October 27, 2009

The Myth of a Christian Nation

Greg Boyd wrote a book called, “The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power is Destroying the Church.” I thought this book might interest you, as it perks my ears. I have not read it, nor will I carve out time in the near future to read it. However, you may want to pick it up, it should be worthwhile. Let me wet your appetite with this quote from the book:

“I believe a significant segment of American evangelicalism is guilty of nationalistic and political idolatry. To a frightful degree, I think, evangelicals fuse the kingdom of God with a preferred version of the kingdom of the world…For some evangelicals, the kingdom of God is largely about, if not centered on, ‘taking America back for God,’ voting for the Christian candidate, outlawing abortion, outlawing gay marriage, winning the culture war, defending political freedom at home and abroad, keeping the phrase ‘under God’ in the Pledge of Allegiance, fighting for prayer in the public schools and at public events, and fighting to display the Ten Commandments in government buildings…Fusing together the kingdom of God with…the kingdom of the world is idolatrous…This fusion is having serious consequences for Christ’s church and for the advancement of God’s kingdom.” (p. 11)

1 Comment

Filed under Christianity

Tags: ,

October 19, 2009

I Want Vanilla!

My thoughts of 21st century Christianity…or whatever it is we find ourselves in:

Vanilla gets associated with a lot of things besides being an ice cream flavor. Vanilla sometimes means bland, boring, or the most commonly chosen option. Well today I’m going to tell you why nothing beats good old trusty, sturdy, always reliable vanilla. But I’m going to do it within an analogy of the explosion of ministry methods in our current times. So get your ice cream scoop, and your mental taste buds ready.

Vanilla ice cream used to be one of the only options. Chocolate and strawberry came along to hug vanilla in Neapolitan ice cream. Now there’s any conceivable ice cream flavor imaginable. Some of which don’t sound too appealing. It’s pretty much akin to my asking for a booger jelly belly blizzard mixed with peppermint ice cream. So suffice it to say, more flavors, combinations, and options doesn’t always lead to better ice cream. Likewise, our creative and imaginative juices in rethinking ministry, it’s tools, techniques, methodology, and philosophy doesn’t always lead to better ministry.

I want my vanilla! My root beer floats, banana splits, malts, shakes, and my pie all demand for vanilla ice cream. Hmmm, yummy. Some new fangled ice cream flavor would absolutely destroy my root beer float! Arrgh, how depressing would that be! Likewise cutesy ministry has the potential to destroy Jesus.

Jesus is my vanilla. Vanilla is the pillar, standard and measuring stick in the ice cream world. Jesus is the pillar in the ministry world. It seems at times merry-go-round discussions of organic, emergent, house, and 1st century church models leaves me puking up my totally good vanilla ice cream. Dude, that was my vanilla ice cream I threw up with some side tangent, peripheral, lack of focus, non-issue issue, never ending merry-go-round and round ramblings. High church, low church, suits or shorts, choir robes or charismatic tambourines, organ or guitar and drums, smells and bells, liturgy or no liturgy, I don’t care. Jesus wants to be preached. Jesus needs to be preached. Preach Jesus with passion and the vanilla is honored.

Now, as a concluding remark. Do I ever push the ministry envelope and try new things? Of course, and I want to do it sooo much more! But I always want to honor and rest on that tasty vanilla bedrock foundation. But I ask you this deep deep question. What would a malt or shake be without whipped cream and a cherry on top?! Not as good for one thing! So keep preaching the vanilla timeless base with “priority Jesus,” but feel free to add your own decorative and stylistic toppings.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Christianity, For Fun

Tags: , , , , ,

October 6, 2009

Not Content

I remember a common denominator across most students’ testimonies when I was in college. When students spoke of their conversion experience they often spoke of their being content. They said they had this peace now, like they had arrived, that their life was in balance, that they found a purpose, and they had this restfulness about themselves now. For whatever reason, I’m not sure why, but many threw in that “their life wasn’t perfect now, they still struggled and had trials, but that it was far better.”

My initial serious flurry reading of God’s Word, which I most often speak of a “testimony” type of experience in my life did not include this contentment idea or ease with the Christian lifestyle as my classmates described it. Yes, I had peace about certain aspects in my relationship with God. But I certainly could not identify with the totality of their “contentment” idea. In fact, I experienced as a college student, and continue to experience quite the opposite.

My experience of holy discontentment contains the following features:
1) Peace, what peace?! My eyes are opened to the fact that I’m a terrible sinner. That’s more than slightly disturbing!
2) My life is not more in balance after coming to Jesus. Yes, Jesus is the center. But, this God-man certainly does an awfully good job in repeatedly turning my small world upside down to keep me off balance. I’m constantly scrambling to recenter myself on the Rock.
3) No need for me to make a disclaimer that “I still struggled and have trials.” I think that’s pretty obviously that I’m in a Romans 7 battle everyday of my existence. And boy, is it ever a battle!
4) To increase in hunger and intensity in pursuit of the Lord.

To summarize, I remember my initial reading of the gospels to be Jesus calling me to a radical paradigm shift. That did not equal peace and contentment, that equaled me being shook up with sleepless nights. I heard the constant ringing in my ear of Jesus saying, “Come, follow me,” and me frozen with fear. I was a wreck at the gravity of living as a “called out one.”

1 Comment

Filed under Christianity

Tags:

October 5, 2009

It’s Not Like Cleaning Your Room

We were created to pursue Jesus. We were also created for joy. But have taken a wrong turn as we think about these two ideas in tandem. Our pursuit of Jesus is supposed to intersect our pursuit of joy. This intersection is to mesh into a singular idea, namely, to find joy in pursuing Jesus. However, these two paths have diverted and now they are as far from each other as one could ever possibly imagine.

The ideas of joy and the ideas associated with pursuing Jesus and Christianity in general are grievously held by many to be two radical different things. Our thinking is so far out of whack that Christianity has become duty driven. “What?!,” you say totally caught by surprise. “Christianity in my experience has always been duty driven!” I know it has, but it was never intended to be this way.

Many hold an affinity to the idea of duty driven Christianity. It was what they were brought up with, and for many older people it’s still the idea they maintain because it’s been pounded into them since birth. Unfortunately the idea of duty driven Christianity is an absolutely bankrupt idea. In fact, it is a complete offense to God, and God in no way honors such an approach to Himself.

Instead of a duty driven pursuit of Jesus we are to have a joy driven pursuit of Jesus. If I present Jesus about as grand and glorious as having to clean my room I have destroyed the gospel. It is a terribly sad, terribly grievous, and terribly sinful way to misrepresent Jesus to others.

So today, I say, “Come to Jesus, it’s not at all like cleaning your room! He’s come to give you life, and life abundantly, and joy too, tremendous joy! But not like the world understands joy, conjuring up ideas of fun, pleasure, or entertainment, it’s an otherworldly mind blowing kind of joy. It’s the joy for which you were created. It’s the kind of joy that can only be found in pursuing Jesus.”

1 Comment

Filed under Devotional, Honest Life

Tags: ,

October 4, 2009

Saturday Night Thoughts

Here are some of my current thoughts of the Christian life in general…

On Evangelism:
To see a revitalization of baby Christian exuberance and passion from older Christians (my prayer for myself).
To share the joy we have in Christ with others is one of the most powerful witnessing tools.
Do I make Jesus look glorious, or do I make Christianity look stale?

On Faith:
To have a paradigm shifting kind of faith.
To have a faith worth remarking about.
To have a faith which the world is struck by and doesn’t understand because it’s profoundly not of this world.
How must I budget my time differently so I can sit at my Master’s feet more to learn, cultivate, and experience a consuming faith?

Leave a Comment

Filed under Devotional

Tags: ,

October 1, 2009

Hosea 4

God has been challenging me to read Hosea feeling the weight of Hosea. I must say up front, I’m doing quite a miserable job at it. It is a monumental task. But regardless of my not catching most of God’s attempt to make me feel the weight of being in Hosea’s shoes, the part that I do catch is still powerful.

21st century U.S. is in Hosea 4. Most can see it, and see it quite plainly one could argue. But God’s asking me to see it in a new way. To see it and be moved by it. To see it and be stirred by the reality of the situation we found ourselves in. To see where my life really intersects the ultimate reality of the grand metanarrative of God’s story. To see where our culture is amusing ourselves to death with meaningless entertainment.

I’m challenged to feel Hosea 4. To feel our 21st century lostness for what it is. I find myself as part of the confusion. I have no categories for such burden, weight, or the power of this reality check.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Devotional

Tags: ,

September 28, 2009

Authority, Obedience, and Love

I worked through Mark 1:21-28 with some people yesterday. You may wish to refresh yourself with this passage now. I think this would be an advantageous exercise to see where our conclusions match and differ. The passage is about Jesus teaching at the synagogue, and goes on to tell the miracle of Jesus casting out an evil spirit. I first asked the group to give me the main point of the passage. One said, “It’s about a miracle.” Another said, “It’s about an evil spirit.” A third said, “It’s about authority.” I was most pleased with the third response because this idea ties both the synagogue and the evil spirit passage together. If you notice both verse 22 and verse 27 specifically bring up the issue of authority.

I then pressed the group to give me the application point, and how they would teach the take away point to others. They struggled. To be fair and frank, I think we all struggle with this part. If we’re not careful we provide general and vague teaching points (differing little from that of our mental rolex of Sunday School summary statements), and make our application fit not only our particular passage here, but a whole lot of others passages as well. I think doing the general and vague take away points shows that we’re not grasping what is going on in a particular text. It shows we’re really having a hard time focusing in on the uniqueness of each passage and the specifics being addressed.

An aside on this issue of “troubling focusing on the text at hand” follows. Many Sunday sermons are also guilty of this and contribute to this problem of general vagueness. When it is modeled and practiced in the pulpit, I can’t really fault a congregation for not having an in-depth reading of Scripture. This is a problem across churches of America, and I think examples of such sermon types are typical rather than atypical. I bet the majority of sermons you’ve heard have faltered on this point or were on the borderline of faltering. (Especially those who preach story fashion and rather than an expository preaching style.) I’ve always appreciated John Piper’s approach as his style steers clear from faltering in this vague mush of generalities, or to state it positively, Piper is text specific. To conclude this aside, we struggle to properly model careful Scripture analysis for congregations in America. It is a norm to see Scripture mentioned at the beginning, or somewhere, and even referenced back to, but in the end it’s some muddy, non-specific, hundreds of passages have that same point in it conclusion.

So, back to the issue at hand. Let’s see a meaningful conclusion from Mark 1:21-28. I made a provocative question/statement for those with me. I asked if they were happy with the conclusion that we should be as obedient as the evil spirit. After all, wasn’t the evil spirit obedient in coming out of the person? And obedience is surely a good thing, right? And shouldn’t we strive to be obedient when Jesus calls out to us? Puzzled, no one knew what to say because no one was comfortable linking obedience with evil spirits. But, whatever…I suppose this is a kind of can of worms…But I do think setting forth this idea helps to formulate love into the final analysis in how our response is to differ from that of an evil spirit. Meaning, should we be obedient? Yes! But obedience not just driven by the authority of Jesus with feet dragging Nick saying “I have to because Jesus says so.” But rather obedience to Jesus driven by a love for Jesus! I think these are some good linking thoughts for reflection with the introduction of the love-obedience concept not mentioned in the text. In fact, it’s the absence of the love-obedience concept in the text of the evil spirit that makes me go there trying to illuminate this idea with the provocative idea that we should behave like the evil spirit.

I’ll conclude with a short final pastoral synthesis. If you’ve been following along with your Bible open, compare how your gelling of thoughts compares with mine. Jesus, the one who shows authority both in the synagogue, and while casting out the evil spirit, desires obedience from us. Jesus, the one in authority, wants us to live obediently to his authority, not out of obligation like evil spirit had to do, but rather to live obediently to Him because we love Him. I’ll even try to make this more concise and a bit more pithy. Mark 1:21-28 teaches us that Jesus is the authority. Let our love find it’s rightful expression in obedience, and let us be glad in radical expressions of dangerous obedience. Bow at the feet of King Jesus, Pharisees and evil spirits are but His footstool.

1 Comment

Filed under Devotional

Tags: , , , ,

September 27, 2009

Treasure

Treasure Christ. This is my desire for you whatever your age. If you are a student, this is my desire for you. If you are a senior citizen, this is my desire for you. If you go to church on Sundays, this is my desire for you. If you stay home and never go to church, this is my desire for you. I desire that we move beyond the idea of believing in Jesus and pursue the idea of treasuring Jesus.

Digging deeper I’ll explain the idea treasuring and how in our society today it tends to reach beyond the idea of believing. First, let’s start with the idea of belief. The idea of belief in our world has become stripped of meaning. (This same idea of stripping words of meaning was happening 2,000 years ago as James articulated the misunderstanding that was occurring between faith and works, James 2:14). On Sunday mornings I feel pastors labor at restoring belief to its proper definition with mixed results. The word, belief, intended to be rich in meaning has shriveled to exclude ideas of action and love in many people’s minds. To help combat this problem, I would like to add supporting words like “treasuring” to help regain a biblical concept of belief.

Statistics report that 70-80% of students “lose their faith” when they make the transition from high school into their first years of college. This gives me fits when I think about how to build a healthy youth ministry at my current church. I try to help students find their footing grounded in Jesus as they try to make sense of the world that is wildly spinning out of control. To do this I like to think of the idea of treasuring Jesus as a compass for what I’m doing. Some of my compass questions follow. Am I teaching students to treasure Jesus? Are they compartmentalizing what they believe in from what they treasure? Am I displaying Jesus as infinitely precious in my life? Do they know that Christianity is about cherishing and savoring Jesus? Is their delight in Jesus and does their soul leap for Jesus?” These are questions that cut to the heart of the matter. These are questions that I think Jesus would ask.

I now conclude inviting you to take a final step with me. As the reader of this post I want to ask you to be bold enough to personalize these compass questions for yourself. Test yourself to see if your notion of belief is robust to include the idea of treasuring Jesus and displaying him as supreme in your life. May Jesus regain reign in our hearts when we permit him a voice to ask tough questions of our soul.

May Jesus be displayed as glorious in our humility and brokenness.

1 Comment

Filed under Devotional

Tags:

September 26, 2009

Thoughts on a Friday Night

Just some thoughts on a Friday night. Stream of consciousness stuff, so don’t read too deep, or look at how it all connects. Or do so. Up to you really. It’s just me thinking out loud, and perhaps God pushing the envelope on some of my thinking, and asking questions of this life and the next. If I speak too raw, bluntly, or honest for some of my readership, then please do not read. Here you will find my Friday night thoughts.

Clear the static in the brain. Take me away from the chain links and concrete. Take away the glitz and glamor. Take away the florescent lights, and take away the street lights. Give eyes to see, and hearts to ear. Let mouths be mute as we stand baffled by your mysteries.

Take away the entertainment. Take away the T.V. remote. Take away the clutter. Take away the distractions too numerous to count. Take away the Friday night high school football lights. Take away the insanity that an entertainment crazed culture craves. Have we absolutely lost our minds? I think so. I think yes. And was this the question that almost made Your prophets lose their own minds?

Lock us in a jail cell like Paul and teach us to understand joy. Let prison guards dance as we sing them your gospel. Give us a new understanding of prison ministry.

Take away emotions that cloud the image of God because we long for recognition and approval. Take away the make up that hides the imperfections of our wary faces.

Take away this nonsense, and take away our lies. Take away the sin, and remove the stain with Your Son’s blood. Take away the hurt, and take away the pain. Take away the loneliness. Take away the make up that we use to cover our fractured lives.

Take away the self-centeredness, and take away the pride. Put to death the old self and help us to see the hallow inside.

Take us to the high places. Take us to the low places. Lead us wherever you see fit. Put the prophet in the wilderness and give him strength to glorify you. Put your Elijah on the mountaintop to mock and indict the world if You see fit. Mock? Yes, I think I read that somewhere.

And remind me again, why did nice, kind, loving, accepting, tolerant John the Baptist get beheaded again? Wait a second…Oh, am I confusing love and acceptance and tolerance and rolling them all into one? Hmmm, John the Baptist. When John the Baptist followed God something had to give. Either heads turn in repentance, or the people hear and hate his message, meaning it’s John the Baptist’s head that rolls on the ground.

Take away our clothes, and make our bones shiver. Teach us dependency. Strip away self-sufficiency. Humilitate us and strip us naked if You must. We might be too stubborn and not listen to anything less then this.

Make cold hearts ablaze with fire. Call out to Lazarus! But take your time and delay Your coming to the tomb for a few days. Yes, do this in Your timing, and do more. Make dry bones walk? Yes, and make dry bones weep too.

Take away big empty words when I’m ever too eager to fill the silence.

Take away that nasty Pharisee’s prayer from my lips! Look, I too recite that by heart! I too have practiced self-righteousness for many years! It’s like cling wrap, I can’t seem to shake how puffed up I’ve become.

If Isaiah said, “Woe is me, I am undone!” Then what of me? How could the Pharisee’s prayer form on Isaiah’s lips? That would be so absurd! Then, oh how absurd I too talk! How absurd is my irreverence when I approach His most high throne.

How could such a self-righteous prayer stand before the throne of our Lord? How could I survive such terrible holiness? How could my chest rise for breath with the weight of holiness crushing down on me? How could these eyes not be destroyed? How could these ears drums not burst? The cries of the heavenly beings shouting holy holy holy, would be 7 x 70 times as much as I could bear. How could this darkened heart remain? Finite words fail me so miserably now. What a scandal we have made of the Lord’s holiness!

So frail, yet so arrogant in our frailty. And so blind in our self-righteous disposition. As if we can breathe on our own! As if the Lord does not provide even the worst of sinners His every breath. The Lord give sinners breath, and He is perfectly right in doing so. And when the Lord stopped the breath of John the Baptist, the Lord was also perfectly right in doing so.

Have Christians exchanged the truth for other gods? Have the prophets sold out for social security and a stable paycheck?

Would Paul have scoffed of the idea of retirement? How about 80 and collecting seashells for a living? Would Paul say that Christians are offending God by ending their life in this manner? Can we not see the passion of John Piper? Can we not see the angst of Matt Chandler? Can we not see the joy of Francis Chan?

Can no one see like Caleb? And are their still wolves dressed in sheep’s clothing? Do the pastors tell lies, and do the people like it like that?

1 Comment

Filed under Christianity, Honest Life

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

September 21, 2009

Hosea, Love the Adulteress

Reflecting on Hosea 3:1.
“The LORD said to me, “Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another and is an adulteress. Love her as the LORD loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes.”" -Hosea 3:1

God calls Hosea to do the difficult thing. He tells him to go and love his wife who is an adulteress. My stomach churns thinking about this unthinkable concept at the God level. Hosea is told to compassionately pursue the one who ripped his heart out and stamped on it. Likewise, God has chosen this painful path for Himself. Faithfully pursue the unfaithful. Hosea must act out the story that God has been wrapped in for centuries.

A final thought on a macro scale. It still floors me what is done here. God chooses a filthy sinful bride. He could have chosen to leave us in the dark enslaved by own vices until death came for each of us. I’m still perplexed as to why. Why come after humanity? Why not let us doom ourselves by our sinful freewill choices? Why all the way to the position of co-heirs with His Son? If restoration, then why not only partially relegating us to slavery? Why such a kind response to our horrific action? Not slavery, not servant hood, but a cleansed bride!?! The King sent us Son to come for His bride! How strange! How otherworldly! How great is our God! How unfathomable are His ways!

Leave a Comment

Filed under Devotional

Tags:

Older Entries