Archive for month: March, 2019

Author: Thomas White | Student at LivingEd-Charlotte

“Life is tough, and as life gets tough, with bills, and health problems, and problems with children, and neighbors, and bosses, [some] get distracted.” ~ Mr. Kenneth Frank

LivingEd-Charlotte: Student Assembly | March 28, 2019

Mr. Ken Frank packed a lot into his assembly, this week. We heard of how we’ll be leading God’s Church before we know it (no pressure or anything), how crucial it is that we don’t divide our lives into the sacred and the secular, how we might retain a biblical worldview in an era fundamentally opposed to it, and each of those points had something like a half-dozen equally profound sub-points. All of that insight is available in the assembly recording (no cost, no obligation), but one sub-point in particular struck me harder than the others. Mr. Frank alluded to the fact that it can be really tempting to give up sometimes, because living a godly life is hard. It’s hard for everyone, and knowing that suffering is a prerequisite for righteous character can feel like a mean joke. When we know we’ll never be perfect as humans, and that this physical life is never going to get any easier, but is in fact probably only going to get worse as the Great Tribulation creeps closer…yeah, it’s tempting to just go, “You know what, all is vanity,” and stay in bed indefinitely.

“People who start off with a biblical worldview can lose it if they get their eyes off Christ. They’ve got to stay focused on Him.”

As Mr. Frank implied, it’s the temporary nature of this physical life that we need to focus on, and that’s pretty difficult, because this life is all we know. Of course, for those with God’s Spirit, this life is only a womb as we wait to be born into His eternal family. But that metaphor can be a tough sell when you think about how a baby in a womb is warm, comfortable, and completely peaceful, and this life is…not those things. So though it sounds childish, I like to think of this life as the setup process to an incredibly amazing board game. No one likes setting up a board game. You have to find the pieces, you have to shuffle the cards, you have to root around in the box for all the fake money you have to organize… It’s not fun, and it feels like it takes forever. But you need to do it, and you need to do it right, in order to actually play the game. Once you start playing, you’re glad you put in the time and effort to set everything up, because the game is great, and a lot longer than the set up.

“We have to think of the bigger question: Where are we going eternally?”

That’s what I tend to forget, and what Mr. Frank reminded me – that this physical life is the setup, not the game. Suffering might very well feel endless, but the amazing reward for it will literally be endless. Even eternal life can sound like an iffy reward when you’re used to life being something you wouldn’t actually want going on eternally, but what about eternal peace? Eternal joy? Eternally giving others peace and joy? Those are in the reward, too. God promises everlasting happiness and fulfillment at the end of this ever-so-tiny period of setup. If we can keep our focus on what we’re setting up for, nothing will be able to keep us from it.

Thomas White was one of the onsite Living Education students for the 2018-2019 semesters. He also has a Bachelor’s Degree in English. Thomas currently works as an Editorial Assistant for the Living Church of God. According to his wife, he eats pizza in entirely the wrong way.

by Thomas White, student at LivingEd-Charlotte

“…I think of a body of believers, when I think about the Church. …the body of believers is made up of so many different kinds of people, from all different kinds of backgrounds, all different kinds of races, all different kinds of experiences, different cultural backgrounds, and different talents.” ~ Mr. Jerry Ruddlesden

Student Assembly, March 14, 2019.

A novel by Robert Heinlein includes a quote that ends with “Specialization is for insects,” claiming that every human being should be able to do basically everything under the sun. That’s all well and good if you’re a character in a novel with as many inexplicable talents and abilities as the author can write for you, but in real life, no human being can do everything. The Apostle Paul says as much in 1 Corinthians 12, where he informs us that God’s Church is a body, and that each member of it makes up a separate and unique, yet unified and integral, part of that body. For this week’s assembly, Mr. Jerry Ruddlesden informed us of the absolutely staggering amount of work that goes into maintaining and operating that body, from the ins and outs of making sure Sabbath Services across the world have halls to be held in, to the intricacies of creating a professional telecast and finding television stations on which to show it. All of this is done by an immense amount of people…and most of these people work almost entirely “behind the curtain.”

“…the body needs a head, the body needs a foot. The body needs an eye, the body needs an ear. We preach the gospel, we feed the flock, and all those little things that happen here, all of us together, we’re a part of that.”

All these unseen—yet hugely important—things, being done by all these unseen—yet absolutely invaluable—people, caused a thought to occur to me. Thanks to Paul’s inspired words, we understand that some members of Christ’s body are eyes, some are ears, some are hands, and some are feet. Obviously, all these parts are on the outside of the body – we don’t need to get X-rayed to see that we have eyes, ears, hands, and feet. But what if you’re none of the above? After all, a body is a lot more than just what the mirror shows. What if you’re a pancreas? A thyroid gland? A spleen? These parts aren’t visible—unless something really, really bad just happened to you—but…well, try spending a day without your thyroid. Actually, please don’t. It will not go well.

“…the members in the Church who are not in charge have their part to play. And it’s not just to ‘pay and pray.’ … It’s way more than that.”

You see where I’m going with this, and Mr. Ruddlesden went there first, as he explained that, for example, though each Tomorrow’s World telecast may only be presented by one man, there are perhaps dozens of people that are never shown, but without whom that telecast would never be produced. Those people aren’t parts of the body’s face; they’re internal organs, and you don’t need to be a doctor to know that a body needs internal organs. The telecast needs more than presenters. The magazine needs more than writers. The Church needs more than people in Charlotte. Preaching the gospel and feeding the flock takes every single one of us. Whether it’s Mr. Weston himself teaching doctrine to the members or the teenager in a tiny congregation being a light and example to everyone they meet, both contribute to the feeding and preaching in their own special ways using their own particular talents. We’ll always need faces, but internal organs are important, too.

Thomas White was one of the onsite Living Education students for the 2018-2019 semesters. He also has a Bachelor’s Degree in English. Thomas currently works as an Editorial Assistant for the Living Church of God. According to his wife, he eats pizza in entirely the wrong way.