Christian altruism and a new start

I’ve had this blog since November of 2002, often it has fallen victim to the needs of life, expectations to be more than me, and simply being low priority. Today I hope to start anew… again… for the 1,000th time. Maybe it will stick this time… maybe.

I bought a new domain name (for $1) so I guess I have some motivation… I better post at least one new entry… is that worth $1?

So I figured I’d start by explaining the new name of this little place “Romans 12 us” – as you can imagine it comes from the book of Romans, chapter 12, in the Bible. I came across this idea because I was trying to think of something which would describe my values for this place, but not setup any expectations or box me in. I started with ideas like “restore.me”, “renew.me” and “thisis.me” – but they were all taken domain names.

I also have a strong idea that at the core, true, center of altruism is Christianity. Which is defined as:

Altruism
Disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others.
“some may choose to work with vulnerable elderly people out of altruism”
synonyms: unselfishness, selflessness, self-sacrifice, self-denial.

Sounds a bit like Christ, yes? However to become altruistic we need to understand the idea of “renewing the mind” and “becoming a new creature”. I decided to read all of Romans 12 again; the entire chapter speaks to every issue in life, the church, and the world. I was floored, re-inspired, and excited to rediscover the gold of knowledge that is in Romans 12, especially in light of today’s political, societal, and overall pessimism towards the world, both in and out of the Church. Go ahead and read it, this post isn’t going anywhere.

See what I mean? Every nugget in Romans 12 is a building block towards Christian altruism, from there we can focus on making disciples with these traits and characteristics as the aim.

Part two to come… how this is impossible except as an outflow of the faith we have in Jesus.

 

[Update: 9/27/16 A part two never came, and I changed the site domain and name back to “no small talk” – I look back at this name change as an ill-thought idea, back to our regularly scheduled programming]