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.
Friday, October 31, 2008
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
