Tuck @ Denbigh Church of Christ

The Presence of God

2012-02-16T11:19:00.001-05:00

Several years ago, one of our elders and I were asked to visit the sister of one of our visitors. The brother wanted us to visit with her and invite her to church (though she refused to visit church with him). So we went. As it turns out, the lady was heavily to New Age mysticism, crystals, astral plane projection… and very likely some mind-altering chemicals. In fact, she was convinced that she had gone to heaven and talked with God. She described in great detail the warm feeling that filled her heart with love, the sweet smell of flowers and the overwhelming feeling of peace and calm. She floated, suspended in midair as she and God chatted for about an hour! Afterwards, she was filled with a sense of tranquility and oneness with the universe. For some reason, as she was talking the tune of Brewer and Shipley's “One Toke Over the Line” kept playing in my head.

Call me a skeptic, but I rather doubt she really spent time in the presence of God. Why? Well, in scripture, when people find themselves in the presence of God, they are overwhelmed not with tranquility, but with terror. Isn't that what we've been coming across in our reading in Exodus? As Israel camped at the foot of Mt. Sinai, God made his presence known on the mountain—

Mount Sinai was covered with smoke, because the Lord descended on it in fire. The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace, and the whole mountain trembled violently. (Exodus 19:18)

That was the awesome presence of God. There was no sense of peace and tranquility, but of sheer terror. The scent in the air was smoke and not some flowery perfume. When God’s voice spoke the Ten Commandments from the mountain, the people were overwhelmed with shock and awe—

When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance and said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.” (Exodus 20:18–19)

Frankly, many Christians are way more comfortable with a God who is easygoing, calming, and smells like daffodils than we are with the God who thunders, commands and smells like smoke. We sing songs that say “In His presence, there is comfort…” and “I can hear the brush of angel’s wings” because “surely the presence of the Lord is in this place.” And there is nothing wrong with those songs. We do come into God’s presence with “confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body” (Heb 10:19-20). But while Jesus provides the way into God’s presence, we must remember that God is the same God that shook the mountain.

And we need to remember for precisely reason Moses gave Israel for the pyrotechnics at Sinai—“ Do not be afraid. God has come to test you, so that the fear of God will be with you to keep you from sinning” (Exo 20:20). Right after the writer of Hebrews speaks of our boldness to enter the presence of God, he says this—

If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God (Heb 10:26-27)

We need to remember that God is God and he is greatly to be feared. The fear of God, remembering who God really is, must keep us from sinning. Being in the presence of God is about many things... warm-and-fuzzy isn't one of them!

Angel

2012-02-14T10:12:00.000-05:00

It suddenly dawned on me this morning that I hadn't done anything at all with the ol' blog in a week or so. Today is Valentine's Day, so it makes sense that I would write something about the lady fair that has been the love of my life for most of my life. Also, I'm still kinda pumped after spending Friday night with Lynn and the girls at the Casting Crowns concert in Virginia Beach, so it makes sense that I might write something about that. So... I decided to combine both of those and share my new favorite Casting Crown's song "Angel" from their new album "Come to the Well." (As far as I remember, it's the only song from the new album that they didn't do in the concert! Grrrr...) I could have written this song. OK, I could NOT have actually written the song (because I have no talent), but the song's sentiment and story are mine.

Not too long ago, I shared in a blog my conviction that the several and various coincidences that brought Lynn and I together were not simply coincidences at all. And the fact that we have stayed together all of these years is no coincidence either; it has to do with a lot of patience, pardon, perseverance, prayer... and passion (it's Valentine's Day, after all). But as crazy as it does sound, somehow this angel did fall in love with me and is somehow still in love with me.

Maybe I'm crazy but I'm praying
That an angel will love me, an angel will love me
Maybe I'm a fool but I'm still falling
Asking heaven above me, for an angel to love me
The rest of my life

Happy Valentines Day, Angel.

Super Bowl Monday

2012-02-06T08:18:00.001-05:00

The Monday after the Super Bowl is always bittersweet for me. Almost always (and this year was no exception) it is mostly bitter because I picked the wrong dog in the fight. (The Super Bowl is always the same; the winner goes to Disney World and the loser goes home to Boston). Yep, me rooting for a team in the big game carries with it the same kind of curse as putting a player's picture on the front of the Madden box. I received a free Patriots jersey in the mail this year... from the Giants! But more than my team loosing, Super Bowl Monday is also "melancholy Monday" because means that football is over.

I've always loved football, but I really haven't followed basketball, baseball and even tennis as I have grown older. I think that is because my interest in those sports were tied from my love of playing those games whereas football has always been a spectator sport for me. With the exception of of a few weeks during March Madness (much of which is in April now) and Wimbledon (got to love strawberries and cream) in July, Super Bowl Monday for me means that sports are pretty much over until August when football comes back. The good news is that my TV watching will drop to almost nil until then. So I'll miss football for awhile; of course, there's always Mr. Madden.

I thought I'd mark the passing of football season this year by re-posting an op-ed piece from Fox News by Josh Graves entitled Is it OK to pray for your team to win Super Bowl in 2012? Josh is the minister at the Otter Creek Church of Christ in Nashville where my sister goes to church. I think he does a pretty good job in both reminding us how unimportant sports are to God but how infinitely important we are to God.

Growing up in suburban Detroit, I never had to wrestle with the question “Is it okay for me to pray for my team to win the Super Bowl?”

As a basketball player turned minister, I’ve observed that sport and religion have one interesting thing in common: both tend to bring out the best and worst in us. Especially in America.

Sport has given us Jackie Robinson and Pat Summitt. Sport has also given us steroid abuse, and Ron Artest versus the world in the Malice at the Palace (Pacer-Piston NBA Brawl).

Religion has given us Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mother Teresa. Religion has also given us witch hunts, the Middle Passage, unethical T.V. preachers who prey on the naive, and the mistreatment of minorities.

Both bring out the worst in us. Both bring out the best. I’ve learned to embrace the paradox. On November 28, 2010, Steven Johnson lined up as a wide receiver for the Buffalo Bills. On November 28, the Bills were playing the Pittsburgh Steelers and they ultimately lost the game because Johnson dropped a pass late in the game, in the end zone. After the game, Johnson tweeted, “I praise you 24/7!!! And this is how you do me!!! You expect me to learn from this??? How??? I’ll never forget this!! Ever!!”

Johnson praised God 24/7, but what kind of God was he praising? It was a kind of religious transaction where he gives God the glory and God gives touchdowns. Or victories. Or Super Bowls. A fair exchange?

God ends up becoming a cosmic vending machine.

Everything is well and good until Jesus makes you fumble. But this isn’t just Johnson’s problem. This way of approaching God shows up often and the best name for it is religion. And notice who is really in charge of this arrangement. You and me. Not God.

This year, Tim Tebow became a household name because Americans (in Red States and Blue States) have differing opinions on the role of prayer in the outcome of sporting events. After learning that Tom Brady’s super-model wife (Gisele) sent a personal e-mail to friends and family asking for prayers “for Tommy” some tweeters had a field day. My favorite tweet went something like this: It’s fine for people to pray for Tom Brady. But ever since Tom Brady threw six touchdowns against Tim Tebow’s Denver Broncos, Tim Tebow—4th member of the trinity— is no longer answering Tom’s prayers. Tebow took the wheel.

Or how about this anecdote that surfaced recently? Tom Brady dies (he is mortal after all) and goes to heaven. St. Peter is waiting at the gate. “Tom, I’m here to show you around heaven and where you’ll be living for eternity.” After showing Brady the ins and outs of heaven, the perks and works, St. Pete takes Brady to his heavenly digs. Patriot red white, and blue are everywhere. As the odd couple approach Brady’s home, he is thankful until he notices a huge mansion on a large hill above his home with Denver Broncos regalia, signage, and decoration. Orange and Blue everywhere. The house is three times the size of his. Brady looks at St. Pete. “Let me understand this . . . I win multiple championships, MVP awards . . . this is the house I get while Tim Tebow—a great guy—has his first season in the NFL . . . and he gets that mansion? And I get this How does that work?” “Tom. Um. Well . . . Mr. Brady . . . that’s not Tim Tebow’s house. That house belongs to God.”

We love to think God takes our side. Roots for our teams. It’s part of our American DNA.
To paraphrase Anne Lamott: You know you’ve created God in your own image when God roots for all the same teams you root for (I’m looking at you Yankee and Cowboy fans).
Here’s my short answer. Based on Christian scripture and practical experience, the purpose of prayer is for God to win. Not for you to win. Or your favorite team. Even if you are from Cleveland—though if anyone has a shot, God just might be rooting for you, Cleveland.
Millions of people all over the world will tune into the Super Bowl tonight. God’s probably not concerned with who wins the Super Bowl. God’s consumed by working on behalf of the usher who can’t figure out how to pay his chemo bill. Or the player going through a divorce. Or the assistant coach who lost his son to suicide. Or the trainer wrestling a gambling addiction. Or the recent immigrant, trying to pay one more bill by cleaning up the confetti that falls in Lucas Oil stadium.

God sees the whole stadium, not the final score.

God’s probably groaning for street kids in Nairobi, Kenya. God’s plotting for an end to Joseph Koney’s abduction and abuse of child soldiers in East Africa. God’s probably orchestrating hope for farmers in the Ulpan Valley, Guatemala.

God’s probably among homeless vets in Cass Park, Detroit. God’s probably grieving children victimized by abusers.

God’s celebrating the new adventure a retiree is setting out on.

God’s smiling as God sees a new mother hold her infant son for the first time.

God’s dancing at our parties.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy this game or any other game. It also doesn’t mean you can’t pray for your team. Because God is a father, God likes to hear from us—whatever the reason, even if our prayers might be childlike in nature.

Just don’t fall into the trap of assuming that your prayers are God’s prayers. Even if that’s your heart’s desire.

Lonesome Dove, Joseph and Us

2012-02-02T13:49:00.001-05:00

One of the best westerns of all time is Lonesome Dove, the TV miniseries based upon the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Larry McMurty. It is the story of August McCrae and Woodrow Call, old Texas Rangers and and new cattleman who decide to make a cattle drive from Lonesome Dove, Texas to the Montana territory. Of course, they have all kinds of adventures along the way. But not long after reaching Montana, McCrae is wounded in leg by Indian arrow; he loses one leg to gangrene and needs the other amputated to save his life. He refuses. In the scene below, the dying McCrae asks his friend Woodrow Call for one last favor.

Lonesome Dove ends with Call’s 3000 mile odyssey from Montana to Lonesome Dove, Texas to bury McCrae in Clara's orchard. Everyone he meets thinks Call was completely crazy to go to all that trouble, but he completes his mission because he gave his word to his friend.

That part of the novel/movie is based on the true-life story of best friends Oliver Loving and Charles Goodnight. Loving was scouting ahead on a cattle drive through Indian territory when he was attacked. Goodnight got to him before he died and promised to take him back to be buried in Texas, although his trek from New Mexico to Texas was nearly as dramatic as Call's odyssey from Montana. In fact, McMurtry gives Goodnight a shout-out by making him a minor character in Lonesome Dove.

But this story is also Biblical. The book of Exodus ends with Joseph charging his family to carry his bones back to Canaan for burial. He knew the promise made to Abraham (his great-grandfather), Isaac (his grandfather) and Jacob (his father). That promise was that the land in which the Patriarchs wandered as nomads would become the home of their descendants. And when Canaan became home for Israel, Joseph wanted to be buried at home. Joseph trusted the promise of God, and he wanted in on that promise. When Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt, one of the final preparations made was to collect that old bag of bones--

Moses took the bones of Joseph with him because Joseph had made the Israelites swear an oath. He had said, “God will surely come to your aid, and then you must carry my bones up with you from this place.” (Exodus 13:19)

Joseph traveled more after his death than he ever had while he was alive. His bones were carried as the Israelites traveled to the foot of Mt. Sinai. His bones went with them as they came to banks of Jordan. His bones turned back and wandered with them through the wilderness for 40 years. And after the death of Moses, the bones of Joseph were carried into Canaan and accompanied the Israelites on the conquest of the land. Finally, after the death of Joshua, the bones of Joseph were laid to rest "beneath the green, green grass of home."

And Joseph’s bones, which the Israelites had brought up from Egypt, were buried at Shechem in the tract of land that Jacob bought for a hundred pieces of silver from the sons of Hamor, the father of Shechem. This became the inheritance of Joseph’s descendants. (Joshua 24:32)

Just an old bag of bones? No, those bones represented Joseph's faith in the promises of God. God always keeps hi s promises. Sometimes He is not as prompt as we would like; God only works on His timetable. But the promises of God always come true. Joseph counted on that; we should count on it as well!

The Real World

2012-02-01T08:51:00.002-05:00

On July 30, 1945, the USS Indianapolis was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine and went down in the western Pacific after delivering the components of the atomic bomb that would level Hiroshima. Because of the secret nature of their mission and some administrative bungling, the Indiana was not missed. A plane flying over the area happened to spot the oil slick of a sunken ship five days later. Of the 1,196 men on board the Indianapolis, only 316 men were saved-- rest had died in the explosion, from dehydration or were taken by the sharks. Charles McVay, the captain of the Indianapolis, was blamed for the disaster (some believe to cover bureaucratic bungling) and was court-martialed. The evidence shows that McVay was not responsible, but he lived the rest of his life being blamed for those 880 deaths. Every holiday, McVay received cards or calls saying, “My husband or father would be alive today if it were not for you.” Finally, McVay could stand it no longer. He shot himself to death with his service revolver (his last link to his military career) in 1968.

When we read a story like that, we are struck with a feeling of injustice. It was terribly unfair that McVay was blamed for deaths that were not his fault. It was terribly unfair that he was haunted to his grave by this disaster. In a fair and decent world, all of the cards and calls that he received would have been of support and gratitude for a life spent in service to his country. A fair and decent world would have acknowledged the pain he felt for the loss of his ship and crew. In a fair and decent world, people would have sought to soften his agony rather than add to it. But we don’t live in a fair and decent world; we live in the real world, Our real world is one broken by sin and overwhelmed with injustice.

That brings us to our reading today from Genesis 38 and the story of Tamar, the wife of Er, son of Judah. The only thing we’re told about Tamar’s husband was that he was such a wicked man that “the LORD put him to death.” (Gen 38:7). The custom of levirate marriage dictated that the closest relative of a man who died before his wife bore children was to marry the widow; the first child would legally be seen as the child of the dead husband (this would later be the background for the story of Ruth). So Judah married Tamar to his second son, Onan. Onan refused to give Tamar a child, and he too was struck down by God. Judah had a third son, Shelah, but he kept putting off marrying him to Tamar. She told her, “Live as a widow in your father’s household until my son Shelah grows up.” (38:11). Judah forgets about Tmar for “a long time” (38:12), and all the while Tamar’s life is in limbo while she waits for Judah to live up to his word, He never does.

So Tamar takes matters into her own hands. She disguises herself as a temple prostitute and positions herself so that she would catch the eye of Judah, while wearing a veil so that he won’t recognize her. She seduces Judah, and they slept together. Afterward, she demanded payment, and he leaves her his staff and seal until he can send her a goat as payment. When Judah sent his servant back with the young goat, the mysterious temple prostitute has disappeared. It was not long before Tamar became pregnant; it was not long before that fact became obvious. Word was sent to Judah "Your daughter-in-law Tamar is guilty of prostitution, and as a result she is now pregnant" (38:24). In a fit of unbecoming moral outrage, Judah demands that Tamar be brought out publicly and burned to death. As she was being brought out to be killed, Tamar springs her trap--

As she was being brought out, she sent a message to her father-in-law. “I am pregnant by the man who owns these,” she said. And she added, “See if you recognize whose seal and cord and staff these are.” Judah recognized them and said, “She is more righteous than I, since I wouldn’t give her to my son Shelah.” (Genesis 38:25–26)

In the only way that seemed open to her, Tamar followed the levirate marriage law that Judah had refused to enforce. Since Judah would not give her Shelah in marriage, Judah himself had in effect become her levirate husband and the father of the twin sons that she would soon bear.

Tamar lived in a real world that was unjust and unfair; she was an innocent victim powerless over her circumstances. Twice she had to live as the wife of men who were wicked; twice she had to suffer through widowhood. She had to bear with the stigma of being sent childless back to her father's house, and she had to make a choice as to how to deal with her plight. There is no doubt that her course of action was itself wrong; the text doesn’t gloss over her deception or her immorality. But what seems to be the point of this story is how God, in a very quiet way, used her plight for His purposes.

This Tamar is never mentioned again in the Old Testament (another Tamar is a daughter of David). But you don't have to read very far in the New Testament before her name pops us

Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar, Perez the father of Hezron, Hezron the father of Ram (Matthew 1:2-3)

The genealogy of Christ is traced through Judah, but not through any of his three sons Er, Onan or Shelah. It is Tamar’s twin boys Perez and Zerah that are mented here, Perez as an ancestor of the coming Messiah. God was able to use the real world misfortunes of Tamar to His glory and His purposes. None of the twists and turns of Tamar’s real world kept her from being used by God to His glory. No, she was not perfect, but she struggled to do the best she could despite her circumstance. And despite that circumstance, even because of that circumstance, the world has a Savior.

The story of Tamar sounds like a soap opera, but it isn’t. It’s the real world. And God can use your real world story no matter how many twists and turns there may be.

The King's English

2012-01-31T10:13:00.000-05:00

We live in a secular, post-Christian postmodern culture that has left behind the trappings of it's Christian heritage and has no use for God, religion or any real spiritual reality. Well, that's what some people want to believe. And sadly, that's how many people who would call themselves "Christian" live their lives with the exception of one hour on Sunday. But all one has to do is follow the soap opera that is the GOP presidential campaign and you get the idea that religion and religious beliefs do still matter in the public square. Our world is surely multicultural and diverse, and no longer can one assume that everyone sees the Bible as "The Good Book." Nor can one assume that the God that most people do still believe in looks anything at all like the God of the Bible. But the influence of Bible on our culture and on our language is still considerable.

That year marked the 400th anniversary of the release of the King James Version of the Bible. Before 1611, there had been many different attempts to bring the Bible into English, beginning with that of William Tyndale (who was burned at the stake as a heretic for his trouble in 1536). Today, there are dozens and dozens of English translations of the Bible; I have 7 English versions come up whenever my Bible software loads (NIV2011, NIV86, ESV, NET, KJV, NLT, NRSV). But between 1611 and 1901, the KJV WAS the English Bible, and the impact it had upon our history and culture is literally immeasurable.

The video below uses 100 phrases from the KJV in 3 minutes or less (notice the counter in the lower left hand corner). So many common phrases that people, who may have no knowledge of the Bible, use every day are in reality phrases brought into English through the KJV. Give the video a watch... and then pay attention in your everyday speech and notice how many times Bible language is used.

I think the KJV is the second most important translation of the Bible ever done. The most important translation is the one that you and I do (or fail to do) each day as we bring the Bible to life in our lives.

The Fear of Isaac

2012-01-30T15:21:00.001-05:00

Our worship yesterday was centered on the theme “Our Awesome God.” The word “awesome” has been so watered down in our language that many things that are decidedly not awesome are called awesome. There is a website called “Oh My, That’s Awesome” that features are kinds of strange “awesome” things-- like an Android geek tie, a 26 pound gummy bear, an iPig docking station, and an underwater scooter—all guaranteed to be awesome! Of course, none of those things are awesome. God is awesome. Ultimately, ONLY God is awesome. We tried to remind ourselves of that yesterday in our worship.

One of the songs we sang yesterday was the Keith Lancaster arrangement of the Rich Mullins classic “Awesome God.” For years, we simply sang the chorus of this song—“Our God is an awesome God, He reigns in heaven above with wisdom power and love, our God is an awesome God.” But I think the the message of verses are what really let this song point us to the awesome in our awesome God. Here's a cappella version arrangement we used yesterday. Listen closely to verses in middle of the song.

Have we too quickly forgotten that our God is an awesome God? Do we realize there really is thunder in His footsteps and lightening in His fists. Do we believe that "judgment and wrath he poured out on Sodom?" Do we think "It wasn;t for no reason that he shed his blood?" God hasn't become civilized or domesticated; our God is still an awesome God!

Our daily Bible reading today is from Genesis 30-34. In part of this story, Jacob decides that it is time to leave Paddan Aram and return home to face the music with Esau. He is afraid that his father-in-law Laban will not easily allow him to leave, so he sneaks off in the middle of the night with his wives, children and flocks and herds. His fear of Laban turns out to be well founded as Laban rides them down and confronts Jacob in the hill country of Gilead. They spend some time accusing each other of being unfair, but then after the required diplomatic back and forth, they decide to make a covenant. They set up a pile of rocks to represent a boundary between and then they swear that they will not cross that boundary into one another's territory. Laban swears by the “God of Abraham and the God of Nahor, the God of their father,” actually covering a gambit of different deities. It is interesting how Jacob returns the oath—

So Jacob took an oath in the name of the Fear of his father Isaac. He offered a sacrifice there in the hill country and invited his relatives to a meal. After they had eaten, they spent the night there. (Genesis 31:53-54).

Earlier he had referred to God as “the God of my father, the God of Abraham and the Fear of Isaac” (Gen 31:42). We are used to the Bible speaking of “the fear of God,” but here the name of God is Fear! God is "He who is to be feared." Maybe we have lost some of that sense of "awesomeness."

Our God is an awesome God. Not awesome like in 26 pound gummy bears. But awesome as in “There's thunder in His footsteps and lightning in His fists.” We need to remember that as we worship. We need to remember that even MORE as we leave worship.

Second Fiddle

2012-01-27T09:32:00.001-05:00

We know Isaac as the son of Abraham and the father of Jacob-- in fact, that is almost all we know about him. Most of the stories in Genesis about Isaac focus on him as Abraham’s son or Jacob’s father. The story of Abraham is told in Genesis 12-25; the story of Jacob is told in Genesis 27-36. Only Genesis 26 is totally dedicated to Isaac. Someone has said that “second fiddle is the hardest instrument to play.” If so, Isaac was a maestro.

But we do get something of a picture of the personality of Isaac in Genesis 26. Because of a famine, Isaac was told by God to move to Gerar and live among the Philistines. While there, Isaac shows himself to be a chip off the old block in a not so positive sense-- as he tried to pass Rebekah off as his sister rather than his wife because she was so beautiful and that made him nervous (he was afraid the Philistines would kill him to get here. If that doesn't sound familiar, read Gen. 12:10-20 and Gen. 20:1-17. I guess this "she's not my wife, she's my sister ploy worked so well for Abraham (twice) that Isaac wanted to try it?

I want to pick up the story there. Isaac prospered and became so powerful that he was perceived as a threat to the Philistines, so Abimelech asked him to move on. Issac does just that, but every time he dug a new well or uncovered an old of Abraham, the inhabitants of the area moved in and claimed the water as their own. This happened several times, and each time Isaac abandoned his new well and moved on to set up shop at another place. There was nothing more valuable than water to these nomadic people, and Isaac was powerful enough to be a threat to the locals (that's why he'd been asked to move by Abimelech in the first place). One can only imagine what David (the man after God's own heart) would have done if he had been treated that way. David he decided to kill a man and his entire family because he cheated on a sheep-shearing bill (see 1 Sam. 25). But yet Isaac responded by moving on and he kept moving on until he found a place where he could live in peace. Eventually, Abimelech came to Isaac and made what amounts to a peace treaty, and “Isaac sent them on their way, and they left him in peace” (Gen 26:31).

Isaac goes out of his way to seek the way of peace. In a time and place in which wars were fought over things less important than water rights, Isaac chose the way of peace. We don’t know many of the facts of Isaac’s life, and maybe that is because compared with Abraham and Jacob, Isaac life was fairly uneventful. And maybe it was uneventful because he chose to live in peace rather than fighting his neighbors to enforce his rights. And that sounds a lot like what we are instructed to do as Christians—

But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. (Matt 5:39-40)

Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. (Romans 12:17-18)

The very fact that you have lawsuits among you means you have been completely defeated already. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated? Instead, you yourselves cheat and do wrong, and you do this to your brothers and sisters. (1 Cor. 6:7-8)

We live in a culture that values rights, and we are told that we are to protect our rights above all else. And yet we follow a God that calls us to walk in the way of peace, In fact, we are to seek peace to the point where there are times when are to give up our rights in order to find it. That is the example of Isaac in Genesis 26. That is certainly not an easy thing to do, but then playing second fiddle isn't supposed to be easy!

On How to Respond to Critics

2012-01-17T15:36:00.000-05:00

I'm sure you've seen You Tube video by Jefferson Bethke entitled “Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus.” The video was uploaded last week and has become YouTube's most-watched video... and one of it's most controversial. There were several links to this video posted by Facebook friends (I never have to go looking for these; someone always brings them to my attention). If you you haven't watched it, go ahead and give it a look. Then I want to make a powerful point. Actually, it is a powerful point I was pointed to by Rachel Held Evans that Bethke himself makes in response to some of his critics.

Bethke is contrasting faith in Jesus with the kind of religiosity represented by the Pharisees that Jesus condemns in texts like Matthew 6 and Matthew 23. And I get it. It's a good point. So many of us (and Bethke includes his past self here) want to substitute doing religious things (like going to church, which is really pretty easy) for a genuine walk-like-Jesus discipleship (like actually taking the Sermon on the Mount seriously, which isn't very easy at all). And sometimes our religious systems get in the way of actually living like Jesus.

Where Bethke runs afoul of his critics (and they may have a point) is that he uses the word "religion" here as a synonym for the hypocritical and hypercritical ritualism that ignores the heart and the spirit of the Law that Jesus was condemning in the Pharisees. But that isn't how the New Testament uses it. The word "religion" (Greek "threskeia") is sometimes used to denounce the "self-made religion" (Greek "ethelothreskia") that focuses on the "appearance of wisdom" and "asceticism and severity to the body" (Col 2:22, ESV). But sometimes the New Testament uses "religion" to describe the disciple's willingness to control hos or her language, to help the poor and the powerless and to keep oneself "unstained by the world" (James 1:26-27, NRSV). So religion isn't bad; only bad religion is bad. Not only is religion not bad; sometimes even those external rituals (like observing holy days and eating kosher foods) can been good if they help us focus on God... and if we resist the annoying tendency to judge those who don't follow our exact program. There is nothing bad about religion... unless it's bad religion. For the record, I liked Bethke's video... except the part that I didn't.

But none of that is my point. In Rachel Held Evans' Sunday Superlatives 1/15/2012 blog (which is kind of highlight look back at the week on the blogoshere), she points to Bethke's response to some criticism he received for his video. As one who has been criticized (both constructively and otherwise) over things I've written and taught, I wish I could say that I always handled critics with as much grace and humility as does he. But I haven't. We'd have far fewer theological squabbles if we were all as open and willing to learn and as unwilling to depend our turf as is this brother here--

“I just wanted to say I really appreciate your article man. It hit me hard. I’ll even be honest and say I agree 100%. God has been working with me in the last 6 months on loving Jesus AND loving his church. For the first few years of walking with Jesus (started in ’08) I had a warped/poor paradigm of the church and it didn't build up, unify, or glorify His wife (the Bride). If I can be brutally honest I didn’t think this video would get much over a couple thousand views maybe, and because of that, my points/theology wasn’t as air-tight as I would’ve liked. If I redid the video tomorrow, I’d keep the overall message, but would articulate, elaborate, and expand on the parts where my words and delivery were chosen poorly… My prayer is my generation would represent Christ faithfully and not swing to the other spectrum….thankful for your words and more importantly thankful for your tone and fatherly like grace on me as my elder. Humbled. Blessed. Thankful for painful growth.”

I thought his video was good and helpful. But his example here on how to handle criticism and the critics who offer it is extremely helpful. Maybe if we would all follow his example, we'd come a bit closer to living out Jesus' prayer for our unity in John 17.

Beyond the Storm

2012-01-05T14:00:00.000-05:00

Jerry Jones is a man well acquainted with tragedy. No, not the Jerry Jones who is the owner of Cowboys (although he is becoming more and more an expert on tragedy). No, I’m talking about Dr. Jerry Jones the preacher, professor and writer who some of you probably know because of the “Marriage Matters” series that he and his wife Lynn have presented at many churches (including Denbigh via DVD). Dr. Jones has seen his share of professional and church tragedies.

He was fired by a Christian college for his stance (and book) on a controversial issue.
As an elder at a controversial church, he tried to moderate some issues and ended up as “a man without a church” for a season.

These professional tragedies set the stage for more personal and real struggles of his life. Within a single year his only brother suddenly died of ruptured aorta, two close lifelong friends died unexpectedly and he watched his wife die a slow and agonizing death from cancer.

These experiences led Jones to write a book entitled Beyond the Storm. In this book, he looks at four different storms that we come to face in life– death, terror, divorce, and illness. In the book, different people share their own struggles with the death of a mate, going through a divorce, being the victim of violent crime, and suffering through a long-term illness. The contributors to the book are all very different, but they share:

An unshakable faith that God was with them through the storms of life.
The certain belief that they were blessed in some way by the storms.

None of these people come close to suggesting that their taste of tragedy was GOOD-- it is never good to lose a mate, get hurt in the Oklahoma City bombing, get cancer or suffer any of the other tragedies talked about in the book. But all of the contributors agree God was somehow able to use these terrible tragedies in surprising ways to bless them and to bless others for good.

The perspective that allows us to see the working of God within the storms of life only comes with time and distance. But the testimony of scripture and of others confirms that God works behind the scenes within the tragedies of our lives to strengthen and bless us. When we are in the middle of the storm, all we can do is hold on in faith and hope. But we can do that because of our confidence in the God who is sovereign over the storms of life. Even things that are not good can be counted as joy as we wait for God to work His wonders.

The Book of Job (which we are reading this week) ends with God appearing to Job in the storm, and this experience of God puts an end to all of Job’s questions... even though those questions are never answered. Job’s final speech of book acknowledges that there is much in life that he can never understand, and he decides that coming to know the God of the storm is what really matters. The Message renders Job 42:3-5 like this--

I babbled on about things far beyond me, made small talk about wonders way over my head.
You told me, ‘Listen, and let me do the talking. Let me ask the questions. You give the answers.’
I admit I once lived by rumors of you; now I have it all firsthand—from my own eyes and ears!

Get Out of Jail Free?

2012-01-04T07:40:00.001-05:00

After reading from Genesis this morning (remember our reading plan), I was skimming through Google News and somehow stumbled across an article entitled “Has Christianity Become a Get Out of Jail Free Card?” by Dr. Boyce Watkins, a professor at Syracuse University. Dr. Watkins is one of millions who are “spiritual” people seeking both God and personal spiritual enlightenment but who have issues with modern organized Christianity. I’m not going to address the whole of Watkins’ article, but I thought the point raised by the title of the article is worth exploring. He writes--

When someone asked me how I feel about Christianity, I said, “I respect it. My father is a Baptist minister. When I do go to church, I choose a Christian church. But one concern I’ve always had is that Christianity has become a ‘get out of jail free’ card for those who are choosing to live an unethical existence. It doesn’t appear (to me) to be a true, untainted quest for spiritual clarity, but instead appears to be a club that you join if you want to get into heaven.”

I knew a man who was a thief, a liar, an adulterer and even a child molester (in an R. Kelly sort of way. Kelly is another man who went straight to the church for forgiveness, and has many fans in the black church). He did things to others that no decent man would ever do. Yet, he loved to thump bibles against my head to remind me that he’s going to heaven and I’m not. Why? Because of the “Get out of jail free card” he received when Jesus died for his sins. Whenever he did something wrong, all he had to do was pray for forgiveness and all sins would be washed away. And since all sin is apparently equal in the eyes of God (his pastor told him so), his actions were no worse than my own.

The emphasis in much of modern Christianity is on “getting saved” and eventually “going to heaven.” And there is an undertone among many that getting saved means “once-saved-always-saved.” Even many who don’t formally drink the Calvinist Kool-Aid seem to come around to an approximation of that viewpoint through the same back door in that Watkins describes above.

Sin is sin in the eyes of God, none of us are perfect, but those who accept Jesus are forgiven. That’s OK as far as it goes, but the leap that many make (like the man in Watkins' example) is to assume that it therefore doesn't really matter that much how we live. My sin is forgiven. God wants me to be happy. God forgives the sins I commit when I ask Him. And so God will take me to heaven when life is over. So I can then pretty live like I want to live and go to heaven as well. So Christianity become a “Get Out of Jail Free Card.”

Paul actually anticipates this modern misconception… and seeks to quash it. He understood that his gospel of grace would be twisted by some. He brings up that possible misunderstanding in two different passages and then both denies the allegation and challenges the alligator (so to speak)—

“But,” someone might still argue, “how can God condemn me as a sinner if my dishonesty highlights his truthfulness and brings him more glory?” And some people even slander us by claiming that we say, “The more we sin, the better it is!” Those who say such things deserve to be condemned. (Romans 3:7-8, NLT)

Well then, should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more of his wonderful grace? Of course not! Since we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it? (Romans 6:1-2)

The point of the gospel is NOT that our sin doesn't matter so much. The point of the gospel is that our sin matters so much that it took Jesus’ death on the cross to bring us back to God. And once we are brought back to God, then we must try our best to rise above sinfulness. God was against sin so much that His response was the cross; we must be against sin so much that our response is to live a crucified life. Sin was so horrible that it cost Jesus everything; accepting the cross as God’s remedy for sin must cost us everything as well.

Get out of jail free? If we truly look to the cross, then the last think we will think about salvation is that it was free. And if we can only see the price that God paid for us, then we will live lives so indebted to Him and overshadowed by the cross that they will be transformed and changed.

My old self has been crucified with Christ.It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. Galatians 2:20 (NLT)

Change for a Dollar

2011-12-21T07:22:00.001-05:00

Last year, Bill Gates, investor Warren Buffett, and Mark Zuckerberg (of Facebook fame) signed the "Gates-Buffet Giving Pledge" in which they promised to donate to charity at least half of their wealth over the course of time. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has already donated $28 billion dollars to charity, and they have pledged to eventually give away 95% of their wealth. A lot of wealthy people don't do that; in fact, few wealthy people do that. One of the criticisms in all the love-fest following the death of Steve Jobs was the fact that he didn't seem to be much of a philanthropist. Of course, I remember someone telling prospective philanthropists "do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing." You really do have to admire people like Bill and Melinda Gates who have made a second career out of giving away what they accumulated in their first.

The biggest danger that "Regular Joes" like you and me face when it comes to giving is in thinking that the only giving that makes a difference is that which is done by the wealthy. Sure, Jesus told the story of the widow and her two small coins (Mark 12:41-44), but His point was the size of her sacrifice, not the good that her gift was able to accomplish. Even though their hearts may have been hard and their actually sacrifice was small, surely more actual good was done by the big sacks of gold thrown into the treasury by the Jerusalem fat cats, right? Maybe not. I seem to remember Jesus making the gift of a sack lunch of loaves and fishes go pretty far in helping people. This is God we're talking about, right? Who knows how He can use my gift even though it falls somewhat short of that of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

I ran across the following film parable about the change that our change can do. It's ten minutes long and there isn't a word spoken, but the point it makes is eloquent, And maybe it's message is particularly powerful during this time of the year.

Jesus tells us that a cup of cold water doesn't lose its reward. We have no idea the good that He can accomplish with our small acts of giving and kindness.

Ghosts of Christmas Past

2011-12-20T08:57:00.000-05:00

The stale smell of apples reminds me of Christmas. When I was a kid, we’d go to Arkansas for Christmas, leaving as soon as Dad got home for work the Friday before Christmas. We’d eat dinner, open our presents, and clap and cheer… and then put them back under the tree and take off for Arkansas on a 24 hour drive where we stopped only for gas and nothing else. Food was packed in the car, and there was always this big bag full of apples. And by the time we got to Arkansas, the whole car had smelled like too-ripe apples, a smell that still gets to me. But that is part of the ghost of Christmas past for me.

Another ghost of Christmas past was the thumping sound that woke me up one Christmas Eve (actually 2:00 a.m. Christmas morning). I was too old for the Santa thing (or else it would have sounded like reindeer hooves). So I snuck up to the room over the garage and looked out the window to see what was going on, and I saw my Dad and Larry Campbell shooting basketball on the new goal they had just installed to surprise me Christmas morning. Well, I was surprised… I was surprised that Dad could shoot hoops! (I miss you, Larry!)

My most special Christmas memory was the birth of our first child at 8:20 a.m. on Christmas morning. I was up late Christmas Eve playing gin rummy with my sister Sonya, and I had just been dealt a hand only a couple of cards shy of gin when Lynn announced that it was time. I wanted to finish that hand… but everyone else seemed to think that was a bad idea, so off to the hospital we went. With snow falling outside (the last white Christmas we've had, I think) and “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” playing on the radio (which Lynn was not enjoying), little Tressa came into our world to change it forever.

Christmas is different when you have a Christmas baby. Oh, it was a big, big deal the Christmas she was born… in a Catholic hospital! But later it was easy for her birthday to be overshadowed by Christmas itself. Everything is closed, so forget going out to a restaurant and getting “Happy Birthday” sung to you by the wait staff. We had to develop a series of special birthday rules to make sure Tressa birthday remained special-- fruit cake can’t be used as birthday cake, you never combine Christmas presents with birthday gifts (they must stay separate and apart), and under no circumstances can birthday presents be wrapped in Christmas paper! Christmas is different when you have a Christmas baby.

Well, there was little ordinary about the birth of Jesus. He was born of a virgin in a barn and laid in a manger. (When Jesus left a door open and someone said, “Hey, were you born in a barn?” He could say, “Why yes I was!”). And what other baby gets gold, frankincense and myrrh at their baby shower? And while new mothers usually send out birth announcements (what else have they to do), this time the Father did the birth announcement (Luke 2:8-14). Angels brought to the shepherds “good news of great joy.” The angels use one of the most familiar New Testament words—euaggelizo. What the angels literally said was, “I preach to you a gospel of great joy.” The birth of Jesus is gospel!

We don’t know when Jesus was born, and we aren’t told to make a bid deal about his birthday. But the fact of Jesus’ incarnation, that he really did come in the flesh, is indeed a big deal. It was more or less an accident of history that we started seeing December 25 as the birthday of Jesus. If somehow we decided to follow the Julian calendar and observe Christmas on January 7 (like some do), I don’t think Tressa would mind a bit. But the fact that Christ the Lord was born into our world was certainly no accident. I’m glad we have this special time of the year to remember that fact in a special way.

Christmas with an Attitude

2011-12-19T09:29:00.000-05:00

I ran across a list of the 25 “Best Christmas Movies of All Time.” Frankly I was a little surprised that there were 25 Christmas movies, let alone the 25 best ones. Some on the list were the expected classics-- “It’s a Wonderful Life” (#2) and “Miracle on 34th Street” (#3). I had heard of many on the list ( “Christmas in Connecticut” (#7) or “Holiday Inn” (#12), but these were in black-and-white and I’m much too young to remember movies in black-and-white. There were 3 versions of “A Christmas Carol” (one with the Muppets and another with Bill Murray). Actually, the greatest version “A Christmas Carol” was the one starring Mr. McGoo, but you won’t see that one on anyone’s list. “Home Alone,” the most successful movie comedy of all time made the list at #8 (should have been higher). And they did get the #1 Christmas movie of all time right-- “A Christmas Story.”

According to the list, #16 was “Die Hard.” You remember the heartwarming story terrorists who try to blow up a skyscraper… except they’re not terrorists but bank robbers out to steal billions and murder a bunch of people in the process. But then they run into Bruce Willis and hilarious holiday hijinks ensue. But the story takes place during Christmas, so technically it’s a Christmas movie. If “Die Hard” is a Christmas story, then it’s a Christmas story with an attitude!

And John’s version of the story of the birth of Christ is a Christmas with an attitude. Of course, John doesn't have a birth narrative in his gospel; he saves that for Revelation. In John's version there are no shepherds, no wise men, no little drummer boys, and this is anything but a “Silent Night.” What this version has is a dragon! John’s version in Revelation 12 is Christmas with an attitude! There are two main characters here—

First, there is a pregnant woman clothed with the sun and has the moon at her feet who is very pregnant and cries out because she is in labor. This woman doesn’t look very much like Mary, because in this story she isn’t Mary. She represents Israel, and later in the story she will morph into the persecuted church. We immediately recognize the son she births—“ he will rule all the nations with an iron scepter” (12:5). The child was snatched up to God and to his throne, and the woman fled to a place where she is cared for by God.
Second, there is an enormous red dragon (Satan) who hotly pursues the woman as she is in labor. He has 7 heads (representing power), and 7 crowns (representing authority), and 10 horns (pointing again to more power). The dragon pursues the woman so he can devour the child she is about to bear. But when the child is taken to heaven to God’s throne, the dragon tries to follow to attack him.

Yep, Christmas with an attitude. This Christ child is not born in the obscurity of a barn and laid quietly in a manger. This birth takes place in the midst of a cosmic conflict. Eugene Peterson, in his book Distant Thunder, writes--

This is not the nativity story we grew up with, but it is the nativity story all the same. Jesus’ birth excites more than wonder, it excites evil: Herod, Judas. Pilate. Ferocious wickedness is goaded to violence by this life. (p. 121)

Angels aren’t singing “Joy to the World” because they are too busy in a pitched spiritual battle with the great dragon. And, of course, they defeat him and the dragon is thrown down from heaven to the earth (Rev 12:9, see Luke 10:18). The good news is that Satan was defeated in his attack on heaven. The bad news is that Satan is thrown down to the earth… with us! (Rev 12:12)

But woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you! He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short.

The bad thing about putting on as nativity plays is that there very few roles in the production so someone always has to play a sheep or donkey. This is definitely not true with John’s version of the nativity play here—we all have a part in this production! The great dragon can’t get to the child, and God protects the mother (now a symbol of the church). So what does the Satanic dragon do next? He comes looking for her children-- that's your part and mine. And God bless us every one!

Then the dragon was enraged at the woman and went off to wage war against the rest of her offspring—those who keep God’s commands and hold fast their testimony about Jesus. (Rev 12:17, NIV)

Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year. We know that because Andy Williams sings, “It's the most wonderful time of the year; there'll be much mistltoeing and hearts will be glowing, When love ones are near; It's the most wonderful time of the year." But the very things that we love about Christmas also become dangers for us.

Yes, Christmas is time for family… and of loneliness for those without families or who have lost parts of their family. (Perhaps that is why depression is so common during the holidays)
Yes, Christmas is a time for tradition and customs, and it is the time when our expectation often exceed our reality (Another reason why depression is so common).
Yes, Christmas is a time for giving and receiving gifts. And it is also the time that we allow materialism to run amok and run up debts we are still paying off in July!

Christmas is a time when we remember the birth of the child that would change all history. We see Christmas card images of Mary-and-child, shepherds, Joseph, the Magi and the rest. (I saw a picture of one nativity scene with Tim Tebow bowing before the manger). We sing the carols and try imagine the angels singing to the shepherds. We tell ourselves that “The True Meaning of Christmas" is in the proclamation of the angels. "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men" (Luke 2:14, KJV). Christmas is a time of peace and good cheer. (Ironic that “Christmas Cheer” for many is what gets slipped into their egg nog!)

But our carols present a one-sided view of the story of that “first Christmas,” the viewpoint of the shepherds, the magi, and the earth! There were things going on surrounding the birth of Christ that were unseen by human eyes on that “Silent Night” outside “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” In Revelation, John shifts our point of view and retells the familiar story from the viewpoint of heaven.

And thus the pastoral serenity of "Silent Night" dissipates into sounds of battle. Viewed from heaven or hell, the reason for the season was all out spiritual warfare. God came down into Satan’s domain to face down the dragon on his own turf, and the old dragon was not about to let that happen without a fight! He used Herod in an attempt to kill the baby Jesus, and he would use many others. All of hell’s fury would be released against that baby boy born that silent and holy night. And as the baby Jesus lay in that manger that night, somewhere in Palestine there grew a tree that would one day be cut down and fashioned into an old rugged cross. It would be that cross that would become ultimate Christmas tree upon which would be hung God’s ultimate gift! So John tells us this Christmas story with an attitude, and we are reminded to always view the manger through the lens of the cross!

RIP Maggie

2011-12-16T15:40:00.001-05:00

Last night, we took Maggie to the vet for the last time. The little pom-terrier mix-mutt was part of our lives for more than eleven years, and I've had a lump in my throat all day. I really owe Tracy Brainard an apology. Years ago she called the church building (in tears) asking for her family to be put on the prayer list because they had just lost a dog. I think I responded appropriately, but I thought the woman had lost her mind. It's just a dog, right? No, Maggie wasn't just a dog. Sorry, Tracy; I understand now.

The picture at right was taken at the pound in Williamsburg where we got Maggie (on one of several visits we had to make before we were allowed to take her home). They guess-timated that Maggie was 2-5 years old when we got her, so she lived to the ripe old age of 12-16 (and in doggie years, that's... well, you do the math). She had a good life, but the tumor that had grown from golf ball size through softball size was heading for bowling ball size, and she was deaf and almost blind. And it was time. There are many things pets remind us about life-- like that it doesn't last forever.

Angelynn had asked us for a dog since... well, since as long as I can remember. But we were never going to get her a dog because we're just not dog people. At some point, Mom told us that we should probably get the child a dog, and Keri started looking at all the area pounds. And before I knew it, Maggie was living INSIDE our house (which we also said would never, ever happen) and sleeping in our bed (which she continued to do for years until SHE decided she would be more comfortable on the floor at the end of the bed). I'm still not really a dog person, but I turned out to be a Maggie person.

So I felt like I needed to mark Maggie's passing with something, so Maggie gets one last blog. I've actually written several about her over the years-- the short piece below was written in March 2008. It was titled "Maggie the Wonder Dog."

My lunch break yesterday reads a little like an old episode of Lassie. I was home on my lunch hour minding my own business and eating my peanut butter and (no sugar added) jelly sandwich when Maggie started barking. Now usually that means that the mailman has just delivered our mail. There was no mail when I went to the front door, but there was smoke, and lots of it, coming out from behind our across-the-street neighbor's backyard. I got my cell phone and went over to investigate, wanting to make sure someone wasn't barbecuing on a really big grill before I called the fire department. Sure enough, the back yard was on fire. I'm not talking just a little bit on fire; the grass, shrubs, pine needle mulch, split rail fence and several trees were burning and the flames had jumped to the other side of the fence. The smoke was so thick by that time that I couldn't tell how far back it went.

So I called 911, and 5 minutes later a fire truck pulled up and fireman jumped out and started doing their fireman thing. Fifteen minutes later, a second fire truck pulled up to add its crew to the mix. Firemen were running around grabbing hoses, axes and shovels just like on TV. I watched the show for awhile chatting with another neighbor before going back to work. I went over after supper to chat with the guy across the street and see the damage. It came fairly close to the house, but nothing was really hurt except a fence that he said he has been meaning to replace. If the fire had burned much longer, that could have been very different.

So Maggie the Wonder Dog saved the day. I still have no idea if she was really barking at the fire or not. She may have glimpsed a squirrel running for its life across the street... which is exactly what any squirrel in the vicinity would have been doing. But there is a good chance I would've have noticed what was going on had she not been barking. So we'll credit Maggie the Wonder Dog with saving our neighbor's house. And then she went out and found Timmy who had fallen down a well.

Good-bye, girl, Good dog!

Jesus Was an Occupier... of a Cross

2011-12-16T08:57:00.001-05:00

I don't get the whole “Occupy Wall Street” deal. According to the movement's unofficial web site, the movement is a protest against “the corrosive power of major banks and multinational corporations over the democratic process, and the role of Wall Street in creating an economic collapse that has caused the greatest recession in generations.” The slogan “we are the 99%” refers to the vast concentration of wealth and therefore power and influence in the top 1% of the population. “Occupy Wall Street” began as a protest rally on Wall Street itself that quickly spread to other cities— locally we had “Occupy Norfolk,” a march that drew literally tens of people (the news said a hundred, but I think they showed the same little group from different angles). Corporate greed and high unemployment seems to be the one thing that these protesters have in common, though some of the rallies that have spread to Europe seem to be more of a place for “football hooligans” to hang out during the off season. Some have compared the OWS movement to the liberal counterpart of the Tea Party movement. I would prefer to combine the best elements of both worlds and create an “Occupy Starbucks” movement.

So why write about something that I admit that I know little about? (If I didn't, I'd never write anything!) Well, I ran across a speech made by Jesse Jackson to an “Occupy London” crowd earlier this week in which he said, “Jesus was an Occupier, born under a death warrant, a Jew by religion, born in poverty under Roman occupation.” Besides the logical contradiction (Jackson’s statement makes Jesus an “Occupied” rather than “Occupier”), I bristled at the suggestion that Jesus would have been right in the middle of the OWS protests lending his support to the movement.

But then, I also bristle when I read Tony Perkins’ blog “Jesus Was a Free Marketer, Not an Occupier” on CNN’s BeliefNet last week. In Luke 19, Jesus tells the “Parable of the Ten Minas” (Luke's version of the parable of the talents) in which a rich man goes off to be crowned king and gives each of his ten servants a mina (about three months wage) with the command “Put this money to work…until I come back.” (Lk 19:13). Two servants do that—one making 10 minas and the other 5, and as a reward they are made governors of 10 and 5 cities. But one servant hid his in the ground and is condemned for not obeying his master (and now king). Perkins point is that Jesus' parable blesses the free market system and condemns the unproductive servant (who looks a lot like the motley OWS crowd). He writes—

Jesus rejected collectivism and the mentality that has occupied America for the last few decades: that everyone gets a trophy – equal outcomes for inequitable performance. There are winners and yes, there are losers. And wins and losses are determined by the diligence and determination of the individual.

Jesus has the king kill all of political enemies at the end of the parable. (Lk 19:27). Is Jesus also blessing that kind of political retaliation along with free market capitalism? The point of the parable is that people thought that the kingdom of God was about to appear (in the form of an earthly overthrow of the Romans). Jesus is telling his disciples that they could not know when the king was coming so they'd better be busy doing His work and being ready for His return all the time. The point isn't how people will be rewarded for their work. Now there is a parable that makes that point-- "The Parable of the Workers in the Field" in Matthew 20:1-16. There Jesus says that the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who hires workers to work in his fields and then pays them the same wages whether they have worked all day or only one hour. God’s free-market system is just that—FREE. Grace does means that everyone DOES get a trophy whether they deserve it or not… because none of us can deserve it.

Jesus was neither an Occupier or Free-Marketer. Jesus was Messiah. His message was "the kingdom of God has come near" (Mk 1:15) and "the kingdom of God is within you: (Lk 17:21). Jesus identified with the poor and the homeless (Matt 8:20), so He would be likely be more at home with the OWS crowd than some of them are. But Jesus was also the friend of “tax collectors and sinners” (Lk 15:1), and the tax collectors were definitely not part of the 99% economically. They were social/religious outcasts precisely because they had gotten rich through the economic oppression of the 99%. And Jesus hobnobbed with them along with poor and homeless. And Jesus even hobnobbed with those who were definitely the 1% of his society, guys like Simon the Pharisee who were both wealthy and influential (see Luke 7:36-50).

I don’t believe that Jesus would be part of ANY of our political, social or economic movements today— He would not be a Republican, Democrat, Tea-Partier or Occupier... though he would be happy to hang with any of those folks if they would listen to Him. Jesus was for people, all people. Jesus was about the breaking of the kingdom of God into the world. He was the Great Physician who had come to heal the sick... all the sick. He was the Lamb of God who had come to lay down his life for the lost—all the lost. Jesus was too busy touching the lives of people in need to ever have time to occupy anything... except a cross.

Tim, Aaron and Faith in the Workplace

2011-12-09T09:12:00.003-05:00

As a lifelong Colts fan, this NFL season was shaping up to be an utter wasteland ( Colts are 0-12), then along came Tim Tebow. Tebow won two national championships and a Heisman trophy in college, but has been routinely panned as not having the skills needed to be a pro quarterback. After going 1-4 at the beginning of this season, the Denver Broncos switched to Tebow and have won 6-of-7 and lead their division. (OK, they have away games at the Bears and Patriots coming up, so the bubble might burst). But I am pulling for Tebow and the Broncos like I have for no other team since Johnny U. hung us his high tops.

Why? Tebow is a committed Christian who has taken a lot of criticism because of his faith. He kneels during games (panned as “Tebowing”) and thanks Jesus for his success. When asked about his latest comeback win against the Vikings, he told Peter King that he was most proud of the fact he was able to say “hello” in the interview to Blake Appleton, a young fan who is suffering with cancer. He then ended the interview with “Have a good day, Mr. King. And God bless you.” Tebow isn’t the first NFL player to pray or thank God (Kurt Warner, Troy Polamalu, etc.), but Tebow has been mercilessly criticized for his faith. One player taunted him after a sack by striking a prayer pose.

Former Bronco quarterback Jake Plummer said that while Tim is a winner, “I think that when he accepts the fact that we know that he loves Jesus Christ, then I think I'll like him a little better.” Tebow, who comes across as quiet and humble, replied simply, “I feel like anytime I get the opportunity to give the Lord some praise, he is due for it." Football analyst Boomer Esiason was been particularly brutal in assessing Tebow, “He can’t play. He can’t throw.” But then he went on to say—

The kid is a tremendous character kid; If he said he wanted to marry my daughter, I'd be happy… But I wouldn't want him to be my first-round draft choice starting quarterback, which he's not capable of being right now.

(Tim, I have two daughters... I'm just saying). But the Broncos keep on winning, and Tebow keeps on pointing to Jesus. But I just have to think that the criticism he has received has nothing to do with football skills (or lack thereof) and more to do with the audacity of being public (and genuine) about his faith.

That brings me to another quarterback who is a dedicated Christian—Aaron Rodgers. Absolutely no one doubts Rodgers ability to play quarterback—he is the best player in the league and his Packers are 12-0. He went through many twists and turns in his career, and his path to the limelight has been less than meteoric. He once said, "God always has a plan for us, a path. Sometimes we wish we knew it sooner, but He always shows up His way." But Rodgers tales a quieter approach to faith--

I feel like my stance and my desire has always been to follow a quote from St. Francis of Assisi, who said, 'Preach the gospel at all times. If necessary, use words.' So basically, I’m not an over-the-top, or an in-your-face kind of guy with my faith. I would rather people have questions about why I act the way I act, whether they view it as positive or not, and ask questions, and then given an opportunity at some point, then you can talk about your faith a little bit.

OK, so now I’m also an Aaron Rodgers fan— maybe the Packers can play the Broncos in the Super Bowl. These are two very different approaches to bringing one’s faith into a high profile job. Which approach is the best? God definitely wants us to bring faith to our jobs (see Eph 6:5-7, Col 3:23). That faith must shape and mold us at work just as it does in every other aspect of our lives. And the faith that shows up at work just might influence people around us in more ways than we realize.

What's Forever For?

2011-12-06T09:27:00.000-05:00

Not since Zsa Zsa Gabor has anyone been so famous for just being famous than has Kim Kardasian. And of course, what she is most famous for recently is having a lavish, made-for-TV "royal wedding" and then filing for divorce only 72 days later. OK, we are used to celebrity marriages ending early and ugly (can anyone say "Charlie Sheen"), but 72 days? We have food in our refrigerator that is older than that! OK, maybe it wasn't totally shocking when Kardasian released the following from her publicist--

After careful consideration, I have decided to end my marriage…I hope everyone understands this was not an easy decision. I had hoped this marriage was forever but sometimes things don’t work out as planned. We remain friends and wish each other the best.

We don't have cable TV, so I have never, ever kept up with the Kardasians. I also never, ever watch the NBA, I didn't know Kris Humphries, Miss Kardasian's 72-day husband. The suggestion has been made that the whole marriage was simply an excuse to have the wedding which promoted the Kardasian brand and made a lot of money in the process. I don't know about that, but I do know that 72 days is a bit too short a time to "give careful consideration" to buying a new car, let alone something as important as one's marriage.

I'd like to say that this can happen only in Hollywood, but that is, of course, not true. The most extravagant and elaborate wedding that has ever been conducted at our church building also has another distinction. This was back when we had pews, and we had to remove the first two rows of pews to accommodate the string ensemble (including a huge classical harp) that provided the music for the wedding. This was (I believe) the first instrumental music that was ever used in a wedding at our building, but that is the the "distinction" I mentioned above. No, sadly, while this was the longest wedding I ever performed, it was the shortest marriage-- the couple stayed together barely 3 months after the wedding. In retrospect, I think the bride (like Miss Kardasian) wanted a big fancy formal wedding-- what she didn't want was a husband.

Yesterday for no particular reason, a old song lyric came to mind. I couldn't remember the song, just the phrase "if love never lasts for ever, what's forever for." Google reminded me that this lyric comes from the song "What's Forever For" written by Rafe VanHoy and recorded by artists like Anne Murray, T. G. Sheppard, Billy Gilman, and England Dan and John Ford Coley, and it was a #1 hit for country singer Michael Martin Murphey in 1982. Lynn often wonders why I can remember obscure things like song lyrics but can't remember to take the trash out on Tuesdays. (Uhh... I think I did take it out today... I hope).

I think the song's questions resonate in a world in which people get married so that they can have a big wedding and then get divorced way too often and far too easily. "So what’s the glory in living? Doesn’t anybody ever stay together anymore? And if love never lasts forever, tell me, what’s forever for?" It is exactly that forever to which Jesus points when asked to comment on divorce (see Matthew 19:4-6). The reason that God failed to honir Judah's worship was because they failed to honor the forever in their marriages (see Malachi 2:13-16). Both of these texts lead us to ask the same question posed by this old country song, "If love never lasts forever, what's forever for?"

Just Happened?

2011-11-29T16:33:00.001-05:00

I just happened to be serving as a youth intern the summer following my freshman year at college. In the process, I received a couple of college credits as an independent study by writing a few papers, reading a few books and preaching a few sermons… none of which were particularly painful except for the people who had to listen to me preach. As the summer was winding down, I just happened to get a call from Eddie Hendrix at Colonial Heights inviting me to come and teach the youth group during their VBS. They almost always hired their own summer intern, but that year they just happened not to have one. As I said, the summer was winding down, I was getting ready to head back to school and I really didn't want to mess with one more project (I had already written the final paper for the independent study). So I almost turned him down, but I just happened to work with Eddie each year at camp, and felt rather obligated to help him out.

A few days later, I just happened to get a call from Alan Smith, my college roommate, who just happened to go to the same church where I was teaching the VBS for that week. He told me that there just happened to be this girl at church that he really wanted me to date, and he offered to “fix-me-up” on my one and only blind date. He just happened to be going out of town that week or else he would have probably taught that VBS class himself, and I would have never gotten the call. And by the way, the girl just happened to be drop dead gorgeous!

OK, to make a long story short, I taught that class and stayed with the family, but I don’t remember anything about that. But I do remember that date… literally. It was August 9, 1975. We had three dates before that VBS week was over. (Maybe that’s why I don’t remember much about the class; my mind was totally on something else!)

I don’t have a theology where God is the great Puppet-master pulling the strings and micro-managing every detail of the universe. For example, I’m not sure God sends His angels to make sure I get a perfect parking place when I am going somewhere and running a bit behind. I do thank Him for things like that even though I’m not sure He caused them directly (kind of like Tim Tebow and touchdowns). But I don’t think all of those random things that just happened to happen to bring Lynn and me together just happened to happen at all. God has blessed my life in many different ways in my life, but so many of those ways just happen to revolve around the outcome of that blind date.

And today just happens to be her birthday. Happy birthday, sweetheart!

Beyond Family

2011-11-29T14:53:00.001-05:00

Like most churches, we try very hard to be "family friendly." After all, the traditional family is under attack in our world today, so the church wants to be a shelter for families in this culture of storm.

So we have a family minister and often talk about family values.
We have sponsored family retreats and had marriage seminars.
We even had plans for awhile to build a family life center.

Some churches have "singles ministers" and "singles retreats," but I have never heard of a "single life center." Sometimes some people get lost in the shuffle when we focus too much on family values.

You see, the church has not always been quite as "family friendly" as we see it today, and least not in one sense. Listen to the following letter written by a distraught parent to a government official complaining about a dangerous new cult:

I am writing to you to plead on behalf of my son. All of his life, this boy has had the best education that money could buy, and he was well on his way to a great career as a lawyer. But just when it seemed his future was secure, he was suddenly snatched by some weird religious sect who now controls every move that he makes. It is as if he is no longer part of our family nor the world that he lived in before they took him. Sir, I implore you and the government to investigate this cult and stop the dangerous influence that this sect is having on our young.

What cult is being described? The church! This is a composite of several letters from parents in the third century complaining to government officials about Christianity. Christians were on the outs with the culture of Rome for several reasons, one of which is that were were seen as a threat to families! But didn't Jesus predict that this would be the case? Yes, the Bible stresses family values and family responsibilities. But when people are serious about following God, that commitment can have a negative impact on their families.

51 Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. 52 From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three. 53 They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law." (Luke 12: 51-53)

Yes, the church must be all for families, but then we also have a higher calling. Church is to BECOME a family; we are to live as a band of brothers and sisters in a common bond that transcends family and becomes family to those who have no family. The church does not exist to simply serve our families; the church exists to transform our families and make them a part of the family of God.

The Problem with Thanksgiving

2011-11-22T11:04:00.000-05:00

You know the story of that very first Thanksgiving Day in the English colonies, right? You know, the one where Captain John Woodlief and those 38 colonists who had just had arrived in the Virginia colonies from Berkeley, England and set aside a day of giving thanks to God at the Berekley Hundred (later renamed Berkley Plantation) on December 4, 1619 where Woodlief proclaimed--

Wee ordaine that the day of our ships arrivall at the place assigned for plantacon in the land of Virginia shall be yearly and perpetually keept holy as a day of Thanksgiving to Almighty God.

Oh, you haven’t heard that story? That because those Johnny-come-lately Pilgrims from Massachusetts arrived at Plymouth Rock with a publicist, so that now everyone just “knows’ that the first Thanksgiving was in Massachusetts with the Pilgrims after the whole colony almost froze to death following that first bitter winter in 1622. But the very FIRST Thanksgiving Day was in Virginia. OK, so actually the first Thanksgiving in the New World was one led by Spanish explorer Juan de Onate held one near El Paso, Texas in 1598, but that one doesn’t count because it was in Texas! They probably had chili and burritos and guacamole or something (actually, that sounds pretty good).

At any rate, the idea of a Thanksgiving Day was not held as a "perpetual" celebration in either Massachusetts or Virginia. Thanksgiving Day was never more than a local and sporadic event until until Abraham Lincoln made it an annual national holiday observance in 1863. Which means that “first” thanksgiving in Massachusetts took place after a bitter winter almost destroyed a whole colony and the first national Thanksgiving Day was observed DURING the tragedy of the Civil War that almost destroyed our nation. We still observe Thanksgiving Day, but it has little to do with struggle and more to do with eating ourselves silly and then complaining about how stuffed we feel!

But that’s not the real problem with Thanksgiving. The real problem is that we set aside this one day to reflect on and give thanks for our blessings (in which we overindulge) and then ONE DAY later… we rush out for “Black Friday,” the biggest shopping day of the year. We forget all about Thanksgiving Day in our rush to run out and get more stuff. The idea of Thanksgiving was born from struggle and the awareness of God’s goodness despite our difficulty and hardship. Now we seem to believe that we deserve all the good things we have, and we can’t even have of day of reflection on Thanksgiving without turning it into an excuse to shop until we drop getting more, more, more. Will Rogers drew this contrast between Thanksgiving Day then and now:

In the days of our founders, people were willing to give thanks for mighty little, for mighty little was all that they expected. But now neither government nor nature can give enough but what we think is too little. In the fall of the year, if the founders could gather in a few pumpkins, some potatoes, and some corn for the winter, they were in a thanking mood. But if we can’t gather in a new car, a new radio...and some government relief, why we feel that the world is against us.

It’s ironic that the more and more we have for which to be thankful, the harder and harder it is seems to get to be truly thankful. As the late Andy Rooney would say, “Why is that?”

The Ultimate Undelete

2011-11-17T08:17:00.000-05:00

I was in Memphis in August of 1985 desperately trying to finish my master’s degree. Why? Well, I had been told that I had until the end of the year to finish my research project, but then I got a call (while at camp at the end of July) telling me that I had until the end of August before the statute of limitations kicked in. Of course, I left grad school in 1980 with only that silly project to complete, so I guess it really wasn't the schools fault that I had put it off so long. Actually it the real reason was eschatological; Jesus could return at any moment, so why waste all that effort on a thesis?

As I worked late one night typing away on my paper, I somehow hit the wrong button and deleted the whole thing. Gone. I loaded up my backup diskette (remember 5 1/4 inch floppies?), it was unreadable. So there I was a week away from my deadline, and all I had was a blinking cursor and a cryptic error code. What saved the day and my degree was some computer nerd named Peter Norton and his “Norton Utilities Undelete 1.0.” My thesis and degree were saved. Thanks Peter.

Wouldn’t it be great if life came with an undelete program? How many times have you said something or done something and wished you could just take back? What if you could hit a key and life would be restored to its pre-crash status?

Make the wrong choice after agonizing over a tough decision? No problem. Click undelete and make the right choice this time.
Say just the wrong thing at just the wrong time in the heat of the moment? Just use your undelete key, and this time you get to say just the right thing.
Disappoint someone you love? Disappoint God? Well, just boot up your Spiritual Undelete disk, and everything is restored to its original pre-crash state.

Well, there is no such button. You can’t un-ring a bell. You can't un-send an email (OK, Gmail does have an "unsend" button, but you only get a few seconds to use it). You can’t take back words already spoken. You can’t undo bad things, no matter how many good things you try to put in their place. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t put Humpty-Dumpty back together again. We've all been there, haven't we?

That reminds me of Peter (Peter the apostle, not Peter Norton). One minute Peter was boldly proclaiming, "Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you" (Mark 14:31). The next minute he was alone, hearing himself say, "I don’t know this man" (Mark 14:71). Over and over he heard the rooster crowing in his head. In fact, what Peter probably heard over and over were Jesus' words, "Whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven" (Matthew 10:33). And Peter had just disowned Jesus in the most dramatic way possible. Three times. He would have given anything for an undelete key!

While Peter struggled with his failure, something was happening in another part of Jerusalem that would change everything forever. Some of the women went to Jesus’ tomb to finish the process of His burial, and what they found was the ultimate undelete key. An angel appeared, telling them that Jesus was alive! And the angel had a special message for Peter, “But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’” (Mark 16:7).

So why did the angel specifically mention Peter? Why not stop with just “Tell his disciples?” Was Peter mentioned by name because of all the disciples, Peter most needed to see the full implication of the resurrection? Peter was a failure. He denied Jesus and so Jesus would deny Him. It was as simple as that, right? Wrong. The empty tomb changed everything. Peter was about to come face to face with God’s undelete key. Because Jesus was raised from the dead, Peter had another chance. And we call that second change "the gospel."

At some point, we all fail miserably. We deny in word or in deed that we know Jesus. Maybe our denial isn't quite as dramatic as was that of Peter. Or maybe it is every bit as dramatic. Maybe our crash and burn was just as public and final as was Peter's. The question is will we, like Peter, accept His forgiveness and move on to greater service and discipleship? Will we live like we believe that the gospel brings broken lives back from the dead? The gospel is the ultimate undelete.

Just Business

2011-11-08T06:33:00.002-05:00

In a scene from the movie, The Godfather, one of the Corleone henchman is discovered to be involved in a plot to betray Michael Corleone, the new Godfather. The plot is discovered, and the henchman is led away to go "sleep with the fishes" or whatever. He says to one of the other henchman, "Tell Michael it was just business; it was nothing personal."

While most Christians (I would assume) aren't involved in organized crime, it is surprising how many do seem to subscribe to this "it's just business" philosophy. The business and financial and career world is a dog-eat-dog rat-race. And to survive, let alone thrive, one must race the rats and eat the dogs right along with everyone else. And so it is all too easy to adopt one set of ethics for business and career purposes and quite another when dealing with family and friends... and church.

In Deuteronomy 24, God through Moses gives Israel a series of laws that pertain to business and financial concerns. Now God understands that we must all make a living-- He came up with that idea! But all of these laws assume that there is a bond of humanity and brotherhood that is more important than getting ahead in business. Notice for example--

In verse 6, the Jews are forbidden to take a millstone as collateral for a loan; that would take away a man's livelihood and thus his ability to repay the debt.
In verses 12-13, when they made a loan was made, particularly to someone poor, the Jews were not keep the collateral overnight. Returning at night a man's coat given as collateral was seen as an act of righteousness in the sight of God.
In verses 14-15, wages were to be paid at the end of each day. The poor lived day to day, and they might not make it to a payday at the end of the week. So the payment of wages was done based on the needs of the worker, not the convenience of the owner!
In verses 17-18, special consideration was to be given to those who were at a particular disadvantage in financial matters-- widows and foreigners. (I wonder if running sweatshops in foreign countries that pay little and pressure workers to the point where some commit suicide applies here at all?)
In verses 19-20, the harvest was to be done in such a away that produce was left in the fields to be gathered by the poor.

The point here is not that we should expect Wal-Mart or Microsoft to do business like this. The point is that Christians should be governed by an unselfishness and heart for people that guides them in their business dealings. It is never the case that any part of our lives is "just business." Indeed, God is our business, and we are glorify Him in our business dealings.

Saints Who Have Never Been Caught

2011-11-01T09:20:00.000-04:00

Christians are called to be holy, and we have no choice than to be 100% against sin. The greatest task of the disciple is to put to death whatever belongs to our earthly nature (Col 3:5) and to live lives that are worthy of our calling (Eph. 4:1). Our problem is that we see the sin in other people's lives more easily than we see it in ourselves. Why is it there are so many Christian activists seeking legislation to ban homosexual marriage (because of its attack on traditional family) that never campaign for laws banning heterosexual divorce (the single biggest attack on the traditional family). Why? Because it is so much easier (and much more fun) to focus on the sins of others than on your own sins

Christians have always had a hard time separating the sin from the sinner, and so we often come across as being against sinners. We also seem to insist upon separating the MINOR sins (ones of which we're guilty) from the MAJOR sins (the ones others commit). The most characteristic way that believers from the Pharisees to the present day church have used to show that they are against sin is to be harsh and condemning in their judgment of "the sinners." You don't have to be one of Fred Phelps wackos holding signs and shouting slogans to be guilty of this kind of harsh judgement. So Jesus is speaking to us and not just to long ago Pharisees in Luke 6:37-42.

37 “Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. 38 Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”
39 He also told them this parable: “Can the blind lead the blind? Will they not both fall into a pit? 40 The student is not above the teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like their teacher.
41 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 42 How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

We are not to judge other people because we are not God-- it's really that simple. God is morally perfect, and it is that perfection that allows Him to be the judge the world. God is neither above His moral law nor subject to it. He IS moral law; right and wrong flow from God's own divine and perfect nature. We can’t judge others because we don’t have that perfect nature. When we point to the sin of others in judgment and condemnation, we always do so with the beam of our own sin in our own eye. In fact, when I spend my time pointing out the sins of others, my attention is distracted from my own sin and what I need to be doing to overcome it.

We are all sinners; we all struggle with our imperfections. We are called as disciples to struggle together to overcome sin and encourage one another in our Christian walk. What we are never called to do is judge one another. In reality, few things are more discouraging and debilitating in our struggle with sin than the censorious, judgmental spirit of other believers who act as if they have no sin. A.T. Lanta's refers to these as the "Saints Who Have Never Been Caught." His poem contains the following stanza:

I'm a sinner, O Lord, and I know it; I'm weak, I blunder, I fail;
I'm tossed on life's stormy ocean; like ships embroiled in a gale.
I'm willing to trust in Thy mercy, to keep the commandments Thou hast taught;
But deliver me, Lord, from the judgment of Saints who have never been caught.

A Personal Relationship with Christ

2011-10-27T08:14:00.000-04:00

How many times have you heard someone talk about having a “personal relationship with Jesus” or a “personal relationship with God?” People are told that they need to “accept Jesus Christ as their personal Savior.” That kind of language is used to stress the need for each person to make his or her own choice to follow Jesus-- as opposed to adopting or inheriting the religious faith of their parents. And that is surely important. Each of us will “appear before the judgment seat of Christ” (2 Cor 5:10). The only way this is going to be a pleasant experience for us is to know the Judge personally.

It may surprise you to find out that the language “personal relationship with Jesus” does not appear in the New Testament. In fact, as Mark Luepke recently pointed out, the word “personal” doesn't really appear in the News Testament. Yes, my NIV uses the term “a trusted personal servant of the king” to describe a man named Blastus (Acts 12:20) and has Jesus talk about those who “gain personal glory” (John 7:18). Nut more literal translations (NASB, ESV) don’t use the word “personal” at all. It’s a bit surprising that this “personal relationship with Christ” mantra of modern Christianity just isn’t found in the New Testament.

Is that really such a big deal? Well, it might be. When many Christians today use the term “personal relationship with Christ,” what they are really talking about is a “private relationship with Christ.” More and more believers are opting-out of church altogether and are choosing to have a more personal religion. The idea is that my religious faith is between only me and God and doesn’t need to involve anyone else. The bottom line, we are told, is that “It’s not about religion; it’s about relationship.”

The New Testament never uses the language of “personal relationship with Christ.” And it certainly doesn't envision a religion that is a private matter between me and God and that everyone else can leave us alone. In the New Testament, faith in Jesus is ALWAYS communal and lived out in relationship with other believers. Over and over again, Christians are encouraged live their lives of faith together in relationship with one another. There is no personal relationship with God without a living relationship within a community of faith. The cross that brings us closer to God also brings us into a "common unity" with other people of faith. So while the language of “personal relationship with Christ” is not used in the Bible, what we do hear over and over is how we are to live with "one another" or "each other."

Rom 1:12- That you and I may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith (1 Thess 4:18)
Rom 12:10- Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves.
Rom 12:16- Live in harmony with one another. (1 Pet 3:8)
Rom 13:8- Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another (1 Thess 3:12, 1 Thess 4:9, 2 Thess 1:3, Heb 13:1, 1 Pet 1:22, 1 Pet 4:8, 1 Jn 3:11, 1 Jn 3:23, 1 Jn 4:7, 1 Jn 4:11-12, 2 Jn 2:5)
Rom 14:13- Therefore, let us stop passing judgment on one another.
Rom 15:7- Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.
Rom 15:14- You yourselves are full of goodness, complete in knowledge and competent to instruct one another.
Rom 16:16- Greet one another with a holy kiss. (1 Cor 16:20, 2 Cor 13:12, 1 Pet 5:14)
1 Cor 1:10- That all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you (Phil 4:2)
1 Cor 11:33- So then, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for each other.
1 Cor 12:25- No division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other.
Gal 5:13- But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love.
Gal 5:15- If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.
Gal 5:26- Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.
Gal 6:2- Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.
Eph 4:2- Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. (Col 3:13)
Eph 4:32- Be kind and compassionate to one another (1 Thess 5:15)
Eph 4:32- Forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. (Col 3:13)
Eph 5:19- Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. (Col 3:16)
Eph 5:21- Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
Col 3:9- Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices
Col 3:16- Teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs
1 Thess 5:13- Hold them in the highest regard in love because of their work. Live in peace with each other.
Heb 10:24- And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.
James 4:11- Brothers, do not slander one another.
James 5:9- Don’t grumble against each other, brothers, or you will be judged.
James 5:16- Therefore confess your sins to each other
James 5:16- and pray for each other so that you may be healed.
1 Pet 4:9- Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling.
1 Pet 5:5- Clothe yourselves with humility toward one another
1 John 1:7- But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another

Some of these passages tell us what we are TO DO with one another—teach, be humble, encourage, show hospitality, etc. And some of these texts warn us what NOT to do with one another—do not lie, do not bite and devour, stop passing judgment, etc. What these verses should tell us is that there is no way to live the Christian faith PRIVATELY. God made us for community and fellowship. He made us for accountability and worship. He did not make us to stay at home and watch religious TV and think that our personal and private religion” is “Christian” in the Biblical sense of that term

Are You a Pretty Good Person?

2011-10-20T08:02:00.000-04:00

Most people probably see themselves as a good person. Even those people you consider to be pretty petty, mean and selfish, they probably consider themselves to be a pretty good person. And even those people who do demonstrably evil things tend to excuse themselves by say, "Yes, but basically, I'm a pretty good person." My point is that we generally set the bar pretty low on what it takes to be a good person. I remember Bob Clark reviewing of Lewis Smedes' book, A Pretty Good Person. I seem to remember him saying that it was a pretty good book, but I don't remember anything about it-- I was bummed that the guy reviewing the Max Lucado book didn't show up.

I ran across the following video while looking for something to use with my Middle School students in our small group study on the Ten Commandments. Warning: There is a commercial at the end; feel free to hit the You Tube stop button when you get there.

This little clip reminds us that maybe we're not really the pretty good person we want to think we are. We think we're a pretty good person, but that's because we're comparing ourselves with other people. That won't fly. Paul reminds us "There is no one righteous, not even one" (Rom 3:10). That is the first of a series of Old Testament quotations that leads Paul to conclude "Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin" (Rom 3:20) and "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Rom 3:23). As long as we keep the bar low and compare ourselves with others (and are pretty selective about the others to whom we compare ourselves), we can convince ourselves that we are pretty good people. But our only real hope at goodness is through an act of God, "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." We'll never be good on our own, but in Christ we have a righteousness granted from above.

But that is really not my point. When a many people "out there" in our increasingly secular world think of "Christians," what comes to their mind is not those who are "a pretty good person." The three words that most come to mind when they hear the word "Christian" are "anti-homosexual, judgmental, and hypocritical." According to David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons in UnChristian (Barna, 2007), many (particularly younger) non-Christians view the church through the lens of what we're against. There are six negative themes that sum up the perceptions and attitudes of younger non-Christian people of Christians-- hypocrisy, treatment of outsiders as conversion targets, hatred of homosexuals, seclusion from the real world, over-politicization, and condemnation. Their perception of us is that we don't come across as pretty good people. In fact, sometimes we can come across as pretty mean-spirited, harsh and condemning in the name of Jesus.

Sure, many of those people have formed opinions based on perceptions gleaned from the media. If by "Christian," they think Pat Robertson or even Fred Phelps, it is no wonder that they have negative views about us. But most of the people surveyed in the Barna study knew Christians personally, and thus some of their opinions were formed by first hand experience.

So here's my point... finally. While it is not enough for us to be "pretty good people," our Christian faith must lead us to live in the world of non-believers in a that "will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life" (Phil 2:15-16). It is not enough for us to be a pretty good person, but if we don't live so that the people around us see us as a pretty good person, then we more or less invalidate our belief that Jesus makes a difference.

Eating Humble Pie at McDonald's

2011-10-17T11:58:00.002-04:00

I don’t really follow pro basketball, so the current NBA lock-out doesn't bother me at all. It amazes me-- the minimum wage in the NBA is $473,604 for a rookie and $1,069,509 for a six year vet. I’m sure the NBA owners make a ton of cash, but it is hard to feel too sorry for any of these guys. I did have a little fun at Labron James’ expense yesterday. I was reading an article on the NBA labor dispute where the writer quoted Proverbs 16:18, “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.” For some reason that made me think of Labron James and his commercial for McDonalds, so I cobbled together pieces of two You Tube videos—

Predicting 7-8 championships is a lot easier that producing championships. Someone suggested that Labron James has a cell phone that only vibrates—no rings! OK, enough poking fun at Mr. James; he may yet win his bunches of championships… if he ever gets to go back to work.

The only reason I can’t make the same point on pride form my life (or yours) is that (thankfully) our bouts with pride and arrogance have not (yet) been posted on You Tube for our viewing pleasure. The verse quoted by the sports writer is just one of many Proverbs than warn of pride--

Prov 8:13 - “I hate pride and arrogance, evil behavior and perverse speech”
Prov 11:2 - “Pride comes, then comes disgrace, with humility comes wisdom”
Prov 13:10- “Where there is strife, there is pride, but wisdom is found in those who take advice
Prov 14:13- “A fool’s mouth lashes out with pride, but the lips of the wise protect them.
Prov 21:4- “Haughty eyes and a proud heart— the unplowed field of the wicked—produce sin.
Prov 29:23- “Pride brings a person low, but the lowly spirit gain honor.”

Why all of these warnings? Because you don’t have to be a millionaire athlete to struggle with pride! We all do. And it is dangerous in ALL of us!

On Being a Visionary

2011-10-11T08:14:00.000-04:00

I suppose you've heard that Steve Jobs, the founding visionary of Apple Computers, died this past week from pancreatic cancer. When I heard the news, I couldn't help but think of my friend Joe Vitello. Joe and I carried on a good humored "Mac vs PC" argument for years, long before Apple came out with their commercials. It bugs me that "Mac" is the cool guy in the commercials, but then Joe was much cooler than me-- he once played drums for Carlos Santana; I once owned a Santana cassette. I also thought of Joe a lot because, like Steve Jobs, Joe died of pancreatic cancer eleven years ago.

I start most mornings skimming through the headlines on Google News and CNN. Both of these have been dominated recently by articles on the life, accomplishments and death of Mr. Jobs. In fact, Michael Oher, the Baltimore Ravens football player featured in “The Blindside” made the news because he had the audacity to admit that he had no idea who Steve Jobs was! For a time the media was all Steve Jobs all the time. Now, I love my iPad and iPod, and I will get an iPhone just as soon as one's available for the $35 a month I’m paying now. But even as an Apple admirer, I was amazed at all the press his passing generated. Some of it was likely due to the fact that no one really realized how really sick he was (some thought he'd make a "one more thing" appearance at the iPhone media event the day before he died).

In the midst of all the Steve Jobs retrospectives that I skimmed, the following post from Brett Harrison on his “Aliens and Strangers” blog caught my attention. (Thanks to Alan Smith for pointing me to this).

I don’t know much about Steve Jobs. Frankly, neither do you. That’s what seems strange to me about our world’s response to his death. We collectively mourn for a man with whom we never shared a meal, a man with whom we never had a conversation.

I’m not suggesting death shouldn’t sadden us. But we do this every time someone in the public eye passes away. Are we grieving the death of Steve Jobs? Or are we simply celebrating the technological advances he brought us — and calling that celebration sorrow, masking our love for things with tears for a man?

I am full of sorrow, though. I recently read this article, which explains why Jobs, on his death bed, authorized a biography to be written about him. Here are his words:

“I wanted my kids to know me. I wasn’t always there for them, and I wanted them to know why…”

I am sad for Jobs’ children. And I am equally sad for a nation who praises and glorifies a man simply because he achieved much in the world of business and technology. That’s a polite way to say it, I suppose. Maybe it would be more accurate, or at least more pointed, to say it this way: I am saddened that we worship a man simply because he gave us phones with touch screens. (Well, look on the bright side: at least we don’t place undue importance on the athletic achievements of 18 and 19-year olds.)

How I wish our society honored those men who love their families with a love that is second only to their love for God.

I think he nails this pretty well. No one is really a "visionary" if he allows his children to grow up needing to read a book in order to know their father.

Don't Go to Church; Be the Church

2011-10-04T07:41:00.000-04:00

Two churches made headlines recently when they cancelled their Sunday morning church services. We did that not too long ago and there were no headlines… except for “Hurricane Irene Batters East Coast.” But New Life Church and Lincolnway Christian Church in Illinois didn't cancel their services because of bad weather; they cancelled services to encourage their members to spend their Sunday outside of their “church services” to engage in Christian service to people in their communities. So they served at grade schools (mulching, weeding, picking up garbage, etc.), shopping centers (free car washes), homeless shelters (serving meals) and low income neighborhoods (proving free home maintenance). The slogan on the T-shirt here says it all—“Don’t GO to church. BE the Church.”

One of our former elders liked to talk about people having limited amounts of “disposable time.” Granted, we often dispose of that time in non-productive ways (a euphemism for “watching TV”). But sometimes asking our members to be at “formal” church service 3-4 times a week leaves them with little time (or maybe “little perceived time”) for other Christian activities. This is especially true for people with children involved in sports and band and scouts and a lot of other great things that require large amounts of time acting as boosters and taxi drivers. We discussed at a recent leaders’ meeting the possibility of reallocating some of our meeting times (or parts of them) for more service-oriented activities. I got the general idea that many were both intrigued and disturbed-- what exactly is “forsaking the assembly” anyway?

The church certainly hasn't outgrown the need for “the assembly of the saints.” But maybe we need to mature to the point where we realize the PURPOSE of the “worship service.” We must not be “neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some” (Heb 10:25, ESV). But the end purpose of our meetings is to help us “think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works” (Heb 10:24, NLT). For too long, Christians have considered coming to church as their religious duty (see this previous post). In reality, our assembly to worship refocuses attention on the Kingship of God, and this allows us to be motivated to out serve our King. The “worship” part of the “worship service” takes place inside the assembly; the “service” part takes place only after we leave. In fact, the service we give to God outside of church is also our “true and proper worship” (Rom 12:2, NIV) or “spiritual worship” (ESV) or “this is truly the way to worship him” (NLT).

“Don’t GO to church; BE the church?” OK, maybe it should be don’t ONLY go to church; be the church. But I do like the idea of the church making that point by sometimes intentionally shuttering its building and shooing its members out into the community to serve.

Without Fear of Molestation

2011-09-29T07:44:00.001-04:00

"Without fear of molestation from the civil authorities." That's a prayer phrase that I heard growing up in many (if not most) of the prayers prayed in church on Sunday mornings. It was right up there with phrases like "ready recollection" and "guide, guard and direct" (which usually came out as one word "guideguardndirect") and other things that I really didn’t understand but repeated in my own prayers nonetheless. Well, I knew what the words "without feat of molestation" meant, but I didn’t really understand that this was really a big problem for churches this side of the Roman empire. After all, I when started to Deer Park Elementary School back in the early 60’s, we still began each day by reciting the Lord’s prayer and absolutely no school activities were ever scheduled on Wednesday nights because that was church night. We didn’t fear molestation from the civil authorities. Even after Madeline Murray O’Hare’s work to remove prayer from the schools (much of which seems to have taken place after her death, if you believe the bulletin articles and email that still occasionally find distribution). The idea of the civil government actually molesting (OK, I always found that word a bit strange) people because of their faith seemed rather remote. And to a degree, it still does.

But it doesn't to Jamie Murray, the owner-operator of the Salt and Light Café in Layton, England. As you might infer from the name of his establishment (Matt 5:13-16), Murray (no relation I trust to Madeline Murrat O’Hare) is a Christian who operates his business in a way that gives honor to God. Since the café opened eight years ago, Murray has been playing Bible texts over the TV screen that can be seen by patrons. Just Bible verses and Bible messages running innocuously on the wall mounted screen. Well, these messages weren’t innocuous to one patron who was offended by the message, and rather than just going to some other establishment for fish-and-chips, he complained to the police who responded by forcing the TV’s to be turned off as a violation of Section 5 of the Public Order Act. When Mr. Murray prays about "molestation by the civil authorities," it is no stock prayer phrase to him!

Neither is it a stock phrase to Youcef Nadarkhani, a Christian minister and leader of a network of Christian house churches in Iran. Bro. Youcef is in prison in Teheran and might possibly be executed by the time you read this for his refusal to recant his faith in Jesus Christ and convert to Islam. In Iran, it is not technically illegal to be a Christian, but it is a hanging offense (literally) to convert from Islam to Christianity. The Iranian government insists that because Nadarkhani's parents (or perhaps grandparents) had been Muslim, then he was under law Muslim… even though he had not ever practiced that religion. While there are many others in Nadarkhani's position in Iran, none is so prominent in leading Christian churches, and thus the fundamentalist Islamic government is going to make an example of him because of it. Pray for our brother believer in Christ and all our brothers and sisters who live in a situation where "molestation by the civil authorities" because of faith in Jesus is simply a way of life.

We take so much for granted, don’t we?

The Greatest Love of All

2011-09-28T07:55:00.000-04:00

Several years ago, Robert Schuller sent me a copy of his book Self-Esteem: The New Reformation. (Actually, he sent it to thousands of preachers, but it made me feel better about myself to think he'd sent it to me personally.) In that book and other writings, Schuller redefined the gospel in terms of self-esteem. Jesus came to give us us back the proper view of ourselves that God intended for us from the beginning. Schuller defined sin as "any act or thought that robs myself or another human being of his or her self-esteem." He suggested that "a person is in hell when he has lost his self-esteem." Thus salvation is being saved from this loss of self-worth, "To be born again means that we must be changed from a negative to a positive self-image--from inferiority to self-esteem, from fear to love, from doubt to trust." Well, if that is the gospel, then perhaps we should see Whitney Houston as a new-gospel singer as she croons, "Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all."

Not only was Schuller wrong, he could not have been more wrong. The central act of Christianity is the cross where Christ "made himself nothing" (NIV) or "emptied himself" (NET) as He died on the cross (Phil 2:7). The cross was not about self-esteem; it is about shame (Heb 12:2), a shame that we also bear as we follow Jesus outside the camp (Heb 13:13). We are given a new identity as children of God, and that does indeed recast how we view ourselves (1 John 3:1-3). But God calls us to "share in His holiness" (Heb 12:10), and our self-esteem often takes a beating when we see just how short of that we are able to come. Paul is not pumping us our self-esteem when he says, "What a wretched man I am!" (Rom 7:24). The fact that God loves us and that Jesus died for us and that the Spirit indwells us DESPITE our wretchedness does not change the fact that we are indeed wretched. And the greatest love of all is learning to lay down our lives for others (John 15:13, 1 John 3:16).

I really enjoy reading Experimental Theology, the blog of Dr. Richard Beck, a professor of psychology at ACU. In his most recent blog, he dealt with the idea of self-esteem and Christianity as it relates to the second great command. "Love your neighbor as yourself." Beck suggests that as it is often taught in churches, Jesus is teaching two things here: (1) we must love ourselves and (2) we must love others as ourselves. Thus as Schuller argues (though not to the same degree), the gospel is concerned about pumping up our self-esteem as a platform for loving other. I liked the way he addressed that idea--

Actually don't think Jesus has this very recent, Western psychotherapeutic situation in mind. I don't Jesus is saying anything at all about self-esteem in the second Greatest Commandment. And it worries me a lot that churches are leading with messages of self-love. I don't think Americans need to hear a message that starts like this: "The first thing you need to do is work on loving yourself. And when you've got that down then you can turn to loving others." Because, as best I can tell, a lot of Christians are spending their whole lives just working away on the first part of that equation. Year after year American Christians are spending all their spiritual formation energy on learning to love themselves. And that seems a bit screwy.

What I actually think Jesus is trying to say in the second Greatest Commandment is that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. As I argue in Unclean, Jesus is trying to blur the boundary between Self and Other. Jesus is trying in the second Greatest Commandment to form an identity relationship between Self and Other, to see our lives as intertwined. The hallmark of this fusion is empathy, the ability to stand in another person's shoes and ask a simple question: "If this were me, what would I want?" Basically, "love your neighbor as you love yourself" is just another version of the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Click over to Experimental Theology and read his entire post; I think it will be informative. Let me sum up with how Beck sums up, "The secret, I think, isn't to try to go from a low self-esteem to a high self-esteem. The secret is to just stop playing the self-esteem game altogether. The key is to get out of your head." I like that... I'm just not very good at it.

The Ten Commandments

2011-09-26T09:36:00.000-04:00

Message to My Devoted Fans (both of them): I have comment moderation on the blog set so that anytime anyone comments, I get an email that allows me to allow or disallow the comment from being posted. This is not so that I can keep disagreements to a minimum (which I'm not opposed to) but a practical necessity sense 90% of the comments I get are spam (somehow I've picked up quite a following of people selling wedding dresses!). I noticed last week that it had been awhile since I received any requests, and sure enough GMail (by Google) decided that all notices from Blogger (by Google) is all spam. Anyway, I'll either change the moderation settings or manually check the Blogger dashboard to approve comments. Sorry if you thought I was ignoring you.

At present, my Sunday morning adult class is undertaking a study of the Ten Commandments and I'm also leading my Sunday night Middle School small group through the same study. After an introductory lesson setting up the series, we're taking one of the commandment each week and trying to unpack it for our world today. Since Middle School students live in a different world than do their parents, the commandment unpacks a little differently. And we're having much more fun on Sunday nights.

One of the things the kids seemed to enjoy was this video on how to learn the ten commandments in order by using your fingers. I gave them a pretest at the beginning, and we couldn't as a group name them all in any order. After they watched the video once, they had them nailed. Pretty cool.

On Faith and Being Sensitive

2011-09-23T08:05:00.000-04:00

People of faith must often navigate mine fields to live our beliefs in our progressively more and more secular culture. Just ask Dr. Richard Scott, a Cambridge-trained doctor who practices in Bethesda Medical Centre in Margate, Kent in England. He was in a consultation with a young man who was suicidal and had several medical and personal issues. At the end of that consultation, Dr. Scott suggested that he might consider faith in Jesus Christ, a faith that meant a lot to the doctor through the years. Several months later, the young man complained (actually, it was his mother who complained) to the medical authorities that his own faith (likely Islam) had been demeaned. Dr. Scott was called before a medical board hearing, and he must now defend his actions or he could lose his medical license. “A line was crossed because Dr. Scott expressed his personal religious belief to a person who he knew was a vulnerable patient in a way that was plainly liable to cause the patient distress.” Dr. Scott responded, “He had an awful lot of problems, and the thing to know, that God loves us and Jesus loves us and you can deal with stuff in the past, in terms of hurt or guilt or fear of failure, stuff you can only really find through Christianity.”

It strikes me as ironic that Dr. Scott works at a hospital named for the place in John 5 where Jesus healed an invalid, and yet just mentioning the name of Jesus in a conversation with a patient in the context of healing got him brought up on charges! The good doctor asked the patients permission before sharing his message of faith, and he only offered it at the very end of the medical consult. Religious faith can clearly have a positive impact in dealing with medical issues (see 1, 2, 3, 4). If that is the case, then how is it inappropriate to offer a faith-based message as a possibility to consider. Of course, I do understand that the patient was particularly "vulnerable" because of his illness, but it was precisely that vulnerability that caused him to need something else in his life; what he had was clearly not working for him. The problem here was not the the doctor offered some sort of extra-medical advice to this patient; the problem was that this man of science suggested that there may be something of value in the idea of God. And those other men and women of science who make up the medical board don't want to admit that God... or at least that they aren't God.

Christians must be sensitive in bringing up the topic of faith in a world where we can no longer assume that most people have it. There have been more than enough uninformed and insensitive proponents of faith who act like they are spoiling for a fight as they run roughshod overs in a rush to win arguments and defend positions. But the idea that seems to have become the status quo in our multicultural word is, "It's OK to have faith as long as you don't try to share it with others." That is impossible for Christians to accept, because one of the tenets of out faith is "Go into all the world and preach the gospel." Sure, we have to find ways to be sensitive as we share our faith, but we MUST still share it.

Pat Robertson and Nicholas Sparks

2011-09-20T09:58:00.001-04:00

Pat Robertson recently made headlines by suggesting that it was Biblically acceptable for the spouse of an Alzheimer’s patient to divorce them and then remarry someone else. Robertson said that he wouldn’t "put a guilt trip" on someone for divorcing a spouse with Alzheimer's disease, arguing that Alzheimer's is itself "a kind of death." So Robertson told a caller asking about struggling with the disease, “if he’s going to do something, he should divorce her and start all over again, but to make sure she has custodial care, somebody looking after her.”

His reasoning seems to be that because the Bible teaches that widows and widowers are allowed to remarry (Rom 7:3). Alzheimer’s “is a kind of death,” so the spouse of one Alzheimer’s should also be allowed to divorce and remarry (as long as arrangements are made for a caregiver). By his reasoning, the “Christian” thing would have been for James Garner to have kicked Gena Rowlands to the curb and started dating other women, turning “The Notebook” into “The Little Black Book.” Am I the only one here who thinks that this makes Nicholas Sparks sound more Christian than Pat Robertson?

I can imagine some exasperated wife (maybe mine?) reasoning, “When my husband flops on the couch all day long on Saturday and Sunday watching college and pro football, it’s like he’s DEAD, so that means…” I do know of a Christian wife who divorced her husband because he had lusted after another woman (not sure how she knew that) and thus he had “already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matt 5:28). Everyone knows that adultery is grounds for divorce, so she got rid of her husband and felt perfectly sanctified in doing so. Pretty convenient, huh?

Pat, if you want to give people permission to white out the “in sickness and in health” clause in their marriage vows, please don’t blame that on the Bible. Every page of scripture reveals to us the faithfulness of God. The reason that God hates divorce is not simply because God wants to preserve the family as the foundation of society and a safe place in which raise children. No, God hates divorce because God is Himself faithful— His “faithfulness reaches to the skies” (Psalm 57:10). Unfaithfulness contradicts the perfect nature of our Almighty God. When we are faithful, we become participants in the divine nature of the God we serve (2 Pet 1:4). Faithfulness isn’t always easy, but it is always divine.

The Gift of Time

2011-09-16T08:54:00.000-04:00

Shelli Eldredge was on vacation in Hawaii, touring with her husband and two sons on mopeds when a terrible accident left her in a coma. She had about fifty broken bones, including a shattered pelvis, broken spine and a crushed skull and facial bones. She was not expected to live, and one of the doctors told her husband that he should seriously consider disconnecting her from life support. She remained in a coma for weeks, and Shelli’s husband Stephen, himself a doctor, thought that it was "pretty apparent that she wasn’t going to wake up." He decided that he was not going to give up, and his "gift of time" allowed what can only be called “a miracle” to take place.

After several weeks in a coma, one of Shelli's doctors walked from one side of her bed to the other and noticed that she tracked his movement with her eyes. Later, after her husband joked with one of the doctors, Shelli laughed out loud. They were all stunned, and Stephen asked, “Shelli, did you hear that?’” She responded by raising her eyebrows. That started a process of recovery, and today, three months after the accident, Shelli is walking and talking and determined to come all the way back. Shelli, Stephen and the boys were recently on the today show telling their story to Matt Lauer.

The gift of time. I wonder how many troubled marriages that seem to be flat-lining or limping along on life support with no hope of reconciliation could be brought back from the brink if only we would give the gift of time so that God could do His work? How many struggling Christians who give up on their church and maybe even on God would be given new life and vitality if they just gave themselves and others the gift of more time. Friendships, jobs, family relationships, church ministry-- sometimes what we need is to give ourselves and others the gift of time so that God can heal and restore.

13 I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.
14 Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD. (Psalm 27:13-14)

Army of the Lord

2011-09-15T15:14:00.002-04:00

OK, it HAS been awhile sense I've posted anything here. I'm still mourning the end of a summer that ended abruptly with VBS, vacation and Hurricane Irene. Lynn and the girls are back in school (Angelynn as a brand new teacher at Warwick High). Summer's gone; I have to deal with it. So it's back to the old routine... which I plan on including a blog post or two or three each week.

We just ended a short sermon series on Spiritual Warfare Sunday. When many people hear "Spriitual Warfare," they think of angels, demons and exorcism. So... do demons possess people today like they did in Jesus’ day? I really don’t know. I doubt Satan would want top do that much our modern world where most people don’t believe that Satan even exists; it would be silly for him to disabuse them of that notion. What I do know is that the Bible never commands us to exorcise demons. There is no passage that outlines an exorcism. Jesus told them to go away, and they went away. It didn’t always work that way for the apostles (Matt 17:14), which probably is why they were so hacked off when they came across the unknown exorcist (Mark 9:38). Of course, it really turned out badly for the sons of Sceva when they tried to cast out demons in the name of Jesus (Acts 19:14).

No, we are not told to cast our demons or how to go about casting them out. But we are told some specific things that we are to do concerning spiritual warfare.

We are told to “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7)
We are told not to “give the devil a foothold” through our anger (Eph 4:27)
We are told to “Resist him, standing firm in the faith” (1 Pet 5:9)

The emphasis on our participation in spiritual warfare is not on how to get the devil out of others; it is rather the necessity of resisting the devil’s hold on us.

The problem is that many of us have come to believe that sin really doesn’t matter that much anyway. After all, how many were brought up thinking that a lot of things were sinful (dancing, drinking, going to movies, mixed-swimming, and the beat goes on) that they now believe to be no big deal. In fact, the whole idea of sin is pretty much no big deal any more, which is a bit awkward on Sunday morning when we remember the price Jesus paid for our sin, a price that makes no sense if sin isn’t that big of a deal any more. You really do get the idea that sin isn’t nearly as gnarly as we once thought it was when you consider the following factoids:

Christians vote against abortion, but we get as many abortions as others
We say we believe in sanctity of marriage, but divorce at higher than culture
We can fuss over social drinking, but we are alcoholics at rate as culture
Polls say as about 50% of our men and 20% of women use pornography
Barna suggests as many Christians as non-Christians cheat on marriage
51% of Christians admitted on one poll they lie (were they being truthful?)

What’s going on? We can defend the reasonableness of faith with philosophic and scientific evidence, but if make no difference in how we live our lives, then why would anyone want it? When we become just like the world around us in every recognizable way, then why would they want to become like us. In fact, HOW can they become likes us—they already are like us?

The old Acappella song “Army of the Lord” asks the question, “Are we walking into the enemy camp laying our weapons down?” More and more of us don’t even know there’s a way going on!

Bitterness Is... Bad

2011-08-12T08:51:00.000-04:00

In Ephesians 4:1, Paul says "I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received." Actually more literally, what he says is “walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called” (ESV). In chapters 1-3, Paul reminds his readers (probably a wider audience than just Ephesus) of their identity in Christ. In the second half of the book, he calls them to live or “walk” in a manner that is worthy of their calling. They were not to “walk” like the pagans (4:17) but to rather “walk” in love (5:2) as children of the light (5:15). This will require making choices between good and evil, so they were to “walk” as wise, not unwise, people. Once we understand our calling by God, then we are to walk in a way that is worthy of our calling.

Paul gets pretty specific in that this walk entails—he talks about things like living in unity, speaking truthfully to each other, stealing from others and dealing constructively with our anger. Living (walking) like the people of God changes the way we respond to those things. And dealing with anger seems to be a particular issue for Paul. He tells not to sin in our anger but to rather process quickly, "Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry" (v. 26). He then warns that a failure to process our anger will give the devil a "foothold" or "opportunity" (ESV). The word here is literally "place." It’s the same word used for Jesus praying "at a certain place" (Luke 11:1). We give the devil a place in our lives when we allow anger to go unresolved. This must be important for us because Paul returns to anger later in the chapter (Eph 4:31-32)

31 Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. 32 Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.

Bitterness, rage, brawling, slander and malice are all just different incarnations of anger. Brawling and rage happen when you act on anger immediately without thinking. Bitterness, slander and malice happen when we hold anger in and let it simmer in our hearts before it bubbles to the surface. We may think that rage is more honest as we blow up and then justify ourselves with, "Hey, I just say what I think." Paul would respond, "That’s fine, now repent don't do it again." Bitterness is what happens when we fail to work through (and pray through) our anger so that we can release it (even if the other person does not properly repent). Bitterness is a very dangerous thing; it twists us spiritually and emotionally.

And bitterness can also twist us up physically. Researchers from Concordia University in Montreal report that constant bitterness can lead to physical illness, affecting everything from organ function to immune response and vulnerability to disease. In other words, bitterness will make you sick. Researchers Carsten Wrosch and Jesse Renaud have written a book based on their studies entitled Embitterment: Societal, Psychological and Clinical Perspectives. There study suggests that bitterness affects many different systems in the body that prevent them from working as they should. Bitterness causes people to blame others for their problems rather than looking side themselves, and this process over time litter makes them sick.

Paul’s advice may help us physically as well as spiritually, "Don’t let the sun go down while you are still angry.” When an offense is serious enough to rise to the level of sin, then Jesus’ process in Matthew 18 ceases to be optional— we must go to the person directly (without talking to others) to resolve the issue in private. If that doesn't solve things, then we go back and take someone with you as a mediator. If that doesn’t work, then involve the church to mediate the issues. What we can’t do is allow things from personals slights to actual sins to fester and grow in our hearts and turn us into bitter people. When that happens, we are crippled spiritually and give the devil a place in our lives

The True Grace of God

2011-08-11T09:36:00.001-04:00

Successful politicians become successful politicians because they are adroit at telling people what they want to hear. Unfortunately, sometimes that is also the case for preachers. Churches sometimes grow because they become skillful in finding what people want to hear... and they tell them. What passes as church growth is too often more stealing sheep from other folds rather than saving the lost lambs. Maybe you do that by having building better programs or bigger buildings. Or maybe you do that by convincing people that your church is “the one true church” while others are simply pretenders. Or maybe you convince them that God will make them healthy and wealthy if they listen (and give) to you. Why do so many of the T.V. preachers stress this health-n-wealth, name-it-and-claim-it heresy? Well, it’s not because the promise to make us rich is writ large on every page of the Bible. No, it’s because that message plays well in the mass market! Paul speaks of this market-driven church growth model in 2 Timothy 4:3 (NLT)

For a time is coming when people will no longer listen to right teaching. They will follow their own desires and will look for teachers who will tell them whatever they want to hear.

People want to hear about the grace of God, but not necessarily about the true grace of God. Too many see God’s grace as license. Oh, maybe not to the point of some of Paul’s critics who saw grace as excuse to keep on sinning so grace could increase (Rom 3:8, 6:1). But they (maybe we?) see grace as permission not to sweat over the details of faith. All we have to do is get close and grace will male up the difference. All you have to do is make a somewhat honest effort and grace closes the gap. And then when it comes down to making the hard choices of discipleship, we can defer and play the grace “get out of jail card.” Grace means that we don't have to sweat the small stuff and that it's all small stuff.

Peter seems to have a different idea. He calls us to “the true grace of God” in 1 Peter 5:12, and in the verses that precede, he describes this true grace with a hard edge--

8 Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. 9 Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings. 10 And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. (1 Peter 5:8-10)

The true grace of God is about standing firm in the face of the opposition to the devil and suffering hardship and persecution as you entrust yourself to His eventual vindication and salvation. That is the true grace of God. That grace comes to us through the cross and that grace calls us to the cross. And that kind of grace doesn't attract huge following on religion television. James Thompson in his marvelous book on 1 Peter entitled The Church in Exile, says this—

Whenever Christians have forgotten that walking in the steps of Jesus is costly, 1 Peter has been a forgotten book. The "true grace of God" hardly seems necessary for communities which are rich in their own resources. Where membership in the family of God is offered at bargain-basement prices, the message of 1 Peter is sure to be irrelevant, for only alien communities will find that this book still speaks a word of encouragement.

Several years ago after one particularly difficult time in getting people to volunteer for church ministry and even having several drop out of church almost-altogether, my wife sighed, "Maybe you've preached too much on grace." I don't think I over-preached grace. But I am afraid that I didn't preach well enough on the true grace of God. The true grace of God is the grace of the cross—not just the cross that Jesus died upon but the cross we are called to die upon along with Him.

Blast from the Past

2011-08-08T08:26:00.000-04:00

We’re in the middle of "vacation season" at Denbigh. Roger and Keri are gone this week; Lynn and I will be gone will be gone next week. And we aren't alone. Most of our church is from other places, so when they get time off they go to those other places. It looked like half the church was out of town yesterday, but we also had a ton of guests as well.

One of our guests yesterday told me, “I was in on the vote on whether to hire you.” Steve and Linda Howell were members at Denbigh back in the early eighties. Lynn and I came to Denbigh in May of 1980 to work as the youth minister and intern under Lloyd Unsell, but Lloyd left Denbigh several months after I got here to move to Oklahoma to be nearer his family. The elders asked me to preach on an interim basis while they found a new pulpit guy. They never found a new guy largely because they never really looked, and I kept filling in. After a year or two or three (memories of the timeframe vary), they decided I was doing an OK job (given their low expectations,), and offered me the position. And Steve was evidently here for that vote. So thanks, Howell's for the vote of confidence all those years ago. And thanks for all the nice things you said yesterday.

Steve and Linda represent a large part about what ministry at Denbigh have been through the years. Because of our close proximity to multiple military installations, we have had a steady stream of people coming in and going out through the years. Several years ago, Roger did a congregational study and discovered that almost half of our church had been here 2 years or less. So we have people for 3-4 years and then start all over with a new batch. Sometimes it seems that just when everyone is on the same page, the book changes, and we start all over again. So it’s good to run across people you haven’t seen for 30 (or more) years that say they appreciate what you did and what you are doing.

Camp Idlewild 2011

2011-07-26T07:19:00.000-04:00

Another Middle School Week at Camp Idlewild is in the books. This was a watershed week for many of our campers; the huge Middle School group with which we started three years ago had their last hurrah. Next year they move up to Teen Week. In fact, several of them didn't wait for next year-- Rachel, Olivia and Kristina all went back for a second week. In the 40 years or so I have been going to camp, I never went back-to-back weeks.

We had a great week. With the exception of Wally Nooner (our head cook extraordinaire), our entire staff came from Denbigh and almost half (15 of 31) of our campers were either from Denbigh or recent Denbigh alumni. So camp week is a big event for our church family (we cancelled services Sunday and Wednesday night and invited our people over to camp). My thanks foes to our staff volunteers Roger Brown, Annette Vitello, Lynne Bean, Beverly Becker, Jennifer Glaspell, Bruce Gaynon, Joann Guthrie, Betty Tanner, Wally Nooner, Lynn Tucker, Sarah Mattingly, Angela Johnson, Mark Becker, Nathan Tanner, Dawn Tanner, Tressa Tucker, Angelynn Tucker and Tori Light. (This was the first year ever that Lynn, Tressa, Angelynn and I were all at camp together.)

The week was HOT. Temperatures at the beginning of the week were in the low to mid 90's, but it didn't take long for us to get over 100, and the heat index was near 120 on several of those days. We changed around the schedule so that outside activities were in the morning and Bible classes were in the afternoon. The kids were great; they went along with all the activities as if the heat didn't bother them. Last year we had all kinds of camper drama and trips to the emergency room; this year was pretty quiet and boring... just like I like it.

If you have never spent time at a Christian camp during the summer, then you have missed one of life's special experiences. And if you have never spent a week at Camp Idlewild... let me know and I'll add you to the staff waiting list for next year!

Should We Stop Evangelizing?

2011-07-25T09:06:00.000-04:00

I was once in Zhitomir, Ukraine as one of the speakers in a seminar for Ukrainian Christians and church leaders. We had a good group of Ukrainian believers, several of whom had traveled cross-country by train, to hear some Americans teaching about a Jewish Messiah who came to save the whole world. Right before the seminar was to begin, a delegation from Kiev showed up demanding to know why our little church in Zhitomir allowed women to speak in church as our translators (well, because they were fluent in both English and Russian) and why we used alcoholic wine in communion (well, because that is the “fruit of the vine” that we could actually purchase in Zhitomir; the one time we tried to buy grape juice, it turned out not to be grape at all but some kind of strange “banana-juice” concoction). We were there to talk about Jesus, but these defenders of the faith wanted to talk about their version of church that could not include female translators or fermented wine.

I thought about that story as I read a CNN editorial by Carl Medearis entitled “Why Evangelicals Should Stop Evangelizing.” The general idea of the article is that Christians have spent so much time recreating their churches on the mission field that we have become impediments to actually talking about Jesus. Medearis is a former missionary and church planter who thinks we should stop spreading "Christianity" and spend more time talking about Jesus himself. Medearis seems to be saying that we need to stop trying to make Muslims into Christians and spend more time encouraging them to be more like Jesus. Among the Lebanese people he worked with, the most violent and fierce of the armed militias driving the violence there were the “Christian” militias. They didn’t look anything like Jesus, of course, but they were “Christian.” Sometimes missionaries (and preachers) like my friend in Keiv, simply recreate their own church structures and compete with other groups who are recreating their own church structures. In other words, they become just like churches back home—competing for converts to their system and not looking too much like Jesus in the process.

I think Medearis has a point. He’s wrong, of course, but he has a point. Jesus is still the only other name under heaven by which people are to be saved (Acts 4:12) and faith in Jesus means accepting him as “the way, the truth and the life” that is the only way to the Father (John 14:6). No Muslim can be Muslim and believe that about Jesus. For while it is true that “there is no God but God,” it is not true that “Mohammed is his prophet.” Getting Muslims to think and act more like Jesus is great, and getting Christians to more gentle and patient with non-believers is not only great but gospel (Col 4:6). But getting people to heaven requires faith in Jesus.

But over the course of history, nothing has gotten in the way of faith in Jesus more than has Christianity. When believers in Christ do things that are not at all Christ-like in the name of Christ, then that just isn’t helpful. We have to live like Jesus to give meaning to our message about Jesus. Maybe we do need to get over some of our fixation on the external structures that go along with our experience of Christianity (which sometimes create barriers where none should exist) and spend more time pointing to the crucified one and living the crucified life.

Medearis says that evangelicals should stop evangelizing. That’s not right. What evangelicals (whoever they are) should stop is seeing their traditions, politics, or economic ideology as having anything to do with the gospel. Christianity is Christ. And maybe there is a sense in which Christianity is Christ alone. Maybe we should make our evangelism more about Christ?

That's Just Nuts

2011-07-13T08:32:00.000-04:00

I must begin by confessing that I don’t really follow politics all that closely. Well, that’s not completely true; I generally spend some time reading/skimming through articles on the web from such varied sources as Fox News, CNN, The Wall Street Journal and The Huffington Post. I consider myself pretty much a political moderate, and while I have always voted Republican in national elections, I do occasionally cross the aisle in state elections. When really pushed for my philosophy on politics, I’d probably describe myself as a “Progressive Lipscombian.” (If you don't know what that means... good). Politics is ultimately about power, and power is generally antithetical to the Kingdom of God. I also suspect that Will Rogers was onto something when he suggested that anyone who could be elected president is probably not qualified to serve.

OK, I say all that because I don’t want it to seem that I’m coming at this from any political perspective. I am definitely not a tea-party member (though if someone starts a coffee-party, I’d be more interested). But the latest brouhaha (and there have been many) over Michele Bachmann caught my attention. It seems that Bachmann has touted her presidential qualifications by pointing out that she and her husband are small business owners and that small businesses are the key to getting our economy back where it needs to be (no argument there). But CNN’s Jim Acosta and Erika Dimmler jump on the fact that the small business being referred to is a Christian counseling clinic where, along with many other things, counselors make use of "reparative therapy." This is where homosexuals who don’t want to be homosexuals are counseled in such a way to help not practice homosexuality. Things like prayer, Bible study, and personal mentoring are used to help people who so desire to "rewire" themselves sexually. If these people can't overcome the homosexual orientation, they they are given tools to help them live celibate lives. That, of course, proves that Michele Bachmann is a kook and not qualified to be president.

Bachmann may be a kook and not qualified to be president, but to use her counseling clinic as proof of that fact is just nuts. What if a homosexual person truly believes that their homosexuality is a sin before God? What if they would like to stop practicing homosexuality? It’s a free country, right? Don’t they have the freedom to NOT be homosexual if they can do that? No one is suggesting snatching gays and lesbians off the street and forcing them into reparative therapy, right? People are making the free-will choice that, based upon their religious belief, they don’t want to practice homosexuality. And to help them with their free-will choice, they are looking for counseling help in changing their sexual orientation (which is very hard) or their sexual behavior (which is very possible). The editorial stance of the article seems to be that if you are gay then you have NO RIGHT to try not to be gay or to get help in not being gay. The culture seems to believe that homosexuals must be free to be gay but cannot be allowed to choose not to be gay? That’s just nuts.

I’m not going to vote for Michele Bachman (unless she names Bob Turner of NY as her running mate. I’d HAVE to vote for a “Bachmann-Turner” ticket, especially if they had “Taking Care of Business” as their campaign song/slogan). But the idea that it is someone wrong to providing counseling to homosexual people who don’t want to be practicing homosexuals? That’s just nuts.

A Hill Worth Dying On

2011-07-11T08:54:00.000-04:00

Earlier this year, 11 Iranians Christians were arrested and charged with “activities against the order of the country.” Specifically, they were charge with drinking wine… communion wine during a Christian worship service. These Christ-followers knew that they were risking their lives and freedom to remember Jesus in this act of worship. They were released in May, thanks in large part to public outcry from the West. These persecuted Christians believed that communing around the Lord’s table with other believers and with the Lord Himself was important—important enough to risk all.

Contrast their solemn faith with some of the disagreements that believers have had over the observance of communion through the years.

Presence: Is the body and blood of Jesus literally present? Is it spiritually present? Is bread and wine only a visual aid to focus our thoughts or does something spiritually happen in communion?
President: Who is qualified to administer communion. Must one be ordained? Must one be a bishop or can a deacon preside over a communion service. Can anyone preside? Can a woman preside?
Participants: Who can eat of the Lord’s Table? Must one be a member of the local body? Can visitors partake? What about the children of members?
Providers: Must deacons distribute communion after it has been blessed? Can only baptized believers “pass the plates” or can the “pre-baptized” participate? Can women serve at the Lord’s table?
Presentation: Must there be only one cup? Must that cup contain fermented wine? Can the cup contain fermented wine? Must unleavened bread be used?

This list of communion issues is by no means exhaustive, but it is indeed exhausting. The kinds of things we have invented over which to feud and fuss is amazing. This picking of nits over communion split the Reformation itself, and it has split many churches through the centuries, some of which I have personal knowledge. But those 11 Iranian Christians never would have even considered those kinds of issues. When you are risking your life for something, you make sure that it counts. If you are going to take a bullet (literally or figuratively), you need to make sure it’s worth it. You must choose carefully the hill on which you’re willing to die.

Jesus died on the hill of Calvary. There is no issue worth taking a bullet for that is not directly connected to what Jesus did there. May God forgive us for all the blood we have spilled on hills that were not worth dying on.

Soaked in Blood

2011-06-25T15:21:00.000-04:00

I remember reading of one denomination that undertook a major revision of its hymnal. Churches revising hymnals is certainly nothing unusual. In fact, if we tell people to take out a hymnal, we have to explain that we mean the old maroon book covered in dust underneath the chair in front of them (we usually just sing “off the wall.”) But the reason for this particular revision of this particular denominational hymnal was to remove or revise all of those old hymns that seem so fixated on “blood.” You know the hymns—“Nothing But the Blood,” “Power in the Blood,” “Alas! And Did my Savior Bleed,” and “Have You Been to Jesus” (“Washed in the Blood of the Lamb.”). Their thinking was that modern sensitivities are too prim and proper to respond or relate to this obsession in these old hymns with blood. Most modern urban people can't relate to “Bringing in the Sheaves,” and neither can they relate to this emphasis on blood. So we'll just avoid those songs altogether.

Frankly, there are some biblical allusions that I try to avoid. For example, I can’t remember ever preaching on the spiritual significance of the dowry Saul required of David for the hand of his daughter Michal (1 Sam 18:25). And then there’s the story of the Levite’s concubine in Judges 18 that is pretty gross as well. But as offensive as the topic of blood might be to modern sensitivities, there is simply no way to tell the gospel story without stressing the fact that the whole story is saturated in blood. Patty Kirk puts it this way in her spiritual memoir Amateur Believer--

The problem of Jesus' blood—what Catholics would appropriately call a mystery—is that it means everything. Not merely the blood covering Jesus when he suffered at our hands, but the gorier blood of our uncleanness—our urges and our hatreds, our humanness—that Jesus assumed when he died for us. It is the blood of our sin as well as the blood sprinkled to cleanse us of sin. The blood of the Israelites' sacrifices. The blood they smeared on their doorjambs to protect their firstborn children from death when the Lord passed over Egypt.

The blood we drink in celebrating communion represents the very essence of Jesus' dual identity as God and man. From his earthly beginning, even as a fetus deep in Mary's uterus, nurtured by the nutrients from her blood, Jesus drew life from his own unique blood, blood mysteriously human and divine simultaneously, special blood that made him the living Son of God and also, incomprehensibly, one of us, the Son of Man.

Communion evokes the bitter wine vinegar offered Jesus on the cross and also the wine we will drink with him in heaven. His death and his resurrection to eternal life. The spilled blood of our guilt and the pulsing blood of our hope. Sin. Sacrifice. Celebration. Blood is at the very core of our faith.

If people really are offended by the story of the blood of the cross, then you just might be telling the story correctly. Paul talks about “the offense of the cross” in Galatians 5:11. (That’s the verse before Paul wishes those who insisted that all be circumcised to follow Jewish tradition would just go ahead and castrate themselves; evidently Paul wasn't too concerned with our sensibilities, modern or otherwise).

The gospel is a story that is soaked in blood; you can't tell the gospel without it. And you can't sing the gospel with the blood either.

A Truly Forgettable Sermon

2011-06-21T21:40:00.001-04:00

Someone told me Sunday that while they thought that my sermon was particularly well done (thank you very much), they were pretty sure that no one would remember the sermon (so why should last Sunday be any different from usual?). Nope, what people would remember was the YouTube Father's Day video "Dad Life" that I "borrowed" (ripped off) as a tribute to our fathers. This was actually last year's video from Church on the Move in Tulsa, OK. I'm sure their video this year was also well done and perhaps I'll "borrow" it next year.

Well the prophecy came true this morning when someone (no names, Michele) Face-booked me and asked for-- not my sermon notes or mp3 of my SERMON-- but the link for the video so their hubby could watch it. So here it is. Maybe if I made my own videos people would remember my sermons better!

Heart Improvement

2011-06-15T07:45:00.000-04:00

You might recognize actor and comedian Jim Labriola from his recurring role on the hit TV show “Home Improvement.” These days Labriola makes his living as a Christian comedian, performing for people who specifically are looking for "clean entertainment." But in his bad old days, Labriola did stand up comedy the way it is expected from stand-up comedians— "injecting a few curse words here and there with a mixture of sexual innuendos added to the punch line."

And then he met Jesus. He was invited by his sister-in-law to a non-denominational church "where people raised their hands and were happy." He said of the preacher, "I never heard a guy talk so much about Jesus almost as if he knew him personally." He continued to go to the church, got to know some people and a few months later decided to give his life to Jesus. But when you give your life to Jesus, Jesus doesn't just leave you alone. Jesus takes us "Just As I Am," but He never leaves us this way. Labriola read from Ephesians 5:4, "Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving." He decided that this verse was speaking directly to him. "I can't just read the Bible and go up on stage and do the opposite." So he cleaned up his act… literally.

Today he performs for churches and Christian gatherings, but also in secular settings. He was surpsied how many people appreciated his “clean humor.” People come thank him for the option of taking their families to a comedy show “without the overlaying fear of listening to an uncomfortable joke while sitting next to your grandma.” His newest CD is entitled "Heart Improvement."

The problem with going to the doctor is that he doesn’t want to just fix whatever ache or pain we are complaining about that day. He also wants us to lose weight, get our blood pressure and cholesterol under control and a myriad of other things we just as soon he not mess with. And that is the way it is with the Great Physician. When we come to Him, he wants to change everything about us that is contrary to our spiritual health. We can’t compartmentalize our lives so that we have one set of values for work and career and entertainment and another one for church and family. Jesus wants us all, and that means that everything has to change. That’s not easy, but that is the deal.

Reasons for NOT Not Going to Church

2011-06-13T08:13:00.000-04:00

We had a very blessed day at Denbigh yesterday. We had a larger number of people present, which is good since we are getting into our summer-slump time. We had former members and down-the-street-neighbors (the Birkenbuel's) back visiting with us, and that was good. We honored a family that was leaving us (the Higgins); it's sad that they are leaving but good we got to thank them. Mary Robinson made a presentation of an beautiful quilt to Janice Barker to let Ben and Janice know we are thinking of them. And we prayed with Brenda and Sammy for them to get through their grand-baby's funeral today (and raised more than enough money to pay the cemetery). The worship was great (we sang all Fanny J. Crosby or Dennis Jernigan songs, an interesting combination that somehow seemed to work). My Bible class was on sex and I got to wear a funny hat in the middle of my sermon. It really was a great day!

We began the service with this YouTube video entitled "Reasons (Why People Don't Come to Church)." The video is produced by the Central Christian Church in Las Vegas (hey, if you don't want me borrowing your creativity, then don't post it on YouTube). I thought it was a pretty good summary of what we are called to be as a church.

After yesterday, I felt very blessed that God has placed me in the church here at Denbigh. We are far from perfect, but I think we do a pretty good job of meeting people where they are and letting them know that while socks are optional, grace isn't... and that it's OK not to be OK... really.

My How Time Flies

2011-06-06T10:01:00.000-04:00

Lynn and I were blown away yesterday as our church honored us for our 31st anniversary at Denbigh with a dinner after church (including two HUGE cakes) and a painting-style picture of our Denbigh church family (now hanging in my office). Lynn and I came to Denbigh as the associate/youth minister in May of 1980 (this picture was taken a few months after our arrival). Lloyd Unsell, the pulpit preacher, left about 2 months later to return to Oklahoma, and I received very quick and unwelcome promotion. (My Dad was one of the elders at the time, and some expressed concern that this was a conflict of interest; we decided that nepotism was OK… as long as you kept it in the family.) Technically, I served for several years as the "Interim Evangelist" while the elders looked for a new pulpit guy. But they hated going through a selection process and kept putting off actually looking for a new guy. After several years, they decided I was doing an OK job… and no one else was willing to work for $200 a week. After 31 years, Lynn and I are still here.

Denbigh is an area dominated by military and government service workers, so while we’ve been here 31 years, almost no one else at church has been. We did a survey several years ago and found that almost half of our people had been at Denbigh less than two years! That is one of the secrets of our longevity… the church keeps changing. Another secret may be wrapped up in an old “preacher story.”

There was once a church which had a reputation of firing their preacher every year. But then they hired a new guy and after his year was up, they extended his contract. They extended it again after his second year. And after the third year, they offered the guy a lifetime contract. Well, he was flattered and asked them why they once changed preachers every year and now had offered him a lifetime contract. One of the elders said, “Well, to tell you the truth, we don’t like preachers and we don’t really want a preacher; you are about as close to no preacher as we have been able to find!"

So there may be several explanations for my ministerial longevity. Whatever the reasons, Lynn and I feel so blessed that we have been able to work with the Denbigh Church of Christ for all these years. From the very beginning, Denbigh has given me the greatest blessing a preacher can every hope to receive from a church—an openness to preach messages from scripture even when those messages don’t necessarily fit within our comfortable church tradition. The church has not always agreed with what I have preached, but they have always been willing to listen and to love me anyway. Sermons that at some places would have been “moving sermons” (sermons where the preacher has had to move afterwards) has been met at Denbigh with “you make me think today and I’ll have to do some more study on that.” There is no greater blessing a church can give a preacher than the willingness to listen and be driven back to the Book. Many preachers have to move all over the country in order to grow in their understandings and change their basic stances on basic issues; I have been blessed to stay at one place and grow and change and watch the church grow along with me.

Jesus said that “a prophet has no honor in his own country” (John 4:44). But then sometimes a preacher can be honored in his own country... much more than he deserves to be. “May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (2 Cor 13:14).

A Pinch and a Sip

2011-06-03T14:49:00.000-04:00

OK, so maybe I’m not the brightest bulb in the chandelier. The clock ran out on my class Sunday before I got to this controversial point, so instead of being thankful that I was this “providentially hindered” and dropping it, I'm going to bring it up on my blog. As they say, fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

First, some background. We practice baptism by full immersion in water, not sprinkling or pouring water. Paul in Romans 6 speaks of baptism as a burial, “We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” Baptism is a recreation of the Christ-event in our lives as we die to sin, are buried in water and then rise out of the water to a new life. The Greek word “baptizo” from which we get the transliteration “baptism” originally meant “to dip repeatedly, to immerse, to submerge.” Sprinkling or pouring a little dirt is not a burial; sprinkling or pouring a little water is baptism.

I never know who (if anyone at all) ever reads this blog, and this emphasis on immersion may be news to you. But everyone in my class Sunday would have “amened” this point on baptism. Churches of Christ really stresses baptism; it’s a good thing someone else already had the copyright on “Baptist Church” or else we may have been tempted to call ourselves that! We stress baptism! I remember listening in on a conversation while some of our folks debated whether or not a baptismal candidate who was standing in the water waiting for his turn to be baptized and then was eaten by a crocodile before his turn came would be saved, (After all, the croc pulled him completely under the water, so…). We do stress baptism, and baptism (baptize) means immersion.

Here’s the question for which I ran out of time and that I now foolishly ask. The word “Supper” as in “the Lord’s Supper” is the Greek word “deipnon” which (using the same lexicon I used above) means “supper, especially a formal meal usually held at the evening.” In other words, the word “supper” means “a full meal” just like “baptism” denoted a full immersion. So (do you see what's coming?) why is it NOT OK to use a little water sprinkled or poured on someone as a symbol of a burial but it is PERFECTLY OK to use a little pinch of cracker and sip of grape juice as a symbol in the Lord's Supper? Do we lose something of theological significance when we replace a meal eaten communally around a table (the model Jesus used) with a symbolic “pinch-and-sip” which we eat in private meditation with no real sharing or communion going on around a table?

For further study, let me recommend a book by my friend John Mark Hicks (most of my friends don’t even read books let along write them) entitled Come to the Table. His take is that we have, to our detriment, turned the Lord’s Supper from a table into an altar.

If you'll excuse me, I have to get ready for the new class I'm teaching Sunday based on Rob Bell's book Sex God. His first chapter is entitled "God Wears Lipstick." What on earth was I thinking?

Looking Back

2011-05-31T07:58:00.001-04:00

I recently had reason to dig out the original contract that I signed with the Denbigh church in 1980 when I first started my work here. I was shocked that I could find it; I was also a little surprised by what was in it. My starting salary in 1980 was $200 a week and the contract stipulated that it was to be given to me "on each Lord’s Day." What was not stipulated in the contract was how often Jack Dulaney, our treasurer, would give me the check on Sunday and then ask me not to cash it for 2-3 days until he made sure that there was any money in the account! Additionally, they gave me $350 a month housing allowance (which was enough to pay rent and utilities for our apartment… our Section 8 government housing apartment!). They also kicked in $140 a month for insurance, but for some reason the $5 a week book allowance that was typed in the original contract was struck through (in pencil) as if disallowed at the time the contract was signed. (Boy, if I had that $5 a week now, I could buy a new book every other month or so!).

The contract gave me one day a week off, two weeks of vacation per year (not to include more than two Sundays), and one week per year to work at Idlewild Christian Camp (not sure whether that was a benefit or a hazardous duty assignment). With those exceptions, the contract stipulated that “the preacher shall be available in his work with this congregation twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week.” The only other contract I remember signing with the church was when Roger was hired (he had one, so I had one). The new one gave me all national holidays off, which I had never had before. (Lynn and I couldn’t decide whether to go to Colonial Williamsburg or to the pool yesterday for Memorial Day, so we stayed home and rearranged furniture). Our elders at that time of this second contract (which I can’t find) worked for the government, so it made sense that they would give me national holidays. (Of course, they frowned on me taking the whole long weekend off like everybody else!)

Section 5 of my contract stipulates my work responsibilities—all pulpit duties, teaching two classes, conducting Ladies Bible class (which was every awkward back when I was 23 and the class was made up of mostly older church ladies), edit the bulletin (which meant type it on a stencil and run it off on a mimeograph machine). Curiously, no mention was made of PowerPoint slides, maintaining the church website, or writing a blog… but then again, they are now paying more than $200 a week!

What is the point of all this? I’m not sure there is one. Well, except maybe this—I have no clue how I got from May 1980 to May of 2011. How can 31 years seem to be such a short period of time? What a blessing these years have been for Lynn and me. I hope there are a few people who have been blessed in return.

What Your Car Might Tell Others About Jesus

2011-05-26T07:54:00.000-04:00

We’re just finishing up a Wednesday night study of Francis Chan’s book Crazy Love. I’ve done several past posts (here and here) on Chan’s book, so I won’t spend time here giving background on the book. If you haven’t read Crazy Love, it would be worth your time to do so. Chan has also posted several videos that go along with chapters in the book on YouTube. Here is the short clip I showed last night--

Chan’s take here really stands out in contrast to what some of the popular TV preachers say and do about concerning money. Can you imagine Creflo Dollar driving a 15 year old Subaru clunker (he drives a Rolls Royce) and sending the excess to support an African orphanage? Joel Osteen owns a 17,000 square foot, $10.5 million dollar estate. Kenneth Copeland flies his own $20 million Cessna Citation jet, the fastest private jet that money can buy. There was a Senate investigation launched into these excesses, but the millions of people who routinely donate to these ministries have not been discouraged. Contrast the video above with this one from Inside Edition--

The contrast between these two different views of money raises two questions, one of them easy and one of them much harder. First, which of these two videos looks more like Jesus? Or maybe even more to the point, which of these two projections of the use of money by Christians looks more like Jesus to our non-Christian world. To tell you the truth, the church looks pretty much like a joke to many non-Christians precisely because of those television preachers and their lifestyles. If we are going to get the world to take a serious look at Jesus, then we'd better take a serious look at ourselves.

Second, and this is a much tougher question, what does the way that you and I spend our money say to the non-Christian world about Jesus? OK, so I don’t drive a Rolls Royce, but I do drive a five year old Honda CR-V which I do like quite a bit and still owe some money on, And that means that I DO NOT drive a 15 year old Subaru and send the difference to support African orphans. Does my CR-V say anything to others about Jesus? I wonder. Is it possible that our lifestyle says more than we realize about how seriously we take Christ… and how seriously we can expect the world to take our message? We suggested last night that the reason that many Christians can’t even consider supporting one orphan (let alone an entire orphanage) is because we are so heavily in debt paying for things we really done need that we don’t have the money to give away for more important… and eternal… things. Paul told Timothy to teach the rich folks in Ephesus (1 Timothy 6:17-19)

17 Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. 18 Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. 19 In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life.

How are we to not be arrogant or put our trust in wealth (v. 17) and lay up for ourselves treasures in heaven (v. 19)? By doing good, being generous and sharing with others in need (v. 18). If we aren't doing that, then maybe were looking more like those rich televangelists than we'd ever like to think!

The Great Disapointment

2011-05-25T08:12:00.001-04:00

In the same year that Alexander Campbell and Barton W. Stone merged their restoration movements, another preacher was making a name for himself on the American religious scene. His name was William Miller, and his followers were called (oddly enough) “Millerites.” Miller came to believe that Bible prophecy held the key to understanding God’s timetable for the end of the world (sound familiar at all?). Based upon the so-called “day-year principle” (“with the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.” see 2 Peter 3:8), Miller set the date for doomsday as October 22, 1844. He attracted quite a following—somewhere between 50,000 and 500,000 (you know how those preacher counts go). There are reports of Millerites

As you may have noticed, the world did not end, and to his credit, Miller responded publically, saying, "I confess my error, and acknowledge my disappointment; yet I still believe that the day of the Lord is near, even at the door." The time following October 22, 1844 was known among Millerites as “The Great Disappointment.” Most of them simply disappeared, and Miller himself faded from the scene and died a few years later. Some of his followers, however, were a bit too invested in Miller’s doomsday scenario, and they modified his predictions came to form two different groups, the Seventh Day Adventists (who believe Jesus began an “investigative judgment” on October 22, 1844 when he entered the heavenly Temple to open the books) and the Jehovah’s Witnesses (who kept right on predicting the end of the world every four or so years or so right up through the 1970’s).

This week, the followers of Harold Camping are experiencing their own “Great Disappointment.” Camping first tried the “investigative judgment” route and said the date was right, but the judgment was spiritual and “invisible” and that the actual end of the world is now October 21. Later he admitted that maybe he just figured it up wrong. What he should have said was what one journalist said for him, “Ok, so I got the Apocalypse date wrong; it's not the end of the world.”

There is a lesson in here somewhere. To humbly seek the mind of God with a determination to follow what you believe to be His will is called "faith." To proclaim that you have the fully understood the mind of God and that you can speak authoritatively for Him is called "arrogance." There really is a huge difference the two, but it is amazing how often we get faith and arrogance mixed up. We must seek the mind of God (faith) but we cannot calim limit Him or obligate Him by our understandings (arrogance). Paul ends a pretty difficult section of Romans (which commentataries either see as a parenthetical interruption of Paul’s main point or the actual main point of the book, take your pick) with a with a doxology we really need to keep in mind—

33 Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!
34 “Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?”
35 “Who has ever given to God, that God should repay them?”
36 For from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.

Anytime we think we have the mind of God figured out (as to the end of the world, how God works in baptism, what kind of church music He prefers or any other topic), we are setting ourselves up for a Great Disappointment. In the words of the great theologian "Dirty" Harry Callahan, “A man’s got to know his limitations.”

What If Rover Is Left Behind?

2011-05-19T10:07:00.000-04:00

This post will make better sense of you've read the one from Monday. What if Saturday, May 21 really is Judgment Day? After all, it could be, right? What if LaHaye and Jenkins are right and the church gets raptured and all the non-believers get “Left Behind?” Some prophetic (or maybe profit-ic?) genius has come up with the perfect solution to those who worry about their left-behind friends and family. For the bargain price of $14.95, you can pay a website to send emails to your non-believing loved ones after you have been raptured. According to some prophecy experts (see the definition of expert in the earlier post), the post-rapture world will be a time of both great evangelism and great tribulation. So if you are gone and you want your friends and family clued-in to what is going on, then what better way than to send them a post-apocalypric post? How does it work? According to the website

We have set up a system to send documents by the email, to the addresses you provide, 6 days after the "Rapture" of the Church. This occurs when 3 of our 5 team members scattered around the U.S fail to log in over a 3 day period. Another 3 days are given to fail safe any false triggering of the system.

Clever, huh? Set up your account (250 MB of documents and 62 different email addresses) and you can evangelize after you've vaporized. (OK, I'm being a wee-bit sarcastic, but I'm having trouble believing this is for real.)

But what about your pets? If you are suddenly raptured, who is going to be there to take care of your pet? Well, you can contact a company called Eternal Earth-Bound Pets which was founded several years ago to care for pets left behind by the Rapture. For $135, this company promises to come and pick up your pets and take them to their 20-acre compound in New Hampshire and care for them. How are they going to do that for $135? The trip from New Hampshire to Virgina get our little Maltese Bella (Maggie is too old; and Marley, well buddy, you’re on your own) and transport her back to New Hampshire would cost more than $135. So why are these people willing to be left behind and care for pets so cheaply? Because owner and operator Bart Centre (why didn't he call his business “The Centre Center”) doesn’t believe in the rapture. But he is willing to honor his contracts for the 10-year period that they are valid. And he is also willing to take free money from the over-gullible.

Hey, the world could end Saturday. The world will end Saturday for about 153,000 people (that’s how many people in the world die each day according to the Population Reference Bureau's "2010 World Population Data Sheet"). After Jesus assures us that even he doesn’t know when the end will come (Matt 24:26), He tells us, “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come.”(Matt 24:42). The point for Christians is that we are supposed to live each day ready for Jesus to come. Each day we pray, “Maranatha,” “Come, Lord Jesus” (Rev 22:20). Yes, one day Jesus is going to come, blow His whistle and say, “Everybody out of the pool.” But people have been predicting when that day would be from earliest of Christian times. And the one thing that these end-time dates have in common is that they always had a tomorrow… and they always gave unbelievers one more reason not to take Christians seriously. If we really want to be ready for Jesus when he comes, setting up emails and taking care of pets isn’t the way to do it. Jesus says this is the way—

34 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ 37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ 40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ (Matthew 25:34-40)

Suing the Devil

2011-05-17T10:10:00.000-04:00

Last year at Pepperdine, we had pie and coffee one evening with a Hollywood producer and movie actor. Really. We were in the cafeteria when two guys asked if they could join us, and they introduced themselves and said. "We just made a movie." I thought they were kidding, and no one at the table said anything. So one of the guys said, "No really, we just finished making a movie and we are looking for about $7 million for distribution and advertising. We heard about this place and thought we'd come." The movie they had just made was "Suing the Devil" staring veteran actors Malcom McDowell, Corbin Bernsen and Tom Seizemore. The actor we met (sorry, I have forgotten his name) is the last in a series of lawyers who represent the devil (played by McDowell) that are introduced in a segment of the trailer below.

The producers evidently had a little trouble finding the money for distribution and advertising. Many of the people who come to the lectures are either preachers or retirees, so they weren't going to get $7 million in the cafeteria that night! The film has missed several release dates earlier this year and it is currently set for release on August 26. I'm planning on going to see it... IF it ever comes out.

On Mowing the Lawn and the End of the Word

2011-05-16T08:25:00.001-04:00

I’m thinking about waiting until next week to mow my lawn. After all, according to some pretty widely reported predictions, the end of the world is coming on May 21, 2011. And who wants to waste time mowing the lawn when the end of the world is right around the corner? So why is the world going to end on May 21? Well, it’s right there in the Bible, plain as the nose on my face (which is pretty plain).

Genesis 7:4 says, "Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made." When God says 7 days, he obviously meant both 7 days and 7000 years. I mean EVERYBODY knows that "one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." The flood occurred in 4990 B.C. (go with me here). So 7000 thousand years since God God destroyed the world the first time is 2011. So that’s gotta be the year. Also, the Mayan calendar ends in 2012, which shows that they were in the right ball park, but that is another conspiracy theory altogether.

So if the year is plainly 2011, then why do we know its going to be May 21? Well, there are 722,500 days between the date of the crucifixion and May 21, 2011. 722,500 is a highly significant number because it is composed of the significant numbers 5x10x17x5x10x17. Five signifies redemption; ten signifies completion; and 17 signifies heaven. The numbers represent the day of redemption (5) and the end of the Christian era (10) and the ascent to heaven (17) -- and these factors are doubled for added significance. So that proves that the world is going to end on May 21.

Well… of course, unless it doesn't. I have my own theory about the exact date for the end of the world. I predict that Jesus will come on any day EXCEPT one that has been predicted as the end-time date by self-appointed end-time sooth-sayers who torture the text to come up with a date even though Jesus Himself warned us not to listen to people making such claims (Matt 24:23) and no one knows when the date will be (Matt 24:36). There have always been “experts” (my Dad says that the definition of “expert” is that an “ex” is a has-been and a “spurt” is a “small stream under pressure”) who knew when Jesus was coming and the only thing they have in common is that they were wrong. (See a previous blog for some examples).

Here are some more of my predictions. I predict that I WILL cut my grass today (unless it rains or the Lord comes TODAY). I’ll predict that I will run this blog in our bulletin Sunday, the day AFTER kingdom-come (because I’m a bit of a smart aleck). And I also predict that the young lady in the picture above WILL be getting her car painted very soon.

More Mixing Ice Cream and Manure

2011-05-13T13:16:00.000-04:00

I read an interview with Donald Trump and concerning his political aspirations… and how he combs his hair. I would like to say that this article showed great insight into the mind of a great political thinker… but I can’t. The fact that a reality-TV star can be taken seriously as a candidate for the highest office of the world’s last remaining super-power is a sad commentary on what our political process has become. In order to be elected president, one must court the cult of celebrity, so if one begins the process as celebrity (especially as the boss on Celebrity Apprentice), then so much the better. To tell you the truth, I am beginning to wonder if the quote attributed Eisenhower might be right on target, “Any man [or woman] who wants to be president is either an egomaniac or crazy.”

Eugene Peterson suggests that the world “politics” has come to mean “what politicians do” and thus the word “often carries with it undertones of displeasure and disapproval because the field offers wide scope for the use of power over others, which power is often abused.” This past week, Lynn and I were talking about one of her co-workers who goes to a church where the “pastor” is paid an insane amount of money and can do whatever he wants and never has to answer to anyone. Lynn said, “Power does often corrupt people… it’s just a good thing you don’t have any.” (I just haven’t let her in on my plan for world domination!) The word “politics” actually comes from the Greek word “polis” or “city” and represents what people do as they live together in community and work together for some common purpose. And that, Peterson suggests, is a very Biblical concept. God is working in “politics” to accomplish His will in ways that we don’t and can’t understand. We join with God in His work in the “political” process in prayer. Peterson writes,

For Christians, "political" acquires extensive biblical associations and dimensions. So rather than look for another word untainted by corruption and evil, it is important to use it just as it is so that by it we are trained to see God in the places that seem intransigent to grace. The people who warn that "religion and politics don't mix" certainly know what they are talking about. The mix has resulted in no end of ills— crusades, inquisitions, witch hunts, exploitation. All the same, God says, "Mix them." But be very careful how you mix them. The only safe way is in prayer. It is both unbiblical and unreal to divide life into the activities of religion and politics, or into the realms of sacred and profane. But how do we get them together without putting one into the unscrupulous hands of the other, politics using religion or religion using politics, when what we want is a true mixture, politics becoming religious and religion becoming political? Prayer is the only means that is adequate for the great end of getting these polarities in dynamic relation. (Where Your Treasure Is, p. 9)

We need to lose the hand-wringing and worry over what is going to become of our country and our world. If God really is God, we need to know that he has our back. God is God if President Obama is re-elected and if he is not, God is God even if the Donald becomes president. God is in control, and He listens to our prayers. It's good to remind ourselves of that occasionally. Psalm 2 begins--

Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth rise up and the rulers band together
against the Lord and against his anointed, saying,
“Let us break their chains and throw off their shackles.”
The One enthroned in heaven laughs; the Lord scoffs at them.

If we believe that God is on his throne, that God CAN change things and that prayer CAN change God, then the most political thing we can do is pray. (See Ezra 6:10, Jer 29:17, 1 Tim 2:2). I am reminded of the Tony Campolo quote, “Mixing politics and religion is like mixing ice cream and manure; it really doesn't affect the manure much, but it really messes up the ice cream." One great way to mix the two and improve both is through prayer!

Back From the Left Coast

2011-05-10T15:57:00.000-04:00

Well, it is back to the old grind after our trip to the left coast. Our sojourn to the Pepperdine Lectures has been a highlight for the last 21 years, and we are already looking forward to next year. But then, we really enjoy our “old grind” as well. It's a good thing. This past Sunday marked 31 years at Denbigh! It was hard getting back in the swing of things, especially since I woke up this morning with a migraine. The drugs knocked it down enough for me to come into work only 4 hours late, but they also made it a little hard to concentrate. So if this blog is a little more goofy than usual, it’s the drugs. I don’t know what it means if the blog is a lot better than usual!

So what happened while I was gone? Well, Osama bin Laden is no longer on the most wanted list! Getting bin Laden does not end the war on terror. In fact, most people seem to think that (in the short term anyway), bin Laden’s death makes another major terrorist act more likely. But it is hard to imagine any resolution in any form to the war on terror without bin Laden being brought to justice.

So what immediately went through your head when you heard that he had been killed? To be honest, the first thought that I had was surprise. I didn’t think he’d ever surface; in fact, I thought it was likely that he was already dead (there had been reports that he had cancer). So what SHOULD Christians think or feel at the death of an “evil mastermind” like Osama bin Laden? Well, one indication of what many of us DID think is the Bible verses that were tweeted following the announcement of his death. According to an article on Christianity Today, the top ten Bible verses tweeted over Twitter were…

Proverbs 24:17 "Do not gloat when your enemy falls; when they stumble, do not let your heart rejoice."
Psalm 138:8 "The LORD will make PERFECT the things that concern me"(KJV). (NIV: "The LORD will vindicate me; your love, LORD, endures forever—do not abandon the works of your hands.")
Proverbs 21:15 "When justice is done, it brings joy to the righteous but terror to evildoers." (Rick Warren started this one):
Ezekiel 33:11 "Say to them, 'As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, people of Israel?"
Ezekiel 18:23 "Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked? declares the Sovereign LORD. Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live?"
Isaiah 1:18 "Come now, let us settle the matter," says the LORD. "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool."
Proverbs 11:10 "When the righteous prosper, the city rejoices; when the wicked perish, there are shouts of joy."
Proverbs 24:18 " … or the LORD will see and disapprove and turn his wrath away from them." (The popularity of this verse is due to it finishing the sentence begun by the #1 most popular verse.)
Proverbs 24:1 "Do not envy the wicked, do not desire their company;" (probably an effort to quote Proverbs 24:17)
Proverbs 28:5 "Evildoers do not understand what is right, but those who seek the LORD understand it fully."

So should we remind ourselves not to gloat over the death of the wicked or should we rejoice that justice has been served? The answer is “Yes.” All those verses are in the Bible, and they all do bear some application here. God is a God of justice; God calls us to be people of grace. There should be no joy when hell gains another victim. But there is joy that “the judge of all the earth does right.” I don’t do Twitter—too much pressure to have thoughts and remember to tweet them (I’m doing well to update my Facebook status once a week). But if I tweeted a verse related to bin Laden, it might be Romans 13:4, “But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he [the king] does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.” We should have faith in God’s justice, but that means that we will “leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord. (Rom 12:19).

Justice will be served. In fact, it is already being served, “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness” (Rom 1:18). We don’t gloat in it. For one thing, we never know what it is that God is going nor how he is using the events around us to do His will. For another thing, do we REALLY want God to bring His full justice to bear in the world… or do we want GRACE as well? If we want grace for ourselves, then we need to leave God enough space to do His work.

Neither Super Nor Natural?

2011-04-27T09:41:00.001-04:00

I’m enjoying teaching a class based on Francis Chan’s book Crazy Love on Wednesday nights. I’m using short clips (many of which I’ve edited to make a little shorter) of him teaching on the material. OK, I didn’t love the fact that I spent $25 buying the teaching DVD only to discover that most of it is available on YouTube for free. And I’m not sure I like how much some of my class rave over how great he is. (Last week there was an audible groan when I announced we’d run out of time and wouldn’t have time for Chan’s video). Chan was pastor of Cornerstone Church, a megachurch in Simi Valley California, until he walked away last year to travel in China working with persecuted Christians and orphans. With life change as background, it is easy to see where this article. Here's some of the article; you can read the full article here.

Church today has become predictable, says bestselling author and influential preacher Francis Chan. "You go to a building, someone gives you a bulletin, you sit in a chair, you sing a few songs, a guy delivers maybe a polished message, maybe not, someone sings a solo, you go home," Chan says in his latest "BASIC" video.

The Crazy Love author is concerned about the big disconnect between what the church looks like today and what it looked like 2,000 years ago. "When you read the New Testament, you see the Holy Spirit was supposed to change everything so that this gathering of people who call themselves Christians had this supernatural element about them," Chan explains in the video series, produced by Flannel…

Chan observes what church looks like today and what it's supposed to look like, according to the Bible. "I heard one person say the church nowadays is neither super nor natural," he says. "Everything is predictable and everything is expected."

"There's a truth to that," he admits. "I feel bad about it. Being around a church culture, even leading a gathering of believers, I've gotten pretty good at predicting what's going to happen in a church service. Was that the way it was supposed to happen?"

"When Jesus said this power (of the Holy Spirit) would come upon you, it really did come upon them and they were powerful beings (Jesus' disciples)," Chan points out. "Why is it that in the church so many people are weak or defeated or we get so insecure because we look at ourselves rather than God? It doesn't make sense."

Though Christians believe in an almighty and all powerful God who places His spirit in believers, the response among His people today is: "Hi, welcome to church. Here's your bulletin. We'll get you out in an hour. Come back next week. I mean, really? Is that all God intended for us?"

Neither SUPER nor NATURAL? I have felt the same frustration he expresses here. I grew up in a church that said it was serious about restoring the New Testament church (and that said it was the only church interesting in restoring the New Testament church). But what we talked about was restoring the forms and formats of “the ancient order." But even as we stressed a cappella church music and the place of baptism in the conversion process (which Chan does a good job in this sermon clip and this clip from his Crazy Love series), I never remember hearing too much about the the radical life of New Testament Christianity. I mean, I grew up in a church that claimed to restore the church of the book of Acts but NEVER even mentioned the Holy Spirit? Really?

So I’m looking forward to Chan’s new series “BASIC.” I'm sure that I won’t agree with everything he will say (but then I don’t always agree with everything that I say). And I'm sure he’ll beat me up even better than he did in Crazy Love. May God help us to be more eloquent at living out His call to be His church in the world today.

Between Doubt and Faith

2011-04-22T08:08:00.000-04:00

I think that the apostle Thomas just needed a better publicist. OK, so he struggled a bit with believing that the resurrection of Jesus had really happened. He wasn't there the first time Jesus appeared to the apostles, and when they told him “We have seen the Lord,” he was a little skeptical. OK, he was a lot skeptical, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” (John 20:25). So we call him “Doubting Thomas.” We use his name to chide people anytime they are skeptical about anything, “The Redskins are going to be good this year; don’t be such a Doubting Thomas.”

Doubting Thomas? Remember when Jesus decides to return to Bethany after the death of Lazarus? Some of the apostles pointed out to Jesus that this might not be such a good strategic move, “A short while ago the Jews there tried to stone you, and yet you are going back?” (John 11:8). When Jesus insists on making the dangerous trip, it was “Doubting Thomas” who speaks up and says, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” (John 11:16). That doesn’t sound like doubt, does it?

And really, can we BLAME Thomas for being skeptical about the resurrection? After all, how do we respond to people (usually interviewed in those supermarket tabloids) who claim to have seen Elvis down at the 7-11 buying a Slurpee? Didn’t Jesus himself warn the apostles about false claims about people seeing Him? (See Matt 24:4). And don’t forget-- Peter and ALL the apostles doubted when the women first came to them with the report of the empty tomb, “But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense” (Luke 24:11). No one calls Peter “Doubting Peter.” But here Thomas does what all the rest of the apostle did when told about the resurrection, and he is forever known as “Doubting Thomas.”

The story of Thomas in John 20 doesn’t end with his doubt-- it ends with his faith. Jesus appears and offers “Doubting Thomas” exactly what he had said he wanted—“Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe” (John 20:27). We don't know if he really put his fingers in the scars, but he did believe. The last words recorded from Thomas in scripture are these, “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28). The strongest and clearest words of worship and praise given to Jesus from human lips in all of scripture comes from the man we call “Doubting Thomas.” Yep, he needed a better publicist.

The power of the resurrection transformed “Doubting Thomas” in “Worshipping Thomas.” And that power of the resurrection can transform us as well. The resurrection is not just a doctrine to believe, it is the source of power in our spiritual lives. Paul said, “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.” The same power that raised Jesus from the dead also gives us spiritual life and eternal life forever.

His Love Endures Forever

2011-04-06T09:46:00.000-04:00

I recently finished reading Rob Bell’s new (and controversial) book Love Wins. When I say “controversial,” that is really an understatement. Before the release of the book, Twitter and the Blogosphere lit up with condemnations and denunciations because Bell (an influential preacher) seemed to be suggesting that hell would be empty and that everyone would be saved. (The theological term for this view is “Universalism”). For many Christians, the very suggestion of such an idea is heretical, and Bell was written up and written out by many because of the book.

To tell you the truth, I was disappointed, not by Bell's conclusions, but because I was left without a really good grasp of why he held them. Or maybe, what I really wanted was a couple of chapters showing how texts like 2 Thessalonians 1:7-10 fit into his thesis that eventually at the end of the final day, love wins and God has his way so that none shall perish but all come to repentance. I really liked a lot of the book, but as they say—“The devil is in the details.” I wanted to see how he worked out some of those details. Roger is reading it now; if you have any questions about it, ask him.

Haven't we have all struggled at times with understanding how a loving and gracious God could condemn people to everlasting torment in an unending hell? We had visitor one Sunday who was returning home after the funeral of a beloved uncle and who had stopped at Denbigh for church. She described how loving and giving her uncle had been and all the good works he had done to care for people and better his community. She then said, “It is such a shame that he had to go to hell because he was a Baptist and was so wrong on baptism.” Yikes! Any deviation from the "gospel" truth is enough to condemn? And that's good news? There is a great quote on the back cover of Bell’s book that says this--

“God loves us. God offers us everlasting life by grace, freely, through no merit on our part. Unless you do not respond in the right way. Then God will torture you forever in hell.” Huh?

OK, maybe I’m the only one (except Rob Bell) who has ever struggled with that question. What about people who never hear the gospel (OUR fault more than theirs)? What about honest and honorable people who love God as they know Him and seek to follow Him as they best understand Him but have just been misinformed about some issues of doctrine? That describes a lot of people, doesn't it? Actually, that describes ALL people to some point! How do we believe in a God of love and mercy who is also a God of vengeance and destruction?

Well, the historical way to do that is quite simple-- you make sure the God of love and mercy is FOR YOU and the God of vengeance and destruction is AGAINST THEM. That was the technique of the Pharisees and the hard-shell Calvinist. God loves us (holy Jews, the elect) and God created them (Gentiles, non-elect) so he’d have enough fuel to keep hell burning for eternity. You might see how this idea might not play in postmodern Peoria. In fact, this image of the hating God (so graphically advertised by those Westboro idiots and their signs) is perhaps the single major reason why so many Gen-X and Gen-Y people are rejecting the whole idea of Jesus and His gospel today. Those are the folks to whom Bell is writing. I don’t know that he is right; I do hope he get their attention and focus it on Jesus long enough for them to see Him.

But while I was reading Bell (and many of his critics and apologists), I was also reading the Bible. In fact, nothing gets in the way of theology quite like reading the Bible. The Bible seems to have no problem whatsoever in laying paradoxical images right beside each other without attempting to reconcile them. Our reading for today (readings that go along with our theme for Sunday) is from Psalm 136 that unashamedly gives thanks to God because his love endures forever—

Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good. His love endures forever.Give thanks to the God of gods. His love endures forever.
Give thanks to the Lord of lords: His love endures forever. (136:1-3)

God is glorified because of his creation (136:4-9) and his protection of Israel (136:10-22). The psalm ends with a doxology that praises God for His care and mercy (136:23-26). After every single point is made about the glory of God, the creation of God, and the protection of God of His people, the refrain is repeated over and over in every verse, “His love endures forever.” I know that “His love endures forever” isn’t exactly “love wins,” but I think the psalmist and Mr. Bell could sit down and have a cup of coffee together. Except that right in the middle of this ballad of God’s love is the proclamation of his judgment on His enemies.

To him who struck down great kings, His love endures forever.and killed mighty kings— His love endures forever.
Sihon king of the Amorites, His love endures forever.
and Og king of Bashan— His love endures forever. (139:17-20)

God has enemies. God’s enemies don’t fare too well in the end (although they may seem to fare well for short amount of time). No one in scripture talks more about the love of God than does this Psalmist, but God’s love is presented with something of an edge. It always is. I am reminded of a quote I ran across years ago from P. T. Forsyth--

“God is love” is not the whole of the gospel. Love is not evangelical till it has dealt with holy law. In the midst of the rainbow is a throne.

I just read a great article in the current issue of Christianity Today by Linda Falter entitled, “A Beautiful Anger.” (sorry, no link; CT wants to be paid before you to read their stuff). On the other hand, Richard Beck (a professor at ACU) argues quite eloquently for Christian Universalism on his Experimental Theology blog. (You'll have to scroll back through his blog for more in this series). I thought I had other things to say here, but it is Wednesday and I want to have some things to say in my class tonight. Let me end this already too long blog with a quote from Patrick Mead on Tentpegs

And when I get to heaven … if I happen to look up and see every single person there who ever lived on earth — I will not feel cheated or lied to. I will rejoice and there will be no voice louder in praise and joy in all of heaven than mine. For who could fail to praise a God who loved that much?

When You Are As Mad as... Turn to Heaven

2011-04-01T08:25:00.000-04:00

Think about the last time that you got really, really angry. Someone cut you off in traffic or cut in front of you in the checkout line. Maybe someone at work took credit for something that was really your idea. Or maybe you were watching either CNN or FOX News and that blowhard news person that you really can’t stand (take your pick) said something that was really, really dumb. You maybe it was your spouse or parent of child who said or did something that was extremely insensitive or hurtful. I don’t know what it was that real got you torqued, but chances are that you don’t have to look too far back in time to find a time when that happened.

Now, that did you do? How did you handle your anger? Most of us aren’t like Mr. Spock who finds emotions illogical. No, when we get mad, we become illogical. We often say or do things that we normally wouldn't. It is no accident that the term we usually use for being insanely angry is the same term that was meant to just be insane—mad.

So what is the best thing to do when you go insane with anger? Paul tells us as Christians that while we will become angry, we are not to sin in our anger… and we are not to hold onto our anger (see Eph 4:26). OK, that is good (and inspired) advice. So HOW do we do that. Frankly, some of us are wired to explode into anger more readily than are others. I remember the funeral of my Uncle Randolph where his kids, closest friends and co-workers all said, “I never saw him lose his temper or even get particularly angry.” I hope my kids and friends will say some nice things at my funeral, but THAT won’t be one of them. Most of us are going to get angry… so what are we supposed to do?

According to a research team which included Ohio State University communications and psychology professor Brad Bushman, one of the very best things you can do when you are very angry is to pray. The researchers found “that people who pray when they are angry feel less angry, behave less aggressively and are less likely to think that others are out to get them.” The group performed three different series of tests (using college student s as their guinea pigs) and all three studies indicated that prayer “has the power to quell anger.” Of course, the researchers did not attribute the power of prayer to God answering prayers; they found that the process of prayer itself helped people reinterpret what made them angry in the first place. Hey, God works through prayer in many ways; the point it, He works.

Next time someone or something really ticks you off—pray. Pray for God to soften your heart and fill it with the grace He gives. Pray for the person that has made you angry. After all, Jesus said “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt 5:44) and “Bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you” (Luke 6:28). Pray for those suffering from the earthquake and tsunami in Japan and Christians suffering persecution in the Middle East (that may help to put your anger in perspective). We need to pray continually (1 Thess 5:17), but maybe especially when we are angry.

Harbingers of the End-Time or Opportunities to Help?

2011-03-29T07:12:00.000-04:00

A recent poll (done by Public Religion Research Institute and Religion News Service) found that nearly six in ten evangelicals (a term always open interpretation) believe that recent natural disasters are signs from God that point to the coming end-time. By comparison, only about one-third of Catholics and mainline Protestants see natural disasters are signs from God. About half believe that natural disasters are the result of God’s judgment and punishment. You may recall that last year, Pat Robertson suggested that the horrific earthquake in Haiti was God’s curse on the country for its history of voodoo. (Robertson made similar remarks about Katrina and God’s punishment for abortion). I haven’t heard of any church leaders baling the Japan disaster as punishment from God.

Can God use natural disasters to punish his people and give them opportunity to repent? The message of the prophet Joes was an impending horde of locusts that would punish Israel for her corporate sons. The plagues on Egypt were a series of natural disasters that were God’s judgment on the various deities of Egypt. The difference in these Biblical examples of natural and the modern disasters in Japan, Haiti and the Gulf Coast is that in the former case, we have the commentary of inspired Bible writers telling us what it is that God is doing. Mr. Robertson, I’ve read Moses and Amos’ I’ve studies Moses and Amos. And Mr. Robertson, you neither Moses nor Amos! To presume to speak for God in what God is doing in the world today is the height of arrogance.

The message for the church in earthquake and tsunami ravaged Japan is precisely the message that millions of God’s people are getting. Here is an opportunity for the people for God to heal hurting people , to model the love of Jesus Christ and in the process to share the good news and the world sees that we are Christians through our love for others.

You can be a part of the ongoing relief efforts in Japan being done by our fellowship by giving to Healing Hands International.

Some Heavy Thoughts

2011-03-25T09:23:00.000-04:00

And article on CNN Health yesterday entitled Frequent Churchgoers Frequently Fatter reports on research that suggests that religiously active people (those who attended church once or more each week) are more likely than their non-religious counterparts to be obese. In fact, regular religious involvement almost doubles the risk of obesity compared with those who don’t go to church at all. That linkseems clear; what isn’t so clear is WHY church folks are so much more likely to more hefty than non-church folks.

My response was, “Sure... it’s all those potlucks!” And that really is a big part of the problem— church potlucks, small group dinners, prayer breakfasts, and the variety of setting for table fellowship. An old joke has as its punchline that our best know religious symbol is the casserole dish. Erik Christensen of St. Luke's Lutheran Church in Chicago is quoted in the article as saying, “There's certainly a church culture around eating. What I see among congregants in their 20s and 30s is they are very fit and what I see among congregants in their 50s and 60s is disproportionate obesity." So the longer you stay in church, the more pounds you pack on. Christensen goes on to say that the virtual disappearance of church sponsored softball, basketball and volleyball leagues adds to the fact that active church members are no longer so physically active.

Another possible explanation is marriage. I gained 15 pounds the first 6 weeks I was married after I moving from Gano Cafeteria at FHC to Lynn's home-cooking (she was already an accomplished cook when we married). Kenneth F. Ferraro of the Center on Aging and the Life Course at Purdue University suggests that “weight gain is common after marriage and that marriage is highly valued in most religious groups. Thus, one wonders if the results could be partially due to religious people being more likely to get married earlier and then gaining weight." I like that explanation better than blaming the whole thing on church potlucks.

It is a bit surprising that the church has not been more active in addressing the issue of obesity. For years we preached against things like cigarette smoking and social drinking from the perspective that these are harmful to the body which is the temple of the Holy Spirit. It is becoming undeniably clear that obesity is one of the major health concerns in our society, the cause of all kinds of deadly things from heart disease to diabetes. And yet not only does the church say nothing about this danger, but we allow church to add to the problem.

An illustration from the article. One church wanted to get involved in helping to deal with the growing problem of childhood obesity. They called a meeting to discuss ways to help with this issue… with a potluck supper to start things off! Maybe we should have fewer church feasts and more church fasts?

Lame Opinions

2011-03-22T08:00:00.001-04:00

I remember Bruce Jackson telling the story of a man who came to be a leader in a church largely because everyone always thought that he agreed with them. He was actually an accomplished politician much like the one my Dad likes to tell about who says, “I have friends on one side of this issue and friends on the other side… and I always stand by my friends!” This guy lived by that credo. But there came an issue that needed resolution, and an emergency meeting convened. After arguments pro and con, a vote was called, “All in favor stand up!” This brother squatted uncomfortably in a half-crouch! He wanted it both ways.

The whole nation of Israel was that guy during “the days of Elijah.” Israel wanted to worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Queen Jezebel made the worship of God a little problematic by killing all the prophets of God she could get her hands upon, but Israel still had warm feelings for the God of their ancestors. But then there was this Phoenician fertility god named Baal who promised to make their land, their flocks and herds, and their wives, and they wanted to worship him as well. They were in a half-crouch between God and Baal; if they were uncomfortable in that awkward position, you would never know it by looking.

Well, these were the days of Elijah, and he came along to stir things up in 1 Kings 18 (our Bible reading for today). Elijah confronted Ahab with a little proposition, “Let’s have a little contest to see just who really is the true God.” So they gathered the entire nation together on Mount Carmel for the ultimate game of survivor. Elijah throws down the gauntlet in verse 21--

Elijah went before the people and said, “How long will you waver between two opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him.” But the people said nothing.

The NCV frames the question as, “How long will you not decide between two choices?” The NRSV puts it “How long will you go limping with two different opinions?” That image is helpful, I think. Israel had been crippled by their indecision; having two opinions was really lame. Elijah wants to force their hand and demand that they choose which god is truly God.

But no one said anything. No one would commit themselves one way or the other. No loudmouth in the crowd screamed, “Baal, Baal, he’s our god; if he can’t do then put us in the sod!” And no one was willing incur the wrath of Jezebel by saying, “The LORD is God; besides him there is no other” (Dt 4:35). They just stood there in a half-crouch saying nothing! A blurb in Reader’s Digest once said, “Pity the person with no opinion for they will go through life with no bumper sticker.” Well, Israel had no bumper sticker for their chariots. No one had an opinion. Or they shared both opinions. No one was saying anything. It was better to have it both ways that to make a choice either way.

Does that sound familiar at all? We live in a culture with competing and contradictory truth systems, each claiming to be valid. We live in an age when many believe at the same time that nothing is ultimately true and that everything is equally true. For many the only absolute truth is that there is no absolute truth. Christianity once enjoyed a favored status in our culture. The Bible was seen as “The Good Book” even if everyone didn’t try to live by it. Today, Christianity is seen as just one among many truth systems in a crowded marketplace of ideas. And frankly, it is easier to get along in our world if you just accept that some of your friends believe in God and other friends don’t believe in God… and then always stand by your friends. It is easier to just waver between two opinions.

In 2002, I took a graduate seminar class under John Warwick Montgomery, the noted theologian and apologist. He suggested in that class that liberal and fundamentalist churches have responded to the post-Christian, postmodern world that sees everything as equally true and nothing as objectively true in radically and entirely different ways.

Liberal churches say, “If you can’t beat ‘em, then join ‘em.” They accept the philosophic presuppositions of the culture and dismiss the contrary parts of the Bible as myth and legend. They dress up social change and politics in religious ritual, and they differ from the secular world only in their religious vocabulary. This version of faith is so very thin that there is little to pass on the next generation.
Fundamentalist churches tended to say, “If you can’t beat ‘em, then withdraw from them.” The secular world is such a threat to their faith that they insulate themselves from that world. Their kids go to Christian schools or are home-schooled in a “safe” environment. They socialize only with members of their church. They listen to Christian music, read Christian books and go to Christian movies. Their points of contact with the world “out there” are as limited as they can make it. They have circled the wagons to protect the faith that they live largely in a vacuum. But, Montgomery suggests, that kind of faith is usually pretty fragile and soon crumbles if it is exposed to the outside world.

Montgomery suggests that the right response (in other words, his response) is not either “If you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em” or “If you can’t beat ‘em, withdraw” but rather to just “Beat ‘em!” We are to live the truth of the gospel without compromise or apology. We are to preach the gospel as true. We are to be ready to give reasons why we believe it to be true (see 1 Peter 3:15). And we are to point to Jesus as the way, the truth and the life… and the only way, truth and life!

We can’t have it both ways. If Jesus is Lord, then he is the only Lord. If He isn’t, then we’re just wasting our time with all this church stuff. To live between these two opinions is just lame.

Live Like You Were Dying

2011-03-16T13:14:00.007-04:00

The song running through my head right now is Please Mr. Postman... except in my head, it's "Please Mr. FedEx-Man (or "FedEx-Person"). According to Mr. Jobs and the FedEx tracking site, my new iPad is on the truck out to be delivered. Well, it's not a new iPad-- it's actually a refurbished old iPad that was marked down $150 to get rid of it to make room for the iPad2. I could have gotten one of those, but it would be worldly and ridiculous to spend that much money on a new something I really don't need. It just seems somehow more holy to spend $150 less on an old something that I really don't need. At any rate, here's the song that should be playing in my head--

The song is Tim McGraw's "Live Like You Were Dying." That is the point of the Bible class I'm teaching tonight (based on chapter 2 of Francis Chan's book Crazy Love). You see, once we understand who God really is (our last lesson), then we need to understand that today may be the day that we meet Him. In other words, we need to live like we were dying. In McGraw's song, he is talking to a man that found out in his forties that he just might be dying. So McGraw asks, "How’s it hit you when you get that kind of news? Man whatcha do?" The chorus is the dying man's answer and the point of the song--

An' he said: "I went sky diving, I went rocky mountain climbing,
I went two point seven seconds on a bull named Fu Man Chu.
And I loved deeper and I spoke sweeter,
And I gave forgiveness I'd been denying."
An' he said: "Some day, I hope you get the chance,
To live like you were dyin'."

The man sees it as a blessing to know that he's dying, because that allows him to live more like
he was meant to live. Well, not that he was necessarily meant to go mountain climbing, ride a bull named Fu Man Chu, or jump out of a perfectly good airplane. It changed him in more important ways as well.

He said "I was finally the husband That most the time I wasn’t.
An' I became a friend a friend would like to have.
And all of a sudden goin' fishin’ wasn’t such an imposition,
And I went three times that year I lost my Dad.
Well, I finally read the Good Book and I took a good long hard look,
At what I'd do if I could do it all again."

So the secret to living is really living like we know we are dying. There's something that rings true there. David says this in Psalm 39:4-5

4 “Show me, LORD, my life’s end and the number of my days;
let me know how fleeting my life is.
5 You have made my days a mere handbreadth;
the span of my years is as nothing before you.
Everyone is but a breath,even those who seem secure.

If we really see that we are dying, that should change how we live. If we know that our days are numbered, then maybe we'd use the time we have left doing things more even important than rising bulls or jumping out of airplanes... or sitting around waiting for the FedEx-Person. My Dad used to quote Eccl. 9:10 ("Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might") as if to say "Whatever is worth doing is worth doing well." That text has a much finer edge on it if you complete the author's thought, "Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the realm of the dead, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom." In order words, whatever you do, do it now because now may be all the time you have left. Live like you were dying.

To quote Forrest Gump, "That's all I have to say about that." Excuse me while I go look outside one more time... I think I just heard a truck!"

If You Can't Say Something Nice...

2011-03-07T09:43:00.000-05:00

“God said it. I believe it. That settles it.” I remember that being pounded into me when I was a college student being taught to take the words of scripture both literally and seriously. The Bible and the Bible alone was the rule of faith and practice for Christians. To be faithful to God, one had to “read and study and then obey the B-I-B-L-E.” as the old children’s song declares. And, by the way, I still believe that.

The problem is that we tend to be pretty selective of the part of the Bible where “God said it, I believe it, and that settles it.” Jesus said a lot of things that makes us pretty nervous, and we tend to come up with explanations as to why what He said really wasn't what He said. Surely he doesn't expect us to sell all that we have and give it to the poor… like he said to the Rich Young Ruler. Surely he doesn't want us to give away our jacket when someone tries to take away our shirt… like Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount. And when Jesus tells us to love our enemies, surely He doesn't expect us to take that literally.

So maybe when God says it, that doesn't always settle it? I was reading an article by Catholic priest James Martin who suggests that Christians today really need to take Jesus’ words in Matthew 5:22 much more seriously. To refresh your memory, this verse reads--

But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.

When I was a kid calling a playmate “Dummy!” was OK; I got into only slight trouble if I called them an “Idiot!” But if I called them a “Fool,” then all the vengeance of heaven would come down upon me (in the person of my parents) because “Fool” was the very thing that Jesus said not to say. Personally, I was never tempted to say “Raca” to someone, but sometimes “Fool” seemed particularly like a relevant commentary on someone’s comments or behavior. What is Jesus saying here?

The word “Raca” is generally explained in the footnotes of our Bibles as “an Aramiac expression of contempt.” The word literally meant “empty headed” or “fool.” Well of “Raca” meant “fool” when why did Jesus use the Greek word for "fool" in his very next line? Maybe it's not the particular words we choose that Jesus is trying to get us to change; maybe Jesus just doesn't want us using words of contempt in our speech at all. In fact that is EXACTLY what Jesus is saying. The question is, “Do we believe it and does that settle it?”

Communication in what is supposedly the “communication age” has gotten progressively less and less polite and more and more disrespectful. I don’t listen to cable news or talk radio anymore because I've grown so tired of supposed “pundits” shouting at each other and calling each other names. (OK, I also don’t watch cable news anymore because we don’t have cable, but that is beside the point). Is it possible to disagree with someone and be respectful at the same time? What is more, isn’t that exactly what Jesus tells us to do? Let me just end my tirade against tirades by quoting a section from Martin’s piece--

It's especially important to hear Jesus's words in our digital age, when snarky blogs, terrible texting, snotty Facebook posts and mean-spirited Tweets zip around the Web and cause serious harm. And it's essential to hear in our 24/7-radio-shockjock-TV-talkshow-endless-gabfest age, when the easiest way to get people to tune into your show is to call someone else a jerk, or worse. "Fool," raca, is probably the mildest of imprecations that you've heard lately.

That goes for Christians speaking about other Christians, believers speaking about other believers, and anyone else with whom we disagree on religious matters. Take a look at any opinionated religious blog, on the right and the left, and you'll see all manner of terrible name-calling -- again, much worse than raca.

We ignore the invitation to practice personal charity, to treat one another with respect, to give people the benefit of the doubt, to avoid name-calling, to curb our tongues and to simply be kind, at our peril. And this is not simply feel-good religion. It's not simply wishy-washy niceness. It's not an excuse to avoid tough conversations. It is at the heart of the Christian life.

Speaking charitably about others is a simple thing, but hard to do. Trust me, I've engaged in this kind of trash talk myself from time to time. I gossip. I may even call people names, like "fool," behind their backs. It's a terrible thing to do.

How do we know this? Jesus tells us in no uncertain terms. So don't overlook this overlooked passage, which contains a word that we can be certain comes to us directly from the lips of Jesus. Listen to his words and allow them to change yours.

My New Bible

2011-03-02T08:56:00.003-05:00

For the first time since 1982, I am switching Bibles. Actually, I staying with the Holy Bible; I am just changing English translations. Two years into my preaching career I noticed that I spent a lot of my sermon time explaining the various nuances and personality quirks of the KJV, so I started preaching and teaching from the NIV. I still used the KJV (actually I still thought in KJV) and the NASB in my study, but the Bible I read from in class and the pulpit was the NIV. I took some flack from my KJV-only preaching buddies, and one area preacher wrote us off as an unfaithful church when we bought a case of NIV pew Bibles. (This was the same guy that kept a tally of every time the speaker at our men’s retreat “perverted the word of God” by reading from a non-KJV Bible. When I told him that the speaker was teaching from a Greek text and translating on the fly, he said, “Well if he’s smart enough to do that, he should be smart enough to use the KJV.” You think I’m making that up, but I'm not!)

The NIV was updated and revised in 1984, which meant the little pocket NT I used in preaching was slightly different in places from the whole Bible I used in study and class. (Fortunately, our pew Bibles were bought after the revision and that saved some trouble). Today I use multiple translations in my computer study Bible— the NIV, NASB, ESV, NET, NLT, and KJV all open automatically and I have 15 or so more I can open if I need them. But the NIV has been my main teaching and preaching text for almost 30 years.

But this Sunday all that will change. My new main English version is (cue the trumpet blast)… the NIV!!! (cue the applause). OK, perhaps some explanation is needed here. A new revision of the NIV was released online at Biblegateway.com last October and is now available in print form. I received my pre-ordered $14 thinline bonded-leather NIV (2011) from Amazon yesterday... too bad the print is so small that I can’t actually read it. Logos Bible Research (my computer Bible folks) sent me a free update to my computer Bible this morning, so my total expense for the upgrade to the new NIV is $14! Not bad. (Of course, to get the links to all the Greek and Hebrew tools in the new version, I have to pay $289.75… which is 3/4 of the iPad. I still haven’t bought. Those links work just fine in the ESV.)

So what do I get for $14? I don’t want to do a full review of the NIV(2011) because it’s Wednesday, and I really need to be working on my class for tonight. Patrick Mead did a good job introducing the NIV(2011) in his Tentpegs blog last week, (To steal a line from Jim McQuiggen, “Everyone should be forced to read Patrick’s blog… if they want to.”) Also, here are the translator’s notes on the NIV revision.

In my computer Bible anyway, new version of the NIV is known as “NIV” and the old NIV is now NIV1984. So when I quote from the NIV and it sounds different from your NIV, that’s because you are hopeless out of date and I am way cool.

Just Fine

2011-03-01T07:48:00.000-05:00

“Just fine.” How many times do you hear that on Sunday mornings? You ask, “So, how you doing?” And (almost) everyone answers, “Just fine.” OK, there is the occasional person who looks at you, raises an eyebrow and asks, “You really want to know?” (And do we?). But most people are “Just fine.” You may personally greet 50 different people (you can’t really talk to everyone) and everyone is “Just fine.” What are the chances of that? Just about zero! No one is doing “just fine” all the time, and that means that no one is always “just fine” every Sunday morning. Now we might answer the question “How you doing?” with “Compared to what?” Compared to the homeless person with no teeth that I met begging in the Wal-Mart parking lot yesterday, I really am doing "Just fine." But we all struggle with things, right? Jesus said, “In this world you will have trouble…” And we do. And sometimes, we're not doing "Just fine: at all!

Barbara Crafton tells of meeting a Christian young man at a restaurant who was very obliviously not doing just fine. He was struggling with some deep emotional and psychological issues, but when she suggested he see a therapist, he said, “I could never witness to anybody again if I were in therapy. I'd feel like a fraud.” Faith should make all of our problems go away, right? The joy of the Lord should overwhelm all depression and emotional issues right? Crafton suggests that many think that the gospel is “supposed to be a happy tale.”

Although you're allowed many trials along the way, it must end up with your accepting Christ, and then things are supposed to be all right with you. You're not supposed to be hopeless and want to die. There's not a lot of room in this narrative for despair, so people committed to it who find themselves staring despair in the face tend to keep that fact to themselves.

Is there any room in the life of a Christian for depression? Isn’t the struggle with depression sign that one’s faith is defective, ineffective or at the very least weak? Is the believer who prays to and worships God but who also struggles with depression or emotional issues really, like this young man assumed, a fraud and hypocrite?

No! Most of us will go through difficult situations and struggles that will lead to “situational depression.” Others will suffer through chemical imbalances that (unless God chooses to work a healing miracle) that will not be praised or prayed away, no matter how genuine a person’s faith may be. Pick up the Bible and read the laments in Psalms and the words of Jeremiah (one of his books is entitled “Lamentations?”). Read the story of Elijah and his dark cave of despair (1 Kings 19). Read the book of Revelation and ask yourself how “happy-clappy” the first readers of this book must have been. Faith helps us “walk through the valley of the shadow of death” (“Even though I walk through the darkest valley,” NIV2011). But there will be dark valleys. And we should not suppose that faith has failed because I don’t feel just fine at the moment!

Church should be a safe place for those struggling with feelings of loneliness, depression and despair. But sometimes we make such people feel worse because of the implication that if people had the right faith, they wouldn’t feel that way—they would be “Just fine” like the rest of us! Well, Isaiah said that the Messiah would be “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.” It just seems to me that it should be OK for His followers to feel the same way at times as well.

It's Good to Have Things Like This...

2011-02-28T09:29:00.002-05:00

I remember the first time I used PowerPoint in making a presentation to an area preacher’s meeting years ago (it must have been years ago because we haven’t one in years). After my presentation, one of my (alleged and so-called) friends said, “Well, I guess if you can’t preach, it’s good to have something like that.” That was an accusation of the worst kind… a true one! Yesterday I used not one but two YouTube clips in my sermon (if you can't preach, it's good to have things like that). And most of the comments I received were about the clips and not about the sermon. Since people asked about them, I thought I’d post them here to make them easier to find.

The first clip is of “excessive celebration” during a ping pong competition. (Notice carefully the zoom-in on the scorer’s table at the end of the match.) The point of the clip is that most of us don’t have to worry about being flagged for excessive celebration during our worship before God. Getting carried away in the joy of the Lord isn’t really our biggest problem. You can watch the clip here (the embed code was disabled for this one).

The second clip come from the Tyler Perry feel good flick “Daddy’s Little Girls.” (Tressa brought it over for me to watch while I was recovering after my surgery). This is the story of a hard-working guy named Monty who tried hard to do right thing raising his three girls alone and dreaming of owning his own auto repair shop. His life comes apart when he loses custody of his girls to his ex-wife, who is the mistress of a drug-dealer and a truly horrible influence on the girls. The harder he tries to do the right thing, the more his life falls apart. He is about to give up when he goes to church and hears a word from God. OK, I know the actor who plays the preacher here is “Bishop” Eddie Long who has become just a bit controversial as of late, and I certainly don’t recommend everything he preaches. (Hey, I don’t even recommend everything that I have preached). But what he says in this movie sermon spoke to me and I think it spoke to some of our folks as well. (Again, I showed a much shorter version of this clip).

We sang twice as many songs yesterday as usual (most of them only one verse) and they all had to do with the joy of the Lord. Sometimes we sing those songs because our hearts are bursting with the joy of the Lord. But sometimes we sing those songs because we desperately want to be reminded of the joy of the Lord that seems to be temporarily overshadowed by struggles and hardships and pain. Sometimes we rejoice because we know God’s joy; sometimes we must rejoice because we know that we will know it again if we hold on to our hope and refuse to give up or give in. Either way, we need to sings those songs of joy!

Reflections on Joy

2011-02-22T08:50:00.000-05:00

I'm preaching this Sunday morning on joy. A couple of things struck me as I was reading some of the many texts in the Bible that stress joy. First, joy is never really and encouraged suggested like, "You just need to try to be more joyful." Joy is COMMANDED. Paul says, "Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!" You can almost see Paul here as a drill sergeant barking orders, "Rejoice in Lord always; I'll say it again, 'Get some joy!'" That's a command. That sounds way too much like my Dad saying, "You will eat your Brussels sprouts and you will like them." (I ate them, and they weren't bad!). Can you really command someone to be joyful. God evidently things so!

Second, joy is often spoken of along side times of pain, struggle and loss. Jesus promised that the apostles that despite the difficulty of the coming cross, their joy would restored in Him, "So with you: Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy" (John 16:22). The example Jesus uses is that of having a baby (John 16:21). There is great pain in childbirth, but then that pain is overwhelmed by joy when the baby is held in the mother's arms. So sometimes we must go through great sorrow, but that sorrow cannot overwhelm our joy. Jesus says, "Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete" (John 16:24).

Jesus wants us to know that joy and sorrow are never completely incompatible. Our faith that God is working in our struggle in ways that we don't understand at the moment means that we can know His joy even in the middle of the storm. He doesn't always stop the rain, but He always assures us that He is there with us. Because He is with us and assures us that He will make our joy complete, we can praise Him in the storm.

If You Can Read This... It Doesn't Apply to You

2011-02-10T10:42:00.000-05:00

I just read an interesting blog post by Greg Boyd at his Christus Victor site entitled "Baby Universalism and Reasonable Infanticide." I have filed this in my "Things I Have Never Really Thought About and Am Now Confused About" file... which is a huge file indeed. His basic question is that if our free will choice to accept God's love and grace is so important (or else why didn't God create us incapable of not loving and obeying Him), then why do we assume that those who die before they can make that choice (i.e. infants) go straight to God without ever having to choose Him? Boyd suggests that while this view is assumed by most people today, it has not been the common view held throughout much of church history. He furthers asks if all babies go to heaven, then why not just kill them before they have a chance to reject God and go to hell? (Some have evidently argued that point at some point in the past; we call such people "nuts"). Read his blog and tell me what you think. Boyd wonders if infants or children who die before they can choose God in this life are not given some chance to choose in the next life. The Bible is silent here, and that may be our best response as well.

But the point for you is (as my title here suggests), if you can read this, then you can make your choice and are held responsible for it.

The Force That's With Us

2011-02-09T08:49:00.001-05:00

I must admit that my Super Bowl Party this year was a bit quieter than usual. I was worn out after my first day back at church after my surgery, and just didn't feel up to being at the church building for our annual Denbigh Super Bowl blow-out. (I assume that a local news crew did not cover us this year like they did the last time the Steelers were at the Big Dance because they thought Mike Tomlin had attended Denbigh Church of Christ as a kid rather than Denbigh High School next door). I did doze through parts of the first half (sorta like the Steelers seemed to) but then thoroughly enjoyed the game and even was pleased with the outcome.

But the game was the only good part of the game... IMHO. The commercials were just not all that funny, and some were just totally inappropriate. Why don't advertisers remember that the Super Bowl is a family thing? (Lynn assumed that GoDaddy.com is a porn site rather than a web-hosting sight because of their advertising!) And I chose to miss the half-time show, which from what I've read was a good decision. And frankly, I wasn't nearly as upset at Christina Aguilera flubbing the national anthem as I was impressed that she got back on track so quickly!

There was one great commercial that was both funny AND came with a great spiritual reminder. It starred a pint-sized Darth Vader trying to use the power of the force to no avail until...

The pint-sized Darth Vader thought that his own power had caused the Passat the start. Of course, the real force that started it was his father (with his cool new VW autostart remote). And that is so much like us, isn't it? We think that our accomplishments, successes and possessions come because of our own abilities, talents and nose-to-the-grindstone work ethic. Sure, God does very often seem to help those who help themselves. He wants us to work hard, not just to bless ourselves and our families, but to be able to share with others in need (Eph. 4:28). We are to work hard at our work as if we were serving God and not just men... or ourselves (Col. 3:23-24).

But the force that allows us to work and succeed and bless others is from God himself. We may think the force is us, but our Father is behind us with the real power to bless us. Every good thing we have is a gift from our Father of lights (James 1:17). When we throw a light switch, the lights come on, but the real power is generated somewhere else. When we work to provide for our family, the power to earn and be blessed really comes from somewhere and Someone else. And we should always give thanks to Him. Moses gave Israel this warning as she prepared to enter into the Promised Land (Duet 7:17-18)--

You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.” But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your forefathers, as it is today.

Ecclesiastes further tells us that not only does God give us possessions, He also gives us the ability to enjoy both our work and the possessions we have, "Moreover, when God gives any man wealth and possessions, and enables him to enjoy them, to accept his lot and be happy in his work—this is a gift of God." (Eccl 5:19).

We are the little kid pretending to be Darth Vader thinking we have the power. Thank God that we have a Father behind us who is holding the remote!

More on Forgiveness

2011-01-24T10:29:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I completed a short sermon series on our responsibility as disciples of Jesus to forgive others who sin against us. I started the sermon with the following video and quote from Mary Karen Read, one of the victims of the Virgina Tech Massacre.

This struggle of forgiveness was made even more poignant when a sister and good friend came forward asking for prayers in dealing with the struggle for forgiveness for an act ever bit as heinous as that committed in Blacksburg, only smaller in scope. The message of Matthew 18 is clear-- in order for us to be forgiven, we must be willing to forgive. To refuse to forgive others is to fail to recognize all that God has forgiven in us.

Forgiveness like this makes no earthly sense, because it comes from above. Corrie ten Boom was confronted with being asked to forgive one of the guards that had tormented her while in a Nazi death camp. She tried to take his hand, but her arm would not move; her heart was filled with such anger, resentment and hatred for this man that represented what had killed her family. She writes this--

Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him. I tried to smile, I struggled to raise my hand. I could not. I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or charity. And so again I breathed a silent prayer. Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me Your forgiveness.

As I took his hand the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me.

And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.

You Da Man!

2011-01-21T07:34:00.000-05:00

The story of David and Bathsheba is one of the saddest stories in scripture. The great king and spiritual leader gave into his baser nature and committed adultery with Bathsheba. When he found out that she was pregnant, he began an elaborate cover-up to hide his personal guilt. When the integrity and loyalty of Bathsheba's husband Uriah continued to thwart David's cover-up, David set up Uriah to be killed in battle. To justify this action to his commander Joab, David responds rather coldly, "Don’t let this upset you; the sword devours one as well as another.” (2 Sam 11:25). David then married the widowed Bathsheba, and his sins were hidden... from everyone except God.

Then Nathan the prophet came to David with a sad story about a poor man whose little pet lamb was butchered and served as brunch by a wealthy man who had many flocks and herds. David was outraged and wanted justice... until Nathan pointed his long, bony finger at David and says, "You are the man!" In modern vernacular, that is a compliment. Make a long put, close a big deal, or complete a critical project, and someone may slap you on the back and say, "You da man!" David was the man... and it was no compliment. He could only stare Nathan and then at the blood on his hands. Guilt. Shame. The entire weight of heaven and earth crushed down upon him. And this was the critical moment of his life.

David responds, "I have sinned against the Lord" (2 Sam 12:13). And he meant it! He faced the utter brokenness of his guilt, and he could do nothing but humbly confess his sin, repent and plead for God's mercy. Psalm 51 captures the depths of his horror over his sin and his struggles with guilt. The words "I have sinned" are spoken in scripture by men like Pharaoh, Balaam, Achan and Saul... when they are caught and are sorry they were caught. But David feels the full weight of his sin and is driven to his knees in humility and repentance. It is in this moment of repentance that David shows the character that makes him "the man after God's own heart."

For the last three weeks, we have been looking at the subject of interpersonal forgiveness in our Sunday lessons. Our scripture reading for today is Colossians 3 which includes the following:

12 Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. 13 Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. 14 And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.

“Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” Scripture consistently reminds us that we are to forgive others because God has forgiven us. Nathan points his long, bony finger at each of us and says, “You da man” (or “you da woman” as the case may be). We are all as guilty as sin, and yet we have been forgiven our blood debt through the blood of the cross. So how can we possibly refuse to forgive someone else? How can we refuse to forgive another sinner when we have ourselves been forgiven of so much so so gracious a God?

More on Baptism

2011-01-19T15:55:00.001-05:00

If you have the time, listen to the sermon I posted last week on repentance, baptism and the Holy Spirit by Francis Chan and then contrast what Chan says about repentance and baptism with the change to the baptismal liturgy considered by bishops of the Church of England.

According to this Daily Mail news article, the Anglican baptismal service “may be re-written to remove some references to Christianity.” The article characterizes this change as ‘baptism lite.’ The purpose of this liturgy re-write is “to make christenings more interesting to non-churchgoers” and to make the service more appropriate and accessible to “non-theologically versed Britons.” In other words, they are “dumbing down” the baptismal service. If I tended toward sarcasm, I might say something like, “They are baptizing babies; how much dumber can they make it?” But I’m not, so I won’t.

OK, I get it. Many people who aren’t Christians will visit churches to see the christening of the babies of family and friends. Many people in secular Europe attend church for three reasons—to be hatched, matched and dispatched (christening, weddings and funerals). So if non-Christians are going to be in church for the baptism of babies, then why not use language that will communicate the gospel in an understandable, non-overly-theologically-obtuse way. I get it. I really do think that’s a wonderful idea.

Except for HOW they do it. One of the sections they want to change is the challenge to parents and godparents to “reject the devil and all rebellion against God” and to renounce “the deceit and corruption of evil” and the challenge to “submit to Christ as Lord.” OK maybe the “deceit and corruption of evil” language could be modernized a bit, but if you remove the idea of turning away from sin (repentance) and acceptance of Jesus as Lord, then what is the point of baptism? Baptism is a picture of the cross. Take away rejection of sin and acceptance of Christ and there is nothing left… except the snacks afterwards.

Francis Chan on Baptism

2011-01-12T16:02:00.000-05:00

Ran across this sermon by Francis Chan on Bobby Valentine's blog "Stoned-Campbell Disciple." Francis Chan is the author of the best-selling book Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God. He was the founding pastor of 4000 member Cornerstone Community Church in Simi Valley, CA, where this sermon was preached. Not long ago, Chan resigned from Cornerstone and is travelling throughout Asia, preaching and strengthening churches. This brother certainly has a pretty good handle on baptism... for someone who isn't a member of our religious tribe!

Francis Chan - Baptism & The Holy Spirit from Wes Woodell on Vimeo.

You Are God Alone

2011-01-11T09:54:00.003-05:00

In our scripture reading for today, David proclaims that praise awaits God in Zion—“Praise awaits you, O God, in Zion; to you our vows will be fulfilled” (Psa 65:1). It is as if all the worshippers have gathered at the Temple and they are waiting God to get there. (This obviously isn’t Denbigh where no one shows up early!). As David gives promise of the worship to come, he also proclaims who God is to be worshiped:

God is a God of GRACE (Psalm 65:2-4). God hears our prayers and forgives us when we cry out to him, even when we are overwhelmed by our transgressions. Not only does God forgive us; he also calls us near and allows us to live in His very presence.
God is a God of GREATNESS (Psalm 65:5-8). God’s power and might called the mountains into existence and commanded the seas to be still. Even those who live far away see those wonders which fill our world from dawn until dusk. It is not that God once did powerful things; God continues to do awesome things, sometimes things that we do not expect (Isa 64:3).
God is a God of GIFTS (Psalm 65:9-13). God takes care of his people by providing our watering our fields with rain, filling our carts with crops, and filling our fields with flocks. God gives good gifts to his people and cares for our needs, so how can we fail to worship (65:13)?

The point of worship is not for us to tell God that He is gracious, great and giving. God already knows that, and he doesn't need us stroking His ego. The point of worship is to remind the worshipper that God is God, and they He Is God alone. It is so easy for us to go do focused on ourselves that we forget who is God alone.

We focus on how we have been offended by the mistakes others and forget how horribly we have offended God and how He has forgiven us time after time.
We focus so much on ourselves and what we have done that we forget it that God not only created everything (including us) but He also gives us the ability to provide for ourselves and for the needs of others.
We focus so much on what we want and do not have yet that we forget to acknowledge all that God has given us and continues to give us.

Worship forces us to take our eyes off of ourselves and focus back on God—His grace, His greatness and His gifts. Worship does not tell God how great he is; it reminds us that God is God… and that He is God alone.

Your Sins Are Forgiven

2011-01-06T06:36:00.001-05:00

In Matthew 9 (one of our scripture readings for today), Jesus is in the middle of a tussle with the Jewish religious leaders. He is in the middle of doing some things that bothered the buttoned-down, letter-of-the-law (even if it’s the one we wrote) rabbis and Pharisees. He had just exorcised some demons… while visiting a Gentile land… and he sent the demons into pigs. That's gotta break a few laws someplace, right? In the next verses, Jesus will call a tax collector of all people as one of his apostles. So just about everything Jesus does at this point is rubbing the rabbis the wrong way.

But it is Jesus' healing of a paralytic that pegs their “you gotta be kidding” meter. He had just done several miracles, so his power to heal one paralyzed should not have been a shock. What was a shock was the language that Jesus used, “Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven.” If you stop right there, you might get the impression that Jesus is baling the man for his paralysis; he had sinned in some way and was being punished with paralysis (don’t walk with God and you won’t walk at all). But what follows makes it clear that Jesus’ words here are for the benefit of the Pharisees who are spoiling for a fight. They respond, “This fellow is blaspheming!” (v. 3). To claim the power to forgive sin is to claim the power of God Himself.

4 Knowing their thoughts, Jesus said, “Why do you entertain evil thoughts in your hearts? 5 Which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’? 6 But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” So he said to the paralyzed man, “Get up, take your mat and go home.” 7 Then the man got up and went home. 8 When the crowd saw this, they were filled with awe; and they praised God, who had given such authority to man. (Matt. 9:4-8, NIV2011)

So is it easier to say, “Your sins are forgiven” or “Get up and walk?” The point is that only God has the power to both forgive sins and to heal. The fact that Jesus really did have the power to heal was demonstrated dramatically when the man got up and toted his mat back home, But Jesus power over this disease also dramatically demonstrated that He also has the power to forgive sin. Anyone can say, “Your sins are forgiven” but Jesus demonstrates his power to forgive with this mighty act of healing.

Each Sunday we proclaim both Christ’s power to give and his power to heal in the Lord’s Supper. When participate in this memorial, we both bow before God's authority over all things spiritual and physical. In the death, burial and resurrection of His Son, God proves His authority over spiritual death ("Your sins are forgiven") and His authority over physical death ("Get up and walk"). Our God is a God who forgives and who heals. He tells each of us “your sins are forgiven” so now we can then “get up and walk” as we live and serve Him daily.

Abomination of Desolation

2011-01-05T06:30:00.009-05:00

OK, so what is with all the mysterious deaths of birds dropping out of the sky in Arkansas? Thousands upon thousands of red-winged blackbirds fell from the sky, littering the ground around Beebe with dead bird carcasses. And officials (how does one get to be a red-winged blackbird official anyway) aren't completely sure what has caused all the deaths. Was it someone shooting off fireworks that caused the birds to get confused and fly into the ground? Was it a sonic boom that confused their navigation instincts and sent them plummeting to earth. Or was this a sign of the gathering hoof-beats of the four horseman of the Apocalypse?

It was done of those. Those Arkansas blackbirds were just so devastated that the Razorbacks lost the Sugar Bowl that they had nothing left for which to live. I mean, it took all these years for Arkansas to finally get to a BCS bowl game (so long that most clear-thinking people have already reached the conclusion that the BCS is an idea who time has come and gone). But they finally get there… and then give up a 28-7 first half lead to Ohio State (which is when I went to bed, by the way). Then they crawl back into the game and then have a chance to actually win it at the end… only to throw it away (literally). That’s why the birds crashed into the ground in Arkansas—they were just so distraught over the Hogs. Of course, if Mallet hadn’t have thrown that last interception and the Hogs would have won the game, the birds would have still crashed into the ground… out of shock of Arkansas actually winning a bowl game.

I miss the old days when all the major bowls were on New Year’s Day. I miss switching channels back and forth between the Cotton Bowl and Sugar Bowl which were on at the same time. I miss being so bleary-eyed by the time the Orange Bowl came on that I could hardly focus my eyes. I miss the fact that at least 2 or 3 of the major bowls could have an impact on the national championship.

A War on Christmas?

2010-12-23T08:50:00.001-05:00

I’ve been reading a lot lately about the “War on Christmas.” You know the issue. It is now politically correct to say “Happy Holidays” (aren't most holidays are happy?) or “Season’s Greetings” (aren't winter, spring, summer and fall all seasons?) rather than “Merry Christmas” (which has somehow become offensive to some). Calendars all label December 25 as Christmas, and most folks aren’t so offended by that that they refuse to take the day off. Is that consistent?

That reminds me of Eric Vann, a guy who used to work for my Dad years ago. Eric was a Jehovah’s Witness and didn't believe in celebrating Christmas. So he always politely refused to contribute to boss’ Christmas present fund-- that was against his religion. But Eric always politely accepted the Christmas bonus that Dad always gave his employees. Consistency is indeed a rare jewel indeed.

I've been intentionally listening and taking note this year while in stores, the bank, doctor’s offices (I’m seeing a lot of those lately) and the like. Frankly, I've been hearing as many or more greetings of “Merry Christmas” as its more politically correct cousins. So what's all the hoopla? So maybe Newport News isn’t much of a battlefield in the war on Christmas.

Is the "War on Christmas" one battlefield in a growing "War on Christianity?" Is our culture slowly but surely seeking to chip away at our faith and make being Christian unacceptable? I think the answer to that question is "Yes" and "No." I think that Christianity's favored status as part of our historical heritage is indeed being chipped away. Remember the "Blue Laws" where they used to (by law) close all stores on Sundays. When I was a kid, they didn't have school activities on Wednesday nights (so that kids could go to church). Those tips of the culture’s hat to Christianity are gone, and others may follow. More and more, we can longer display Christian symbols (crosses, nativity scenes, etc.) on public buildings. But then, neither can display a menorah or Star of David. That’s not a war on Christianity but a diverse culture seeking to treat all religions the same. It is likely that one day, churches will have to pay property and sales taxes on like everyone else. I’m not happy about that, but that doesn't really strike me as an attack on my faith.

I think Christians need to get more and more comfortable in recognizing what has really always been true. When the Christian faith is consistently and persistently lived, it is never at the center of the culture; it is always a counter-culture. We live as people follow Jesus in this world but never part of this world (John 17:15-17). We follow Jesus outside the gate of respectability as we bear the scandal of the cross which He bore for us (Heb. 13:12-13). When we live by Christian principles, we will seem different from the world around us and people who are differently are routinely mistreated.

13 Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good? 14 But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed. “Do not fear what they fear; do not be frightened.” 15 But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, 16 keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander. (1 Peter 3:13-16)

The way to combat anti-Christian sentiment and behavior is to live so thoroughly and completely like Jesus that the slanders are silenced. We are to respond to the opponents of our faith with gentleness and respect. We are to be ready to give an answer to those who ask us about our faith, but we must not run recklessly into the midst of the culture wars. It is still true what G. K. Chesterton a generation ago, “It is not that Christianity has been tried and found wanting; it is rather that Christianity has been left untried.” If we show people a Christianity that looks and feels more like Jesus, we won’t have to defend ourselves nearly as much.

The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse

2010-12-20T08:43:00.017-05:00

For the second year in a row, my sermon on Sunday came from Revelation. This year we looked at "It's a Long Way from a Manger to the Throne" and the picture of Christ reigning in Revelation 5. He is before the throne as all creation worships, "Worthy is the Lamb." He alone can open the scroll of the future, and when he does, the drama of the book begins. As the first four of the seals of the scroll are opened, the four living creatures before the throne cry out and in response appear the "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse."

A rider on a white horse appears with a bow and wearing a crown; he is a conqueror who has come in conquest.
A rider on a red horse comes carrying a sword; he is given power to take peace from the earth.
A rider on the black horse comes uses scales to measure grain sold for excessive prices indicating a time of famine.
The last rider comes on a pale horse. This rider is named Death, and Hades follows behind him. He is given power to kill by sword, famine and plague.

These four riders represent the all too familiar progression—the conqueror brings war, war brings famine and famine brings death. This is what has happened throughout human history when man gives in to the lust for power.

What is the meaning of the vision? Have the four horsemen come to persecute the church? Do these thundering hooves begin judgment on Rome for her persecutions of Christians? Or do the four horsemen simply represent the ongoing consequences of man’s thirst for power? The precise details don’t matter as long as we understand—

God’s people were being hurt by conquest, war, famine and death.
Yet God reigns despite conquest and war and famine and death.

The church at the end of the first century was suffering tremendous pressure from Roman persecution. People were dying. Faith did not insulate them from the evil that existed in the world. There is no way for the "Health-and-Wealth" theology that is so popular today to reconcile itself with the fact that sometimes faithful people suffer despite their faith. Sometimes because of their faith.

But the story is not complete until we see the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse. Later in the book another rider thunders across John’s canvass, "I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True." (Revelation 19:11). This rider brings justice and destroys the enemies of God with a sharp sword that comes out of His mouth. On his robe and thigh appear the name "King of Kings and Lord of Lords." The story of Revelation is not over until Jesus comes to bring justice. We may suffer because of the evil choices of others, but ultimate victory belongs to those who give themselves to serve the One who is Faithful and True.

It's Most Wonderful Time of the Year

2010-12-16T09:03:00.001-05:00

Andy Williams croons that “It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.” And he's right. If you watched our family videos (which I can’t because we no longer own a working VHS player), you’d think that Christmas was the only time of the year; most of our videos are of Christmas morning. I have a lot of memories wrapped up in this season. December 30 will mark the 33rd anniversary of our wedding. January 1 is the 45th anniversary of Arkansas’ Cotton Bowl win over Nebraska that gave them national championship. And December 25th 29th anniversary of the birth of my oldest daughter... and I think also that 29th anniversary of the last time we had a white Christmas.

For the record, Christmas is very different when you have had a Christmas baby. The Christmas she was born sure was different (she was delivered to "Jingle Bells" playing in the background). Of course, being a Christmas baby born in a Catholic hospital gets you some special perks! Celebrating Christmas birthdays is a lot of trouble as you must make sure that you separate the two celebrations. For example, fruit cake cannot be used as a birthday cake! Also, you can’t combine the gifts; birthday presents must stay “separate and apart.” And under no circumstances may you wrap a birthday present in Christmas paper! That would be the worst form of bad form!

Christmas birthdays are complicated. But then, Jesus’ birthday was complicated as well. Sure, I know that Jesus was likely not born on December 25. It was only several accidents of history that selected this date as the day set aside to remember Jesus’ birth. But like many who were born on December 25, there was little about Jesus’ birth that was ordinary.

He was conceived by God and born of a virgin—that’s pretty rare
He was born in a barn and laid in a feed trough—that’s rare as well
And what other baby gets gold, frankincense and myrrh at their shower?

And then there was the unusual manner of how the birth announcement was handled. Usually, new mothers send out birth announcements. After all, new mothers don’t have anything else to do. But this time, the Father handled the birth announcement (see Luke 2:8-14).

Angels brought to the shepherds "good news of great joy." That is an interesting choice of words. In fact, the angels use one of the most familiar words in all the Bible— the word "euagglelizo." Or as that word is generally translated-- "gospel." What the angel literally said to the shepherds was, "I preach to you a gospel of great joy." The birth of Jesus is gospel! God had come into the world. That little baby in the manger was Immanuel, "God with us." In all the hype and hustle and hoopla of this season, don’t forget the gospel that God is with us. He came to be with us then; He remains with us today. That is good news indeed.

Free Speech... Except on an iPhone?

2010-12-10T09:19:00.000-05:00

The Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience was issued in 2009 by leaders in Catholic and Orthodox and Evangelical church to affirm support for “the sanctity of life, traditional marriage, and religious liberty.” The drafting committee included Chuck Colson, Princeton law professor Robert P. George and Beeson Divinity School dean Timothy George. The document (according to a recent article by Colson) has been signed by more than half a million Christians. The document is a respectful and well-written proclamation of the commitment of the signers to promote the sanctity of all human life, to uphold marriage as holy matrimony between a man and a woman, and to strive preserve the liberty of Christians who seek to live their religious convictions.

Read the document carefully. I don't believe there is anything in this that is different from the views held by believers in Christ from the time of the first century onward—life is to be revered, marriage is to be upheld as sacred, and faith is to be lived out in the lives of the faithful. At the end of the document there is something of all call to “civil disobedience,” but the scope of that call is the commitment not to allow Christians institutions (hospitals, schools, churches) to be forced “to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth.”

So why bring this up? An article by Chuck Colson in the San Francisco Chronicle on Tuesday reported that Apple had pulled the Manhattan Declaration app from its app store for the iPhone and iPad. The app had received a 4-plus rating from Apple (meaning it was free from objectionable content), but some advocates of same-sex marriage complained to Apple, saying that the Manhattan Declaration promoted hate speech and homophobia. Well, we can’t have that, and so Apple pulled the app from the app store. Colson writes, “It was a triumph of political correctness and ad hominem attack over civil discourse. And I am saddened - and very concerned - that a pioneering company like Apple, whose products are used by untold millions to interact and communicate, chose to shut down the dialogue over one of the defining cultural issues of our time.”

In case you didn't catch the code here, let me refresh your memory. When I disagree with someone’s views on health care reform, campaign finance reform, or the BCS championship, we simply just disagree. But if I disagree with homosexual marriage, then I am a hate-mongering homophobic. And that is not much of an exaggeration. To simply say that you are opposed to homosexual practice and marriage is, in the eyes of some, hate speech. Here is the paragraph from the Manhattan Declaration that was accused of hate speech and homophobia—

We acknowledge that there are those who are disposed towards homosexual and polyamorous conduct and relationships, just as there are those who are disposed towards other forms of immoral conduct. We have compassion for those so disposed; we respect them as human beings possessing profound, inherent, and equal dignity; and we pay tribute to the men and women who strive, often with little assistance, to resist the temptation to yield to desires that they, no less than we, regard as wayward. We stand with them, even when they falter. We, no less than they, are sinners who have fallen short of God's intention for our lives. We, no less than they, are in constant need of God's patience, love and forgiveness. We call on the entire Christian community to resist sexual immorality, and at the same time refrain from disdainful condemnation of those who yield to it. Our rejection of sin, though resolute, must never become the rejection of sinners. For every sinner, regardless of the sin, is loved by God, who seeks not our destruction but rather the conversion of our hearts. Jesus calls all who wander from the path of virtue to "a more excellent way." As his disciples we will reach out in love to assist all who hear the call and wish to answer it.

That's hateful stuff, isn't it! By the way, the word “polyamorous” is defined as “ the practice, desire, or acceptance of having more than one intimate relationship at a time." So if stating that Christians are opposed to homosexuality is hate speech, then it is also hate speech to suggest that we are opposed to sleeping around. We just hate everybody, don’t we?

The secular culture doesn’t have a problem with our Christian beliefs… and long as those beliefs are neither seen not heard. That means you can’t put the Manhattan Declaration in an app so you can you can choose to read it on your iPhone. Of course, the issue isn't the Apple app store. Apple has a long whimsical history of approving, disapproving and re-approving apps The issue isn’t even whether or not minority views can be expressed or expounded in the public arena. The issue is whether or not the majority view (most Americans do oppose homosexual marriage) can be expressed in the public arena in a respectful and reserved matter when those views are opposed to the wishes of the thought police. Colson ends his article—

There is something more at stake here than whether Apple hosts a particular app; whether or not we are capable as a society of maintaining the free marketplace of ideas. Because the open and civil exchange of ideas is essential to democracy and a free society. The kind of society that has produced entrepreneurial geniuses like Jobs.

It's Not the Sermon, Stupid

2010-12-08T09:37:00.001-05:00

Last week I blogged about a Gallop Poll study that suggested that religious Americans have a higher level of feeling of overall well-being. To quote the poll, “Americans who are very religious have higher wellbeing than those who are less religious, a relationship that holds even after controlling for several related demographic and geographic variables.” You can read my blog here and the Gallop article here.

Well, today MSNBC reports on another study, this one published in the professional journal American Sociological Review, suggests that “religious people gain life satisfaction thanks to social networks they build by attending religious services.” The article noted that studies like the Gallop one I mentioned always suffered from a chicken-and-egg type problem. Religious people do seem to be more happy and have a greater sense of well-being, but does religion make people happy or do happy people become religious? And, as one person posted on my blog, is this well-being “a psychological result rather than a spiritual reward?”

According to the article today, what makes people happier and gives them a higher sense of well-being is the social connection between people who are linked by a common identity and a sense of community within something they feel is important. Here’s the quote-

We think it has something to do with the fact that you meet a group of close friends on a regular basis, together as a group, and participate in certain activities that are meaningful to the group… At the same time, they share a certain social identity, a sense of belonging to a moral faith community. The sense of belonging seems to be the key to the relationship between church attendance and life satisfaction.

What gives church people this sense of well-being is social interactions within a community that matters. The title of the article is “Church-Goers Tend to be Happier People.” The tagline is “It's not the sermon — it's the socializing that's the key, new study shows.” (I guess I should be thankful it wasn't, "It's not the sermon, stupid.") I would argue that the sermon and worship gives the Christian gathering its identity as “a moral faith community.” But fellowship within the community of faith is a powerful force. It was meant to be. The Hebrew writer reminds that the power of the Christian assembly is the assembly—

Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works. And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near. (Heb 10:24–25, NLT).

Actually there is very little said about exactly what we are to do when we come together. Yes, there are those “five acts of worship” I grew up hearing about, but no text discusses them as such or tells us exactly how to go about them. Paul discuss some things the church at Corinth did-- “When you meet together, one will sing, another will teach, another will tell some special revelation God has given, one will speak in tongues, and another will interpret what is said.” (1 Cor 14:26, NLT). But that verse ends with his main point in context, “But everything that is done must strengthen all of you.” The point of coming together is coming together to be strengthened together. Can’t we worship God alone? Of course! Not only CAN we do so, you SHOULD be doing so. But the point of the assembly is the assembly, the power of mutual edification and encouragement.

I’m glad this study confirms that religious people have a higher sense of well-being and thet it comes from them meeting together in a community of faith. But then, I already knew that.

A Day of Infamy

2010-12-07T07:42:00.000-05:00

On December 7, 1941 at 7:53 a.m., Japanese warplanes launched a surprise attack on the U.S. feet at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. The battle lasted slightly longer than two hours, and after it was over, 2,403 Americans were dead, 8 American battleships were damaged or destroyed, and the Pacific Fleet was crippled. The next day, President Roosevelt asked congress to declare war and proclaimed that December 7, 1941 would be a day that would live in infamy.

Next year will mark the seventieth anniversary of this day that shall live in of infamy. But as the years roll by, that day becomes more and more of a distant memory. The world that existed then no longer exists today. The only threat that Japan represents is in terms of trade imbalances. As the world of 1941 fades into history, it would be so easy to forget the horror, the sacrifice and the bravery of December 7, 1941. I checked most of the main news websites this morning—CNN, MSNBC, ABC, FOXNEWS. While all the news sites reported that the date was December 7, none of them mentioned the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack. (Google News did have several articles). I guess there have been so many more days of infamy in the intervening 69 years that we don’t focus on one day 69 years ago.

If you visit Pearl Harbor today, you will see an imposing and impressive memorial that is there to ensure that we never forget. There the U.S.S. Arizona still lies in its final resting-place at the bottom of Pearl Harbor where it has been since December 7, 1941. And there 1,102 of the men who died on the Arizona still lie; their ship has become their tomb. Spanning, but never touching, the mid-section of the sunken battleship is a 184 foot-long memorial. All of the names of all of the men who died on the Arizona are engraved there on the ship. I visited the memorial once and stood there as Dad videotaped each and every name inscribed on the memorial. My Aunt Laverne’s fiancé, a man who would have become my uncle were it not for that day of infamy, is one of those 1,102 names. That memorial is there to make sure visitors to Pearl Harbor never forget the horror and the sacrifice of that day so long ago.

Each Sunday, the church gathers today to remember another day that lives in infamy. At the center of Christianity is a story of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is easy to forget that this is the part of our faith that is “of first importance” (1 Cor 15:3). The sacrifice of Jesus took place so long ago; there have been so many other days of infamy that have taking place between that time and today—infamy in our world and in our own lives. We have heard the story of the cross so many times that we can become dumbed to its power and importance. We can forget that this story is the very heart of our Christian faith. It is still the greatest story ever told. And it is our story.

It is a story we must never forget. So on the night before the story, Jesus created a memorial to himself. The Christ memorial is not nearly as imposing as the one in Pearl Harbor, but it is a memorial which has endured for two thousand years… and it will endure until Jesus returns again. By eating bread and drinking wine/ juice, we remember a day that lives not only in infamy, but in hope and in salvation. Each week we are called to gather around the table to remember Jesus cross and recommit to living in the way of the cross throughout the week and throughout our lives.

He's the Lion, no Lyin'

2010-12-06T12:17:00.000-05:00

OK, let me get this out of the way first. I am on the record as being totally opposed to the travesty that is the BCS system for deciding the national championship of college football. OK, I'm not as against it now as I would be if I were a TCU fan. But seriously, there needs to be a playoff system in which a real champion is crowned. There needs to be a system in which every team at the beginning of the season has a chance to win. The BCS really is a BC-Mess. HOWEVER, how cool is it that my Razorbacks headed to the BCS party at the Sugar Bowl. Of course NOW the problem is that all the BCS games are on ESPN and we don’t have cable. So I guess I’m going to have to work on inviting myself over to someone’s house on January 4 to watch the Hogs crush the Buckeyes.

OK, now for the real blog. We’ll be heading to the movies sometime this weekend to see The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. We go to movies regularly… if you count twice a year regularly. Lynn and I both loved The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and I liked Prince Caspian well enough. And we have been looking forward to Dawn Treader. The last movie we saw in a theater was this obscure little flick called Avatar.

I notice this morning that Liam Neeson, who provides the voice of Aslan the Lion in the movie, decided to be politically correct and multicultural by suggesting that Aslan does not simply represent Christ in Narnia (which was the impression C. S. Lewis had when he wrote the books) but also represented other religious leaders as well--

Aslan symbolizes a Christlike figure, but he also symbolizes for me Mohammed, Buddha and all the great spiritual leaders and prophets over the centuries.

How nice. Obviously, you can read anything into anything you like. I remember someone telling Arthur C. Clarke that a cross-like pattern of stars above the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey was sending an obvious message about Jesus and the cross. Clarke, an atheist, replied, “Hey, if I really want to send a message, I’ll call Western Union.” C. S.Lewis was not just a Christian writer, he was the most influential Christian writer of the twentieth century. And Lewis definitely intended Aslan as a representation of Jesus. He wrote, “He is an invention giving an imaginary answer to the question: ‘What might Christ become like if there really were a world like Narnia?’”

Lewis did not believe that Jesus was simply one among many other religious leaders. He did not believe Jesus was a representation of all religious leaders. In fact, Lewis argued that Jesus intended for us to decide whether to accept Him as the Son of God or to reject him completely. He wrote:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic -- on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg -- or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. (Mere Christianity, pages 40-41.)

Jesus was not just one of many Lions of Judah. He was and is THE Lion of Judah. You can accept that or not. What you can’t do is make Jesus multicultural and politically correct!

Religion and Well-Being

2010-12-02T09:24:00.004-05:00

Why should you come to church every week? Why should you find more ways to get more involved with the activities and the people at church? Well, one good reason may be that it will make you more physically, mentally and emotionally well. A recent Gallop Poll indicates that Americans who are highly religious have a higher level of overall "well-being."

The study defined "highly religious" people as those for whom "religion is an important part of daily life and church/synagogue/mosque attendance occurs at least every week or almost every week." There were two other groups in the study-- the moderately religious and the nonreligious. There was a "statistically significant relationship between religiousness and wellbeing" and this difference "holds up after controlling for numerous demographic variables." This level of "well-being" was caused by things like "healthy behaviors, life evaluation, work environment perceptions, and emotional health."

The article can be found at the Gallop website. It not only gives the results study, but there is also an overview of how the study was conducted. Here is the section of the article subtitled "Implications"

Americans who are very religious have higher wellbeing than those who are less religious, a relationship that holds even after controlling for several related demographic and geographic variables.

This study does not allow for a precise determination of why this might be the case. It is possible that Americans who have higher wellbeing may be more likely to choose to be religious than those with lower wellbeing. It is also possible that some third variable could be driving certain segments of the U.S. population to be more religious and to have higher wellbeing.

It is also possible that the relationship is straightforward, that something about religiosity, defined as a personal importance placed on religion and frequent religious service attendance, in turn leads to a higher level of personal wellbeing. Religious service attendance promotes social interaction and friendship with others, and Gallup analysis has clearly shown that time spent socially and social networks themselves are positively associated with wellbeing. Religion generally involves more meditative states and faith in a higher power, both of which have been widely used as methods to lower stress, reduce depression, and promote happiness. Religion provides mechanisms for coping with setbacks and life's problems, which in turn may reduce stress, worry, and anger. Many religions, including Christianity, which is by far the dominant religion in the U.S., embody tenets of positive relationships with one's neighbors and charitable acts, which may lead to a more positive mental outlook.

Highly religious Americans' healthier behaviors may have multiple causes, including for example culturally negative norms against such behaviors as smoking and alcohol consumption in a number of religions. It may also be possible that the lower emotional wellbeing of less religious Americans puts them in a state in which they are more susceptible to non-healthy behaviors.

By the way, there was no statistically significant difference between the well-being of those who were only moderately religious and those who are totally nonreligious. So if you are going to be religious, you might as well go whole hog and do it right. This will also promote your spiritual well-being as well.

Always Be Prepared

2010-12-01T11:13:00.001-05:00

But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. (1 Peter 3:15)

When we hear the word "evangelism," we often think of things like knocking doors, gospel meetings, filmstrip lessons, and other evangelism tools. Michael Green, author of the book Evangelism Through the Local Church, suggests that the early church grew because its members "gossiped the gospel." Jesus was the topic of their daily conversations with people because they were convinced that everyone needed to know Jesus. Whatever tool the church uses in evangelism, there is no replacement for "regular Christians" who simply talk to people about Jesus.

Peter tells us in today's reading to "always be prepared to give an answer." The word "answer" or "defense" (NASB) is the Greek word apología from which we get the word "apologetics." Paul used this word when he made his defense before the Jews in Jerusalem (Acts 22:1) and King Agrippa in Caesarea (Acts 25:16). To give an apologı́a means simply to give reasons why you believe in Jesus and live your life for Him. In the text above, Peter says that the first step in this process is to "in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord." Before you can share why Christ is the center of your life, He must be the center of your life.

But I have quoted only part of the text. The missing key in evangelism may be what follows in verses 16 and 17-

But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander.

How we share our faith ("gentleness and respect") is important; so is how we live our lives. We must speak a good word for Jesus; evangelism always gets around to words. But the context of our words is a joyful and holy life that affirms that what we believe works. The Christian who is bitter, negative, fault-finding and joyless will not be evangelistic. Neither will the negative, joyless, fault-finding church. May God help us to set apart Christ in our hearts and live joyful and hopeful lives for Him. And may He help us be better "gossips of the gospel."

The Reason in the Season

2010-11-30T08:19:00.000-05:00

Atheists have become evangelistic as of late. The group "American Atheists" has launched an advertising campaign that seeks to take back the holidays from Christians. They have paid for billboards to be erected that claim that "You Know It's a Myth: This Season, Celebrate Reason." The group claims that the ads are designed to embolden "closet atheists" who "go along to get along, to "attack the myth that Christianity owns the solstice season" and to raise awareness (and one presumes money) of its group.

What should be our response to people who go out of their way to ridicule our faith, even at a time of the year when that faith is the most visible? Well, there is on old saying that "Living well is the best revenge." The very best way we can defend our faith is to treat its detractors and opponents with respect as we live out our faith in positive and proactive ways. The very worst thing we can do when someone belittles our faith is to respond in a way that is beneath our faith. We need to show everyone that faith works, and that means we must live it in positive and loving ways. That is exactly the point that Peter makes in todays reading from 1 Peter 2:15-17 when he says--

For it is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish men. Live as free men, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as servants of God. Show proper respect to everyone: Love the brotherhood of believers, fear God, honor the king.

Show proper respect to everyone. Silence ignorant talk by the way that we live. Show the world that faith works, that it makes us mature, whole people of integrity and joy. When we live right before the world, these kinds of criticism just loose their punch

Happy Thanksgiving

2010-11-24T13:18:00.001-05:00

Most of our Thanksgiving Day traditions seem to come from those Massachusetts Pilgrims and 1622. That’s always been annoying to me; the first Thanksgiving was at Berkeley Plantation, Virginia, in 1619. I had Virginia history 3 times in my elementary and high school years, and they taught us this stuff. In fact, all US history is really Virginia history since the original claim for the Virginia Colony was from sea to sea and pole to pole! Those pesky Pilgrims of Plymouth simply had a better press agent!

You know the story; 103 of 158 of the original Massachusetts colonists died the very first winter. The Pilgrims managed to survive (good ol' Squanto) and the bountiful harvest that next fall ensured the continued survival of the colony. So Gov. William Bradford declared that a festival of thanksgiving be observed to God. This Thanksgiving festival became an annual event in Massachusetts by 1690, but it didn’t become the recurring national Thanksgiving Day holiday until Abraham Lincoln proclaimed it so in 1863.

And perhaps this is the trouble with Thanksgiving for many of us today. The first Thanksgivings took place following tremendous struggle after a devastating winter almost destroyed the colony. The first national Thanksgiving Day was proclaimed in the middle of the devastating tragedy of the Civil War. Our Thanksgiving Day today retains many of the forms and traditions, but few have to do with same struggle! Thanksgiving is our day to eat ourselves silly and then complain how terrible we feel afterward. Thanksgiving for us is a day off from work, with family, and to nap in front of football until all the sales begin on Black Friday. That’s the problem with Thanksgiving—we have one day to reflect on our stuff and then we go get more stuff!

Thanksgiving was born in struggle and from struggle. Is it possible that we are too blessed to really be too thankful? Will Rogers drew this contrast between thanksgiving then and now:

In the days of our founders, people were willing to give thanks for mighty little, for mighty little was all that they expected. But now neither government nor nature can give enough but what we think is too little. In the fall of the year, if the founders could gather in a few pumpkins, some potatoes, and some corn for the winter, they were in a thanking mood. But if we can’t gather in a new car, a new radio...and some government relief, why we feel that the world is against us.

We have too much, and therefore we expect too much, to really be truly thankful. We are so focused on our stuff that we fail to see the God who gives. May God forgive us and cause us to refocus on the things that really matter. And may we be thankful.

How Not to Invite a Co-Worker to Your Church

2010-11-23T09:52:00.003-05:00

It's almost time to start thinking about our New Year's resolutions for 2011. I don't know how it happened that 2010 is now almost gone, but it is. Once we get past Thanksgiving on Thursday, the rest of the year will fly by in a blur. So we need to get to work right away on our resolutions. And I know that many of us will resolve to be better at evangelism this next year. So you help us get started on our resolution to be more evangelistic, I post this video on "How Not to Invite a Co-Worker to Church."

We do need to be inviting people to church and church activities. We don't need the preacher to be cool (thank goodness). But what we do need is the conviction that people need God and that they can find Him where we find Him.

Let No Debt Remain Outstanding

2010-11-19T10:07:00.000-05:00

I had Lynn's car inspected several weeks ago (it passed, hooray!). When I paid Guy the $16 for the inspection, he noticed that the lamination was peeling off my credit card. I am literally wearing my credit card out! So you think that maybe I'm using it too much? Credit cards are a real convenience, and we do pay off our balance each month. But the problem with credit cards is that they are a convenience; they make it very convenient to buy things you don't need with money that you don't have. The average family carries about $8000 in credit card debt.

Paul told the Romans, "Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another" (Rom 12:8). We are called by God to be faithful stewards of the blessings that he has entrusted to us and to share with those in need. Timothy is told to tell those who have money "to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. 19 In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life" (1 Tim 6:18-19).

Too many if us have compromised our ability to do good works and share with others because we have over-obligated ourselves with debt buying things that we can't really afford. Think about it-- if you are carrying $8000 in revolving credit card debt, then you bought $8000 worth of things that you couldn't afford. That is so simple that its not even funny... well, maybe it is funny. Watch this Hulu clip.

We call the Friday after Thanksgiving "Black Friday" because this is the number #1 shopping day when retailers recoup losses and get in the black. Maybe we should call it "Red Friday" because it is when many shoppers begin their overspending and running up balances on their credit cards. Maybe we should implement this policy of "if you don't have money, then don't buy things." It seems pretty simple really. It also seems pretty Biblical.