not the other major moral theories of deontology and consequentialism, but the ideas of “spontaneity” and “authenticity” which have a grain of truth (Christians really should act “from the heart”), but which screen out the reality of moral formation, of chosen and worked-at habit-forming prayer and moral reflection and action, which gradually over time form the Christian character in which “authentic” behavior is also truly Christian behavior, not simply “me living out my prejudices and random desires”.

The point about “virtue”, then, is that it flags up something which is central in the New Testament but marginal in much western Christian reflection, namely the fact that

1. Behaviour is habit-forming,

1. Christian behavior is supposed to be habit-forming and hence character-forming,...

... like learning a new language 

When you learn a language, your brain literally changes: new connections are made, new possibilities emerge, new habits of mind, tongue, and even sometimes body language emerge and are formed. The result is not, though, that you can speak it for the fun of it, but that you can communicate with people in that language, and perhaps even be able to go and live in the country where that language is spoken, and feel at home there.

This illustration helps to explain one part at least of the well known problem about how “what we do here and now” is umbilically connected to “who we will be in God’s new world”.

The point is that in the new heavens and new earth there is an entire way of life awaiting us, and we have the chance to learn, here and now, the character-skills we shall need for that new way of life – particularly the great three which Paul says will “abide” into God’s future, namely faith, hope and especially love. (All this depends of course on the Spirit, and on the transformative renewal of the mind which Paul speaks about in Romans 12:1-2.)

NT Wright expounds on the merits of virtue and becoming fully human:

... two other things to be said.

First, the point about “vice”, the opposite of “virtue”, is that, whereas virtue requires moral effort, all that has to happen for vice to take hold is for people to coast along in neutral: moral laziness leads directly to moral deformation (hence the insidious power of TV which constantly encourages effortless going-with-the-flow). The thing about virtue is that it requires Thought and Effort . . .

Second, the point about Christian virtue is that it claims, all the way back to the Adam-and-Abraham nexus in Genesis 12 and elsewhere and on to 1 Corinthians 15 and Revelation 21-22, that to become part of God’s people is to become a genuinely human being. So many Christians suppose that “normal humanness” is one thing and that “Christian living” is a rather odd and perhaps distorted form of being human, whereas part of the point of being Christian is to be genuinely human.

He concludes:

I come back to the point: for many in the West, all that matters is “doing what comes naturally”. That is an attempt to acquire instantly, without thought or effort, what Christian virtue offers as the fruit of the thought-out, Spirit-led, moral effort of putting to death one kind of behavior and painstakingly learning a different one. When the Spirit is at work, we become more human, not less – which means we have to think more, not less, have to make more moral effort, not less – and there has been a collusion between certain types of Christian teaching and certain types of post-Enlightenment moral teaching as a result of which many Christians are simply unaware of this challenge.
I hope the book will alert a new generation to the exciting and bracing prospect of a fully human and fully Christian life ‘after you believe’…

See the full interview HERE.