What in the world is Rankism?

1. Break the taboo on rank. Make it a safe subject for discussion in the workplace.
2. Acknowledge the roles of others and support equitable compensation.
3. Keep your promises to Somebodies and Nobodies alike.
4. Teach your children their rights. Respect children so they will be respectful.
5. Honor your Inner Nobody and your Inner Somebody alike.
6. Be aware rankism begets rankism. If you’re feeling frustrated, don’t pick on someone of lower rank; and don’t kick the dog!
7. Encourage respect for the other side in sports, debate, and daily life.
8. Think about what you want to pass on. And do it.
9. Health care providers can enlist patients as partners.
10. Show the world dignity through your profession.
11. Recognize that servers are people, too.
12. Try to see outside your position and build a model that synthesizes your outlook with the views of others.
13. Give recognition to someone who deserves it.
14. Bring dignity to law enforcement and conflict resolution.
15. Choose not to participate in disrespectful jokes or conversations.
16. Give your attention to someone you might normally avoid interacting with. Someone with a disability. Someone of another culture. Someone of a different faith.
17. Assist or advocate for immigrants, homeless individuals, the disabled, the elderly, anyone who is especially vulnerable to assaults on their dignity.
18. Offer assistance to someone who may not be getting the help or recognition he or she needs - an elderly neighbor, a new mother, a caregiver.
19. Ask questions about people in authority. Do they use their power to help others, or to keep them down? Have they earned their authority or are they just assuming it?
20. Exemplify rather than exhort.

Answers to a Friend's Questions

Ken,

Just a quick question concerning what you wanted me to be thinking about during my trip away.

Clarify my thinking for me.

1.Do you believe that Christ is not coming back again?

I believe everything prophesied about messiah is true including His advent incarnate and all subsequent comings. Jesus is one with the Father and the same Holy Spirit so it is altogether proper and correct to to say the He came again in the person of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. When the Bible records the two messengers in white robes saying that this same Jesus would come back I am sure they told the truth and I believe them. Timing is of the essence.


2.Do you not believe in the Rapture of the Church?

Rapture is not a word used in the Bible but comes from a Latin root word in the Vulgate (one of the only times we honor Roman Catholic scholarship). The snatching away or secret rapture is not a belief that I hold too near or dear to my heart. Sorry! the word rapture doesn't occur in the KJV.

At best I am confused about the messages that you are communicating to me the other day & was wondering if you could refer me to the scripture /vs. where you are postulating your premises from.

The message I am communicating and advocating is for a renewed look at the centrality of the cross. On the seventh day God rested and on the seventh day man rested. The Sabbath was created for man not the other way around and so I suggest that the current preoccupation with "another coming" (second, third or fourth coming) is not what the Gospel of the Kingdom is about. I believe the incarnation was planned for and prophesied by God Himself and not in reaction to man's fall. His original intent was by the Last Adam and not the first Adam to show Himself to us. Now we can rest from our works because salvation is only by One Name. Now we can enter into our rest for all eternity and that includes now. Yes, we have a home in glory land that outshines the sun and that is a great promise we can bank on, but the real promise is that we can eat from the Tree now and have a Father now, not just later. I conclude that we have a God of relationship whose intent is realized in the first coming of the Son by restoring to the Father that which was lost and thus bringing many sons into relationship with Himself.

My analysis of your current dialogue is: That the current teaching concerning the second coming of Christ(2Peter3vs.4) are inaccurate and that there will be no 'Rapture' of the church. Is that correct or am I misinterpreting you some how?

There are many teachings on the "second coming"; another term used today so freely by us as though it were found in the scripture. Look for second coming and see if you can find it.

...Let me know, Peter (the name has been changed)

The question then remains as to how to deal with the great disappointment that ideas so strongly held and taught dogmatically as doctrine are open to legitimate debate among Bible thumping evangelical, ideas that ought to be held a little looser by us. I am dealing with disappointments everyday as I realize that His ways are higher than mine, higher than the horse I rode in on and higher than most of the other guys I know.

• Is there an apocalyptic end of things prophesied?
  
• What will it look like?
  
• Is evil increasing in the earth and is it imperiling the the future of the church Jesus prophesied He would build and that hell could not prevail against?
  
• Were we created by God primarily for relationship with Him or were we created to die just so we could go to heaven?
  
• If the Kingdom does not come with observation then how come there are so many prophesying to the satisfaction of the visible?

The Just shall walk by Faith!

I now believe that the Cross (planned for from before the foundation of the earth) inaugurated the age to come in the earth. The cross is the completion of creation, the crowning achievement and the beginning of the New Creation in the earth.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;

As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,

World without end. Amen, Amen.

'Thirst" for knowledge' may be opium craving from PhysOrg.com
Neuroscientists have proposed a simple explanation for the pleasure of grasping a new concept: The brain is getting its fix. The "click" of comprehension triggers a biochemical cascade that rewards the brain with a shot of natural opium-like substances, said Irving Biederman of the University of Southern California. He presents his theory in an invited article in the latest issue of American Scientist. [...]