Friday, May 23, 2008

Out-Reach

So I was sitting in the section of the Rice Memorial Center where all the GLBT magazines sit neatly in their racks, and the cover of OutSmart caught my eye. I ended up reading an article, a letter addressed to Joel Osteen, that I found really interesting -- here are some excerpts:

"Silence can say harsh things. Joel Osteen's refusal to speak an opinion on God and homosexuality has ruffled either side of the issue -- those who say it's a sin and those who believe it's not. A man who reaches more than 40,000 people at Lakewood each week and another 200 million television viewers worldwide should take a stand on one of today's most pressing societal issues."

"Mr. Osteen...expect a group of at least two dozen gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgenders, along with their families and supportive church leaders, to visit Lakewood on Mother's Day. Lakewood is the first of six megachurches that The American Family Outing will attend through Father's Day hoping to address family, faith, and sexual orientation in friendly sit-down conversations with members of those congregations."

The article went on to discuss the AFO's initiative to start dialogues with large Christian communities to reconcile the belief and cultural differences between the two groups.

----------

This irony in this article is staggering. Who is supposed to be reaching out to whom?

It is humbling to realize that the gay community, or some organizations within it, are reaching out in love and reconciliation to the very body of Christ that is supposed to have lovingly and sacrificially brought that gospel to them. It's about as paradoxical as Gentiles reaching out to the Jews through whom God revealed Himself and His word and His Son. God has a funny way of flipping peoples' roles.

Here are my basic thoughts on the issue:

-- Pursuing homosexuality is a sin. It's no worse a sin than any other, and no better.

-- Homosexuality is made more controversial than other sins for three reasons: one, it's often seen as a natural, inherent part of a person's identity, and two, people are often very proud, defensive, and indignant about homosexuality in a way you wouldn't see with other sins, and three, it doesn't have the immediate apparent destructive consequences of some other sins, for example, murder or stealing.

-- It's not the best argument to say that homosexuality must be controllable, or must be a sinful choice, because God says it's wrong in the Bible. People are born with a sin nature, a natural inclination to sin. People who are born with bad tempers are naturally predisposed to wrath; people who are horny are predisposed to sexual sin and lust. By this reasoning, I do think people can be born with homosexual temperaments.

I often forget that our relationship with God is always grace first. I think gays often get the message that they have to change themselves before they can enter God's house and worship Him with His family. It's really the other way around. God's grace enables and necessitates transformation, not for gays, but for everyone. I think liberal Christianity often plays down the fact that sin, including homosexual sin, brings death. The grace of Jesus Christ is the only means for that -- we need to tell each other that! Doesn't that provide a great answer to the question of whether to be zealous for God's standards or whether to be loving and accepting? I think when people get stuck hard on the question of love versus justice, they are forgetting in part the magnitude and transformative nature of God's grace.

We are very hypocritical. I found myself glancing around the RMC every few minutes to see if anyone I knew were walking by watching me read OutSmart. I wondered if people would think I was gay, and then I wondered why in the world that should bother me, when we all profess to be redeemed sinners. I think many of my friends suffer from the same self-consciousness.

It looks like in this case, the AFO has their priorities in order, and it is humbling. People making themselves right isn't God's game, for defiant homosexuals or for self-righteous Christians. God's Kingdom is about encouraging each other to pursue God, and letting everything else follow from His grace and redemption. And after we remove the plank from our own eyes, God still wants us to help others get their splinters out.

Sunday, May 18, 2008

Sunday Morning Sharkfest

Short version: This morning, my friend, my little brother, and I were going to go to church, but we didn't. The End.

Longer version: My little brother is always really slow to mobilize. He has to be roused at least three times to get out of bed to go to school in the morning, so it's not uncommon for whoever's driving to burst a blood vessel trying to get the little fartknocker out of bed.
So we needed to leave for church by 9:45 this morning to get to the 10:30 service. Where is Geoff? On the toilet. Males in the Dunn household, except me, have been known to sit on the can for up to half an hour just moseying and taking their time, so my friend and I take turns shouting at him to hurry up. He mumbles from behind the closed bathroom door that he has a stomachache. We wait while he sits on the can for 20+ minutes.

Three options formed in my head, in this order: (1) hurry his malingering ass out of the bathroom and get him to the car so we can speed down the freeway to stumble in late and flustered to church, (2) leave him on the can (he's 17, he can handle himself), and go to church -- I mean, if he's not going to get anything out of it, I might as well get some spiritual mileage out of the day, right? (3) Not go to church, sit around and fume all day, and unintentionally-but-sort-of-intentionally guilt-trip the little fartknocker.

It seems obvious when I list them out that those three options are incredibly unloving. But those were the first things that occurred to me to do. And if you stop and think, that sort of scene probably plays itself out around the American South Bible Belt on Sunday mornings. Foxtrot cartoons always have the parents screaming and hollering in order to get their lackadaisical kids into their pews on time. It's almost become a cultural joke to think about two congregants engaging in apoplectic road rage and then finding themselves next to each other in church. I remember a lot of Sabbath mornings that felt extremely stressful because everyone was running into the congregation on edge -- I remember wondering where the love, joy, peace, patience, and all that jazz had gone.

Two scriptures came to mind: the Mark 2:27 part where Jesus points out that "the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath," and the 1 John 4:20 part where "if anyone says, I love God, but hates his brother, he is a liar." How could I abide in God's love, how could I celebrate God's love on His Sabbath, and still lack the patience, the love, the concern for my brother -- who actually did turn out to have a pretty bad case of stomach pains for the next few hours. God gave me my brother that I should have the opportunity to love him, and my first few thoughts today definitely failed that.

God doesn't want us to wallow in our guilt, but if we're doing something wrong, then we need to know it. Think about those two churchgoers who scream at each other on the road and then end up in adjacent pews feeling guilty. They have a right to feel humbled: as Jesus put it in Matthew 5, "If you bring your gift to the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift."

God looks at our hearts, not our church attendance, in the end.

Fortunately, God's grace gave me those thoughts before I did anything rash, and what we ended up doing was staying home, while I wrote this entry and gave my brother some soda and crackers. Which I know, sounds pretty basic.

Sunday, May 11, 2008

Kingdom Work

In the last few weeks, I graduated and commissioned in the United States Navy, but for the most part, after I finished final exams and projects, I went to a lot of receptions and ate a lot of food and spent a lot of time with friends and family.

I always tend to feel like I'm wasting time when I'm not "doing something worthwhile." Am I not supposed to be advancing the Kingdom of God, caring for his people, promoting the gospel, or something?

Ecclesiastes 2 warns that spending a lot of time worrying about strivings and labor is vanity. It states, "There is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink, and that his soul should enjoy the good of his labor. This also, I saw, was from the hand of God."

It's hard to read a lot of Ecclesiastes, but I think it's wisdom that God gives us a lot of gifts so that we can enjoy them. So often we're overachievers, and we want to be great stewards and do excellent things with what God provides, but I think there's something to be said for learning to be a great recipient of a gift. How could we really be great proponents of the gospel of grace if we didn't first allow ourselves to be awed by what it means for us? How can we be planters of trees to shade others, if we don't know what it means to sit and enjoy the shade?

The book Through Painted Deserts by Don Miller recounts Don going on a road trip from Houston to Oregon and being overwhelmed by the fact that God made the stars and the mountains to amaze us. I had some similar experiences last summer, road-tripping through national parks from Houston to San Francisco. If you stand on top of Half-Dome on Yosemite, or look out over the depths and widths of the Grand Canyon, or stare around at the vast and terrible stillness of Death Valley, it gives you a sense of what God had in mind at the very beginning, before we fouled things up -- the world as an amazing garden for us to enjoy in His company. And the biggest lesson God taught me during that road trip was to learn let go, to relax, and to enjoy things as they came.

Sometimes the Bible isn't just a set of instructions, and sometimes the world isn't just a battlefield for Christians to conquer for Christ. Sometimes life is a love letter, authored by God, for us to enjoy. I think that's why Job was exceedingly blessed after his trials -- it wasn't a reward for any good behavior, it was a gift from a loving Father. I think it's why Jesus took a nap on the fishing boat on the Sea of Galilee. I think that's why I've had some time to breathe, relax, and enjoy my friends and family and the beautiful weather and this amazing university experience.

Sunday, May 4, 2008

Jacob and Esau

Question of the week:

I've run into people who have understood the gospel and what it means on an intellectual level. But one person in particular has said to me, "Yes, I understand that Jesus came to take away my sins, which I can't do myself, and to reconcile me with God. But I don't want to be in debt to anyone or owe anyone anything. I didn't ask to be obligated to His grace, and I'd rather deal with consequences on my own terms, even if that means going to hell." What do you say to that?

My first thought is, this person probably doesn't have the best understanding of how bad sin and death really are, but then again, sometimes I don't either. My second thought is that as Christians, we all have to really learn by experience or revelation what grace is and to accept it. It is a turning point in every Christian's faith when they realize, "Hey, grace isn't just like a reset button -- it is hard work and sacrificial love on God's part, something I deserve the opposite of, and it's what I'm called to base my life and my faith upon." So that thought that we don't want to be obligated to anyone and we want to make it on our own terms (or if we know we can't, at least go down trying) is a reflection of the non-Christian mindset.

From the moment we're born, we're indebted to the grace of others, either our family or "the kindness of strangers," but that's a little different. Accepting Christ is a decision, a willful acceptance of our indebtedness to Christ's work and our inability to stand on our own feet.

Still, in some ways, it feels like a valid question. Jesus did suffer and die for us, but we weren't there and we never asked Him to, so what obligates us to accept except a certain realism that we can't do it alone? I'd like to know what anyone would say to that statement, "I don't want to be indebted to anyone."

------------------------------

Genesis 27 is a chapter about people who mess things up, and a lot of my insight is based on this morning's sermon at Grace Bible Church.

In verses 1-4, Isaac blindly tells Esau to go hunt some meat and cook him a savory stew so that he can receive his father's blessing. In verses 5-29, Jacob and Rebekah come up with a conniving, deceitful scheme to pass Jacob off as Esau and steal the blessing of Isaac. The remainder of the chapter is Esau getting really pissed off, getting an ersatz blessing from Isaac, and then Jacob having to flee Isaac's household so Esau won't kill him.

How do we read this story? I've heard so many approaches and interpretations. Isaac was going to bless Esau, but as predicted by God in Genesis 25:23 when the twins were born, Jacob ends up on top, which we can take to mean that God has excellent foresight. Esau gave up the right to a birthright in Genesis 25 when he ate Jacob's stew, so what happened was really what Esau deserved. Sure, Jacob and Rebekah were deceitful and corrupt in the way they went about it, but they were passionate after God's blessing, so in the end, that was in accordance with God's will -- sort of the argument that the person who really wants the championship is the person who will use any means to get there. And nothing really happens to Jacob -- he gets the blessing, doesn't he -- so it must've been okay for him to do what he did.

Here are some important things I've realized about this story:

- By choosing Esau to bless, Isaac is trying to circumvent God's will. I'd always read God's words in Genesis 25:23 as prophecy, not a command, but God definitely told Rebekah (who almost certainly would've told Isaac) that the blessing was to go to Jacob. So it's not as if the blessing was ever up for grabs, and Jacob just came away with it in the end. Jacob was intended to have God's blessing from the beginning.

- Jacob was supposed to have the blessing because God wanted him to, and that's all we'll ever really know about it. Malachi 1:2-3 and all of that. It's a reality of how God works, and it's not a function of merit or deserving. Jacob was a conniving little snot, and Esau married a Hittite and gave his parents grief, so it's not like either were golden boys.

- It is absolutely ridiculous that Isaac tried to circumvent God's will and give the blessing to Esau over his affinity for Esau's venison stew, but we forgo God's plan for ridiculous things too. A Bible scholar named Alexander Whyte noted, "What envy was to Cain, and what wine was to Noah, and what lewdness was to Ham, and what wealth was to Lot, and what pride and impatience were to Sarah -- all that, venison and savoury meat were to Isaac." Great men of God sacrifice so much of their marital happiness and godly purity for the momentary pleasures of Internet pornography. It is important that I realize that I am not above any sin, ever.

- Are Jacob and Rebekah working to achieve the stated will of God? Yes. Are they sinning in the way they go about it? Absolutely they are. But they get the blessing -- does that mean it's okay? No way. It is one thing to work toward the stated will of God and another to do it by worldly means. First, it's clear that they're sinning. Jacob's chief concern is getting caught by Isaac, not doing wrong. And they're lying and deceiving and stealing. Second, if they do things wrong and don't reap the consequences they deserve -- well, that's the definition of mercy, right? Doesn't mean they weren't sinning. Third, Jacob and Rebekah do have to deal with pretty dire consequences that I hadn't thought about before today. Jacob has to leave his father's house for hard labor in Laban's fields. He never gets to see his mother again, and accordingly, Rebekah never sees her favorite son again. Jacob and Esau, two twin brothers, are also estranged in a hateful relationship for decades. And their descendents are continually at war, up until King Herod (an Edomite) encounters Jesus (an Israelite). So the fact that Jacob did end up with the blessing doesn't mean he got away with anything so much as it reflects how God is going to make His will come to pass.

I had a lot of misconceptions about Jacob and Esau, but I think today's sermon and reflection have helped a lot. These were men like us, they screwed up like us, and they are redeemed like us. And I've certainly exchanged God's blessing for things stupider than venison.