Trolley Folly

/ W. Keith Brenton / 2 Comments

While taking a break from wiring blocks on my model railroad layout, I’ve been doing some detail work. Today I completed a mostly-scratchbuilt model of a Eureka Springs trolley bus. These rubber-tired, gas-powered trolleys convey tourists for a very nominal fee from one end of town to the other and almost anywhere within it. Taking the red route trolley around town – seeing all the great old Victorian homes and limestone buildings (some of them hanging right off cliff sides) – is one of my family’s favorite things to do. The red route takes you to the corner across from the depot of the ES&NA, the railway which I’m modeling. So I heavily modified an unpowered Bachmann replica of a San Francisco cable car to more closely resemble a Eureka Springs trolley. I chose the older, 34-passenger open model which has now been retired in favor of the new closed, fully air-conditioned 43-passenger model. I’m posting a postcard photo of the actual old trolley bus on top and my model directly beneath it. (There’s a little spherical distortion in the bottom photo from my iPhone lens.)

(You can see a photograph of the Bachmann-made cable car replica at http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXBUK4&P=F. )

Oh, and the scale of it is 1:87. It’s about four inches long, in other words. About as long as my iPhone. Working in a scale that tiny takes time.

So I apologize if I haven’t spend as much time blogging recently.

Man does not live by blog alone, you know.

Postscript: Okay, better photo … Eureka Springs Trolley Bus, 1:87 Model

Was God Just Clearing His Throat When He Said, “Herem”?

/ W. Keith Brenton / 4 Comments

Herem (sometimes spelled more phonetically correctly as “cherem“) is a concept that gives me cold chills up and down my spine, and I am obviously not alone in my reaction to it.

It describes the consecration of something to God – often, in the Old Testament, an entire city – usually by totally destroying it.

It has come to have the lesser meaning, through the centuries, of complete ecclesiastical censure from the Jewish community – what we would call, in Restoration Movement circles, “disfellowship.” But that’s not the meaning I’m talking about.

Total destruction of an entire village or city – “men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys” (1 Samuel 15:3) – at God’s command; that kind of herem is a concept some have found so repulsive that it has caused them to doubt the inspiration of (some) scripture; that God could or ever did order such a thing in Deuteronomy 7:16 or 7:26 or 13:15. Or that Joshua was following His orders when he did so in Joshua 10:1 or 10:28 or 10:35 or 10:37 or 39 or 40-42 or 11:11-12 or 11:20-21, etc., etc., etc.

It is an action which these folks find so morally repugnant that they cannot bring themselves to believe God would command it.

I can totally sympathize with them. Herem sounds, to twenty-first century American Keith, too much like Holocaust. Extermination. Genocide. How could creatures whom God created and loved be ordered by Him to be annihilated? How could a merciful God condemn Saul for having mercy on King Agag and sparing him from the herem of the rest of the Amalekites (1 Samuel 15)? How could a loving God inspire Isaiah to warn that He would Himself commit herem to “all nations” in His wrath (Isaiah 34:2)?

Surely, these folks reason, the herem instruction must have been attributed to God by writers of scripture rather than coming from God Himself.

Which is a way of thinking that leads to all kinds of problems, not the least of which is to what extent the inspiration of scripture can be relied upon, or discerned and determined, by us rather dim-witted mortals. If we don’t like part of scripture that doesn’t seem Godly to us, can we just reclassify it as uninspired and shuffle on past it? By what standard do we determine what seems Godly to us? And where does that process stop, if it’s completely subjective?

I think the answer to the questions above is complex and difficult and far beyond my powers of comprehension even if it were within my powers of explication.

But here’s what I think.

  • God is merciful and loving. He is also just and righteous. We can’t handle that balance perfectly, and He can. This perplexes us, and we have a tendency to create God in our own image rather than accepting the vice-versa.

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  • God is sovereign. He created us, for His own purpose, to His own glory – and not to meet our standards of morality, however much we might think them to be perfect.

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  • He creates and destroys. He gives life, and He takes life. If you have difficulty with the concept of Him taking life or a city full of lives or the lives of 185,000 Assyrians at the hand of one angel or causing a flood that obliterates all kinds of life, you are going to have big, big problems with the idea of Him judging mankind and meting eternal punishment to those whom He deems disobedient – people who do, in fact, desperately deserve punishment for their hatred, violence, greed, slander, abuse, tortures, and murders. Was there even one of the consequences foretold by God in Deuteronomy 28 which were not visited upon His beloved people to discipline them?

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  • The instances in which herem are described in scripture were swift and sure. They were accomplished without rancor or pity – there was no time for either. They accomplished the destruction of cultures which had become so twisted that evil was thought to be good and good was considered to be evil. Captured kings were dismembered, or if killed, their corpses dishonored and displayed. Cult prostitution was rampant. Babies were sacrificed to idols made by hands. Scripture calls their practices “detestable” over and over again. The reason God required the destruction of such cultures was so that their evil would not infiltrate Israel and contaminate her culture, and that’s exactly what happened when His people failed to obey His command. They were to be His instruments of obliterating this evil from the land He was giving them so that they would never forget what His wrath might do to them.

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  • God did not love Israel any more or less than the nations around her. (Jonah 4:10-11) But a point came when Israel’s sin began to exceed that of the nations around her; she had not learned to excise sin, act justly, love mercy nor walk humbly with her God though her history was replete with the consequences of not doing so. Examples of herem went unheeded and/or unremembered. Repeated defeats and captivities had proven ineffective. Law would no longer suffice. Destroying Israel would not be instructive. Redemption was the only alternative.

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  • And if you have trouble with the idea of God taking lives that are not innocent, you are going to have insurmountable difficulties with the notion of a God who allows the life of His innocent Son to be brutally wrung from Him, blow-by-blow and blooddrop-by-blooddrop and breath-by-breath, naked, nailed to a cross, in front of His mother.

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  • This is all just a little beyond us. It does not fit within the limitations of the three-and-a-half pounds of head cheese comprising billions of neurons firing electrical impulses that go a little faster than 250 miles an hour inside our skulls. We need to get over ourselves, get past the idea that we know better than He does and stop judging Him and the way He has chosen to communicate with us through His word.

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  • God is God, and we are not.

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  • Thank God for that.

Eat This ‘Roll Forward’

/ W. Keith Brenton / 2 Comments

Maybe you’ve heard it taught before – the doctrine that all of the sins of Israel were not forgiven by God; but “rolled forward” to the cross.

Where did that teaching come from?

As nearly as I can tell, it didn’t come from scripture. I can’t find the term “roll forward” or “rolled forward” in the Bible at all.

I think the closest you’ll come to it is Hebrews 10:3-4:

But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins, because it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

And as for the part of the teaching that says the sins of the people of Israel were not forgiven … well, I have a problem with that because scripture has a problem with it.

In Leviticus 4:20, 26, 31 and 35; 5:10, 16, 18, and Numbers 15:25-28. Unintentional and accidental sins could be forgiven. Sins that weren’t understood to be sins could be forgiven.

And in Leviticus 6:7 and 19:22. Sins that restitution was made for could be forgiven.

And in Numbers 14:19-20. Some sins prayed about by the leader of the people could be – and were – forgiven.

And in 2 Chronicles 7:14 and Isaiah 33:15-24, God promised forgiveness for sins when penitence was shown.

And in Psalm 51:1-9, and 130:4; and Isaiah 43:25; and Micah 7:18, where God’s forgiving nature is recognized and praised.

How is that possible, if Hebrews 10:3-4 is true?

Because of the context of those verses – the surrounding chapter, Hebrews 10.

Only the blood of Christ – His sacrifice; His death; His burial; His resurrection – can bring about forgiveness of sins.

So one can only conclude that the power of His blood is as potent when “rolled back” through time all the way to Eden as it is “rolled forward” through time to its end. One can only determine that the blood of bulls and goats was powerless to do anything – except to serve as an “annual reminder of sins” – including any presumed “rolling forward” of sins from one era to another. God had no delight in it.

Now I realize that this is an inconvenient fact – a bitter-in-the-stomach roll – for those who would completely separate the Old Covenant from the New, and who maintain that there was a different kind of God in the Old Testament from the kind of God we find in the New, and who insist that what we do now in obedience is the only way anyone can or ever could achieve forgiveness.

Well, too-bad-and-have-a-Pepto-Bismol. Nobody achieves God’s forgiveness. Not by righteous acts of obedience, whether animal sacrifice or penitence or confession or even baptism. Nothing we can do, apart from the power of the blood of Christ, can save us or anyone who has ever lived. We accept that by obedience, just as those long before us accepted God’s grace and forgiveness by obedience. It’s not like any of us has done any heavy lifting in removing that burden – not even accepting relief from it by living lives of gratitude for the atonement that was made.

It isn’t our obedience that saves us. It’s His. We just have to accept that.

Christ Himself made the sacrifice. Only He could. Only He did.

That’s just the kind of God He is.

And He does not change:

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. ~ Hebrews 13:8

So I don’t think we have to worry about the eternal destiny of those under the Old Covenant. Guilt was never “rolled forward.”

Forgiveness “rolled back.”

Just A Little Setback ….

/ W. Keith Brenton / 1 Comment

Last night I was about to attach the last of the Atlas electrical switches to the control panel shelf of my model railroad layout when the shelf fell off the wall. The wooden brackets on which it was mounted just split in two at the joints.

Turns out those big, beefy wooden shelf brackets were assembled with wire nails – probably shot in with an electric gun. Not twisty nails; not corrugated nails: less-than-1/16″ diameter wire nails.

Fortunately, I had put 6-8″ of play in the wires already attached to switches mounted earlier, and the shelf only fell about 6 inches atop boxes underneath it (filled with scenery materials to be used later).

So this morning I rebuilt the brackets with big, long, beefy countersunk wood screws and liberal amounts of Elmer’s Wood Glue. I overbuilt them, in other words.

My late dad would be so proud.

Spirit and Truth

/ W. Keith Brenton / 2 Comments

God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth. ~ John 4:24

What does Jesus mean by that: “in spirit and in truth”?

I have heard it taught – perhaps you have, too – that when Jesus says “in spirit,” He means that the spirit of the worshiper is engaged in worship, and when He says “in truth,” He means that the worship obeys God’s commands for worship.

Where does that interpretation come from?

Does Jesus use the word “spirit” exclusively to describe the spirit of an individual person? Is it possible that He is speaking of the Holy Spirit within an individual person instead – or also?

Does Jesus use the word “truth” exclusively to describe God’s commands? Does He even use it to describe God’s commands at all? Is it possible that He is speaking of truth here as the accurate proclamation of fact (as He uses it a few verses before – 4:18)?

The quote above, of course, is not isolated. It is part of a conversation with the woman at the well near Sychar, Samaria in John 4. The entire conversation is about truth. The entire conversation is about Jesus: the Truth, the Living Water, the Messiah.

As nearly as I can tell, Jesus never uses the word “truth” in John or any other gospel (or through His Spirit in any New Testament writing) to describe a set of commands from God.

He uses it to describe prophecies He shares; He uses it to describe characteristics of God’s children; He uses it to describe Himself and God’s word. His followers later use it to describe the gospel; and will speak of walking in the truth and obeying the truth or the gospel – not as a set of instructions – but as a Christlike way of life.

Not once do I find “truth” used to describe anything but the accurate proclamation of fact.

In fact, one of Jesus’ points to the woman at the well is that man’s interpretation of God’s commands are not His commands at all; where one set of forefathers or another claimed as the unique place and way of worship was irrelevant. God’s desire is worship from the heart of the worshiper, wherever he/she is. (See Isaiah 29:13 and its context … and the reason Jesus quotes it in Matthew 15 and Mark 7.)

Jesus seems to speak on one occasion in scripture of an individual person’s spirit (Matthew 26:41; Mark 14:38). In virtually every other instance in the gospels, a writer refers to Jesus’ spirit (which He gives up at the cross) or evil spirits whom He casts out (plural) or the Holy Spirit (singular). In the remainder of the New Testament, the same holds true; the exceptions are when Stephen surrenders his spirit at his martyrdom (Acts 7:59) and several occasions in which writers speak of an individual’s spirit (Examples: Romans 8:16; 1 Corinthians 5:5, 7:34, 14:14-16).

But in the great majority of those passages in which a person’s individual spirit is mentioned, it is in the context of (hopefully) being united with the Holy Spirit. Don’t just take my word for this; check it out for yourself:

God’s desire is for His Spirit to be united with ours (1 Corinthians 3:16, 6:17; 2 Corinthians 1:21-22; Galatians 4:6; Ephesians 1:13, 2:22, 3:16, 5:18; 2 Timothy 1:14, 4:22; 1 John 3:24).

Is that what Jesus is communicating to the woman at the well in Sychar? He has not given up nor fully given out His Spirit at this point, nor has He taught His closest followers about His Spirit in those final days of His mortality.

But this is what He tells her in the verse right before the one quoted above:

“Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.” ~ John 4:23

The time was coming; the time had come. They were right on top of it. And He says this will happen, because it is the Father’s will.

So I’ve had to come to the conclusion that what Jesus means by the phrase “in spirit and in truth” means that, in order to truly worship God who is spirit, we must be united with His Holy Spirit; we must worship as a proclamation of truth from the heart that we thoroughly believe – loving Him with all our heart, mind, soul and strength.

And that His instruction has nothing to do with rules made up by man and attributed to God.

Facts Don’t Persuade Us

/ W. Keith Brenton / 1 Comment

Hat tip to Phil Wilson who tipped me off via Facebook this morning to this Boston Globe online article, “How Facts Backfire”:

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/07/11/how_facts_backfire/?page=full

The research described by the article confirms what most of us have suspected, I think, for a long time: that facts don’t persuade us. We accept the facts which support what we want to believe, and ignore or distort reported facts in order to conform with what we want to believe. And some of us – who have reached a really deep level of dishonesty with self – misreport or lie, inventing items which we portray as factual.

These ways we deal with facts affect the way we vote, the studies show – which does not bode well for our country.

More than than that, they affect the way we handle our businesses, our interactions with others, our lives and – you know it’s true – our faith.

It’s not a new phenomenon. Jesus had to refute it in Matthew 12:22-45, where Pharisees reinterpreted the fact that He had just exorcised a demon from a man who regained his sight and speech by saying: “It is only by Beelzebub, the prince of demons, that this fellow drives out demons.” They didn’t try to controvert the obvious fact that a demon had been exorcised. They just “put a spin” on it that conformed with what they wanted to believe about Jesus.

His response included some of the straightest talk ever about a house divided against itself, and the consequences of blaspheming the Holy Spirit – which I believe to include crediting the wondrous, beneficial and miraculous acts of the Spirit to Satan and his minions; in essence, calling His good “evil.” He calls it an eternal sin “which will not be forgiven.”

(Let’s remember that, the next time we’re thinking about bad-mouthing someone who claims to have an extraordinary experience and can’t help but wonder if it was God’s touch in their lives, shall we?)

Our resistance to facts which challenge our beliefs is bad news – not those facts themselves. In a society which largely no longer knows the difference between a fact and a premise, cannot distinguish inductive from deductive logic or exhorted knowledge from experiential knowledge from empirical knowledge, knows little to nothing about logical fallacies, has little regard for the balance of passion with reason – this can be disastrous news.

What bothers me as much as anything else – or more – is that I occasionally catch myself resisting the facts.

And that I should probably be catching myself more frequently when I do it.

At What Point Are We Saved?

/ W. Keith Brenton / 10 Comments

This question, perhaps above all others, has caused contention and division within the body of Christ – His church – for the better (or worse) part of two thousand years.

Are we saved at the moment we believe? The moment we repent? The moment we confess Christ as Son of God? The moment we are baptized? The moment we receive the Holy Spirit?

It’s important to those who want to be contentious and divisive because the moment at which one is saved may be the key to which aspect of our salvation they wish to promote above all the rest – as if one were more important than the others; or as if the steps along the path toward God in Christ must be taken in a certain order; or as if taking a certain number of steps is all up to us and does not involve grace at all until after we alone have taken them ….

It’s important to them so they can establish their own beliefs as uniquely right, correct, and holy – and their own fellowship sharing those beliefs to be uniquely approved by God and saved, and all others heretical and condemned to hellfire.

May I suggest that Jesus describes the moment we are saved in Matthew 25?

That it’s the moment when the Master, the King – when Jesus Himself – either says “Well done, good and faithful servant!” or “Throw that worthless servant outside into the darkness!”?

That it’s the moment when HE decides, not when WE decide?

That it’s the moment culminating all the moments between “the hour I first believed” (Amazing Grace) and “the hour of my departure for worlds unknown” (Be With Me, Lord)? All the decisions we have made; the choices we’ve chosen; the steps we’ve taken; the acts of obedience and gratitude and trust in His grace that we have shown – all in partnership with God and Christ through the Holy Spirit?

That’s what I’d like to propose.

So, am I suggesting that we cannot know until then whether we are saved?

Yes, that is exactly what I am suggesting.

However, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit is our seal of redemption (Ephesians 1:13; 4:30); we can approach God with confidence by the blood of Christ (Ephesians 3:12; Hebrews 10:19).

We believe that grace is real, and that is called faith not knowledge.

Through faith we are saved:

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— Ephesians 2:8

… and that faith itself is not even wholly our doing; it is the gift of God.

So, am I suggesting that we have nothing to do with the process?

No, not at all! Our willingness to extend our faith – to believe, to stop pursuing evil and self and begin pursuing good and God, to confess His Son for Who He IS, to immerse ourselves in the water of living His life in this world by the power of His Holy Spirit – is absolutely essential to a salvation that begins in this life and never ends. As we receive His grace, we extend it to others; become channels of that blessing to those around us. We feed the starving; give water to the parched; show hospitality to the homeless; look after the sick; visit the imprisoned. We demonstrate that God cares about the whole person; in this life as well as the next.

That point of view takes the emphasis off of a minimalistic “five-steps-and-you’re-done” salvation. It restores the fullness of the gospel lived out rather than just intellectually acknowledged in a reduced-calorie recipe for redemption which has no salvific value at all if not demonstrated daily instead of displayed once on a Sunday in a church and fondly recalled as the-day-I-was-saved-so-that-now-I-can-go-back-to-living-the-life-I-want-to-live. That may be the moment our salvation begins, but it is certainly not the be-all-and-end-all of it.

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. ~ Galatians 2:20

We can have absolute confidence – faith – in what Christ has done, even when we have lost faith in the flesh and in checklist-salvation and even in ourselves; our own ability to be-good-all-the-time-and-do-all-the-right-things-and-believe-all-the-correct-beliefs-and-obey-all-of-the-church-rules.

One more time: it is our faith in Him which saves us; not in ourselves.

But remember: it was His faith in us which led Him to the cross on our behalf.

And that deserves our whole-hearted, life-long response of faith, gratitude, and worship. It means being prepared, with lamps expectantly trimmed. It means knowing the Master’s desire for a return on his investment, and His faith in us as re-investors of the deposit He has made on our salvation. It means that faith-in-the-living separates the sheep from the goats.

That kind of service will bear fruit for His kingdom, bring others and ourselves closer to Him – and it will not go unrewarded; it will inevitably lead to the moment we are saved.

That’s the message of Matthew 25.

You can have confidence in it.

‘What Really Matters’ at New Wineskins

/ W. Keith Brenton / Leave a comment

What Really MattersGuest Editor Sara Barton introduces the July-August edition of New Wineskins with her article titled after this issue’s theme: “What Really Matters: Conversations with Twenty-Somethings.”

Prepare to have your preconceptions blown away in the next few days as you read some young people you’ve probably never heard of – but will hear from, and about, in the near future!

The Fourth of July

/ W. Keith Brenton / 6 Comments

Now that it’s over, and the subject is no longer quite as inflammatory by being outdated, I’d like to tell you what I believe about celebrating the Fourth, saying the Pledge of Allegiance, singing “The Star-Spangled Banner,” displaying the flag and doing any or all of those things in a church building whether on a Sunday morning or not.

I believe Romans 14. Specifically, on the point of the subject at hand, I believe verses 5 through 13.

One man considers one day more sacred than another; another man considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. He who regards one day as special, does so to the Lord. He who eats meat, eats to the Lord, for he gives thanks to God; and he who abstains, does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God. For none of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone. If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.

For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living. You, then, why do you judge your brother? Or why do you look down on your brother? For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat. It is written:
” ‘As surely as I live,’ says the Lord,
‘every knee will bow before me;
every tongue will confess to God.’ ” So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God.

Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in your brother’s way.

This is not a cop-out answer. I believe it is the right answer, the complete answer, the scriptural answer, the answer inspired by the Holy Spirit of God and Jesus Christ, His Son about referring to our country in worship.

It ain’t right. It ain’t wrong. Get over it, folks.

Everybody’s going to have a country. Everybody’s going to want what’s best for his/her country. That doesn’t mean that everybody wants only his own country to prosper or to know of God’s love or to be blessed. But let’s face it, the folks in every country have their own flags and their own national birthdays and their own patriotic songs and pledges and fealties and loyalties and preferences.

Israel’s leaders (and later, Judah’s leaders) prayed for God to bless their nation. God often indulged their requests – when they were obedient. And when they weren’t, He reminded them through His spokespersons that He didn’t love them any more or less than the people of the nations around them.

Singing patriotic songs at church is not essentially different from singing songs like “Come to the Church in the Wild Wood” or “Precious Memories,” which thoroughly bless some people but have no intrinsic spiritual value (other than, perhaps, an oblique reference to “unseen angels”). Some patriotic songs – “America the Beautiful,” for instance, actually contain a prayer for God’s ongoing blessing of the land and its people. They don’t include or exclude others by not mentioning them. They are what they are: patriotic songs.

And to exclude them entirely because they are not specifically worship songs to God is just silly. We’re also advised in scripture to “Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs” as well as to “Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” The verses sit right next to each other (Ephesians 5:19-20). They are co-equally important. Don’t give me a bunch of hooberbloob about not singing entertaining songs if you have ever been uplifted or blessed by any of the songs you’ve sung (and heard; you know you’re hearing them, too) at church. They’re meant to be entertaining to God, and above all else, to help us help each other recognize and confess His extraordinary wisdom, power, justice, mercy and love.

My advice (and that’s all it is) is to choose worship activities wisely and sparingly if they don’t express that kind of worship. We only give ourselves about an hour at best – out of the 168 that God gives us each week – to praise His name together and build each other up. Why not choose songs, pledges, oaths and symbols that express our worship as – first of all – His people; His nation … and incidentally of this nation that He seems to have superabundantly blessed?

Let’s do a few things which recognize that perception of ours and which bless people who have especially deep loyalties to this country – who may have served to defend her, or have lost dear ones who did – but let’s not go overboard with it. Keep first things first. Give honor to whom honor is due (Romans 13:7) and give glory and worship to Whom it is due (Psalm 29:2).

Let it all be done in peace for mutual edification (Romans 14:19); patriot for pacificst and pacifist for patriot.

Let all be done – eating/drinking, fasting; day-observing, day-ignoring – let all be done to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31).

And, uh, please … no fireworks inside the church building!

Why Micah 6:8 is My Favorite Bible Verse

/ W. Keith Brenton / 5 Comments

He has showed you, O man, what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God. ~ Micah 6:8

Micah 6:8

  • Because everyone who believes, also wants to know what God desires of them.
  • Because this verse tells us succinctly what God desires of us.
  • Because Jesus more-or-less quotes it in Matthew 23:23 – in Micah’s order. (What is faithfulness if not walking humbly with God?)
  • Because it puts in imperative language the very same principles that scripture expresses as most important: that we should love the Lord our God with heart (loving mercy), mind (discerning and dispensing what is justice), strength (walking is an activity requiring the strength God has given us), and soul (with God; communion of soul-to-Soul).
  • Because this is the way Jesus lived.
  • Because this is the way I want to live, and this verse makes it easy to keep that in mind.

That’s why.

And if that’s not enough, I could probably think of more reasons.