I wanted to present an additional idea to my previous discourse on First Principles and faith.
A First Principle is a philosophical term for a "basic, foundational proposition or assumption that cannot be deduced from any other proposition or assumption." An example would be the syllogism: Men are different from women. Kylie Minogue is a woman, and I am a man. Conclusion: I am not Kylie Minogue. The First Principle would be the starting point that we accept to be true, that men are different from women. Everything else logically follows from that stated truth.
I was having an extended discussion with my friend Willy about First Principles as applied to personal faith. At a certain point, he remarked, we all have a point where we decide to say, "Fuck it! I accept this as true." For a lot of people you run into, finding the First Principle might be as easy as the following hypothetical conversation:
Why do you call yourself a Christian? Because I believe in God. Why do you believe in God? Because the Bible says He's real and good. Why do you believe the Bible?
Because it's true. Why is it true? Because it's the Bible.
For that person, the assumed truth of the Bible is the philosophical starting place of faith. For a more curious or inquisitive type, it might go further:
Why do you believe the Bible is true? Because I've done a lot of research, and archeological investigation really corroborates a lot of the historical personages and events recorded in the Bible. Why do you take those as reliable? Well, these archeologists have described their methods and research, and they sound pretty legitimate, which I've decided is convincing enough for me.
The point being that everyone, after a series of "why" questions, has a point at which they base their faith on a First Principle. Does the fact that everyone, even Christians, might espouse a different First Principle for their faith or beliefs undermine the legitimacy of faith? On the contrary, that's the nature of faith. At a certain point, we decide to believe.
My friend Michael also made an incredibly insightful observation about the First Principle for Christians. He said that one day, he had begun, offhand, to question things by asking "why" in iterative succession. Why do I exist? To glorify and magnify God. Why is it necessary or right to do that? Because God is awesome and good and His glorification is the right thing to do, reflecting that magnitude of light and goodness. Why?
He found that at the very root of all these series of questionings lay the answer, as if from God: I Am.
He tried it several times, with a number of different starting points about life and the universe, and every time, after he asked why and why and why, Michael found himself at the basic First Principle that He Is.
Why is the sky blue? Because of the way the ozone and other chemicals emanate electromagnetic energy in specific wavelengths interpreted in bands by the cones in our eyes? Why do they do that? Because God designed them that way. What is the purpose and evidence behind that? Because He created all things for His glory. Why? Because He Did. Because, Michael, I Am.
Maybe if we ask why honestly, believer or nonbeliever, we'd find ourselves all in the same place. Maybe if we believe in Jesus, then all our First Principles are the same after all. Maybe God did more than tell us His name, and that's enough to anchor every question important enough to ask.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Obligatory Christmas Post
The real bailout happened 2008 years ago.
Boy, do I wish I could meet the person who came up with that. I think I'd smack him in the face and shake his hand at the same time.
Boy, do I wish I could meet the person who came up with that. I think I'd smack him in the face and shake his hand at the same time.
One Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church
My experiences with the Catholic Church have not been that extensive, but in the past few years, I have had the great opportunity to be friends with a few devout Catholics and thus the chance to actually ask some questions instead of relying on mostly negative stereotypes that had previously formed my conception of Catholicism.
Long sentence.
Like many Protestants (I'm not sure I fit that label in its truest sense, but I'm not Catholic, right?), I had grown up thinking of Catholicism as a hyper traditionalist, dogmatic, and legalistic institution. They prayed blindly to dead saints. They worshiped the Virgin Mary. They had extra apocryphal books that they considered Scripture. They held services in Latin, for seemingly no apparent reason, since the Bible was written in Hebrew and Aramaic. At one point in history, they sold indulgences and forced the real Christians to break off in a Reformation, for 95 reasons. They were monolithic in their stance against divorce, abortion, and fun.
I asked my first Catholic friend to explain the reasoning behind a lot of their ideas, and she partially answered my queries. She clarified that she doesn't pray to the canonized saints, but rather prays that they would intercede for her, the way we might ask a priest or parent or righteous person to pray for us. She cited James 5:16 as a biblical basis, where it states that "the prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective."
It seemed to me like the whole practice of praying to St. Christopher as a patron saint for travel is a large extrapolation from the associated Scriptural text. We talked about some more of the larger practices in the Catholic Church -- that the papacy comes from Scriptures like Matthew 16:17-20, among others -- and it seemed to me that Catholics would have to make a lot of leaps of faith from specific isolated verses of Scripture to the way they insisted was the right way to practice and apply them. Can you really go from "on this rock, I will build my Church" to having a pope seated in the Vatican who occasionally is infallible in Magisterium? Catholicism was more legitimate than I had thought, but only if you were willing to make big stretches in faith.
Also, any time I attended a Catholic service, I automatically think of that final montage in The Godfather where Michael Corleone has everyone whacked during the ceremony for his godson. Can't help it.
I went on a month-long road trip with another friend who had converted from Protestant to Catholic during his freshman year of college. He is one of the smartest guys I know. He was patient and answered a lot of my questions. Don't a lot of people in the Catholic Church just blindly follow a lot of tradition and dogma? Yes, that's true, and it's a problem, but it's also a problem for every denomination out there. Isn't it a huge stretch to derive the whole institution of the papacy from isolated Scriptures here and there? The Protestant denominations also have practices that are stretches of faith: the idea that tithing is a modern obligation, for example. And so on.
The most intriguing and challenging aspect of his Catholic faith was the validation (or not) of church history. We could argue doctrinal points all day, and we did. But a lot of his reason for belief was that he saw that the Catholic Church had preserved the things of God from Christ's first coming to the present day. That in the same way that Israel had preserved the Torah and been witness to the nations of God's law, love, and character, so the Catholic Church has been God's instrument over the last 2000 years. That the Catholic priests and scribes had been the ones to maintain and consolidate the canon of Scripture and that they had been the ones to make important decisions for Christendom in councils and diets. And if God had used the Catholic Church as His true body for the last 2000 years, then that was pretty compelling reason to join Team Catholicism.
I don't share my friend's view of history, but it was more legitimate than the blind loyalty to the Catholic Church that I had previously imagined.
Whenever a person believes anything, he or she makes a decision, at some point, to believe, no matter what the evidence or lack thereof dictates. Philosophically, every set of beliefs comes from an immovable "first principle," where you basically say, "I'm going to accept this as true." Wikipedia's example is that for the syllogism "All men are mortal; Socrates was a man. Socrates was mortal," the first principle was "All men are mortal." You accept this statement as truth, and the rest follows from logic.
It makes sense to me that faith would also follow a first principle. Okay, we Protestants really like to believe that our faith is based on undeniable evidence and reason. But everyone has a different point at which they choose to believe something is the truth. For most people, you ask why they believe in God, and they say, the Bible says so, and you say, why do you accept the Bible is true? And they say, because it is, and you've reached the end of their paradigm. That the Bible is true is a first principle for them. For others, you would need to go further to find the first principle -- they have to put their trust in the fact that biblical archeology is true, or they would have to do further research to see whether the archeology was done legitimately, or they would have to do even further research to see whether the reports auditing the archeology were verifiable -- you get the idea. Everyone has a point where they say, "Screw it. I believe this much is true, and everything follows from this."
For the Protestant thinker, this identifying of first principles and taking small leaps of faith is a never-ending process. Every issue and every practice, I have to wrestle with why I believe it and how I should practice it and whether Scripture or doctrine really says what I think it says and whether it makes sense with the world around me, a recurrent process largely chronicled in this blog. And here is the main distinction I see with the Catholic faith. When they take it on faith that the Catholic Church is true, then they have made one astoundingly large conceptual leap of faith -- but everything else Catholic follows from that because they can then trust the Church's authority. Where I might have to question whether the Trinity is a real, necessary part of my belief, where I might have to question everything, the Catholic believer can trust the authority of the Church that he has chosen to subscribe to. The Protestant believer has to make many small leaps of faith and decisions to believe in whatever constitutes his day-to-day faith. The Catholic believer has to make one huge leap of faith.
For me, right now, that intellectual leap is too large, so I don't think I'm in any danger of becoming Catholic. I still don't agree with the history or a lot of their practices that seem to stray too far from their biblical bases. But here are two things I do like about the Catholic Church at large.
The first is their reverence in worship. I like the way they seem to take God seriously. I like the feel of Catholic services: it's hard to sit through all those prayers and liturgy and look at all the imagery around the churches and not ponder, with some sense of wonder, the God who is so much bigger than you. Sometimes Protestant services and gatherings have the atmosphere of having been thrown together at the last minute, like a barnyard shindig. I pray a lot in my boxers right after I get off the can, and I know I'm not supposed to be legalistic or self-righteous, but I feel like I do owe the King of the Universe and Lord of my life more reverence than I give Him most days.
The second is their strong emphasis on the importance of family.
I guess in the end, I'm happy where I am, and I'm happy I'm not a Catholic. But they're less ridiculous than I had thought they were originally.
Long sentence.
Like many Protestants (I'm not sure I fit that label in its truest sense, but I'm not Catholic, right?), I had grown up thinking of Catholicism as a hyper traditionalist, dogmatic, and legalistic institution. They prayed blindly to dead saints. They worshiped the Virgin Mary. They had extra apocryphal books that they considered Scripture. They held services in Latin, for seemingly no apparent reason, since the Bible was written in Hebrew and Aramaic. At one point in history, they sold indulgences and forced the real Christians to break off in a Reformation, for 95 reasons. They were monolithic in their stance against divorce, abortion, and fun.
I asked my first Catholic friend to explain the reasoning behind a lot of their ideas, and she partially answered my queries. She clarified that she doesn't pray to the canonized saints, but rather prays that they would intercede for her, the way we might ask a priest or parent or righteous person to pray for us. She cited James 5:16 as a biblical basis, where it states that "the prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective."
It seemed to me like the whole practice of praying to St. Christopher as a patron saint for travel is a large extrapolation from the associated Scriptural text. We talked about some more of the larger practices in the Catholic Church -- that the papacy comes from Scriptures like Matthew 16:17-20, among others -- and it seemed to me that Catholics would have to make a lot of leaps of faith from specific isolated verses of Scripture to the way they insisted was the right way to practice and apply them. Can you really go from "on this rock, I will build my Church" to having a pope seated in the Vatican who occasionally is infallible in Magisterium? Catholicism was more legitimate than I had thought, but only if you were willing to make big stretches in faith.
Also, any time I attended a Catholic service, I automatically think of that final montage in The Godfather where Michael Corleone has everyone whacked during the ceremony for his godson. Can't help it.
I went on a month-long road trip with another friend who had converted from Protestant to Catholic during his freshman year of college. He is one of the smartest guys I know. He was patient and answered a lot of my questions. Don't a lot of people in the Catholic Church just blindly follow a lot of tradition and dogma? Yes, that's true, and it's a problem, but it's also a problem for every denomination out there. Isn't it a huge stretch to derive the whole institution of the papacy from isolated Scriptures here and there? The Protestant denominations also have practices that are stretches of faith: the idea that tithing is a modern obligation, for example. And so on.
The most intriguing and challenging aspect of his Catholic faith was the validation (or not) of church history. We could argue doctrinal points all day, and we did. But a lot of his reason for belief was that he saw that the Catholic Church had preserved the things of God from Christ's first coming to the present day. That in the same way that Israel had preserved the Torah and been witness to the nations of God's law, love, and character, so the Catholic Church has been God's instrument over the last 2000 years. That the Catholic priests and scribes had been the ones to maintain and consolidate the canon of Scripture and that they had been the ones to make important decisions for Christendom in councils and diets. And if God had used the Catholic Church as His true body for the last 2000 years, then that was pretty compelling reason to join Team Catholicism.
I don't share my friend's view of history, but it was more legitimate than the blind loyalty to the Catholic Church that I had previously imagined.
Whenever a person believes anything, he or she makes a decision, at some point, to believe, no matter what the evidence or lack thereof dictates. Philosophically, every set of beliefs comes from an immovable "first principle," where you basically say, "I'm going to accept this as true." Wikipedia's example is that for the syllogism "All men are mortal; Socrates was a man. Socrates was mortal," the first principle was "All men are mortal." You accept this statement as truth, and the rest follows from logic.
It makes sense to me that faith would also follow a first principle. Okay, we Protestants really like to believe that our faith is based on undeniable evidence and reason. But everyone has a different point at which they choose to believe something is the truth. For most people, you ask why they believe in God, and they say, the Bible says so, and you say, why do you accept the Bible is true? And they say, because it is, and you've reached the end of their paradigm. That the Bible is true is a first principle for them. For others, you would need to go further to find the first principle -- they have to put their trust in the fact that biblical archeology is true, or they would have to do further research to see whether the archeology was done legitimately, or they would have to do even further research to see whether the reports auditing the archeology were verifiable -- you get the idea. Everyone has a point where they say, "Screw it. I believe this much is true, and everything follows from this."
For the Protestant thinker, this identifying of first principles and taking small leaps of faith is a never-ending process. Every issue and every practice, I have to wrestle with why I believe it and how I should practice it and whether Scripture or doctrine really says what I think it says and whether it makes sense with the world around me, a recurrent process largely chronicled in this blog. And here is the main distinction I see with the Catholic faith. When they take it on faith that the Catholic Church is true, then they have made one astoundingly large conceptual leap of faith -- but everything else Catholic follows from that because they can then trust the Church's authority. Where I might have to question whether the Trinity is a real, necessary part of my belief, where I might have to question everything, the Catholic believer can trust the authority of the Church that he has chosen to subscribe to. The Protestant believer has to make many small leaps of faith and decisions to believe in whatever constitutes his day-to-day faith. The Catholic believer has to make one huge leap of faith.
For me, right now, that intellectual leap is too large, so I don't think I'm in any danger of becoming Catholic. I still don't agree with the history or a lot of their practices that seem to stray too far from their biblical bases. But here are two things I do like about the Catholic Church at large.
The first is their reverence in worship. I like the way they seem to take God seriously. I like the feel of Catholic services: it's hard to sit through all those prayers and liturgy and look at all the imagery around the churches and not ponder, with some sense of wonder, the God who is so much bigger than you. Sometimes Protestant services and gatherings have the atmosphere of having been thrown together at the last minute, like a barnyard shindig. I pray a lot in my boxers right after I get off the can, and I know I'm not supposed to be legalistic or self-righteous, but I feel like I do owe the King of the Universe and Lord of my life more reverence than I give Him most days.
The second is their strong emphasis on the importance of family.
I guess in the end, I'm happy where I am, and I'm happy I'm not a Catholic. But they're less ridiculous than I had thought they were originally.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Shorts, Part One
Some days, I have original thoughts:
If you do a respectable ab workout, then it really hurts to do pullups, which must mean that pullups are an ab workout.
When people say, "Happy belated birthday," the sentiment they mean is a belated happy birthday. The phrase unintentionally shifts the blame from the negligent person who forgot your birthday to you for having a birthday belatedly. Good job, latecomer.
If you've ever wondered why they put Indian fennel seeds in Italian sausage, you've probably speculated that it's to make the sausage taste better. But it's probably because Indian fennel seeds are phytoestrogenic, so the effective way to be able to ingest Indian fennel seeds without turning into a woman would be to accompany them with a giant amalgamation of delicious pig meat.
The lack of hair continuity between chest hair and facial hair is probably because the body is designed for heat exchange around the carotid arteries in the neck.
"Wasabi" could almost be a dyslexic kid's exclamatory equivalent of "I saw a bee!"
The next six months, and frankly, the next four years will involve a lot of isolated, shift work in the Navy. I may not have regular opportunity to attend church or to plug into Christian fellowship. I think an earlier version of me would have considered a period of my life where I didn't have both an active ministry and explicit spiritual sources and outlets a wasted time period. Maybe, maybe not. Is that why God let Moses sit in the desert for 40 years before calling him to do something? Is that why He let Jesus be a carpenter for 30? Sometimes you're supposed to do "Christian things," but I don't think you're wrong if it doesn't look like two discipleship meetings and a small group every week. You just have to be ready to up and move when God decides to "use you again."
Did Jacob the Patriarch do anything worthwhile for God? He stole a birthright, wrestled an Angel, and demanded a blessing. It seems like his most noteworthy accomplishment was fathering a dozen or so male children, which probably makes more worthy the fact that he worked diligently for 14 years for the right wife. [Women: Insert snide comment about the ratio of men's to women's work in raising children.] And yet somehow he became the namesake of Israel. Jacob have I loved, indeed.
If someone tells you, oh, they've been to China, you should probably ask what Beijing and one section of the Great Wall were like.
If you went to Japan for a few weeks and didn't eat any sushi at all, you're probably my girlfriend.
The idea behind the Advent Conspiracy is a good one, but I think for my grandparents, giving nice gifts at Christmas and birthdays is one of the few and best ways they know how to love us. And I've thought about asking for nothing for Christmas, or a donation to some cause, but I think they would feel sad that they didn't get to buy a gift for me. The more loving thing to do here, for them, is to receive a gift graciously with a smile.
It'd be interesting to see what percentage of people who saw the new James Bond film knew what the words "quantum" and "solace" mean. Probably all the 11th graders.
If anyone makes a Christian pun on the term "Crossfit," I might die a little on the inside.
In the Roman era, warriors and soldiers wore red so that if they bled on the battlefield, their crimson wounds would be disguised. Nowadays, most of the world's military forces have uniform pants that are khaki brown. What are they hoping won't show in brown pants?
I wonder if most men in the world would be better men if they had ever been in one good fistfight.
If you do a respectable ab workout, then it really hurts to do pullups, which must mean that pullups are an ab workout.
When people say, "Happy belated birthday," the sentiment they mean is a belated happy birthday. The phrase unintentionally shifts the blame from the negligent person who forgot your birthday to you for having a birthday belatedly. Good job, latecomer.
If you've ever wondered why they put Indian fennel seeds in Italian sausage, you've probably speculated that it's to make the sausage taste better. But it's probably because Indian fennel seeds are phytoestrogenic, so the effective way to be able to ingest Indian fennel seeds without turning into a woman would be to accompany them with a giant amalgamation of delicious pig meat.
The lack of hair continuity between chest hair and facial hair is probably because the body is designed for heat exchange around the carotid arteries in the neck.
"Wasabi" could almost be a dyslexic kid's exclamatory equivalent of "I saw a bee!"
The next six months, and frankly, the next four years will involve a lot of isolated, shift work in the Navy. I may not have regular opportunity to attend church or to plug into Christian fellowship. I think an earlier version of me would have considered a period of my life where I didn't have both an active ministry and explicit spiritual sources and outlets a wasted time period. Maybe, maybe not. Is that why God let Moses sit in the desert for 40 years before calling him to do something? Is that why He let Jesus be a carpenter for 30? Sometimes you're supposed to do "Christian things," but I don't think you're wrong if it doesn't look like two discipleship meetings and a small group every week. You just have to be ready to up and move when God decides to "use you again."
Did Jacob the Patriarch do anything worthwhile for God? He stole a birthright, wrestled an Angel, and demanded a blessing. It seems like his most noteworthy accomplishment was fathering a dozen or so male children, which probably makes more worthy the fact that he worked diligently for 14 years for the right wife. [Women: Insert snide comment about the ratio of men's to women's work in raising children.] And yet somehow he became the namesake of Israel. Jacob have I loved, indeed.
If someone tells you, oh, they've been to China, you should probably ask what Beijing and one section of the Great Wall were like.
If you went to Japan for a few weeks and didn't eat any sushi at all, you're probably my girlfriend.
The idea behind the Advent Conspiracy is a good one, but I think for my grandparents, giving nice gifts at Christmas and birthdays is one of the few and best ways they know how to love us. And I've thought about asking for nothing for Christmas, or a donation to some cause, but I think they would feel sad that they didn't get to buy a gift for me. The more loving thing to do here, for them, is to receive a gift graciously with a smile.
It'd be interesting to see what percentage of people who saw the new James Bond film knew what the words "quantum" and "solace" mean. Probably all the 11th graders.
If anyone makes a Christian pun on the term "Crossfit," I might die a little on the inside.
In the Roman era, warriors and soldiers wore red so that if they bled on the battlefield, their crimson wounds would be disguised. Nowadays, most of the world's military forces have uniform pants that are khaki brown. What are they hoping won't show in brown pants?
I wonder if most men in the world would be better men if they had ever been in one good fistfight.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Fhqwhgads
We were talking about my friend [Fhqwhgads] at lunch, and someone asked how Fhqwhgads was doing, and someone else said, "Fhqwhgads is hanging on right now," and it was generally remarked upon that Fhqwhgads is the sort of person who always seems to be hanging on to life.
Fhqwhgads is very needy, emotionally and spiritually. A lot of the times, when you can classify your friends into people who invest and pour themselves into other people and people who need to be invested and poured into, Fhqwhgads falls squarely in the latter category. Fhqwhgads always ends up precariously balanced on razor-thin ice over a terrifying, rushing river of emotional and spiritual meltdown -- the world ends easily and often for Fhqwhgads. Fhqwhgads often seems unable to figure out the trick to living life. Fhqwhgads cries a lot.
According to Jesus, Fhqwhgads should be considered blessed because Fhqwhgads is poor in spirit and is one who mourns and therefore will have the Kingdom of Heaven and be comforted. Fhqwhgads should be considered like the Woman at the Well, whom Jesus meets directly and promises living water. Fhqwhgads should be considered like the tax collector who prayed with downcast eyes and went home justified instead of the righteous Pharisee. Fhqwhgads is the sort of broken that God can love the best.
If you don't know anyone like Fhqwhgads, then you don't know how hard it is to be Fhqwhgads's friend. It is a never-ending endeavor of forgiveness, humility, service, sacrifice, vulnerability, hardship, and love. It is difficult. Sometimes I fail and I think that Fhqwhgads is just a drain, not a giver or a source, someone who just needs and needs when all you do is give and give. God help us all when we think like that because it's hard not to sometimes. If I can't figure out why Fhqwhgads is blessed, and sometimes I really can't, then I'm no better off than Fhqwhgads.
Fhqwhgads is very needy, emotionally and spiritually. A lot of the times, when you can classify your friends into people who invest and pour themselves into other people and people who need to be invested and poured into, Fhqwhgads falls squarely in the latter category. Fhqwhgads always ends up precariously balanced on razor-thin ice over a terrifying, rushing river of emotional and spiritual meltdown -- the world ends easily and often for Fhqwhgads. Fhqwhgads often seems unable to figure out the trick to living life. Fhqwhgads cries a lot.
According to Jesus, Fhqwhgads should be considered blessed because Fhqwhgads is poor in spirit and is one who mourns and therefore will have the Kingdom of Heaven and be comforted. Fhqwhgads should be considered like the Woman at the Well, whom Jesus meets directly and promises living water. Fhqwhgads should be considered like the tax collector who prayed with downcast eyes and went home justified instead of the righteous Pharisee. Fhqwhgads is the sort of broken that God can love the best.
If you don't know anyone like Fhqwhgads, then you don't know how hard it is to be Fhqwhgads's friend. It is a never-ending endeavor of forgiveness, humility, service, sacrifice, vulnerability, hardship, and love. It is difficult. Sometimes I fail and I think that Fhqwhgads is just a drain, not a giver or a source, someone who just needs and needs when all you do is give and give. God help us all when we think like that because it's hard not to sometimes. If I can't figure out why Fhqwhgads is blessed, and sometimes I really can't, then I'm no better off than Fhqwhgads.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
The Great Commission
The most recognizable rendition of the Great Commission comes from Matthew 28:
"Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, to the mountain which Jesus had appointed for them. When they saw Him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, 'All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.'"
In essence, Jesus says, "Hey guys, this one is from Me, and I have authority everywhere now. Go, Make disciples, Baptize, and Teach them."
If you look online, you'll find a lot of very strong statements on TGC, including "It's not the Great Suggestion," and "It goes without saying that ALL Christians have a responsibility to fulfill the Great Commission." It does go with saying that "The Great Commission" is not a term ascribed to this passage by the Bible, kind of like the term "Trinity." How can we determine whether this specific command from Jesus is to the eleven disciples He was directly addressing or to every Christian in every generation? I don't believe it goes without saying at all, so here are some thoughts:
1. Some would say that based on Mark 16:20 and Romans 16:25-26, the gospel has already been taken to "all nations." Which clearly, at this time period, wouldn't really mean all the nations of the world, but when The Great Commission uses the words "all nations," and those other two verses talk about the gospel having "been made known to all nations," it would seem like a fulfillment of a specific, finite command.
It reminds me of the case where Jesus cries out, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones the ones sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! See! Your house is left to you desolate, for I say to you, you shall see Me no more till you say, 'Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord!'" And after reading that, you have to balance whether salvation will return to the Jewish people only after they have turned from evil and sought His face (2 Chronicles 7:14), or whether that Scripture had more specific tie-ins to the fact that, in Matthew 21, the Jewish masses in Jerusalem had welcomed Jesus into the city shouting, "Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord!" The broader viewpoint is often more compelling and convicting, but the latter has enough Scriptural basis to make you wonder if this prophecy of Jesus is a more finite, specific case.
2. It's pretty clear that we are supposed to serve as the means of God's gospel going to the nations. Romans 10 makes the case, "How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they are sent?" If believers are supposed to be the means of God's salvation reaching the world, then the Great Commission certainly supports that end.
3. The idea that Jesus uses the phrase "to the very end of the age" suggests that His command covers a larger time frame than the lifetimes of the eleven disciples. It's not immediately apparent what "the very end of the age" means, but it's probably longer than one generation.
4. If the eleven disciples were supposed to teach people to "observe all that Jesus commanded," then they should probably teach their disciples to observe this last command of Jesus to "go and make disciples." So the Great Commission, by including this "teach" command, is self-perpetuating, like a "Go To" function. That's just good, solid algorithmic logic.
5. The kicker for me is that my faith and probably yours is a direct result of Christians being obedient to the Great Commission. Even if it's not clear from Scripture that the Great Commission is intended for all Christians, the fact that you and I are believers in Christ is a testament to many Christians in many generations taking this command to heart and making disciples. That seems like pretty strong evidence that they were doing what they were supposed to be doing.
I think most people would agree with me that we are supposed to follow the Great Commission, that we are sent with a mission ("commission" -- "with a mission") by the highest Authority to Go, to Make disciples, to Baptize them in His name, and to Teach them everything Jesus said.
So we shouldn't be, but we probably will be, challenged by the following queries:
Is the directive "of all nations" for every single believer to take to heart, or a directive to the body of Christ at large? In other words, does every believer have an obligation to be nation-minded, or should the body of Christ as a whole be targeting to all nations?
How many disciples have you made? Who are they?
Where have you Gone? How are you Making disciples? How have you Baptized them? What have you Taught them?
"Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, to the mountain which Jesus had appointed for them. When they saw Him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, 'All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.'"
In essence, Jesus says, "Hey guys, this one is from Me, and I have authority everywhere now. Go, Make disciples, Baptize, and Teach them."
If you look online, you'll find a lot of very strong statements on TGC, including "It's not the Great Suggestion," and "It goes without saying that ALL Christians have a responsibility to fulfill the Great Commission." It does go with saying that "The Great Commission" is not a term ascribed to this passage by the Bible, kind of like the term "Trinity." How can we determine whether this specific command from Jesus is to the eleven disciples He was directly addressing or to every Christian in every generation? I don't believe it goes without saying at all, so here are some thoughts:
1. Some would say that based on Mark 16:20 and Romans 16:25-26, the gospel has already been taken to "all nations." Which clearly, at this time period, wouldn't really mean all the nations of the world, but when The Great Commission uses the words "all nations," and those other two verses talk about the gospel having "been made known to all nations," it would seem like a fulfillment of a specific, finite command.
It reminds me of the case where Jesus cries out, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones the ones sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! See! Your house is left to you desolate, for I say to you, you shall see Me no more till you say, 'Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord!'" And after reading that, you have to balance whether salvation will return to the Jewish people only after they have turned from evil and sought His face (2 Chronicles 7:14), or whether that Scripture had more specific tie-ins to the fact that, in Matthew 21, the Jewish masses in Jerusalem had welcomed Jesus into the city shouting, "Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord!" The broader viewpoint is often more compelling and convicting, but the latter has enough Scriptural basis to make you wonder if this prophecy of Jesus is a more finite, specific case.
2. It's pretty clear that we are supposed to serve as the means of God's gospel going to the nations. Romans 10 makes the case, "How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they are sent?" If believers are supposed to be the means of God's salvation reaching the world, then the Great Commission certainly supports that end.
3. The idea that Jesus uses the phrase "to the very end of the age" suggests that His command covers a larger time frame than the lifetimes of the eleven disciples. It's not immediately apparent what "the very end of the age" means, but it's probably longer than one generation.
4. If the eleven disciples were supposed to teach people to "observe all that Jesus commanded," then they should probably teach their disciples to observe this last command of Jesus to "go and make disciples." So the Great Commission, by including this "teach" command, is self-perpetuating, like a "Go To" function. That's just good, solid algorithmic logic.
5. The kicker for me is that my faith and probably yours is a direct result of Christians being obedient to the Great Commission. Even if it's not clear from Scripture that the Great Commission is intended for all Christians, the fact that you and I are believers in Christ is a testament to many Christians in many generations taking this command to heart and making disciples. That seems like pretty strong evidence that they were doing what they were supposed to be doing.
I think most people would agree with me that we are supposed to follow the Great Commission, that we are sent with a mission ("commission" -- "with a mission") by the highest Authority to Go, to Make disciples, to Baptize them in His name, and to Teach them everything Jesus said.
So we shouldn't be, but we probably will be, challenged by the following queries:
Is the directive "of all nations" for every single believer to take to heart, or a directive to the body of Christ at large? In other words, does every believer have an obligation to be nation-minded, or should the body of Christ as a whole be targeting to all nations?
How many disciples have you made? Who are they?
Where have you Gone? How are you Making disciples? How have you Baptized them? What have you Taught them?
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Redeeming Love
On recommendation from two girls at CSU, I read Francine Rivers's novel, Redeeming Love. The book basically re-tells the story of Hosea from the perspective of a godly farmer named Michael Hosea whom God commands to marry a prostitute, who then leaves him and hurts him over and over again, as they both learn and experience redeeming love.
If you're a Christian girl who is infatuated with Mr. Darcy, you will probably love this book.
What I appreciated about this book is that for the first time, I considered the perspective of Gomer, the prostitute Hosea is commanded to marry. It's pretty explicitly stated in the book of Hosea that God wants Hosea to experience and struggle with the infidelity of his wife, as an allegory for God's tempestuous relationship with Israel, a nation that has betrayed Him for other idols. And I always thought, man, it really speaks something amazing about God, that He chooses to love and forgive and pursue Israel (and us!) after they spurn and reject Him again and again. Seventy times seven, right? Here was a story where I identified a lot with Hosea, and the seemingly impossible challenge of forgiving and loving and giving people second chances and making yourself vulnerable again and again. I learned a lot from Hosea this way.
But I never thought of Gomer's experience. How she would feel born without purpose, trapped in her sin, obligated by her guilt, and unworthy of God's unconditional love. Accepting grace is no easy thing for a lot of people, especially if we keep screwing up over and over again. And the experience of redemption is an awesome one that we can't overestimate. So Redeeming Love was a good read for me because it helped me realize that perspective. A lot of people feel trapped by their past and their sin, and for a lot of people, accepting the depth of God's love and the completeness of His redemption and restoration for them is a long and rocky process.
What I didn't enjoy about the book: it reads like a trashy romance novel.
"His hand rested comfortingly on her thigh. Even that light touch made her melt inside. 'What do you feel now that I'm soft clay in your hands, Michael?' 'Joy,' he said. 'Pure joy.' He saw how the pulse raced in her throat and pressed a kiss to it. He heard her soft intake of breath and felt the answering warmth spread swiftly through him. He wanted her. He would always want her."
The whole book is like that. Seriously. I felt like I needed to eat some red meat and grunt and break some concrete with my forearms after reading 464 pages of that maudlin writing. And I think in a lot of ways, especially in the presentation of the character Michael Hosea, it is almost emotionally pornographic for women. I honestly consider that a serious concern in some social circles.
So if you are a man, and you want to understand better the heart of a woman and the story of Hosea, then you can read Redeeming Love. Just make sure you have your woman fetch you a beer and a steak after you're done to replenish your Y-chromosomes.
If you're a Christian girl who is infatuated with Mr. Darcy, you will probably love this book.
What I appreciated about this book is that for the first time, I considered the perspective of Gomer, the prostitute Hosea is commanded to marry. It's pretty explicitly stated in the book of Hosea that God wants Hosea to experience and struggle with the infidelity of his wife, as an allegory for God's tempestuous relationship with Israel, a nation that has betrayed Him for other idols. And I always thought, man, it really speaks something amazing about God, that He chooses to love and forgive and pursue Israel (and us!) after they spurn and reject Him again and again. Seventy times seven, right? Here was a story where I identified a lot with Hosea, and the seemingly impossible challenge of forgiving and loving and giving people second chances and making yourself vulnerable again and again. I learned a lot from Hosea this way.
But I never thought of Gomer's experience. How she would feel born without purpose, trapped in her sin, obligated by her guilt, and unworthy of God's unconditional love. Accepting grace is no easy thing for a lot of people, especially if we keep screwing up over and over again. And the experience of redemption is an awesome one that we can't overestimate. So Redeeming Love was a good read for me because it helped me realize that perspective. A lot of people feel trapped by their past and their sin, and for a lot of people, accepting the depth of God's love and the completeness of His redemption and restoration for them is a long and rocky process.
What I didn't enjoy about the book: it reads like a trashy romance novel.
"His hand rested comfortingly on her thigh. Even that light touch made her melt inside. 'What do you feel now that I'm soft clay in your hands, Michael?' 'Joy,' he said. 'Pure joy.' He saw how the pulse raced in her throat and pressed a kiss to it. He heard her soft intake of breath and felt the answering warmth spread swiftly through him. He wanted her. He would always want her."
The whole book is like that. Seriously. I felt like I needed to eat some red meat and grunt and break some concrete with my forearms after reading 464 pages of that maudlin writing. And I think in a lot of ways, especially in the presentation of the character Michael Hosea, it is almost emotionally pornographic for women. I honestly consider that a serious concern in some social circles.
So if you are a man, and you want to understand better the heart of a woman and the story of Hosea, then you can read Redeeming Love. Just make sure you have your woman fetch you a beer and a steak after you're done to replenish your Y-chromosomes.
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Right Now, You Like Me
When Sally Field won the Oscar for Best Actress in 1985, she gushed out a heartfelt and earnest acceptance speech, where she spilled to the Academy, "...and I can't deny the fact that you like me! Right now, you like me!" People have made fun of that speech for decades, but when you look at her bubbling those words out in unbridled catharsis, what strikes you is how excited and energized she seems at the reality that right now, she is liked.
I've said before that my new perspective is that the worst thing in the world is to be alone. And I think that I've always believed that God loves me, but only recently have I considered that He likes me. In the recesses of my head, I guess I'd always accepted that Christ died for us sinners because He loved us, which meant because God is love and because it was the right thing to do. God loves me? Of course He does -- that's the awesome thing about God, He saved a wretch like me, He can love people who are as messed up as you and me! But the idea that God would enjoy my company, that He would look at me and see the best in me and think that what happened in my life was actually important? Big Idea, the type that shifts your paradigm with a clutch.
But it is definitely true that to love someone best, you have to learn to like them. It's been true in my relationship with my girlfriend, with my family, with my other friends -- I haven't begun to love them well until I begin to see the best about them. And it's not that I have to deny that they have flaws or undesirable attributes, but I think that if I love them, then I will focus on the most beautiful aspects about them. You can only love out of principle for so long, and even though it is sometimes difficult and sometimes a sacrifice, you can't wake up every day and think that you are going to love an ugly person because God said to. At a certain point, if you really love them, you will begin to consider them beautiful. You will find a way.
At the top of this post are two versions of a photograph of the swamp at Cypress Gardens in South Carolina. When I take photos these days, I edit them slightly using Microsoft Picture Manager, which is like the Microsoft Paint of photo-editing. The one on bottom is the one that my camera captured initially; the one on top is the one where I took the time to highlight what I considered its best attributes, particularly the contrast between the light and dark lines in the image. I helped create that photo by seeing a particularly striking image in my mind and capturing it. I saw something worthwhile and beautiful in that picture, and I took the time and effort to highlight its beauty, to make it as significant as I could. If that pattern sounds familiar, it's because you already know that God created us in His image, that He saw that we were good, and that the closer we come to God's perspective of love, the more we see the best and most beautiful attributes in the people around us. It's not that I'm distorting the images from their true form; I'm simply pointing out the best that they have to offer.
In Searching for God Knows What, Don Miller observes, "I kept wondering about the people who met Christ who were losers in the lifeboat, the crippled and the blind, the woman at the well, Mary Magdalene and Zacchaeus. Entire communities shunned them and told them they were no good, but God, the King of the universe, comes walking down the street and looks them in the eye, holds their hand, embraces them, eats at their tables, in their homes, for all the world to see. That must have been the greatest moment of their lives."
When God came and died for us, He did it because He so loved the world. We shouldn't take it to mean that we did anything to deserve it. But if we believe that God isn't an idiot, then we should really be struck with the devastating truth that God likes us enough to think that we're worth it.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Two Exercises
Two good exercises for a small group, bible study, or discipleship meeting. Neither of them were originally my idea, but I've tweaked them substantially and found through experience that a lot of good can come out of going through them with people.
1. Three Lists
Take a whiteboard or a large piece of paper, and guide the audience to answering a question. The first question is, "What ideas or truths would a person have to believe in order to become saved or to be a Christian?" Keep their responses simple; don't let them get away with large, comprehensive statements like "You'd have to believe that Jesus Christ came down to sanctify us through the atonement He provided on the Cross." Your audience will or should probably come up with statements like "Jesus was a real, historical person." "Jesus was also fully God." "The Bible is a valid source of truth." "We can't make it to heaven through our own efforts." In summary, you're getting an understanding of what the gospel basis is in a short list of short statements.
Next, lead them through generating another list of ideas or truths. The second question is, "What are things that should be a part of every Christian's walk with God?" This list will probably include spiritual disciplines: prayer, quiet time, bible study, worship, fasting, accountability... and it might also include healthy practices like having a solid Christian community, evangelism, church, being filled with the Spirit, etc. The idea here is that you're having a discussion about those essential things about living the Christian life that, if any serious, earnest Christian were missing one, he or she would be missing out on God's best for them. Don't let people get by with blanket suggestions -- ask them why quiet times should really be on the list, and if a Christian doesn't get up every morning in a scheduled way, will he or she really be missing out on God's best? Is there a Scriptural basis for that? Is it essential or just helpful? Through answering this question, you'll be eliciting an image of what people think it means to follow God.
Then for the third and final list, ask people to clear their heads of the past two questions and discussions and to think intently on the third question: "How would a guy go about falling in love with a girl?" Be clear: you're not asking how you can get someone to fall in love with you, but how you would go about falling in love with someone. You might get a few answers: "You'd have to spend time with her." "You'd have to get to know her." But I think you'd come to the conclusion with your audience that although there are some solid, meaningful things you should do, it's not a watertight, comprehensive process.
Things you can take from this exercise: When I've done it with my disciple and with a small group, we chased it down all sorts of rabbit holes. One was that, in some ways, it's harder than people think to define exactly what a Christian is. People almost always come up with Romans 10:9, but don't usually feel that a Christian can just abide by those two statements and fundamentally understand the gospel. There's just so much divergence of doctrine. At some point, most people decide that Muslims are not Christians, and that Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses are somewhere on the periphery of Christianity, and that Baptists and Methodists are near the center, and it's based on some belief in a fundamental basis of truths, but what goes into that basis and why do we buy into it? The first question is an excellent launching pad for thinking that one out.
The second question I added because I thought it was a good thing to think about why we approach our relationship with God in particular ways, and whether those are good ways for us or good ways for everyone.
And I think the third question is a beautiful one because it reminds us that the center of following Jesus isn't so much what we believe, but a love relationship that can't be summed up on a list without losing some of its power and mystery. How would you go about falling in love with a girl? It'd probably be more than a list of disciplines and good ideas -- it would probably be a saga of mistakes and excitement and anticipation and understanding and communion and forgiveness and grace and intimacy and thrill. How much more so falling in love with Jesus!
So that was Three Lists.
2. The Starting Lineup
Pass out notecards to everyone in your group. Have them shut their Bibles and make them inaccessible. Ask them to take 5 minutes and write down on their notecard the top 5 or 10 go-to Scriptures they would use to explain the gospel to someone. Then discuss what people wrote and why.
The point here isn't that people won't always have Bibles on them or that they need to memorize every verse, although those are certainly ideas worth considering. The point here is to see how ready we are to take the gospel to the nations and to our friends. It was pretty telling that, the last time I did this exercise, several people wrote down "John 3:16" and then balked at coming up with other verses or passages.
In 2 Timothy, Paul charges his disciple to "preach the Word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching." I think we are all similarly commissioned, and I think we would be ill-prepared if we were to go out into our mission field, wherever it is, with just John 3:16 at our disposal.
Am I dogging the power and beauty of John 3:16? I am not. But I have the feeling that most of us aren't sharing the gospel with people to the extent or with the frequency that we would claim that followers of Christ should. There are only two reasons for our hesitancy: we don't know how, or we don't want to. The more equipped and awash and ready we are with the truth of Scripture, the more we can overcome both of those roadblocks.
And that was the Starting Lineup.
1. Three Lists
Take a whiteboard or a large piece of paper, and guide the audience to answering a question. The first question is, "What ideas or truths would a person have to believe in order to become saved or to be a Christian?" Keep their responses simple; don't let them get away with large, comprehensive statements like "You'd have to believe that Jesus Christ came down to sanctify us through the atonement He provided on the Cross." Your audience will or should probably come up with statements like "Jesus was a real, historical person." "Jesus was also fully God." "The Bible is a valid source of truth." "We can't make it to heaven through our own efforts." In summary, you're getting an understanding of what the gospel basis is in a short list of short statements.
Next, lead them through generating another list of ideas or truths. The second question is, "What are things that should be a part of every Christian's walk with God?" This list will probably include spiritual disciplines: prayer, quiet time, bible study, worship, fasting, accountability... and it might also include healthy practices like having a solid Christian community, evangelism, church, being filled with the Spirit, etc. The idea here is that you're having a discussion about those essential things about living the Christian life that, if any serious, earnest Christian were missing one, he or she would be missing out on God's best for them. Don't let people get by with blanket suggestions -- ask them why quiet times should really be on the list, and if a Christian doesn't get up every morning in a scheduled way, will he or she really be missing out on God's best? Is there a Scriptural basis for that? Is it essential or just helpful? Through answering this question, you'll be eliciting an image of what people think it means to follow God.
Then for the third and final list, ask people to clear their heads of the past two questions and discussions and to think intently on the third question: "How would a guy go about falling in love with a girl?" Be clear: you're not asking how you can get someone to fall in love with you, but how you would go about falling in love with someone. You might get a few answers: "You'd have to spend time with her." "You'd have to get to know her." But I think you'd come to the conclusion with your audience that although there are some solid, meaningful things you should do, it's not a watertight, comprehensive process.
Things you can take from this exercise: When I've done it with my disciple and with a small group, we chased it down all sorts of rabbit holes. One was that, in some ways, it's harder than people think to define exactly what a Christian is. People almost always come up with Romans 10:9, but don't usually feel that a Christian can just abide by those two statements and fundamentally understand the gospel. There's just so much divergence of doctrine. At some point, most people decide that Muslims are not Christians, and that Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses are somewhere on the periphery of Christianity, and that Baptists and Methodists are near the center, and it's based on some belief in a fundamental basis of truths, but what goes into that basis and why do we buy into it? The first question is an excellent launching pad for thinking that one out.
The second question I added because I thought it was a good thing to think about why we approach our relationship with God in particular ways, and whether those are good ways for us or good ways for everyone.
And I think the third question is a beautiful one because it reminds us that the center of following Jesus isn't so much what we believe, but a love relationship that can't be summed up on a list without losing some of its power and mystery. How would you go about falling in love with a girl? It'd probably be more than a list of disciplines and good ideas -- it would probably be a saga of mistakes and excitement and anticipation and understanding and communion and forgiveness and grace and intimacy and thrill. How much more so falling in love with Jesus!
So that was Three Lists.
2. The Starting Lineup
Pass out notecards to everyone in your group. Have them shut their Bibles and make them inaccessible. Ask them to take 5 minutes and write down on their notecard the top 5 or 10 go-to Scriptures they would use to explain the gospel to someone. Then discuss what people wrote and why.
The point here isn't that people won't always have Bibles on them or that they need to memorize every verse, although those are certainly ideas worth considering. The point here is to see how ready we are to take the gospel to the nations and to our friends. It was pretty telling that, the last time I did this exercise, several people wrote down "John 3:16" and then balked at coming up with other verses or passages.
In 2 Timothy, Paul charges his disciple to "preach the Word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching." I think we are all similarly commissioned, and I think we would be ill-prepared if we were to go out into our mission field, wherever it is, with just John 3:16 at our disposal.
Am I dogging the power and beauty of John 3:16? I am not. But I have the feeling that most of us aren't sharing the gospel with people to the extent or with the frequency that we would claim that followers of Christ should. There are only two reasons for our hesitancy: we don't know how, or we don't want to. The more equipped and awash and ready we are with the truth of Scripture, the more we can overcome both of those roadblocks.
And that was the Starting Lineup.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Stories of Grace
Outside of the whole Jesus-dying-for-my-sins example, in recent times, I've had some awesome encounters with God's grace, and I want to write them down before I forget and cease to be thankful.
1. Through my last semester and a half at Rice University, my girlfriend's clinical depression was probably the hardest thing I'd had to deal with to date. One night in April, I was really wound up and emotionally exhausted, after several hours of trying frustratedly to talk her through some issues that had persisted for months. After my girlfriend left, I sat in my room, practically immobilized by emotional and physical exhaustion and a foreboding, heavy sense that I couldn't handle the difficulty and sacrifice of supporting my girlfriend through her struggles. I had never felt so alone or overrun by a situation. It came to the point where it was about 2:00 am, and I had punched walls and furniture until my knuckles were red and hurled things around the room, and then my friend Lauren dropped by our suite to visit a roommate and stopped in to say hello.
Lauren is also clinically depressed and has struggled for years with reconciling her emotions with reality and with how she interacted with her circumstances and the people around her. Lauren and I went for a walk and for the next hour and a half, she listened patiently as I rambled and vented, and she told me exactly what I needed to hear -- that I wasn't alone, that she knew from experience that being close to a depressed person is an incredibly hard thing, especially if you're one the only supports, and that this desperation and frustration and anger that I was experiencing was expected, and that I was doing a good job in an incredibly challenging role. She related it to her experience, and I really came to appreciate that Lauren is an incredibly good, patient, helpful friend, the kind who will walk with you at 2:00 am and listen to you vent and walk you through your catharsis. I felt like I was in 1000x better condition after talking to her than I had been in weeks. It's important to know that you're not a failure and that you're not alone, and it was a big revelation for me to understand that about myself when I had been trying for months to convey that to my girlfriend.
My girlfriend is doing 10x better these days. She is happy almost all the time, and things are a lot easier-going, at least for the time being. I love her to pieces. But what was Lauren doing stopping by my room at 2:00 am on a Tuesday night in April? Why would I have a visit from a person with extensive experience both being depressed and overcoming depression just as I reached a seemingly insurmountable impasse with the issue of depression?
Grace.
2. My disciple grew up in the Pentecostal Church, where they have a heavy emphasis on the significance of spiritual gifts: teaching, prophecy, speaking in tongues, etc. If you watch the documentary Jesus Camp, you can see a rather intense example of how the Pentecostal Church handles these gifts, as hundreds of kids shake and quiver and weep and speak in tongues, claiming that they have been swept up by the Holy Spirit. I've disagreed with Kyle on several counts, mainly on the basis that you can't replace the disciplines of studying the Word, of training disciples, of corporate worship, and of good planning and stewardship of God's resources with an unceasing reliance on the spontaneity of the Holy Spirit. For example, he had mentioned that an ideal weekly church service would be a group of people gathered together with no agenda or planning, and that they would just listen for the Holy Spirit to lead, and as a very last resort alternative, they might have a book of the Bible on standby to study. I completely disagree -- I think that the gifts of the Spirit have to be tempered for the edification of the church by the sense of judgment and reason that God gives us, not to mention His written word. If God left you in charge of a crop harvest (which He has), would you sit in your farmhouse and wait for things to grow, or would you be out there working in a disciplined way to plant and water and harvest in conjunction with relying on His miraculous work?
Kyle asked one day if we could talk specifically about spiritual gifts. He asked me what I thought about them. And just an hour beforehand, I had been going through passages in an arbitrary way (which sounds hypocritical in light of what I just typed, and probably was) and happened to read through 1 Corinthians 12-14, which talk explicitly about that very topic in a clear and elucidating way. And as a result of my being ready, having freshly gone through those passages, what followed was a really productive discussion on spiritual gifts and their role in the spiritual life of a believer and in the growth of the body of Christ.
Why would I have read 1 Corinthians 12-14, the most lucid exposition on spiritual gifts that the New Testament offers, an hour before Kyle asked me to discuss and share my thoughts on the topic with him? Why was I prepared (in the active sense, as in Someone preparing me) to engage with my disciple over an issue that was central to how he was raised spiritually?
Grace.
There are more, but it's getting late, and my point has been made.
What I really appreciate about instances of grace and the stories that come out of them is that they are all pointers to the ultimate story of grace between God and us. Every story of grace starts off when we find ourselves helpless to an insurmountable set of circumstances. Every story of grace includes an externally given, saving provision that we didn't affect and that we didn't deserve. Every story of grace ends on a note of transformation and restoration. In short, every story of grace is a beautiful retelling and reminder of the gospel story.
1. Through my last semester and a half at Rice University, my girlfriend's clinical depression was probably the hardest thing I'd had to deal with to date. One night in April, I was really wound up and emotionally exhausted, after several hours of trying frustratedly to talk her through some issues that had persisted for months. After my girlfriend left, I sat in my room, practically immobilized by emotional and physical exhaustion and a foreboding, heavy sense that I couldn't handle the difficulty and sacrifice of supporting my girlfriend through her struggles. I had never felt so alone or overrun by a situation. It came to the point where it was about 2:00 am, and I had punched walls and furniture until my knuckles were red and hurled things around the room, and then my friend Lauren dropped by our suite to visit a roommate and stopped in to say hello.
Lauren is also clinically depressed and has struggled for years with reconciling her emotions with reality and with how she interacted with her circumstances and the people around her. Lauren and I went for a walk and for the next hour and a half, she listened patiently as I rambled and vented, and she told me exactly what I needed to hear -- that I wasn't alone, that she knew from experience that being close to a depressed person is an incredibly hard thing, especially if you're one the only supports, and that this desperation and frustration and anger that I was experiencing was expected, and that I was doing a good job in an incredibly challenging role. She related it to her experience, and I really came to appreciate that Lauren is an incredibly good, patient, helpful friend, the kind who will walk with you at 2:00 am and listen to you vent and walk you through your catharsis. I felt like I was in 1000x better condition after talking to her than I had been in weeks. It's important to know that you're not a failure and that you're not alone, and it was a big revelation for me to understand that about myself when I had been trying for months to convey that to my girlfriend.
My girlfriend is doing 10x better these days. She is happy almost all the time, and things are a lot easier-going, at least for the time being. I love her to pieces. But what was Lauren doing stopping by my room at 2:00 am on a Tuesday night in April? Why would I have a visit from a person with extensive experience both being depressed and overcoming depression just as I reached a seemingly insurmountable impasse with the issue of depression?
Grace.
2. My disciple grew up in the Pentecostal Church, where they have a heavy emphasis on the significance of spiritual gifts: teaching, prophecy, speaking in tongues, etc. If you watch the documentary Jesus Camp, you can see a rather intense example of how the Pentecostal Church handles these gifts, as hundreds of kids shake and quiver and weep and speak in tongues, claiming that they have been swept up by the Holy Spirit. I've disagreed with Kyle on several counts, mainly on the basis that you can't replace the disciplines of studying the Word, of training disciples, of corporate worship, and of good planning and stewardship of God's resources with an unceasing reliance on the spontaneity of the Holy Spirit. For example, he had mentioned that an ideal weekly church service would be a group of people gathered together with no agenda or planning, and that they would just listen for the Holy Spirit to lead, and as a very last resort alternative, they might have a book of the Bible on standby to study. I completely disagree -- I think that the gifts of the Spirit have to be tempered for the edification of the church by the sense of judgment and reason that God gives us, not to mention His written word. If God left you in charge of a crop harvest (which He has), would you sit in your farmhouse and wait for things to grow, or would you be out there working in a disciplined way to plant and water and harvest in conjunction with relying on His miraculous work?
Kyle asked one day if we could talk specifically about spiritual gifts. He asked me what I thought about them. And just an hour beforehand, I had been going through passages in an arbitrary way (which sounds hypocritical in light of what I just typed, and probably was) and happened to read through 1 Corinthians 12-14, which talk explicitly about that very topic in a clear and elucidating way. And as a result of my being ready, having freshly gone through those passages, what followed was a really productive discussion on spiritual gifts and their role in the spiritual life of a believer and in the growth of the body of Christ.
Why would I have read 1 Corinthians 12-14, the most lucid exposition on spiritual gifts that the New Testament offers, an hour before Kyle asked me to discuss and share my thoughts on the topic with him? Why was I prepared (in the active sense, as in Someone preparing me) to engage with my disciple over an issue that was central to how he was raised spiritually?
Grace.
There are more, but it's getting late, and my point has been made.
What I really appreciate about instances of grace and the stories that come out of them is that they are all pointers to the ultimate story of grace between God and us. Every story of grace starts off when we find ourselves helpless to an insurmountable set of circumstances. Every story of grace includes an externally given, saving provision that we didn't affect and that we didn't deserve. Every story of grace ends on a note of transformation and restoration. In short, every story of grace is a beautiful retelling and reminder of the gospel story.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
On Christian Manhood
I never thought about Christian manhood until I came to college, but in a way that makes sense because the focus on the topic of Christian manhood didn't really evolve until recent decades. It's like parenting that way -- for centuries, parenting was something that people just did, and raising children was just a part of their lives, but if you asked, "Who are you? What is your identity?", nobody would say, "A father" or "a mother." They'd just tell you who they were, what they did, what they believed, what their passions were. It's only in recent decades that parenting and the art of child-rearing became the subject of countless books and curricula and methodologies, and there are two sides to this coin: a lot of good, sound wisdom has been shared and a lot of fluff has been generated over something that isn't as complicated or all-important as it's been made to seem. Parenting is important, but it shouldn't consume what you live for or who you are. I feel the same way about today's Christian idea of manhood.
There is a definite need for real men in the kingdom of God. There are a lot of boys out there who haven't yet begun to act like men. There is a lot of passivity and a lot of spectatorship -- we inherited it from Adam, the first man, who was passive enough to let Eve do the negotiating with the serpent, who was passive enough to let Eve take and eat the fruit, and who was passive enough to eat it himself when she gave it to him. There are men who passively let sin creep up on their doorstep and don't have the zeal or the courage to chase it away -- these are the men who know they have a problem with sexual purity and yet let themselves come to a place where they're alone in a room with the Internet and a closed door. There are men who blame other people for their shortcomings -- like Adam who tried to toss the blame to his wife Eve, or like a lot of angry men who credit their own absent fathers for their struggles to love their families. There are men who pursue the hearts of women until they are married, and then lack the passion and the initiative to pursue the hearts of their wives. There are men who sit at home while they should be out in the fields sowing, watering, reaping the harvest.
In God's image, men are meant to be leaders -- and leaders purport a vision -- and where there is no vision, the people perish (Proverbs 29:18). Without men to catch God's vision and follow hard after it to guide others towards it, the church stumbles, communities are directionless, families are broken.
So it's a good thing that there is a lot of good literature out there -- there's a definite margin for improvement. Some of it is better than others.
I'm not a big enthusiast about Wild at Heart because I think in a lot of ways, it effectively replaces solid biblical teaching with quotations from Braveheart. If doing the work of a man were as easy as getting fired up about heroic movies, I don't think any of us would have a problem getting the job done. There are even conferences for men these days where men spend a weekend watching movie clips and powerpoints and receive an all-included Scottish claymore sword at the end as a shiny reminder that they're the warrior protectors of their families. A little ridiculous. This weekend, however, Charleston Southern University did a men's retreat and went through two pretty solid curricula: one from The Quest for Authentic Manhood about Five Wounds men must face (1. The Absent Father Wound, 2. The Overly Bonded with Mother Wound, 3. The All Alone Wound, 4. The Lack of Manhood Vision Wound, and 5. The Heart Wound), and the other concerned the Four Pillars of a R.E.A.L. man (Rejecting passivity, Expecting God's greater reward, Accepting responsibility, Leading courageously).
My first reaction to lists and steps is pretty dismissive -- I usually don't really buy that there are Four Steps to anything authentic or Eight Keys to a powerful prayer life, but once you get over the numbers and acronyms game, there is some real wisdom to be found in some of the teaching. In a way, it's like the Scout Oath and Scout Law that I grew up with -- sure, they're not comprehensive, watertight paradigms of morality, but if you follow them consistently, you'll probably be headed in a good direction. Likewise, while it's probably not a complete list, a Christian guy who rejects passivity, expects God's best, accepts responsibility, and leads courageously will probably do great things in the kingdom of God. If it's arrogant of syllabus-writers to try to distill God's wisdom and direction into 8 convenient steps, it's also arrogant of me to dismiss blanketly what's been written because it's been formatted in a "pre-packaged" way.
But Don Miller also made a really good point about the whole tamale in his book about fatherhood and manhood, To Own a Dragon. In one of his chapters, he recounts speaking to a group of 900 high school boys, and telling them to take out a pen and write down that God's definition of a real man...is...someone...who has...a penis.
“God’s definition of a real man is a person with a penis!...And as much fun as I was having, I was also being serious. It had been a long journey for me, a journey filled with doubt and fear, and the only answer I could come up with is that all the commercials, all the sales tactics that said I wasn’t a real man unless I bought some book, or wore some aftershave, or slept with some cheerleader, were complete lies. If you have a penis, I told the group of guys, God has spoken… You are men. Some of you have never heard this before, but I want to tell you, you are men. You are not boys, you are not children, you are not women, you are men. God has spoken, and when God speaks, the majority has spoken. You are a man.”
Don has hit on a really good point here. The world has put so many false requirements on manhood -- that you need to have muscles, that you need to have a deep voice and grunt a lot, that you need to be good at sports -- and in some senses, Christianity sometimes does the same thing, creating hoops for Christian men to jump through to see if they are men, and at the same time, creating tests that can be failed, that can tell men that they are not men in God's eyes. But if you pee standing up, then that's all the validation you need. You've been given all the right equipment -- all that remains is that by His grace, you can act and live like the man that God made you to be.
Three Steps or Four Pillars to Authentic Manhood can do a lot, but it's all worthless if it's not rooted in our redeemed, restored identity of manhood, given to us by God through the death and resurrection of Jesus.
We keep calling for men to take a stand, and it should be refreshing to know that real men can do just that -- even while peeing.
There is a definite need for real men in the kingdom of God. There are a lot of boys out there who haven't yet begun to act like men. There is a lot of passivity and a lot of spectatorship -- we inherited it from Adam, the first man, who was passive enough to let Eve do the negotiating with the serpent, who was passive enough to let Eve take and eat the fruit, and who was passive enough to eat it himself when she gave it to him. There are men who passively let sin creep up on their doorstep and don't have the zeal or the courage to chase it away -- these are the men who know they have a problem with sexual purity and yet let themselves come to a place where they're alone in a room with the Internet and a closed door. There are men who blame other people for their shortcomings -- like Adam who tried to toss the blame to his wife Eve, or like a lot of angry men who credit their own absent fathers for their struggles to love their families. There are men who pursue the hearts of women until they are married, and then lack the passion and the initiative to pursue the hearts of their wives. There are men who sit at home while they should be out in the fields sowing, watering, reaping the harvest.
In God's image, men are meant to be leaders -- and leaders purport a vision -- and where there is no vision, the people perish (Proverbs 29:18). Without men to catch God's vision and follow hard after it to guide others towards it, the church stumbles, communities are directionless, families are broken.
So it's a good thing that there is a lot of good literature out there -- there's a definite margin for improvement. Some of it is better than others.
I'm not a big enthusiast about Wild at Heart because I think in a lot of ways, it effectively replaces solid biblical teaching with quotations from Braveheart. If doing the work of a man were as easy as getting fired up about heroic movies, I don't think any of us would have a problem getting the job done. There are even conferences for men these days where men spend a weekend watching movie clips and powerpoints and receive an all-included Scottish claymore sword at the end as a shiny reminder that they're the warrior protectors of their families. A little ridiculous. This weekend, however, Charleston Southern University did a men's retreat and went through two pretty solid curricula: one from The Quest for Authentic Manhood about Five Wounds men must face (1. The Absent Father Wound, 2. The Overly Bonded with Mother Wound, 3. The All Alone Wound, 4. The Lack of Manhood Vision Wound, and 5. The Heart Wound), and the other concerned the Four Pillars of a R.E.A.L. man (Rejecting passivity, Expecting God's greater reward, Accepting responsibility, Leading courageously).
My first reaction to lists and steps is pretty dismissive -- I usually don't really buy that there are Four Steps to anything authentic or Eight Keys to a powerful prayer life, but once you get over the numbers and acronyms game, there is some real wisdom to be found in some of the teaching. In a way, it's like the Scout Oath and Scout Law that I grew up with -- sure, they're not comprehensive, watertight paradigms of morality, but if you follow them consistently, you'll probably be headed in a good direction. Likewise, while it's probably not a complete list, a Christian guy who rejects passivity, expects God's best, accepts responsibility, and leads courageously will probably do great things in the kingdom of God. If it's arrogant of syllabus-writers to try to distill God's wisdom and direction into 8 convenient steps, it's also arrogant of me to dismiss blanketly what's been written because it's been formatted in a "pre-packaged" way.
But Don Miller also made a really good point about the whole tamale in his book about fatherhood and manhood, To Own a Dragon. In one of his chapters, he recounts speaking to a group of 900 high school boys, and telling them to take out a pen and write down that God's definition of a real man...is...someone...who has...a penis.
“God’s definition of a real man is a person with a penis!...And as much fun as I was having, I was also being serious. It had been a long journey for me, a journey filled with doubt and fear, and the only answer I could come up with is that all the commercials, all the sales tactics that said I wasn’t a real man unless I bought some book, or wore some aftershave, or slept with some cheerleader, were complete lies. If you have a penis, I told the group of guys, God has spoken… You are men. Some of you have never heard this before, but I want to tell you, you are men. You are not boys, you are not children, you are not women, you are men. God has spoken, and when God speaks, the majority has spoken. You are a man.”
Don has hit on a really good point here. The world has put so many false requirements on manhood -- that you need to have muscles, that you need to have a deep voice and grunt a lot, that you need to be good at sports -- and in some senses, Christianity sometimes does the same thing, creating hoops for Christian men to jump through to see if they are men, and at the same time, creating tests that can be failed, that can tell men that they are not men in God's eyes. But if you pee standing up, then that's all the validation you need. You've been given all the right equipment -- all that remains is that by His grace, you can act and live like the man that God made you to be.
Three Steps or Four Pillars to Authentic Manhood can do a lot, but it's all worthless if it's not rooted in our redeemed, restored identity of manhood, given to us by God through the death and resurrection of Jesus.
We keep calling for men to take a stand, and it should be refreshing to know that real men can do just that -- even while peeing.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Bethesda
The first part of John 5 is a spectacular excerpt of Scripture. It tells the story of a pool of water with healing properties, called the Pool of Bethesda, and a man who waits 38 years with an infirmity by the poolside, only to be healed by Jesus. The story is spectacular for the following reasons:
- It is mystical. - I think it's easy for us to picture Jesus wandering from city to city, ministering to sinners, binding up the brokenhearted, teaching as no man taught, and making the Pharisees mad. But I think that we spend a lot of time trying to make Jesus very real and accessible to us and to historically validate Him, and thus it's challenging to picture Him in the context of a mysterious Pool with Five Porches outside the Jerusalem Sheep Gate, where an Angel used to go down at certain times, stir the water, and imbue said water with mysterious healing properties that were only good for one person at a time.
- It makes no sense. - So Jesus healed a guy who had been infirm for 38 years, and we get the sense that Jesus chose him because the healing bandwagon had passed him by. But what sets the guy apart? From what John tells us, there were a "great multitude of sick people, blind, lame, and paralyzed, waiting" for their turn at the poolside. It's not like they were healthy and spry, just hopping down the steps to enter the Pool -- they were in the same handicapped rowboat. Why did Jesus pass them by? Why did He walk away and leave them still sick and lame and desperate at the poolside, still trusting in the mysterious angelic healing properties of the Pool? The man Jesus healed didn't even really ask to be healed or even acknowledge Jesus as God until after the fact -- there was no incredible display of faith like there was for the Roman centurion, or woman who touched Jesus's cloak, or the blind man who appealed to Jesus above the scolding of His disciples.
- It makes perfect sense. - The man had been sick for 38 years. That's a long time. And I think God hates to see His children suffer, and it definitely matters to Him if you've been suffering for a long time. And the man had no friends to help him down into the water, and surely that condition of abject loneliness was also moving to the heart of God. And sure, the man didn't explicitly acknowledge Jesus as Lord at the time and didn't ask for His healing -- but I think this is a story about God's compassion, not the duty to repentance. And here's the thing -- the man was ready to be healed. Jesus asked him right off the bat, "Do you want to be made well?" And I think that's not really a cookie-cutter question to ask a sick person because if you stop and think, you probably have dozens of friends who don't want to "be made well," and you definitely have times when you don't want to "be made well." So for Jesus to ask that question and for that man to have responded to the affirmative is no small thing.
- It is relevant. - The man didn't even know it was Jesus who healed him. I think if you or I had planned this miracle, Jesus's name would be all over it, for the purpose of promulgating God's glory. Sometimes we think it is a waste of time to do good things for people without putting Jesus's name on it. During campus ministry meetings in college, we would often discuss how to reach the campus for the glory of God, and community service would always come up as an idea -- but always with a caveat, always with the condition that people would have to know that it was Christians who were doing God's work out of renewed hearts and Christ-centered love -- otherwise, there was no point, we'd just be like any other service organization. And people worry about the fact that Christians don't tip well during after-Sunday lunch, and if people see you're a Christian and see that you're not generous, then you're being a bad ambassador for Christ. But what happens when you go to a new restaurant and people don't know you're a Christian? Freed from the need to represent God, you can tip as little as you like. We marry the work for God's glory with how people perceive God in light of our actions, and it can become a bad thing if we stop acting out of love and compassion and forget that Jesus healed a man who, at the time, didn't even know His name.
At the end of his gospel, John reflects on the fact that there were so many things that Jesus did that the world itself could not contain the books that could've been written to describe it. The story of the Bethesda Pool is not a safe one, but I'm glad John elected to include it anyway.
- It is mystical. - I think it's easy for us to picture Jesus wandering from city to city, ministering to sinners, binding up the brokenhearted, teaching as no man taught, and making the Pharisees mad. But I think that we spend a lot of time trying to make Jesus very real and accessible to us and to historically validate Him, and thus it's challenging to picture Him in the context of a mysterious Pool with Five Porches outside the Jerusalem Sheep Gate, where an Angel used to go down at certain times, stir the water, and imbue said water with mysterious healing properties that were only good for one person at a time.
- It makes no sense. - So Jesus healed a guy who had been infirm for 38 years, and we get the sense that Jesus chose him because the healing bandwagon had passed him by. But what sets the guy apart? From what John tells us, there were a "great multitude of sick people, blind, lame, and paralyzed, waiting" for their turn at the poolside. It's not like they were healthy and spry, just hopping down the steps to enter the Pool -- they were in the same handicapped rowboat. Why did Jesus pass them by? Why did He walk away and leave them still sick and lame and desperate at the poolside, still trusting in the mysterious angelic healing properties of the Pool? The man Jesus healed didn't even really ask to be healed or even acknowledge Jesus as God until after the fact -- there was no incredible display of faith like there was for the Roman centurion, or woman who touched Jesus's cloak, or the blind man who appealed to Jesus above the scolding of His disciples.
- It makes perfect sense. - The man had been sick for 38 years. That's a long time. And I think God hates to see His children suffer, and it definitely matters to Him if you've been suffering for a long time. And the man had no friends to help him down into the water, and surely that condition of abject loneliness was also moving to the heart of God. And sure, the man didn't explicitly acknowledge Jesus as Lord at the time and didn't ask for His healing -- but I think this is a story about God's compassion, not the duty to repentance. And here's the thing -- the man was ready to be healed. Jesus asked him right off the bat, "Do you want to be made well?" And I think that's not really a cookie-cutter question to ask a sick person because if you stop and think, you probably have dozens of friends who don't want to "be made well," and you definitely have times when you don't want to "be made well." So for Jesus to ask that question and for that man to have responded to the affirmative is no small thing.
- It is relevant. - The man didn't even know it was Jesus who healed him. I think if you or I had planned this miracle, Jesus's name would be all over it, for the purpose of promulgating God's glory. Sometimes we think it is a waste of time to do good things for people without putting Jesus's name on it. During campus ministry meetings in college, we would often discuss how to reach the campus for the glory of God, and community service would always come up as an idea -- but always with a caveat, always with the condition that people would have to know that it was Christians who were doing God's work out of renewed hearts and Christ-centered love -- otherwise, there was no point, we'd just be like any other service organization. And people worry about the fact that Christians don't tip well during after-Sunday lunch, and if people see you're a Christian and see that you're not generous, then you're being a bad ambassador for Christ. But what happens when you go to a new restaurant and people don't know you're a Christian? Freed from the need to represent God, you can tip as little as you like. We marry the work for God's glory with how people perceive God in light of our actions, and it can become a bad thing if we stop acting out of love and compassion and forget that Jesus healed a man who, at the time, didn't even know His name.
At the end of his gospel, John reflects on the fact that there were so many things that Jesus did that the world itself could not contain the books that could've been written to describe it. The story of the Bethesda Pool is not a safe one, but I'm glad John elected to include it anyway.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Salt and Light
Jesus once stood on a mountain and said,
You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.
You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.
Salt and Light. What do these two metaphors mean?
The idea that we are to be salt is a little challenging to interpret, since the Bible and biblical cultures considered salt in a variety of ways. Salt was a preservative; salt was a seasoning; but salt was also a sign of brackishness and stagnation, and Jewish scholars have read a lot into comparing the living freshwater of the Jordan River and the salty stagnation of the Dead Sea. James 3:12 even mentions that a river cannot produce both fresh and salty water as a way of explaining the difficulties in taming the harmful ways we speak to each other. So obviously, there's some parsing to be done to put things in correct context.
Colossians 4:6 encourages us, "Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how to answer each one." And Mark 9:50 says that "salt is good, but if salt loses its flavor, how will you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and have peace with one another." It seems to me that Paul and Jesus are talking about the way salt not season food, but also sustains its flavor and preserves it -- in other words, not only does salt bring food to life, but it also keeps it alive, and if you lose the salt, then what else do you have? (Pepper. Pepper Potts, if you're Ironman.) That saltiness, that vibrancy, that life, should emanate from the way we keep community with each other.
Here's the other thing. Salt doesn't lose its flavor. It's a stable ionic compound and doesn't tend to change chemically, so its flavor is part of its permanent inherent characteristics. So maybe we also can't lose our flavor, and that bringing of joy, life, vibrancy, hope, seasoning to the world is something that Christians fundamentally do, and if we "lose our flavor," we're simply forgetting who we are.
The idea of Christians being light to the world is a little more straightforward -- our lives and "good works" should shine before people such that they would wonder and glorify God. It's a little interesting that Jesus calls His followers the "light of the world" in Matthew 5:14, and yet Jesus is called the "light of the world," explicitly in John 8:12 and 9:1-5, and implied to be "light" in Matthew 4:16, John 3:19, 1 John 1:1-5, and many, many other verses.
The fact that both Jesus and His followers are called "light" isn't even an issue that the Bible really sidesteps. Isaiah 49:6 talks of Jesus when it says, "I will also give You as a light to the Gentiles, that You should be My salvation (Jesus, in Hebrew, Y'shua, means Salvation) to the ends of the earth." Yet when Paul quotes this verse in Acts 13:47, he expresses it as a commission for Christians: "For so the Lord has commanded us: 'I have set you as a light to the Gentiles, that you should be for salvation to the ends of the earth.'"
Jesus probably puts it best in John 12:35-36, when He tells people, "A little while longer the light is with you. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you; he who walks in darkness does not know where he is going. While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may becomes sons of light." To aspire to be a "son of light" sounds very mystical and hard to put a finger on doctrinally, but it's important to remember that a metaphor is often more valuable when you read it and allow the image to move you than to analyze the life out of it. Sometimes I have a hard time keeping from reading the Living Word of God as a history and literature textbook.
Finally, the Bible gives yet another usage of the word "light" that might be confusing to the novice reader, in Luke 12:48:
But the one who did not know and did what deserved a beating, will receive a light beating.
You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.
You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.
Salt and Light. What do these two metaphors mean?
The idea that we are to be salt is a little challenging to interpret, since the Bible and biblical cultures considered salt in a variety of ways. Salt was a preservative; salt was a seasoning; but salt was also a sign of brackishness and stagnation, and Jewish scholars have read a lot into comparing the living freshwater of the Jordan River and the salty stagnation of the Dead Sea. James 3:12 even mentions that a river cannot produce both fresh and salty water as a way of explaining the difficulties in taming the harmful ways we speak to each other. So obviously, there's some parsing to be done to put things in correct context.
Colossians 4:6 encourages us, "Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how to answer each one." And Mark 9:50 says that "salt is good, but if salt loses its flavor, how will you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and have peace with one another." It seems to me that Paul and Jesus are talking about the way salt not season food, but also sustains its flavor and preserves it -- in other words, not only does salt bring food to life, but it also keeps it alive, and if you lose the salt, then what else do you have? (Pepper. Pepper Potts, if you're Ironman.) That saltiness, that vibrancy, that life, should emanate from the way we keep community with each other.
Here's the other thing. Salt doesn't lose its flavor. It's a stable ionic compound and doesn't tend to change chemically, so its flavor is part of its permanent inherent characteristics. So maybe we also can't lose our flavor, and that bringing of joy, life, vibrancy, hope, seasoning to the world is something that Christians fundamentally do, and if we "lose our flavor," we're simply forgetting who we are.
The idea of Christians being light to the world is a little more straightforward -- our lives and "good works" should shine before people such that they would wonder and glorify God. It's a little interesting that Jesus calls His followers the "light of the world" in Matthew 5:14, and yet Jesus is called the "light of the world," explicitly in John 8:12 and 9:1-5, and implied to be "light" in Matthew 4:16, John 3:19, 1 John 1:1-5, and many, many other verses.
The fact that both Jesus and His followers are called "light" isn't even an issue that the Bible really sidesteps. Isaiah 49:6 talks of Jesus when it says, "I will also give You as a light to the Gentiles, that You should be My salvation (Jesus, in Hebrew, Y'shua, means Salvation) to the ends of the earth." Yet when Paul quotes this verse in Acts 13:47, he expresses it as a commission for Christians: "For so the Lord has commanded us: 'I have set you as a light to the Gentiles, that you should be for salvation to the ends of the earth.'"
Jesus probably puts it best in John 12:35-36, when He tells people, "A little while longer the light is with you. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you; he who walks in darkness does not know where he is going. While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may becomes sons of light." To aspire to be a "son of light" sounds very mystical and hard to put a finger on doctrinally, but it's important to remember that a metaphor is often more valuable when you read it and allow the image to move you than to analyze the life out of it. Sometimes I have a hard time keeping from reading the Living Word of God as a history and literature textbook.
Finally, the Bible gives yet another usage of the word "light" that might be confusing to the novice reader, in Luke 12:48:
But the one who did not know and did what deserved a beating, will receive a light beating.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
War and Peace
In his Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, John Piper states that an "earnest prayer and challenge" of his for Christians is:
That you develop a wartime mentality and lifestyle; that you never forget that life is short, that billions of people hang in the balance of heaven and hell every day, that the love of money is spiritual suicide, that the goals of upward mobility are a poor and dangerous substitute for the goal of living for Christ with all your might and maximizing your joy in ministry to people's needs.
In Searching for God Knows What, Don Miller writes:
To be honest, I think most Christians [...] want to love people and obey God but feel they have to wage a culture war. But this isn't the case at all [...] in fact, even today, moralists who use war rhetoric will speak of right and wrong, and even some vague and angry God, but never Jesus [...] I can't say this clearly enough: If we are preaching a morality without Christ, and using war rhetoric to communicate a battle mentality, we are fighting on Satan's side.
I have juxtaposed these two excerpts slightly out of context, but I think it's really fascinating that the two Christian authors that my peers regard as their most influential take such opposite approaches to Christian ministry.
If we elect not to play the game of taking thoughts to unbalanced extremes, then I can see a lot of value in thinking both ways. We do serve a Lion and a Lamb.
That you develop a wartime mentality and lifestyle; that you never forget that life is short, that billions of people hang in the balance of heaven and hell every day, that the love of money is spiritual suicide, that the goals of upward mobility are a poor and dangerous substitute for the goal of living for Christ with all your might and maximizing your joy in ministry to people's needs.
In Searching for God Knows What, Don Miller writes:
To be honest, I think most Christians [...] want to love people and obey God but feel they have to wage a culture war. But this isn't the case at all [...] in fact, even today, moralists who use war rhetoric will speak of right and wrong, and even some vague and angry God, but never Jesus [...] I can't say this clearly enough: If we are preaching a morality without Christ, and using war rhetoric to communicate a battle mentality, we are fighting on Satan's side.
I have juxtaposed these two excerpts slightly out of context, but I think it's really fascinating that the two Christian authors that my peers regard as their most influential take such opposite approaches to Christian ministry.
If we elect not to play the game of taking thoughts to unbalanced extremes, then I can see a lot of value in thinking both ways. We do serve a Lion and a Lamb.
Friday, September 26, 2008
Romans 6: Beauty Contests
Most people can quote Romans 6:23, and as a consequence of being able to quote it, I think most people use it as a distilled truth: that if you sin, your punishment is death; otherwise, you can accept God's free gift of eternal life in Jesus. I don't think that's an untruth, or even really a partial truth -- it's a fair understanding of what the verse is saying -- but the context of Romans 6 really paints that truth in wider swaths.
Romans 6 is a chapter about slavery and freedom. The highlights are that "as many of us were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death." And "if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ having been raised from the dead, dies no more." The chapter talks about Sin and Death as personified masters, claiming that "Death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once and for all, but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord."
Paul then explains his allegory, saying he is merely speaking "in human terms" because of "the weakness" of our human condition. He talks about slavery and freedom -- that we were all slaves of sin, and were free in regard to righteousness, and that the wages of that slavery to sin was death, and how in the other plantation, our slavery to God bears the fruit of holiness and everlasting life.
I think being a slave to sin is like being trapped in a beauty contest. There's a pivotal scene in that Little-Indie-That-Could, Little Miss Sunshine, where a disillusioned fifteen-year-old reflects for a while, then says, "Fuck beauty contests. Life is one fucking beauty contest after another." And sometimes I think we feel like we're in a sort of moderate place where we're neither trapped by sin nor convicted by God, but there are a lot of times when we're in beauty contests, trying desperately to please, and feeling more strongly like slaves than anything else.
I like beer, but sometimes at parties, I'm just in a beauty contest. I feel self-conscious and appraised, and I minimize that by having a red plastic cup in my hand, which has to contain beer, even if I don't really feel like drinking it. I have to laugh at people's jokes, or when they quote a Will Ferrell or Adam Sandler movie for the fifteenth time that night. I have to keep drinking at a minimum steady rate because otherwise it's like walking during a marathon when everyone else is running past you and giving you the dubious eye. And I have to stay until the party's critical mass begins to leave, and no earlier and no later, or else people will notice me as the odd one out. Isn't it weird that people (college freshmen) go to parties partially to establish a cool reputation in the eyes of their peers and cope by becoming as inconspicuous and indistinguishable from other party-goers as possible?
Sometimes being a Christian among Christians can become a beauty contest. When your peers in your bible study talk at length about some new Christian book you haven't read, or promise rings for their long awaited future spouse (especially if your own track record isn't the purest), or how they and twelve other popular Christian girls are called to a Season of Celibacy (but maybe you aren't?), I think that it could be frustrating for you if you spend a lot of time grappling with sin. You'd probably wonder why your friends don't have to wrestle with their habits or blunders or mistakes or doubts. You'd feel like you were losing the beauty contest of the Kingdom of God, and you'd probably feel trapped, forever relegated to Christian mediocrity, an only partially-freed slave to sin. What if you were a Bible study leader or a pastor and addicted to, say, pornography?
My friends have described addiction to pornography as binding, gripping, and inexorable. Any closeness with God seems shattered by the jarring "reality" of a desperate, recurrent need to close the door, turn down the speakers, and double-click Internet Explorer. I think it wouldn't be too hard to feel like a slave to sin if you were grappling with an addiction to pornography.
Sometimes it feels like smooth sailing, that sin is something that can throw off your groove but not really get you down, like a parking ticket or late fee. But I think sometimes, especially when we find ourselves in beauty contests, we really understand Paul's metaphor of slavery and understand what he means as he explains,
"For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice, but what I hate, I do." (Romans 7:14-15)
I've read over this passage several times, but I never really thought about the significance of verse 17:
"But now, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me."
And again, in verse 20: "Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me."
He finishes, "O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God - through Jesus Christ our Lord!"
We were slaves to sin, so when we used to sin, well, it was what we did as a function of our slavery to sin. But now we are slaves of God, and when we sin, it's not a function of who we really are as much as it is us forgetting who we really are in Jesus. Now, we have been remade in the likeness of Jesus. Being remade in perfection and grace means that there is no more beauty contest for us because Jesus has fundamentally and irrevocably removed any trace of ugliness from us. Being remade in the likeness of Jesus also means there is no beauty contest because Jesus Himself was probably physically unattractive (Isaiah 53:2-3) and never bothered to try to make Himself look good to anyone while He was here.
I'm convinced that there's no place for competition within the Kingdom of God. And if that's the case, there's certainly no place for beauty contests.
Romans 6 is a chapter about slavery and freedom. The highlights are that "as many of us were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death." And "if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ having been raised from the dead, dies no more." The chapter talks about Sin and Death as personified masters, claiming that "Death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once and for all, but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord."
Paul then explains his allegory, saying he is merely speaking "in human terms" because of "the weakness" of our human condition. He talks about slavery and freedom -- that we were all slaves of sin, and were free in regard to righteousness, and that the wages of that slavery to sin was death, and how in the other plantation, our slavery to God bears the fruit of holiness and everlasting life.
I think being a slave to sin is like being trapped in a beauty contest. There's a pivotal scene in that Little-Indie-That-Could, Little Miss Sunshine, where a disillusioned fifteen-year-old reflects for a while, then says, "Fuck beauty contests. Life is one fucking beauty contest after another." And sometimes I think we feel like we're in a sort of moderate place where we're neither trapped by sin nor convicted by God, but there are a lot of times when we're in beauty contests, trying desperately to please, and feeling more strongly like slaves than anything else.
I like beer, but sometimes at parties, I'm just in a beauty contest. I feel self-conscious and appraised, and I minimize that by having a red plastic cup in my hand, which has to contain beer, even if I don't really feel like drinking it. I have to laugh at people's jokes, or when they quote a Will Ferrell or Adam Sandler movie for the fifteenth time that night. I have to keep drinking at a minimum steady rate because otherwise it's like walking during a marathon when everyone else is running past you and giving you the dubious eye. And I have to stay until the party's critical mass begins to leave, and no earlier and no later, or else people will notice me as the odd one out. Isn't it weird that people (college freshmen) go to parties partially to establish a cool reputation in the eyes of their peers and cope by becoming as inconspicuous and indistinguishable from other party-goers as possible?
Sometimes being a Christian among Christians can become a beauty contest. When your peers in your bible study talk at length about some new Christian book you haven't read, or promise rings for their long awaited future spouse (especially if your own track record isn't the purest), or how they and twelve other popular Christian girls are called to a Season of Celibacy (but maybe you aren't?), I think that it could be frustrating for you if you spend a lot of time grappling with sin. You'd probably wonder why your friends don't have to wrestle with their habits or blunders or mistakes or doubts. You'd feel like you were losing the beauty contest of the Kingdom of God, and you'd probably feel trapped, forever relegated to Christian mediocrity, an only partially-freed slave to sin. What if you were a Bible study leader or a pastor and addicted to, say, pornography?
My friends have described addiction to pornography as binding, gripping, and inexorable. Any closeness with God seems shattered by the jarring "reality" of a desperate, recurrent need to close the door, turn down the speakers, and double-click Internet Explorer. I think it wouldn't be too hard to feel like a slave to sin if you were grappling with an addiction to pornography.
Sometimes it feels like smooth sailing, that sin is something that can throw off your groove but not really get you down, like a parking ticket or late fee. But I think sometimes, especially when we find ourselves in beauty contests, we really understand Paul's metaphor of slavery and understand what he means as he explains,
"For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice, but what I hate, I do." (Romans 7:14-15)
I've read over this passage several times, but I never really thought about the significance of verse 17:
"But now, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me."
And again, in verse 20: "Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me."
He finishes, "O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God - through Jesus Christ our Lord!"
We were slaves to sin, so when we used to sin, well, it was what we did as a function of our slavery to sin. But now we are slaves of God, and when we sin, it's not a function of who we really are as much as it is us forgetting who we really are in Jesus. Now, we have been remade in the likeness of Jesus. Being remade in perfection and grace means that there is no more beauty contest for us because Jesus has fundamentally and irrevocably removed any trace of ugliness from us. Being remade in the likeness of Jesus also means there is no beauty contest because Jesus Himself was probably physically unattractive (Isaiah 53:2-3) and never bothered to try to make Himself look good to anyone while He was here.
I'm convinced that there's no place for competition within the Kingdom of God. And if that's the case, there's certainly no place for beauty contests.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Excerpt from Speaker for the Dead
I'd forgotten about this excerpt from Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead. Sorry, Orson, for the blatant copy-and-paste, but I figure you're the sort of writer who's more interested in sharing ideas. Not theologically watertight, but an interesting presentation nonetheless:
A great rabbi stands teaching in the marketplace. It happens that a husband finds proof that morning of his wife’s adultery, and a mob carries her to the marketplace to stone her to death. (There is a familiar version of this story, but a friend of mine, a Speaker for the Dead, has told me of two other rabbis that faced the same situation. Those are the ones I’m going to tell you.) The rabbi walks forward and stands beside the woman. Out of respect for him the mob forbears, and waits with the stones heavy in their hands, “Is there anyone here,” he says to them, “who has not desired another man’s wife, another woman’s husband?”
They murmur and say, “We all know the desire. But, Rabbi, none of us has acted on it.”
The rabbi says, “Then kneel down and give thanks that God made you strong.” He takes the woman by the hand and leads her out of the market. Just before he lets her go, he whispers to her, “Tell the lord magistrate who saved his mistress. Then he’ll know I am his loyal servant.”
So the woman lives, because the community is too corrupt to protect itself from disorder.
Another rabbi, another city, He goes to her and stops the mob, as in the other story, and says, “Which of you is without sin? Let him cast the first stone.”
The people are abashed, and they forget their unity of purpose in the memory of their own individual sins. Someday, they think, I may be like this woman, and I’ll hope for forgiveness and another chance. I should treat her the way I wish to be treated.
As they open their hands and let the stones fall to the ground, the rabbi picks up one of the fallen stones, lifts it high over the woman’s head, and throws it straight down with all his might. It crushes her skull and dashes her brains onto the cobblestones.
“Nor am I without sin,” he says to the people. “But if we allow only perfect people to enforce the law, the law will soon be dead, and our city with it.”
So the woman died because her community was too rigid to endure her deviance.
The famous version of this story is noteworthy because it is so startlingly rare in our experience. Most communities lurch between decay and rigor mortis, and when they veer too far, they die. Only one rabbi dared to expect of us such a perfect balance that we could preserve the law and still forgive the deviation. So, of course, we killed him.
A great rabbi stands teaching in the marketplace. It happens that a husband finds proof that morning of his wife’s adultery, and a mob carries her to the marketplace to stone her to death. (There is a familiar version of this story, but a friend of mine, a Speaker for the Dead, has told me of two other rabbis that faced the same situation. Those are the ones I’m going to tell you.) The rabbi walks forward and stands beside the woman. Out of respect for him the mob forbears, and waits with the stones heavy in their hands, “Is there anyone here,” he says to them, “who has not desired another man’s wife, another woman’s husband?”
They murmur and say, “We all know the desire. But, Rabbi, none of us has acted on it.”
The rabbi says, “Then kneel down and give thanks that God made you strong.” He takes the woman by the hand and leads her out of the market. Just before he lets her go, he whispers to her, “Tell the lord magistrate who saved his mistress. Then he’ll know I am his loyal servant.”
So the woman lives, because the community is too corrupt to protect itself from disorder.
Another rabbi, another city, He goes to her and stops the mob, as in the other story, and says, “Which of you is without sin? Let him cast the first stone.”
The people are abashed, and they forget their unity of purpose in the memory of their own individual sins. Someday, they think, I may be like this woman, and I’ll hope for forgiveness and another chance. I should treat her the way I wish to be treated.
As they open their hands and let the stones fall to the ground, the rabbi picks up one of the fallen stones, lifts it high over the woman’s head, and throws it straight down with all his might. It crushes her skull and dashes her brains onto the cobblestones.
“Nor am I without sin,” he says to the people. “But if we allow only perfect people to enforce the law, the law will soon be dead, and our city with it.”
So the woman died because her community was too rigid to endure her deviance.
The famous version of this story is noteworthy because it is so startlingly rare in our experience. Most communities lurch between decay and rigor mortis, and when they veer too far, they die. Only one rabbi dared to expect of us such a perfect balance that we could preserve the law and still forgive the deviation. So, of course, we killed him.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Into the Wild at Heart
After some reflection, I think that going out into nature for a while is like God's version of Take Your Child to Work Day.
I took a road trip last summer that went through 33 days and 15 national parks, from Houston to Yosemite. I was expecting that with an experience like that, God probably had a whole curriculum of neat things He was going to teach me, and I was eager to let the epiphanies begin. Instead, I saw a bunch of mountains and deserts and forests and canyons. But what breathtaking, jagged mountains, and what immeasurable, bleak deserts, and what intricate, vibrant forests, and what dizzying, textured canyons. And through the whole summer, I think God was showing me two things: a) that when cooped up in a car with two other guys for over a month, I turn into a jerk, and I really needed to learn to compromise and loosen up, and b) to admire His workmanship. Which makes sense, right? We so often think of God as a teacher, or as a savior, or as something that fits our immediate, specific human needs that we forget that sometimes we are stepping into the studio of an Artist, who is pleased with His work, who "saw that it was good," and who wants us to be pleased with it too. And I was humbled that out of all this natural splendor and savage, untamed wilderness, man, in spite of all of our polluted sinfulness, is still God's favorite, the "apple of His eye." (Deut 32:10)
I think it's impossible to witness and experience God's creation and not commune on some fundamental level with God. Here's one reason to consider. I've recently come to the conclusion that for almost every person on Planet Earth, the worst thing in the world is to be alone. It's something that occurred to me moving to a new city with no friends or connections. No one wants to be alone. The common definition of spiritual death, the result of sin (Romans 6:23) is "eternal separation from God," and even though that phrase isn't directly biblical, Isaiah 59:2 posits that our sin makes us very alone, without God. Being alone, unloved, is the worst thing in the world.
I just finished the book Into the Wild, which is about a 23-year old guy who graduated from Emory and treks off into the wilderness by himself to find himself, the "dominant primordial beast," as Jack London articulates it. But people who trek off into the wilderness by themselves - and I think I know because I have a bit of this bug in me too - go off not to be alone but to struggle, to experience, to master and to be broken by the savage power of God's creation and His unbridled power and beauty, without the distraction of other people or cheap bangles. Any story of man versus nature is not a story of solitude, but at heart a story of man coming to terms with God's creation, majesty, and mystery.
If being alone is the worst thing in the world, and I think it often is, then being out in nature, standing tip-toe on a mountaintop, stretching to venture as close to the Creator as we dare risk, is the opposite of being alone. How can you say otherwise, when you've just come back from perusing the Artist's studio?
Also, Job 38.
I took a road trip last summer that went through 33 days and 15 national parks, from Houston to Yosemite. I was expecting that with an experience like that, God probably had a whole curriculum of neat things He was going to teach me, and I was eager to let the epiphanies begin. Instead, I saw a bunch of mountains and deserts and forests and canyons. But what breathtaking, jagged mountains, and what immeasurable, bleak deserts, and what intricate, vibrant forests, and what dizzying, textured canyons. And through the whole summer, I think God was showing me two things: a) that when cooped up in a car with two other guys for over a month, I turn into a jerk, and I really needed to learn to compromise and loosen up, and b) to admire His workmanship. Which makes sense, right? We so often think of God as a teacher, or as a savior, or as something that fits our immediate, specific human needs that we forget that sometimes we are stepping into the studio of an Artist, who is pleased with His work, who "saw that it was good," and who wants us to be pleased with it too. And I was humbled that out of all this natural splendor and savage, untamed wilderness, man, in spite of all of our polluted sinfulness, is still God's favorite, the "apple of His eye." (Deut 32:10)
I think it's impossible to witness and experience God's creation and not commune on some fundamental level with God. Here's one reason to consider. I've recently come to the conclusion that for almost every person on Planet Earth, the worst thing in the world is to be alone. It's something that occurred to me moving to a new city with no friends or connections. No one wants to be alone. The common definition of spiritual death, the result of sin (Romans 6:23) is "eternal separation from God," and even though that phrase isn't directly biblical, Isaiah 59:2 posits that our sin makes us very alone, without God. Being alone, unloved, is the worst thing in the world.
I just finished the book Into the Wild, which is about a 23-year old guy who graduated from Emory and treks off into the wilderness by himself to find himself, the "dominant primordial beast," as Jack London articulates it. But people who trek off into the wilderness by themselves - and I think I know because I have a bit of this bug in me too - go off not to be alone but to struggle, to experience, to master and to be broken by the savage power of God's creation and His unbridled power and beauty, without the distraction of other people or cheap bangles. Any story of man versus nature is not a story of solitude, but at heart a story of man coming to terms with God's creation, majesty, and mystery.
If being alone is the worst thing in the world, and I think it often is, then being out in nature, standing tip-toe on a mountaintop, stretching to venture as close to the Creator as we dare risk, is the opposite of being alone. How can you say otherwise, when you've just come back from perusing the Artist's studio?
Also, Job 38.
Friday, September 5, 2008
Come and See
Every time I re-read John 1, I come across something new.
Again, the next day, John stood with two of his disciples. And looking at Jesus as He walked, he said, "Behold the Lamb of God!" The two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus. Then Jesus turned, and seeing them following, said to them, "What do you seek?" They said to Him, "Rabbi, where are You staying?" He said to them, "Come and see."
Philip found Nathaniel and said to him, "We have found him of whom Moses in the law, and also the prophets, wrote - Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph." And Nathaniel said to him, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" Philip said to him, "Come and see."
What a surprising and powerful response to the questions of the curious -- "Come and see." I've spent so much time puzzling over how a Christian is supposed to present the gospel of Jesus, and everything it entails, to someone who wants to hear. It's for this reason that we memorize handy formulas like the Four Laws, or keep fresh on Apologetics, or mull over ways to make conversations more natural. It's because we so often tend to think of the gospel as a fundamental set of ideas that, logically presented, have to be agreed with. When my friends have approached me and asked, "What is a Christian?" or "Why do you believe what you believe?" or "Who is Jesus?" I've always been clumsier, more tongue-tied, less ready with a compact summary of absolutely everything than I thought would've reflected someone who was supposed to be "ready in season and out" to "preach the Word." (2 Tim) I basically always feel like I've lost ground for the Kingdom of God if I don't provide a satisfactory answer on the spot.
But here someone asks a question to Jesus. And yes, it's a simple question of where He's spending the night. But Jesus could've said, I'm staying at My mom's, or an inn, or with John the Baptist. He could've simply answered the question. That's probably what I would've done. Instead, he gave an invitation. And I feel that if we're to truly understand what it is to share our faith, we need to be giving out more invitations and fewer answers.
What if Jesus had simply answered questions? What if He had never invited the disciples along for the ride and the chance to get to know Him? The gospels show, time and time again, instances where the disciples just didn't get it. Having spent years with Jesus, watching Him preach and minister and teach and heal and love, they still asked stupid questions like "Who will be the greatest among us?" If the disciples couldn't get it right after years of spending every moment with Jesus, how can we expect any of us to get it right with instant responses to singular questions? But walk a while with me. Let me show you a Christian community with individual lives redeemed by God, redeemed to God. Let me introduce you to worship and prayer and the joy we can take in fellowship with God. Let me tell you about my Friend and Savior and King. I don't think I can explain it sufficiently at all in five minutes, and I'm sorry to the people with whom I thought I could.
The catch is that we can't say "Come and see" if we don't believe that the power and grace of God have transformed our lives, if we don't believe that the Holy Spirit bears real fruit and real holiness, if we're too afraid to show our junk and our brokenness to others, or if we don't really buy that through Jesus, our sins are forgiven and ourselves reconciled with God. It's much safer for us to give an answer and not an invitation.
Where would Nathaniel have been if someone had not said, "Come and see"? Probably still under the fig tree, wondering what he missed.
Again, the next day, John stood with two of his disciples. And looking at Jesus as He walked, he said, "Behold the Lamb of God!" The two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus. Then Jesus turned, and seeing them following, said to them, "What do you seek?" They said to Him, "Rabbi, where are You staying?" He said to them, "Come and see."
Philip found Nathaniel and said to him, "We have found him of whom Moses in the law, and also the prophets, wrote - Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph." And Nathaniel said to him, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" Philip said to him, "Come and see."
What a surprising and powerful response to the questions of the curious -- "Come and see." I've spent so much time puzzling over how a Christian is supposed to present the gospel of Jesus, and everything it entails, to someone who wants to hear. It's for this reason that we memorize handy formulas like the Four Laws, or keep fresh on Apologetics, or mull over ways to make conversations more natural. It's because we so often tend to think of the gospel as a fundamental set of ideas that, logically presented, have to be agreed with. When my friends have approached me and asked, "What is a Christian?" or "Why do you believe what you believe?" or "Who is Jesus?" I've always been clumsier, more tongue-tied, less ready with a compact summary of absolutely everything than I thought would've reflected someone who was supposed to be "ready in season and out" to "preach the Word." (2 Tim) I basically always feel like I've lost ground for the Kingdom of God if I don't provide a satisfactory answer on the spot.
But here someone asks a question to Jesus. And yes, it's a simple question of where He's spending the night. But Jesus could've said, I'm staying at My mom's, or an inn, or with John the Baptist. He could've simply answered the question. That's probably what I would've done. Instead, he gave an invitation. And I feel that if we're to truly understand what it is to share our faith, we need to be giving out more invitations and fewer answers.
What if Jesus had simply answered questions? What if He had never invited the disciples along for the ride and the chance to get to know Him? The gospels show, time and time again, instances where the disciples just didn't get it. Having spent years with Jesus, watching Him preach and minister and teach and heal and love, they still asked stupid questions like "Who will be the greatest among us?" If the disciples couldn't get it right after years of spending every moment with Jesus, how can we expect any of us to get it right with instant responses to singular questions? But walk a while with me. Let me show you a Christian community with individual lives redeemed by God, redeemed to God. Let me introduce you to worship and prayer and the joy we can take in fellowship with God. Let me tell you about my Friend and Savior and King. I don't think I can explain it sufficiently at all in five minutes, and I'm sorry to the people with whom I thought I could.
The catch is that we can't say "Come and see" if we don't believe that the power and grace of God have transformed our lives, if we don't believe that the Holy Spirit bears real fruit and real holiness, if we're too afraid to show our junk and our brokenness to others, or if we don't really buy that through Jesus, our sins are forgiven and ourselves reconciled with God. It's much safer for us to give an answer and not an invitation.
Where would Nathaniel have been if someone had not said, "Come and see"? Probably still under the fig tree, wondering what he missed.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
The Difference
What makes Christianity right and Islam wrong?
At some point, everyone questions the difference between Christianity and other religions. And to say that other religions don't have things about them that are admirable is simply untrue -- many of them do have a very advanced morality and have done a lot of good for a lot of people. And to say that Christianity, as a religion, gets everything right, is also untrue, and a good look at church history, the documentary Jesus Camp, or yourself will tell you that Christianity, as lived out by Christians, doesn't get everything right.
But a lot of Christians really struggle sometimes when asked, what exactly is the difference between what you believe in and what anyone else believes? What does Christianity have that other religions can't offer? Many Christians, myself included, have fallen into the valid, but squirrelly and sometimes unsatisfactory arguments about the age of the Bible, the scientific truth of creation, the hard-to-describe, unfilled "void" we feel in our lives, or the Dead Sea Scrolls. The pursuit of these issues is important, but if those issues are our first defenses of Christianity being set apart from other religions of the world, we are merely preparing to scrap against relativism and nothing more.
What does Christianity offer that other religions can't offer?
Here's the simple answer. The answer is Jesus.
And any Christian who doesn't understand why Jesus is the real, important difference between what Christians follow and what everyone else subscribes to needs to take a time-out and re-evaluate what they understand the gospel to mean and who they understand Jesus to be.
At some point, everyone questions the difference between Christianity and other religions. And to say that other religions don't have things about them that are admirable is simply untrue -- many of them do have a very advanced morality and have done a lot of good for a lot of people. And to say that Christianity, as a religion, gets everything right, is also untrue, and a good look at church history, the documentary Jesus Camp, or yourself will tell you that Christianity, as lived out by Christians, doesn't get everything right.
But a lot of Christians really struggle sometimes when asked, what exactly is the difference between what you believe in and what anyone else believes? What does Christianity have that other religions can't offer? Many Christians, myself included, have fallen into the valid, but squirrelly and sometimes unsatisfactory arguments about the age of the Bible, the scientific truth of creation, the hard-to-describe, unfilled "void" we feel in our lives, or the Dead Sea Scrolls. The pursuit of these issues is important, but if those issues are our first defenses of Christianity being set apart from other religions of the world, we are merely preparing to scrap against relativism and nothing more.
What does Christianity offer that other religions can't offer?
Here's the simple answer. The answer is Jesus.
And any Christian who doesn't understand why Jesus is the real, important difference between what Christians follow and what everyone else subscribes to needs to take a time-out and re-evaluate what they understand the gospel to mean and who they understand Jesus to be.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Support Groups
Have you ever been to a support group? The idea is a little bit laughable to most of us. The show Dexter, the movie Fight Club, and even the musical RENT feature them prominently and comically. (Maybe not RENT, but I sure laughed during that scene.) And of course, there's that horrible group of divorced women from Jerry Maguire that sat around in a circle cackling and crying incessantly about nonsense every time they were onscreen until Jerry's awesome "You complete me" speech finally shut them up.
Some of the small group bible studies I've gone to have felt like support groups. Some of the small group bible studies I've led have felt that way too. I think it's a pretty common Christian experience. You sit in a circle. You share your name, your age, where you're from. And, leaning on that common trust and vulnerability that Christians are supposed to have, you share your secret sins and struggles. And everyone in the circle leans inwards, in an understood choreographed gesture of support, and hands are clasped and prayers are prayed. Or it could happen during accountability. Sometimes in a coffee shop. Sometimes tears are involved, especially if girls are involved.
I was leading a bible study last night, and as we introduced ourselves around the circle, one of the guys said, "Hi, my name is Chad, and I'm not an alcoholic." And it was a pretty funny thing to say, but I wasn't sure what to make of our mens' study resembling a support group.
In a way, it's a beautiful thing. I was reading Don Miller's Searching for God Knows What, and he makes the point that man isn't meant to be alone -- that we need something or someone outside of ourselves to tell us who we are and that we are valued, and if we don't find God to meet that need, we'll go desperately to other people and to society. And I think that's very true, and since men have a tendency to isolate themselves and tough things out, it's a good thing to come together to encourage each other and expose what's going on in our lives. We are broken people, and we have messed ourselves up, and to recognize the commonality and extremity of our predicament is a necessary and good thing.
But the drama of our condition shouldn't be the overarching focus, and I think that's the thing I don't like about Christian gatherings that feel like support groups. In Alcoholics Anonymous, or any other classic, the approach is to "overcome" or "move beyond" a certain condition or disorder, and the means is usually a multi-step method. But there is no 7-step method to overcoming sin, or 3-step method to a great prayer life, or a 13-step method to forgiving-my-divorced-parents. And the war against sin and pain isn't one that we undertake on our own will, accord, or strength -- so there's no reason a bible study or small group should sound like a locker room pep talk, as players and coaches work each other up into an animalistic frenzy and rush out to take the field like warrior-poets and mortify sin. Seriously, you haven't been to Christian gatherings that looked a little like that?
Someone once told me about an accountability group where the guys agreed upon a euphemism for sexual sin, or masturbating: "going to McDonald's." And they would meet weekly and sit uncomfortably in a circle for a while, and then someone would say, "Well, I went to McDonald's four times this week." "Oh, man, isn't it awful. I didn't want to, but I went to McDonald's five times this week." And they'd conclude that sin is really awful, but it's clearly a very serious and attractive thing, and hopefully God can help them out, and I wonder, what really came out of that? Everyone basically told each other that they went to McDonald's. If anything, just the conclusion that if I sin, I have Christian brothers out there who sin too, so I'm not alone in my guilt and shame. I wonder how many accountability relationships are like that.
When the priests approached Jesus and asked Him why His disciples and He weren't fasting, Jesus replied that the wedding guests couldn't fast while the Bridegroom was with them, but they would surely fast and mourn when He was taken away. And I know that Jesus isn't physically here on this earth at this moment, but He has resurrected and defeated sin and death, and He has foreshadowed a reunion with God through our having the Holy Spirit and its fruits, and shouldn't that be a cause for some joy?
I'm not saying that we should fake the funk and put on a happy face. But we should embrace the truth that we tell people we believe. If Jesus has really overcome the world and taken our punishment, then that should be bigger news than our sin and struggle. If Jesus has resurrected, then it shouldn't be simply a question of whether sin can be excised from our lifestyles, but whether our lives can be reconciled with a loving, dynamic relationship with God like they were meant to be from the beginning. If Jesus is our victory, then we have no reason to go through life hanging our heads in shame and defeat. And if we believe that experiencing God is bigger than the story of our sinful condition, then our times of encouragement and support with one another shouldn't conclude with, "Well, I went to McDonald's too this week. Sure does suck, doesn't it."
Some of the small group bible studies I've gone to have felt like support groups. Some of the small group bible studies I've led have felt that way too. I think it's a pretty common Christian experience. You sit in a circle. You share your name, your age, where you're from. And, leaning on that common trust and vulnerability that Christians are supposed to have, you share your secret sins and struggles. And everyone in the circle leans inwards, in an understood choreographed gesture of support, and hands are clasped and prayers are prayed. Or it could happen during accountability. Sometimes in a coffee shop. Sometimes tears are involved, especially if girls are involved.
I was leading a bible study last night, and as we introduced ourselves around the circle, one of the guys said, "Hi, my name is Chad, and I'm not an alcoholic." And it was a pretty funny thing to say, but I wasn't sure what to make of our mens' study resembling a support group.
In a way, it's a beautiful thing. I was reading Don Miller's Searching for God Knows What, and he makes the point that man isn't meant to be alone -- that we need something or someone outside of ourselves to tell us who we are and that we are valued, and if we don't find God to meet that need, we'll go desperately to other people and to society. And I think that's very true, and since men have a tendency to isolate themselves and tough things out, it's a good thing to come together to encourage each other and expose what's going on in our lives. We are broken people, and we have messed ourselves up, and to recognize the commonality and extremity of our predicament is a necessary and good thing.
But the drama of our condition shouldn't be the overarching focus, and I think that's the thing I don't like about Christian gatherings that feel like support groups. In Alcoholics Anonymous, or any other classic, the approach is to "overcome" or "move beyond" a certain condition or disorder, and the means is usually a multi-step method. But there is no 7-step method to overcoming sin, or 3-step method to a great prayer life, or a 13-step method to forgiving-my-divorced-parents. And the war against sin and pain isn't one that we undertake on our own will, accord, or strength -- so there's no reason a bible study or small group should sound like a locker room pep talk, as players and coaches work each other up into an animalistic frenzy and rush out to take the field like warrior-poets and mortify sin. Seriously, you haven't been to Christian gatherings that looked a little like that?
Someone once told me about an accountability group where the guys agreed upon a euphemism for sexual sin, or masturbating: "going to McDonald's." And they would meet weekly and sit uncomfortably in a circle for a while, and then someone would say, "Well, I went to McDonald's four times this week." "Oh, man, isn't it awful. I didn't want to, but I went to McDonald's five times this week." And they'd conclude that sin is really awful, but it's clearly a very serious and attractive thing, and hopefully God can help them out, and I wonder, what really came out of that? Everyone basically told each other that they went to McDonald's. If anything, just the conclusion that if I sin, I have Christian brothers out there who sin too, so I'm not alone in my guilt and shame. I wonder how many accountability relationships are like that.
When the priests approached Jesus and asked Him why His disciples and He weren't fasting, Jesus replied that the wedding guests couldn't fast while the Bridegroom was with them, but they would surely fast and mourn when He was taken away. And I know that Jesus isn't physically here on this earth at this moment, but He has resurrected and defeated sin and death, and He has foreshadowed a reunion with God through our having the Holy Spirit and its fruits, and shouldn't that be a cause for some joy?
I'm not saying that we should fake the funk and put on a happy face. But we should embrace the truth that we tell people we believe. If Jesus has really overcome the world and taken our punishment, then that should be bigger news than our sin and struggle. If Jesus has resurrected, then it shouldn't be simply a question of whether sin can be excised from our lifestyles, but whether our lives can be reconciled with a loving, dynamic relationship with God like they were meant to be from the beginning. If Jesus is our victory, then we have no reason to go through life hanging our heads in shame and defeat. And if we believe that experiencing God is bigger than the story of our sinful condition, then our times of encouragement and support with one another shouldn't conclude with, "Well, I went to McDonald's too this week. Sure does suck, doesn't it."
Monday, August 18, 2008
Happiness is Coming Home Again
Matthew and Margaret are married. I think they'll be really happy together and I have great hopes for them. They've been an important couple for me for the simple reason that at first, I didn't think they were particularly compatible or complementary -- I think when they started dating, it was a shocker for a lot of us -- but the real truth is that they are two big-hearted, compassionate, earnest, selfless, and vulnerable people who love each other and love God very much, and that seems to have counted much more than anything eharmony or mattdunnthematchmaker could've produced. More than any other secondary traits, from what I've seen, their marriage is built on the fruits of the Spirit and their pursuit after God. That sort of perfect match, unpredicted by people like me, is literally ordained by God and His work in their hearts, and it was very cool to be there this past weekend and see that.
My favorite story with Margaret is from sophomore year when I had a ridiculous cold, and she gave me a hug and made me some tomato soup and some nice conversation, despite the fact that she was ridiculously busy. And I asked her in a head-achy, congested stupor when she was going to find a nice boy and settle down. I ask a lot of forward questions, but I got my answer to this one.
There is a musical called You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown that contains the line, "Happiness is coming home again," and that was incredibly true this weekend. I have never, ever been the type to get homesick, but if I were, I'm most homesick when I'm home on a brief visit and know I have to leave soon. There's a certain tragedy to coming back to a place and knowing that something, probably you, has changed. What ran through Moses's mind when he came back to Egypt after 40 years? Did he experience a heartbreaking divide in his soul between doing what God wanted him to and throwing down his stick and running back to the family he grew up with? What about Ruth -- was her break from Moab and the land of her family as clean and determined as she made it seem to Naomi, or was she acting out of deferent obedience to follow the people and ways of God? How did Jesus feel while He was here? He commented that he "had no place to lay His head," but also wept over Jerusalem, as if longing for a restoration over a dear relationship that had changed. Was Jesus longing for His return to the Father? Or was He at home on the earth, sharing good times and bad with His dear friends Mary and Martha and Lazarus?
The great comfort of believing in Christ and His game plan, at least as far as this topic is concerned, is that it's always "see you later" and never "goodbye" with dear friends in Christ. We rest assured to our reunion with God and with each other in heaven and eternal happiness, and for that reason, we endure with cheerfulness the mess and burden of our time on this earth. If God weren't real, if I didn't believe that, I don't think I'd be living responsibly -- I think I'd spend every waking moment with the people I love, doing the things I love. To go to work every day, to put in extra hours, to steal moments from friends and family and fulfillment in an unbearably finite existence is a severely depressing thought.
And when I think about the comfort and hope that God provides, I have a habit of falling into objectivist's guilt. Are my agnostic friends right? Was Pascale's Wager? Do I mainly believe because I like these prospects better than the hopelessness of the alternative ones? And I think a lot of Christians want to say, no, this hope that God provides is actually the verifiable truth, and not entirely feel-good, and as a result, sometimes guilt accompanies the receipt of God's comfort and goodness.
I do value apologetics, I do value critical thinking, and I do value the objective search for truth. But I think I also really, really want to believe. And if God were as good and as real as they say He is, then wouldn't that absolutely be my response to that incredible truth?
My favorite story with Margaret is from sophomore year when I had a ridiculous cold, and she gave me a hug and made me some tomato soup and some nice conversation, despite the fact that she was ridiculously busy. And I asked her in a head-achy, congested stupor when she was going to find a nice boy and settle down. I ask a lot of forward questions, but I got my answer to this one.
There is a musical called You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown that contains the line, "Happiness is coming home again," and that was incredibly true this weekend. I have never, ever been the type to get homesick, but if I were, I'm most homesick when I'm home on a brief visit and know I have to leave soon. There's a certain tragedy to coming back to a place and knowing that something, probably you, has changed. What ran through Moses's mind when he came back to Egypt after 40 years? Did he experience a heartbreaking divide in his soul between doing what God wanted him to and throwing down his stick and running back to the family he grew up with? What about Ruth -- was her break from Moab and the land of her family as clean and determined as she made it seem to Naomi, or was she acting out of deferent obedience to follow the people and ways of God? How did Jesus feel while He was here? He commented that he "had no place to lay His head," but also wept over Jerusalem, as if longing for a restoration over a dear relationship that had changed. Was Jesus longing for His return to the Father? Or was He at home on the earth, sharing good times and bad with His dear friends Mary and Martha and Lazarus?
The great comfort of believing in Christ and His game plan, at least as far as this topic is concerned, is that it's always "see you later" and never "goodbye" with dear friends in Christ. We rest assured to our reunion with God and with each other in heaven and eternal happiness, and for that reason, we endure with cheerfulness the mess and burden of our time on this earth. If God weren't real, if I didn't believe that, I don't think I'd be living responsibly -- I think I'd spend every waking moment with the people I love, doing the things I love. To go to work every day, to put in extra hours, to steal moments from friends and family and fulfillment in an unbearably finite existence is a severely depressing thought.
And when I think about the comfort and hope that God provides, I have a habit of falling into objectivist's guilt. Are my agnostic friends right? Was Pascale's Wager? Do I mainly believe because I like these prospects better than the hopelessness of the alternative ones? And I think a lot of Christians want to say, no, this hope that God provides is actually the verifiable truth, and not entirely feel-good, and as a result, sometimes guilt accompanies the receipt of God's comfort and goodness.
I do value apologetics, I do value critical thinking, and I do value the objective search for truth. But I think I also really, really want to believe. And if God were as good and as real as they say He is, then wouldn't that absolutely be my response to that incredible truth?
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
The Old Account
There are some cases where you can hear the truth a thousand times and not really understand how to act in light of that truth. I think for me, money is one of those bugbears. I understand that Jesus said to store up treasures in heaven and that Paul McCartney said that money can't buy me love. But I think I'm not alone in being hesitant to invest my money into something that won't return directly to me. I check my bank account every month or so and if I've spent more than I made, then I get this tight uneasiness in my stomach.
Why worry? Harrison Ford made the observation, here paraphrased, that money is never an issue, unless you don't have it. And I've realized that to be true. Blessed to have a solid lower-middle class job in America (yes, I looked up "middle class" on Wikipedia), in my day-to-day living, money is absolutely an abstract. I don't spend anything ridiculous. I don't own any jetskis or horses. Yet I squirm about spending too much on a movie ticket or a new pair of shorts. I forget that, at least for the time being, all money really, truly is to me is a set of numbers on a computer screen that I try to make go up instead of down. I forget that I'm not in control of my life, that I could lose everything tomorrow and still have everything important.
Sometimes I think we think that it's a race to have balanced living a good life and having a pretty decent net positive balance at the end of the road, but you know what Scripture calls for us to have in our accounts at the end of life? No more than zero. So I should really embrace the idea that not every month has to end with a positive net balance -- God gives us money to use for His Kingdom work and to sustain us, not to hoard. There might have been a parable about that.
It's important to stay out of debt -- we do have an obligation to be good, faithful stewards of everything Christ has provided for us in our redeemed, purpose-driven lives, be that money or time or family or relationships. And we do have an obligation to model values like hard-work and self-control, as a witness and encouragement to others. And in 2 Thessalonians, Paul remarks on the importance of not burdening others: "For you yourselves know how you ought to follow us, for we were not disorderly among you; nor did we eat anyone's bread free of charge, but worked with labor and toil night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you, not because we do not have the authority, but to make ourselves an example of how you should follow us [...] For we hear that there are some who walk among you in a disorderly manner, not working at all, but are busybodies. Now those who are such, we command and exhort through our Lord Jesus Christ that they work in quietness and eat their own bread."
So yes, it's important to work and be faithful with the ledger. But I think I'm not the only Christian who really needs to let go of earthly treasures. I mean, it's come to the point where every time a ministry asks for money, they have to play some acoustic guitar music and a photo slideshow to guarantee donations. And I know that slideshows and acoustic guitar music are fine things, but I think ministries pretty much feel like they have to have those hooks to get Christians to donate. And there's a pretty well-known joke among waiters:
What's the difference between a Christian and a canoe? A canoe tips more.
Well, that's me, and it's a poor way of loving people who spend their days serving people like me. I think Christians should be big tippers. We should know how to take care of each other and how to show a little grace in practical ways.
I think people who read these thoughts will maybe think, that's a good thought, but it's not as if I should just shuffle off all my money to ease my guilty conscience. My problem is that I can't discern any good Kingdom investments or outlets for my money, so I'm saving it up. I don't think that's true at all -- I think every time you have an opportunity to give, whether it's to a homeless person, an international relief organization, a church, or your grandmother's birthday, your mind goes through two questions: should I give (yes or no) and do I want to give (yes or no)? And if our hearts say yes/no, then the cardial discrepancy depressurizes our stomach and gives us a tight, uneasy feeling. My biology might be a little off -- my point is that most of us probably experience no lack of opportunities for monetary investment in the Kingdom of God.
My other theory is that it's impossible to enjoy the reward of giving without doing it first. There are times where God grants us foresight of His blessing in something that we plan to do that makes us look forward to that particular endeavor -- marriage, children, joining a church, whatever. But it is so hard to want to give if we haven't started giving yet. Hence the camel and the eye of the needle. How can we see ourselves storing up treasures in heaven if we're sitting on a pile of earthly treasures? Isn't that the whole reason we haven't had our priorities straight to begin with?
Now I've done the easy part, which is write some words about something I should put into practice. I hope God grants me whatever it'll take for Step Two.
Why worry? Harrison Ford made the observation, here paraphrased, that money is never an issue, unless you don't have it. And I've realized that to be true. Blessed to have a solid lower-middle class job in America (yes, I looked up "middle class" on Wikipedia), in my day-to-day living, money is absolutely an abstract. I don't spend anything ridiculous. I don't own any jetskis or horses. Yet I squirm about spending too much on a movie ticket or a new pair of shorts. I forget that, at least for the time being, all money really, truly is to me is a set of numbers on a computer screen that I try to make go up instead of down. I forget that I'm not in control of my life, that I could lose everything tomorrow and still have everything important.
Sometimes I think we think that it's a race to have balanced living a good life and having a pretty decent net positive balance at the end of the road, but you know what Scripture calls for us to have in our accounts at the end of life? No more than zero. So I should really embrace the idea that not every month has to end with a positive net balance -- God gives us money to use for His Kingdom work and to sustain us, not to hoard. There might have been a parable about that.
It's important to stay out of debt -- we do have an obligation to be good, faithful stewards of everything Christ has provided for us in our redeemed, purpose-driven lives, be that money or time or family or relationships. And we do have an obligation to model values like hard-work and self-control, as a witness and encouragement to others. And in 2 Thessalonians, Paul remarks on the importance of not burdening others: "For you yourselves know how you ought to follow us, for we were not disorderly among you; nor did we eat anyone's bread free of charge, but worked with labor and toil night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you, not because we do not have the authority, but to make ourselves an example of how you should follow us [...] For we hear that there are some who walk among you in a disorderly manner, not working at all, but are busybodies. Now those who are such, we command and exhort through our Lord Jesus Christ that they work in quietness and eat their own bread."
So yes, it's important to work and be faithful with the ledger. But I think I'm not the only Christian who really needs to let go of earthly treasures. I mean, it's come to the point where every time a ministry asks for money, they have to play some acoustic guitar music and a photo slideshow to guarantee donations. And I know that slideshows and acoustic guitar music are fine things, but I think ministries pretty much feel like they have to have those hooks to get Christians to donate. And there's a pretty well-known joke among waiters:
What's the difference between a Christian and a canoe? A canoe tips more.
Well, that's me, and it's a poor way of loving people who spend their days serving people like me. I think Christians should be big tippers. We should know how to take care of each other and how to show a little grace in practical ways.
I think people who read these thoughts will maybe think, that's a good thought, but it's not as if I should just shuffle off all my money to ease my guilty conscience. My problem is that I can't discern any good Kingdom investments or outlets for my money, so I'm saving it up. I don't think that's true at all -- I think every time you have an opportunity to give, whether it's to a homeless person, an international relief organization, a church, or your grandmother's birthday, your mind goes through two questions: should I give (yes or no) and do I want to give (yes or no)? And if our hearts say yes/no, then the cardial discrepancy depressurizes our stomach and gives us a tight, uneasy feeling. My biology might be a little off -- my point is that most of us probably experience no lack of opportunities for monetary investment in the Kingdom of God.
My other theory is that it's impossible to enjoy the reward of giving without doing it first. There are times where God grants us foresight of His blessing in something that we plan to do that makes us look forward to that particular endeavor -- marriage, children, joining a church, whatever. But it is so hard to want to give if we haven't started giving yet. Hence the camel and the eye of the needle. How can we see ourselves storing up treasures in heaven if we're sitting on a pile of earthly treasures? Isn't that the whole reason we haven't had our priorities straight to begin with?
Now I've done the easy part, which is write some words about something I should put into practice. I hope God grants me whatever it'll take for Step Two.
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Watchmen
There is a movie called Watchmen coming out, based on the graphic novel by Frank Miller, and it looks like a lot of fun.
In Isaiah 62, God declares, "I have set watchmen on your walls, O Jerusalem."
In Ezekiel 33, God appoints Ezekiel to be a watchman for the house of Israel.
Ezekiel 26-32 summarily drives home the point that you don't want to be on God's bad side, whether you're the prince of Tyre (earthly ruler serving Satan), the king of Tyre (Satan), or anyone in Egypt or Sidon or Assyria or Edom or the surrounding regions. "Their iniquities will be on their bones ecause of the terror of the mighty in the land of the living. Yes, you shall be broken in the midst of the uncircumcised and lie with those slain by the sword." (32:27-28) Probably a good time if any to get out of the country, maybe take that long forestalled trip to the Yellowstone, and generally not be in the Middle East when God utterly and furiously decimates the kingdoms of the earth.
Reading these chapters by yourself at night is a pretty frightening reminder that God's Word was never meant to be boring.
Here's what Chapter 33 says:
"When I bring the sword upon a land, and the people of the land take a man from their territory and make him their watchman, when he sees the sword coming upon the land, if he blows the trumpet and warns the people, then whoever hears the sound of the trumpet and does not take warning, if the sword comes and takes him away, his blood shall be on his own head. He heard the sound of the trumpet, but did not take warning. But he who takes warning shall save himself.
"But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet, and the people are not warned, and the sword comes and takes any person from among them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood I will require at the watchman's hand. So you, son of man: I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel.
"When I say to the wicked, 'O wicked man, you shall surely die!' and you do not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood I shall require at your hand. Nevertheless, if you warn the wicked to turn from his way, and he does not turn from his way, he shall die in his iniquity; but you have delivered your soul."
The chapter continues on to remark, in verses 17-20, that therein is God's justice: that the righteous-turned-wicked will die and the wicked-repented-righteous will live.
This passage offers a lot of insight towards a lot of questions we often ask about God's justice. What about those people who never hear about the gospel? If we don't take up the Great Commission, then won't God in His grace use someone else? If what the Bible says doesn't seem fair, does that mean we just have to believe that God's definition of fair supersedes our societal and otherwise derived notions of justice?
God's revelation to Ezekiel offers a few key points here. The first is that the wicked die in their own iniquity; in other words, nobody is unjustly or undeservedly punished. I think that idea is something we try to marginalize as Christians when we say that surely people need to hear the full four-law gospel before deciding to reject or accept salvation. Romans 1 makes the claim that "since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes are clearly seen [...] even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse because although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God." It's a big topic, but my point here is that this notion in Ezekiel 33 is certainly not without scriptural corroboration -- there is almost never such a thing as innocent, undeserving victims who are swept away by God's wrath. And I say "almost" because I'm not entirely sure what to do with Ezekiel's wife, from Chapter 24.
The second really cool thing about this passage is the role that watchmen play in the salvation (or at least possible salvation) of a people under siege. It's at least part of God's provision, part of His plan for grace, part of His justice. When people query, why doesn't God do something about those people who haven't heard of or been exposed to the goodness of His kingdom or the redemption of His gospel, they can forget in close-mindedness that watchmen are part of God's provision: watchmen who stand on the walls and warn people about the approach of destruction and help bring about the possibility of redemption and salvation.
I think it follows (as in, it's not a stretch) that Christians are called to be watchmen of sorts. Are we condemned (have we "failed to deliver our souls") if we tarry or fail in our appointment? Up until the point that "there is no condemnation in them who are in Christ Jesus." Over whom can we be called watchmen? Over those people who are facing destruction.
Whenever anyone makes a point, the immediate danger is that you can take it to an extreme. There's always the danger that someone will literally walk up to someone else and say, "O wicked man, you will surely die!" There's always the danger that we'll believe we are the only means God has for the salvation of a select number of people, and cut God out of the deal: how decisive our role is and exactly many degrees-of-freedom God gives things is also a big question and we'll never decidedly know during our earthly lifetimes. I'm not saying anything ridiculous here.
But I am saying something extreme, in that I am saying that Ezekiel 33 says something extreme: destruction is coming in a terrible way, and God has made you and I watchmen on the walls to warn people, and for this duty, we are accountable. How often we praise God that we are "saved" and forget that we are "saved" from a terrifying reality of destruction! How often we forget how many people are still without hope of salvation! And how much would God be glorified if His watchmen weren't so often asleep on the job.
In Isaiah 62, God declares, "I have set watchmen on your walls, O Jerusalem."
In Ezekiel 33, God appoints Ezekiel to be a watchman for the house of Israel.
Ezekiel 26-32 summarily drives home the point that you don't want to be on God's bad side, whether you're the prince of Tyre (earthly ruler serving Satan), the king of Tyre (Satan), or anyone in Egypt or Sidon or Assyria or Edom or the surrounding regions. "Their iniquities will be on their bones ecause of the terror of the mighty in the land of the living. Yes, you shall be broken in the midst of the uncircumcised and lie with those slain by the sword." (32:27-28) Probably a good time if any to get out of the country, maybe take that long forestalled trip to the Yellowstone, and generally not be in the Middle East when God utterly and furiously decimates the kingdoms of the earth.
Reading these chapters by yourself at night is a pretty frightening reminder that God's Word was never meant to be boring.
Here's what Chapter 33 says:
"When I bring the sword upon a land, and the people of the land take a man from their territory and make him their watchman, when he sees the sword coming upon the land, if he blows the trumpet and warns the people, then whoever hears the sound of the trumpet and does not take warning, if the sword comes and takes him away, his blood shall be on his own head. He heard the sound of the trumpet, but did not take warning. But he who takes warning shall save himself.
"But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet, and the people are not warned, and the sword comes and takes any person from among them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood I will require at the watchman's hand. So you, son of man: I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel.
"When I say to the wicked, 'O wicked man, you shall surely die!' and you do not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood I shall require at your hand. Nevertheless, if you warn the wicked to turn from his way, and he does not turn from his way, he shall die in his iniquity; but you have delivered your soul."
The chapter continues on to remark, in verses 17-20, that therein is God's justice: that the righteous-turned-wicked will die and the wicked-repented-righteous will live.
This passage offers a lot of insight towards a lot of questions we often ask about God's justice. What about those people who never hear about the gospel? If we don't take up the Great Commission, then won't God in His grace use someone else? If what the Bible says doesn't seem fair, does that mean we just have to believe that God's definition of fair supersedes our societal and otherwise derived notions of justice?
God's revelation to Ezekiel offers a few key points here. The first is that the wicked die in their own iniquity; in other words, nobody is unjustly or undeservedly punished. I think that idea is something we try to marginalize as Christians when we say that surely people need to hear the full four-law gospel before deciding to reject or accept salvation. Romans 1 makes the claim that "since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes are clearly seen [...] even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse because although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God." It's a big topic, but my point here is that this notion in Ezekiel 33 is certainly not without scriptural corroboration -- there is almost never such a thing as innocent, undeserving victims who are swept away by God's wrath. And I say "almost" because I'm not entirely sure what to do with Ezekiel's wife, from Chapter 24.
The second really cool thing about this passage is the role that watchmen play in the salvation (or at least possible salvation) of a people under siege. It's at least part of God's provision, part of His plan for grace, part of His justice. When people query, why doesn't God do something about those people who haven't heard of or been exposed to the goodness of His kingdom or the redemption of His gospel, they can forget in close-mindedness that watchmen are part of God's provision: watchmen who stand on the walls and warn people about the approach of destruction and help bring about the possibility of redemption and salvation.
I think it follows (as in, it's not a stretch) that Christians are called to be watchmen of sorts. Are we condemned (have we "failed to deliver our souls") if we tarry or fail in our appointment? Up until the point that "there is no condemnation in them who are in Christ Jesus." Over whom can we be called watchmen? Over those people who are facing destruction.
Whenever anyone makes a point, the immediate danger is that you can take it to an extreme. There's always the danger that someone will literally walk up to someone else and say, "O wicked man, you will surely die!" There's always the danger that we'll believe we are the only means God has for the salvation of a select number of people, and cut God out of the deal: how decisive our role is and exactly many degrees-of-freedom God gives things is also a big question and we'll never decidedly know during our earthly lifetimes. I'm not saying anything ridiculous here.
But I am saying something extreme, in that I am saying that Ezekiel 33 says something extreme: destruction is coming in a terrible way, and God has made you and I watchmen on the walls to warn people, and for this duty, we are accountable. How often we praise God that we are "saved" and forget that we are "saved" from a terrifying reality of destruction! How often we forget how many people are still without hope of salvation! And how much would God be glorified if His watchmen weren't so often asleep on the job.
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