Faith in Public Life

Dr. Francis Collins was recently nominated by President Obama to head the National Institutes of Health. There seems to be a growing number of scientists and politicians that believe the President has made a great mistake. No one doubts that Dr. Collins is qualified for the job. Collins discovered in 1989 the gene that causes cystic fibrosis. He became the director of the group that in 1993 would sequence the entire human genome. He has been politically adroit enough to appropriate support and funds for his genetic research, and most people believe that he would make a wonderful director for the NIH.

So what is the problem? Is Dr. Collins an axe-murder? A soviet spy? A Republican? No, he is a Christian. He believes that a person can both be rational and also a believer. He is the author of The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, and he toured the country pushing his book (as all authors are required to do). There are some who worry that allowing such a vocal believer to head the NIH is too dicey to be wise. After all, the man believes that human morality is given to us by God and that we are ultimately responsible to him. Clearly he can’t be trusted to run a government agency! One critic of Dr. Collins says this

Any scientist who happens to practice a religion and is honest enough to admit it knows that science is based on empirical evidence while religion is based on the ether of faith and it is unlikely under the harsh light of reason and logic for the two to meet and make sense. Together they make (non)sense.

Sorry, but that sounds a bit like “Any one smart enough to know anything at all should know enough to agree with me.” And they worry Dr. Collins is too dogmatic?

We live in a postmodern, post-Christian world where there are multiple worldviews and points of view. Christianity no longer enjoys majority status in people presuppositions— not everyone accepts the Bible as the “Good Book” or believes there is a God. I truly believe that most of Christianity's “intramural” theological squabbles make no sense in this age of many gods and no god at all. We shouldn’t be surprised that our faith is looked down upon. Our job is not, I believe, to use political clout to move the country back to its Christian roots (if it indeed really had such roots).

Our job is to live such holy lives of integrity that the unbelieving world may still quibble with the truthfulness of our faith but can’t doubt the fact that it works. If all Christians lived humble, self-controlled, loving, peaceful lives (as Christ demands), then most of the arguments against Christians in public life would vanish. If we want people to respect Christianity again, then we’re going to have to do something radical. We're going to have to live it!

Camp Idlewild 2009

Another year of Camp Idlewild is in the books. I was at camp for the 40th anniversary of the lunar landing; I was also at Idlewild when Armstrong took that big step for mankind 40 years ago! To say that camp has been a big part of my life is an understatement. I delivered my first sermon (3 minutes long) at camp. I met my wife at camp (in fact, Lynn's first counselor at age 9 was my mother). I made one of the greatest catches in the history of softball at camp (over the shoulder at full speed diving into the weeds… Willie Mays called to inquire about my technique). I took Lynn to camp in 1977 to give her an engagement ring. I have lots of good memories at Camp Idlewild. OK, there are some not so good ones too, but I won’t go into those.

We made some more very good memories this year at camp. For the second year in a row, I directed the Junior (Middle School) week. We had 18 girls and 16 boys and a full compliment of staff-- and everyone worked together to make this one of the best weeks ever. This was the most cooperative and accommodating bunch of middle-schoolers I’ve ever seen. For example, they wanted very badly to play pranks on each other, but I kept telling them “No.” They would shrug and say, “OK,” and they didn't. Well they did pull a little bitsy prank at the prodding of their counselors on Friday night… and then felt guilty about it. What great kids!

Most of my staff and 16 of the 34 campers were from Denbigh (counting some former members now at Carrsville). We also had 4 or 5 camp mascots (staff brats) who really added a lot. When I saw Kate and Emily climbing to the top of a tall tree, they added gray hairs. The kids really liked singing, and we had some great devotional times. We had a bunch of the kids (and a few adults) come up on stage and sing “This is How We Overcome” Sunday morning, complete with the spinning around and yelling Whoop-Whoop, Aye-Aye’s… that was great.

Then there was the “Great Yellow Jacket Incident of 2009.” Have you seen those cartoons where a swarm of bees chase someone? Well, it’s no cartoon. A swarm of angry yellow jackets followed us from the archery range through the amphitheater around the old canteen building and into the dining hall. We had several campers stung—Kacie won the ribbon for most bee stings with 14. But everyone was brave and we survived… many of the yellow jackets did not!

Here's a YouTube video of our week. Hope you like it. Hope you'll join us next year!

Where We Hang Our Hat

In the 1890s there was a small Baptist church in Mayfield County, Kentucky. The church had two deacons who were constantly arguing and bickering over some issue or the other. One of them put up a small wooden peg on the back wall so the pastor could hang up his hat. When the other deacon discovered the peg, he was outraged. “How dare you put a peg in the wall without first consulting me!” The people in the church took sides and the congregation eventually split. Today the residents of Mayfield County still refer to the two churches as Peg Baptist Church and Anti-Peg Baptist Church.

For the record, we’re neither Peg-ite nor Anti-Pegite; we’re Non-Peg-ite, just as the Bible teaches! But before we get too smug, we need to remember that we have something of a history of division in our churches, maybe over things just as silly. At the same time the Peg-ite and Anti-Pegite controversy raged in Mayfield, our churches were splitting over the use of instrumental music in worship and how missionaries could be and should be supported. We have divided over how many cups can be used in communion and how many Bible classes are permitted. We have divided over what we believe will happen at the end of time (rather than just waiting to find out). We’ve even divided over whether or not we should pay preachers! Heretics!

So why haven’t we done a better job reaching the world for Jesus? It seems to me that Jesus did the hard part, right? He loved us enough to die for us. All we have to do is love Him enough to love each other. Ultimately, what the cross was about is reconciliation. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:18-19—

All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.

Maybe the world looks at Christ’s church and poorly we get along with each other and has decided that this “ministry of reconciliation” stuff just doesn’t work very well!

Watch Your Step!

Fifteen year old Alexa Longueira was just doing what teens do—she was walking along texting one of her friends. And the DEP crew on Staten Island was doing what they do— preparing to enter the sewers to protect (DEP = Department of Environmental Protection) and serve. What they did wrong was to remove the manhole cover BEFORE they put out the orange safety cones. And what Alexa did wrong was continue her walking and text without looking where she was going. Without pausing her texting, she plunged through the open manhole and into the yuck below. She must have been using a Blackberry because iPhones surely have an open manhole app to warn of things like that. Or they should have. Fortunately, Alexa suffered only fright, a few scrapes and some foul smelling clothes. Her family, of course, is going to sue.

The same thing happens to us in our Christian life if we aren’t careful. We can be rambling along not really paying attention spiritual and walk right into one of Satan’s traps. Brian Simmons, in the Pepperdine video we watched Sunday night, told about a man named “Bob” who was just walking along, not realizing that he was becoming more and more friendly with an attractive co-worker until they went on a business trip together. Before he knew it, we tumbled through the manhole into the yuck below. If we aren’t waling carefully, those kinds of tumbles await us all.

In Ephesians 5:15-16, Paul says, “Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.” Literally, what Paul says is “Look carefully then how you walk” (ESV). Commentators actually seem split as to whether the adverb “carefully” actually modifies the word "look" or the word “walk.” Is Paul saying we are to “look carefully so we can walk” or to “look so we can walk carefully?” Well, if Alexa had been doing EITHER, she would not have tumbled into the manhole. And if Bob would have done either, he would not have tumbled either.

One of Jesus’ most favorite command was, “What I say to you, I say to everyone: ‘Watch!’” (Mark 13:37) He warns us to watch out for a lot of things-- false prophets (Matt 7:15), those who deceive us (Matt 24:4), coming of the Lord (Matt 24:42), not to fall into temptation (Matt 26:41). Spiritual inattention invariably leads to a fall. Ask Alexa or Bob... or yourself.

Revenge of the Folk Singer

What a great way to deal with customer non-service. Last year a musician named Dave Carroll was traveling on to Nebraska on United Airlines. While on the ground in Chicago, Carroll saw his $3500 Taylor guitar being tossed around by airline baggage handlers. Sure enough, the guitar was severely damaged. While United never denied the damage, Carroll got the expert run-around from various and sundry airline employees for nine months. Everyone was to blame except for United, and finally he was given the airline’s official “NO” to his repeated requests for compensation.

What is one to do? Well, most of us would just be out of luck, but Carroll is a musician. So he did what musicians do—he wrote a song and created a music video about his experience. In fact, what he promised the United employee that gave him the final “NO” (Ms. Irlweg) was that he would write three songs about his United experience and make You-Tube videos for each. Well, the first song and video is done, and it has become an Internet sensation. United now knows that you don’t tug on Superman’s cape, you don’t spit into the wind, you don’t pulls the mask off the ol’ Lone Ranger and you don’t break Dave Carroll’s Taylor guitar.



United has now (after the video received 2.5 million hits on YouTube) admitted its responsibility and offered full compensation, but Carroll has asked that they donate the money the charity. Evidently he is too busy working on his second video to go pick up their check. As Jay Guin (on whose blog I first saw this) put it, “This is satisfying at a very deep level.” BTW, if Carroll would have been flying on Delta, the song would have been “Delta Loses Guitars.”

The Man in the Mirror

I’ve been walking around the last couple of days humming Michael Jackson tunes. I never was really a huge fan, and I am surprised how easily (and often) these songs keep popping into my mind this week. It seems that my favorites (according to what I keep humming) are “Man in the Mirror” (which I’ve always liked) and “Billy Jean” (which I didn’t like, but I keep humming for some reason). Someone has said that Michael Jackson songs have been the “soundtrack of our lives,” and maybe that is true. But if I don’t stop humming these songs, I’m going to break into a moonwalk!

I watched excerpts from the Jackson memorial where a lot of people spoke of their close connection to Michael. But the sad truth seems to be that no one was really close to Michael Jackson, at least over any period of time. Diane Diamond, a journalist who covered Jackson for years and wrote a 2005 biography said it was “absolutely a revolving door” in his life as Jackson fired employees, feuded with family, and shunned collaborates and close friends who dared to disagree with him. Diamond says, “There were constantly new people in his life. He didn't want anyone to tell him what to do.”

Despite what was said at his funeral, Michael Jackson was a strange man. From the cartoonish way he dressed, to his odd (I hope only odd) behavior toward young boys, to the freakish plastic surgery— Jackson was strange. And I can’t help but wonder of some of that bizarre behavior was the result of the fact that no one was in his life to could tell him, “Michael, uhh, that’s really not a good idea.” What he had were enablers and yes-men who took his money and let him be just as strange as he wanted to be. Maybe the drugs that seemed to have killed him would not have been around if he would have listened to people who loved him. No was there to help him really look at the man in mirror and nudge him toward changing his ways.

God didn’t make any of us to live unaccountable lives. We need a relationship with God, but we also need relationships with other people who will call us into account and keep us honest to ourselves and God. James says, “Make this your common practice: Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you can live together whole and healed” (James 5:16, The Message). We need to make ourselves accountable to others so that when we get a bit strange, we have people who can tell us.

In the movie Quo Vadis, General Marcus Vinicius rides in triumph through the streets of Rome accepting the accolades and praise of the masses of Roman. Behind him is a slave who holds a crown of olive leaves above his head and repeats the words, “Remember, thou art only a man.” If Michael Jackson has close to him to remind him of that, maybe he would still be with us and making music.

Vacation Church

We have been in Arkansas since Friday and having a good visit with Mom and Dad. The trip was originally supposed to be to escort Angelynn back to Harding, but she got a job offer the day before we were to leave. So there is the answer to the joblessness across the country because of this recession-- just plan a trip to Arkansas. I'm not sure what the unemployed in Arkansas are supposed to do.

We enjoyed going to church with Mom and Dad Sunday. I usually preach 50 or so weeks out of the year, so getting a Sunday off was a real treat. We went to early service, so that meant getting to church by 8:15 a.m. That sounds early, but that is about 2-3 hours later than usual, so I felt like I was skipping church sleeping in so late. Beside the late hour of revival, there was several other differences going to church when I don't preach--

• I feel no frustration when the PowerPoint guys gets out of sync.
• I feel no responsibility when the songs don't fit the worship theme just right.
• I feel no pressure for the service not to last to long or too short
• I had to try not to fall into the "critic mode" that annoys me when I'm in charge. (I could so easily become Simon Crowl, and I really don't want anyone to do that).

In short, it's good occasionally to be able to relax and just let church happen and not feel like I have to make it happen. What I need to learn how to do is to relax and just let church happen when I am doing the planning and presenting. After all, I'm never really the One in charge.

Veggie Tales

Police were called to a church in Florida when two women got into a knock-down, drag-out fight with cucumbers. It seems that the church was giving away free veggies when the two ladies got into a disagreement over which veggie stash belonged to which lady. Soon the two women were pummeling each other with cucumbers, and the police had to be called to break up the fight. It is a blessing the church wasn’t giving away free watermelons!

OK, a fight at church over cucumbers sounds pretty silly. But then, having a fight at church over anything is pretty silly. Or really, it is a "shame" or a "humiliation." That is the world Paul uses to dress down the church at Corinth who were taking each other to court over property issues (1 Cor. 6:1-6). These believers were so interested in getting their way that they didn’t even think how their fights would impact the pagan world around them. In all of our fights over theological issues and church practices (fights that that outsiders could not possibly understand), did anyone possibly ponder how all this plays in Peoria. How can we be ambassadors for the Prince of Peace
when we can't get along with one another?

That church in Florida will forever be known as the place where the two ladies went at it with cucumbers. I wonder how many of our churches have forever compromised their witness because of fights, fusses and feuds that in the final analysis are just as silly as mixing it up over veggies.

A Community of the Cross

I got up this morning, kissed my sleeping wife and went off to work. It kinda felt like I was in an old Father Knows Best rerun. Usually she is up and moving around way before me. But today was the first day that school was out and teachers did not have to report for duty. One of the perks you get as a schoolteacher is getting the summer off; the other perk is a paycheck. So Lynn is now a woman of leisure… for the week or two that we don’t have something already planned.

My sermon Sunday is on the church as a community of the cross. I ran across a couple of quotations that I didn’t use in the sermon. Being a true conservative at heart, and thought I would conserve typing and use them here--

“Christianity has taken a giant stride into the absurd. Remove from Christianity its ability to shock and it is altogether destroyed. It then becomes a tiny superficial thing, capable neither of inflicting deep wounds nor of healing them. It's when the absurd starts to sound reasonable that we should begin to worry.” (Søren Kierkegaard)

“In terms of human wisdom, Jesus was a perfect fool. And if you think you can follow him without making something like the same kind of fool of yourself, you are laboring not under the cross, but a delusion.” (Frederick Buechner)

If Christians really believe that we are a community of the cross saved by God's grace to love and serve Him and others, then why do we spend so much time acting like it is what we have figured out or have accomplished that really makes the real difference in being the true church. Paul says focusing on human wisdom and strength robs the cross of its power (1 Cor 1:17). When we what we do (say like the format of our church music) a requirement for salvation, then we have robbed the cross of its power.

If we really would cling to the cross for dear life, we would not risk taking a hand away to point a finger at someone else.

You Can't Please Everyone

File this one under, “You can’t please everyone.” President Obama was being interviewed by CNBC when a pesky fly started buzzing around him. He swatted at it a couple of times, but it persisted on interrupting the interview. Finally, the President reached up and smacked it dead. It was a Kung Fu moment (“When you can take the pebble from hand, Grasshopper…”). I think it was rather impressive-- I just hope Iran and North Korea were paying attention.

Well, faster than you can say “animal activist,” there was a statement from PETA decrying the president’s obvious lack of sensitivity. Among other things, PETA said, "We support compassion even for the most curious, smallest and least sympathetic animals. We believe that people, where they can be compassionate, should be, for all animals." They also sent the president a “Katcha Bug Humane Bug Catcher” that allows one to trap a house fly and then release it outside. So we’re supposed to practice catch-and-release on flies. Shooting Alaskan wolves from helicopters is inhumane. The kid torturing cats in Florida is inhumane. But swatting flies?

You can’t please all the people all the time. And you can’t please some of the people any of the time. It seems that every time we do anything at church, there is someone who is not pleased. When we do something just a little bit differently, some people aren’t pleased. But go awhile doing things exactly the same, and other people aren’t pleased. The line from the old Ricky Nelson song “Garden Party” comes to mind, “You can’t please everyone, so you got to please yourself!”

I understand the sentiment. Get enough complaint and criticism, and you just want sing right along, “You can’t please everyone…” God wants us to sing a different tune. No everyone is at the same place in the walk with God. No everyone understands everything the same. There are people Paul calls “the weak” who need to be taught, but in the meantime need to be pleased. Paul says this in Romans 15:1-3

We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Each of us should please his neighbor for his good, to build him up. For even Christ did not please himself but, as it is written: “The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.”

No, we can’t please everyone. But that doesn’t mean we give up trying and just please ourselves. That’s not what God did, and that’s not what God wants us to do. Sometimes we have to bear with the weak. Now, the word for weak is the word incapable or powerless; it is often used to mean impossible—see Matt 19:21, Mark 10:27, Heb 6:4). So when Paul talks about the weak, he is talking about those who are incapable of understanding, those of whom more mature response is impossible. He’s not talking about someone who knows better but refuses to act better. And even cantankerous critics need a break every once in awhile.

Nope, we can’t please everyone. But we don’t therefore just please ourselves; we seek to please God.

The Most Sepcial Day of the Year

Oh, boy, it’s almost Father’s Day. It’s the most important and special holiday of the year… NOT! A recent article by Geoff Williams in Parenting suggests that “Father's Day is an afterthought, a holiday just a few steps above the one that celebrates the groundhog and that other one that promotes trees.” He compares the gift he gave his wife for Mother’s Day (the ornamental weeping cherry tree she always wanted planted in the yard beside a fancy new bird bath) with the gift she got him (some boxer shorts and a tiny reading lamp so he can read in bed without disturbing her). There does seem to be some inequity there, doesn’t it? This reminded me of a routine Bill Cosby did years ago—

On Mother’s Day you break your back working to buy some presents… On Father’s Day you say, “Dad give me some money, I want to buy you a pack of cigarettes.” Then you smoke half the pack coming home… and it’s not even his brand.

Why the difference? Cosby suggested that it is because mothers are so much easier to give gifts to. You can paint a old rock and give it to Mom and she’ll say, “Isn't that so precious; that’s the sweetest thing…” Dad will say, “Get that old rock out of the house!” He may be onto something. Mom is still easier to buy for, largely because Lynn buys her gifts!

But I have an idea the difference in importance between Mother’s Day and Father’s Day has more to do with the importance in the closeness of the relationships. Many fathers remain emotionally distant from their children; many father are just plain distant… as in not there at all. So maybe Mother’s Day is more important because mothers are more important.

Well I never borrowed money from Dad to buy him a pack of cigarettes for Father’s Day. That’s because he gave up smoking when his kids were born because he didn’t think it would be good for them to be around the smoke (that was way, way before anyone knew anything about secondhand smoke). That was only the first of a jillion sacrifices that Dad made and still makes to make sure that my sister and I have had what we needed (and usually what we wanted). If all Dads were more like my Dad, Father’s Day would be a much bigger deal as a holiday!

Catch-and-Release

Ron Hall and Denver Moore teach us something about real friendship in the book Same Kind of Different as Me. This is the true story of the improbable friendship of a rich Texas art dealer and a poor Louisiana sharecropper. Hall and his wife Dorothy began volunteering each week at a homeless shelter, and Dorothy became convinced that God wanted them to befriend Denver. Ron made halting overtures, but Denver wouldn’t even speak to them. Finally he asked Ron, "What do you want from me?" Ron replied, "I just want to be your friend." Denver promised to think about it. And he did.

He later said to Ron, "There is somethin I heard ‘bout white folks and bothers me, and it has to do with fishin." Ron wasn’t much of a fisherman, but he promised to try to answer the question. He said, 'I heard that when white folks go fishin they do somthin called 'catch and release.'' He didn’t understand that. When "colored folks" caught a fish, they would show it off to everybody and then they’d eat it. He just couldn’t understand why anyone would catch-and-release. Then it became clear that Denver wasn’t talking’ about fishin at all—

So, Mr. Ron, it occurred to me. If you is fishin for friend you just gon’ catch and release, then I ain’t got no desire to be your friend… But if you is lookin for a real friend, then I’ll be one. Forever.

Maybe that is what is wrong with our friendships and relationships today—we’re just too good at catch and release. We eschew the brother-and-sister, family-ties fellowship that is talked about in the New Testament for the catch-and-release friendships of which Denver was suspicious. Relationships among believers in the body of Christ are relationships that are forged in blood and bathed in baptism. They are not meant to be catch-and-release.

Is God Enough?

This comes from YouTube via Bobby Valentine through Alan Smith. But you need to watch this. Do we really believe that God is enough?



This is from a sermon by John Piper, and I believe he nails it pretty well. It is easy to sit in our air-conditioned auditorium singing "Blessed Be Your Name" with our praise team and PowerPoint while everything around us seems to be going well. But what about when things aren't going so well. The point of that song and the point of our faith is that God is God during the good times and the bad. We don't serve God so that he will bless us with great cars great jobs, great home, and great families. We serve God because God is God, and God is enough. He may bless us with jobs and homes and cars and families. Or he may bless us with suffering and struggle and hardship. But God is God despite what happens in our and in what happens in our lives. God is enough.

The Old Disappearing Hitchhiker Trick

Patrick Mead has a story on his blog that relates to our study of "Angels and Demons" on Wednesday nights. An abbreviated version goes like this—

A woman is driving down the highway and sees someone on the side of the road. She has the strong feeling God wants her to pick him up, and she does. She and her rider get into a spiritual conversation, and he finally tells her that God sent him to tell people that the Lord is getting ready to come back. The woman didn’t realize that she was speeding until a cop pulled her. She apologized, telling the cop that she wasn’t paying attention because she was talking to the man, but her rider was gone. She started to insist that there was a man riding with her, but the cop stopped her and said, “You are the 16th person I have pulled over with the exact same story.”

Could God have sent an angel in this way to announce that He is coming back? Well, angels have already announced that, right? (See Acts 1:11). This particular story is a pretty common urban legend that dates back into the 40’s (see Snopes.com for more details). Actually, it is a good idea to check out any story you get in an email at Snopes.com to see if it is a documented urban legend. Let me quote part of what Patrick says in response--

It is WAY to easy to get into a one-up battle with people when it comes to healing stories, stories of miracles, numbers of baptisms, success of missions, etc. I repeat — God doesn’t need the help and it makes outsiders laugh at us. I was in a discussion once where a pastor insisted that he defeated a demon and cast him out of a parishioner while the doctor (who actually treated the person) said that medicine brought the man around to his senses. Minirith and Meier (Christian psychiatrists who run a well known clinic) are famous for saying that demons seem to be allergic to Thorazine; their way of saying that many things pastors say are caused by demons are really caused by biology and can be treated by pharmacology).

I believe in demons, angels, healings, and miracles. I also believe that the curtain between our reality and Reality in the spiritual realm usually stays closed. Consider this as an example: I don’t think Daniel saw God every day even though he prayed to Him three times a day for over 70 years. We have records indicating that God showed up in Daniel’s life — pulled that curtain aside — a handful of times. Stephen, the great martyr, saw the curtain pulled back at the point of his death. Forgive me, but I am suspicious when I hear people speak as if God not only twitches the curtain far more often in their lives than He ever did for Daniel or Paul or Stephen, but has pulled it down and snuggled next to them on the couch.

C.S. Lewis in his book Miracles suggests that a world in which miracles happened regularly would be a world of chaos and magic. God doesn’t send angels to everyone or work miracles in everyone. That didn’t happen in the lives of Bible characters, and we shouldn’t expect it to happen today. On the other hand, God just may be a bit annoyed when we start talking about the things that He can no longer do today. As far as I’m concerned, God can do anything He decides to do. I’m sure He is relieved that I have given Him my permission!

What Are Your Giant Hidden Cherubs?

We’ve been studying angels and demons on Wednesday nights. Actually, I title the series “Angels and Demons” to coincide with the new Tom Hanks movie in the theaters now. Cute, huh? The title PowerPoint slide each week is a graphic from the movie poster. Such shamelessness keeps me from having to have original thoughts.

One of the points that has come out of this study for me is that angels are all over the place in the Bible. I never thought about that. Angels don’t just show up with an occasional message for the prophets, announce the birth of Christ to the angels and then rest up for the grand finale in Revelation—they are all over the place in the Bible. Makes you wonder whether or not they are still all over the place.

My reading for this morning from 1 Kings 6 mentions angels. Well, these are really cherubs. Actually they aren’t real cherubs but the huge representation of cherubs that Solomon placed in the most holy place in the temple. He had this huge pair of cherubs carved out of olive wood. They were 15 feet tall, and their wings spanned the entire room, touching the wall on one side and the other cherub’s wing on the other. And the entire cherub carved from olive wood was overlaid with gold. Solomon made these giant golden cherubs with wall-to-wall golden wings… to be placed in a room where they would be seen by only one man only one time each year! These cherubs must have been astonishingly impressive, but no one ever saw them except the high priest... and God! Solomon would have likely said that this was the point—God would see them and thus it had to be perfect.

There are parts of our lives that we rarely (or never) let other people see. There are parts of ourselves that we keep buried deep within us— our failures and our fears, our dreams and our nightmares, our hopes for the futures, our doubts in the present and our pains from the past. Maybe we share parts of these with a few people, but we work very hard to hide them from most. Maybe we hide them from ourselves. If we make enough noise with our frantic, frenetic lifestyles, there is never that quiet time where self-examination takes place

We need to know that God knows. The same God who gazed upon Solomon’s cherubs hidden away from almost everyone else also sees the darkest and most secret parts of us that we keep hidden. After all, we are his temple and He reigns over every part of us. Nothing is secret from Him.

O LORD, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD. (Psalm 139:1-4)

At the Movies

Lynn and I have been talking about going to the movies. We haven’t actually gone, but are talking about it. Actually, it's more like negotiation, We don't like the same movies. I like action-adventure and sci-fi; she likes romantic comedies. We both liked Titanic and Pear Harbor— romance while stuff blew up! I think the last movie we saw in a theater that we both liked was The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. But we haven't been in awhile, and so we need to go to the movies (someone gave us an AMC movie card last Christmas and we still haven't used it).

We did agree on last year’s sleeper hit Slumdog Millionaire. We both hated it. OK, maybe not “hated it.” Actually, we liked the ending and the music-video-credits at the end, but there was an awful lot of dreary before you get there! That is what makes me nervous about the next movie Lynn wants us to see, Up. Why am I nervous? Because of things like I read in Greg Boyd’s blog today—

For my 52nd birthday I went to the animated movie Up with Shelley and a couple of friends. What a marvelous birthday present!! People, you HAVE to see this show (and in the theaters, not on DVD, and in 3-D, not 2-D…the 3-D effects were incredible!) Second only to Slumdog Millionaire, this show was the most amazing thing produced in the last year.

See? The same people that liked Slumdog are pushing Up. Fool me once, shame on me… Lynn talked me into seeing Slumbog because "somebody" told her it was really good. Now we are supposed to see Up because "somebody" told her it was really good. We only go to the movies a couple times a year, so I’d like for this one to be good (I still haven’t seen Star Trek or Angels and Demons for cryin' out loud). So what am I going to do? Somebody help me out here.

Wait a minute. It was "somebody" who told us to go to the last one!

Wallowing with the Heathen?

Last night I dreamed that I was outside in a fierce storm with the wind blowing in my face. Then I woke up to discover that I had pulled the mask of my new CPAP machine halfway off and it was blowing air in my face! I don’t know about this machine; I felt like I was being smothered. It is a lot easier to inhale than to exhale, so I feel like I’m constantly hyperventilating. I guess smothering on the mask or getting strangled on the hose is better than getting axe murdered in my sleep… which Lynn informed might happen if I didn’t get the snoring thing fixed.

Yesterday, I mentioned in the blog something about deacons smoking outside on the porch after church. Cathy told me this morning that they used to do the same thing at her church as well. I remember that also happening at my grandmother’s church. And this was during the time when preacher’s routinely preached against smoking as a worldly thing that Christians shouldn’t do. Is that a bit strange?

I also remember hearing sermons against “mixed bathing” (swimming with members of the opposite sex) on Sunday and then seeing my church friends at the pool on Monday. Camp still has strict rules against mixed swimming although all of the kids go to the pool and the beach all the time. One local preacher used to preach a sermon each spring on the evils of going to the beach (someone once told me that the title of his sermon was “Wallowing with the Heathen”). The sermon is routine… and routinely ignored!

My point here isn’t that we need to get back to the good old days when we didn’t wallow with the heathen. The point is that we didn’t follow the command not to wallow even when it was routinely being preached. It seems to me that we were training ourselves and our young people not to really take what the church preached too seriously. I mean, we heard that smoking and going to the pool was wrong and then saw Christians smoking and going to the pool. (Not at the same time; the pool had strict rules against smoking). So what was the point of all that?

I wonder what ways that our church today is going out of its way to be irrelevant?

Summertime Sunday Nights

Today is June 2, which makes Sunday June 7. So Sunday is a very important date on our church calendar— it's the first Sunday after the end of small group season. Instead of meeting in various small groups in different homes (some of which are not Sunday night), we will all meeting together at the church building at 6:00 p.m. for Sunday night services. We do different things on Summertime Sunday Nights--

• Old Fashion Sing-Song Night. Here every man (sorry Kati) in the church gets the chance to lead a song or two.
  
  
• Pepperdine Bible Lectures Night. The church watches a DVD of Jeff Walling or Mike Cope or Don McLaughlin preach and see what its like to hear good preaching.
  
  
• Praise Night. The praise team leads us a fast-paced, up-tempo worship and then I preach an inspiring lesson. In other words, we redo Sunday morning.
  
  
• Ministry Night. We break up into teams that sing at the nursing home, make visits, address cards, or spend time in focused prayer. We’ll do one of these right before Upward and VBS to get last minute details ready.
  
  
• Retro-Night. Here we have a throwback service where we do things just like we used to-- two songs, a prayer, a song, a sermon, a song, a closing prayer and then the deacons go out to smoke on the porch (just kidding).
  
  
• Unity Night: We’re hoping to have some joint services with other churches in the area. That is still in the works.

We have all of these things scheduled, or at least tentatively planned. What we don't really know is WHY! Why have a service on Sunday night at all? What is the purpose? We still have people who come every time the door are open; you don’t really have to do much for them except open the doors. We have parents with small children who won't t likely come unless we do something for the children, but most of the people who come on Sunday night work with the children every other service. The only guests we generally have on Sunday evening are people traveling from out of town (not people from our community).

So what exactly is the purpose of having a second service on Sunday night? Before we learned that we are saved by grace and not works, Sunday night attendance was how you separated the faithful from the unfaithful church members. OK, that is not the purpose any more, but it does seem like we ought have a purpose. Right now, the purpose of our Sunday night service is to have something on Sunday night. Measuring success is quite easy here—if we have something Sunday night, then we've succeeded! It seems like we can do better.

Language and Gospel

I try hard very hard to be socially, ethnically and racially sensitive. One of the worst insults anyone could throw at me is to call me a racist. (Well, that and calling me a Cowboys fan). I’m all for truth and justice, but I know that the American way is only one way among many ways. I don’t expect the whole world to speak English. I BOTH regret that so many American jobs have been outsourced overseas AND I admire and respect people in other countries who work so hard and so long to better their lives and the opportunities for their children.

All of that aside... ARGH! I just spent an hour and a half on the phone with tech support at Xerox trying to get our copier/printer/scanner printing and scanning. All the network settings somehow got completely scrambled (I brought up the web interface for the printer, I got our web cam! Fun!) A network printer/scanner that has no network settings is neither a printer nor a scanner. So I called Xerox. The young woman I talked to was eager to be of assistance. Every time I called, she asked, “How may I be of assistance?” (At least, I think that’s what she said.) The problem was that she didn’t have the English skills to communicate clearly enough to walk me through the technical issue. Hey, I don’t speak Hindi or Bengali or Telugu, and I’m not trying to be the ugly American. But when communicating technical information to Americans is your job, you really need to be able to speak English. Or is it just me?

I eventually just let her think that she had solved the problem and then spent 10 minutes on Google and figured it out myself. After setting up a new IP for on the printer then changing the IP in the printer driver on the computers, I had to give it a 139 port number for the scanner driver. I don’t now why, but it seems to work; the copier is now a scanner and printer again. Roger is on his own changing his printer driver—I don’t do Vista. Vista is a foreign language.

When you want to communicate important information, it is up to you to make sure you are speaking the right language. I wonder if that is our problem when communicating the gospel to a world that is totally foreign. We tend to make arguments and stress issues that made little sense a generation ago and that now totally garble the basic message of the gospel. To be honest, postmodern people have little interest in arguments period; they want to see something working. So maybe the more we argue, the less it looks like the gospel is working. I’m not suggesting that we back away from truth; our story (metanarrative in postmodern parlance) is still the greatest story every told. But when we equate this story to our silly-isms and arguments from command-example-inference, we confuse people with what amounts to a foreign language. The world is asking today (even when they don’t know that it’s what they’re asking), “We would like to see Jesus” (Jn 12:21). We need to make sure we use the right words; we need to point to the Word.

Church Problems

A sad but true fact—all of us know of too many stories of churches that became so embroiled in conflict and disagreement that things happened that would be downright silly if they were not true—

• In one church, a leadership disagreement got so heated that a deacon’s wife whacked one of the elders with her purse! I’m not sure, but I think elder-whacking is wrong for most people. I hope I’m not giving anyone any ideas.
  
  
• After one church spent a long time in prayer and preparation, one congregation decided to begin using a praise team in worship. Not everyone was happy with the elder’s decision (if you can imagine that). On the first Sunday for the praise team to lead worship, someone went through and cut every mike cord with a pair of scissors. I hope I’m not giving anyone any ideas.
  
  
• An elder of a storefront startup church in our area became so angry after a meeting that he stormed out, and returned a short time later with a gun. He shot the preacher dead and then burned down the building. Boy, I really hope I’m not giving anyone any ideas!

We sometimes talk about restoring the NT church. We may have done a better job of that than we realize— every church we know about in the New Testament had unity problems! In fact, the reason that we know about churches like Corinth and Galatians is because they had these problems. Paul wrote his letters to help these churches solve their problems. So if there were any “problemless” churches in the first century, we wouldn’t know about them!

I heard one preacher suggest that Philippi was a church that had no real church problems. What book was he reading? Sure, Paul talks about joy a lot in Philippians, but he never really accuses them of having any! Three of the four things Paul tells the church to do in Philippians 2:2 are about having the same mind. Why? They weren’t of one mind. Hey Paul tells Syzygus, the loyal yokefellow, to step between two warring sisters and help settle them down. What are the chances that ol' Syzygus got whacked with a purse?

Philippi had the same church problem that my church has—it was full of people that want to have their own way. I look back at some of the rough spots that we have had here, and I have to admit that I was not always on the side of the angels. Sometimes I wanted my own way too much. After all, I was more consistent in my exegesis and smarter, obviously, because I knew how to say “exegesis.” What I wasn’t smart enough to see is that God was giving me a chance to do the Christ thing and lay down myself as a sacrifice. If I would have done that, I would have been walked on. But I might have also given the Spirit the space to do His holy work on the hearts of others.

I’m beginning to understand that the church will not have unity until we desire it more than we want to be right and have our own way. How do we do that? Paul gets us a long way down the road in what he says in Philippians 2:3-11 (NLT)

3 Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. 4 Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too. 5 You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had.
6 Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to.
7 Instead, he gave up his divine privileges; he took the humble position of a slave
and was born as a human being.
When he appeared in human form,8 he humbled himself in obedience to God
and died a criminal’s death on a cross.
9 Therefore, God elevated him to the place of highest honor and gave him the name above all other names,
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,to the glory of God the Father.