A Bally Mennonite Blogger

Worship Wars Re-Thunk

2012-01-17T14:16:00.001-05:00

In the missional and emerging church movements throughout the Christian church in the US today, one particular item seems to be a sticking point for a lot of people. For that matter, going back to the "seeker-sensitive" movement from Willow Creek and other churches, this topic has been a matter of scrutiny. What topic is that? Music and worship style on Sunday morning.

"Worship Wars" is one of the terms that is frequently given to this particular tension in the church. For the most part, this is divided into three main camps. On one side, you have the traditional minded people who find great inspiration in the rituals of Sunday morning worship, whether it is high liturgical style or a more casual liturgy. Stages of the Sunday morning service are well delineated and song selection is from the old hymns of the church. On the other side you have the contemporary people. Liturgy, if there is any, consists of some very simple stages. There are announcements, a prayer time, an offering, a LOT of up-beat Vineyard/Hillsong/Chris Tomlin music selections (with, perhaps, a hymn or two done with some really cool rhythms), and a nice long "relevant" sermon. And from week to week, the service really doesn't seem to have a predictable order. It's how things "flow" and "move" for the morning. Somewhere in the middle, especially when it comes to music, is the "blended" style which mixes the traditional liturgy with hymns and contemporary songs, seeking to, instead of catering to one side or the other, bring the best of all worlds together.

For many who have been through the worship wars, this last option, blended worship, seems to be the best option. First, it acknowledges the good in both ends of the spectrum, affirming people from both sides that their preferred style of worship is good. Secondly, it removes some of the "consumer" part of the church that comes along with adopting a contemporary service style (gotta be "marketable" to a new generation). You could also say it does the same for the traditionalists. Everyone has something they can appreciate and no-one is left out. Finally, it maintains a relevance to the culture around us while celebrating the history that has gone on before, introducing both traditionalists and contemporary folks to the good in both sides, teaching an appreciation for the "other".

But really, is it any better? I was challenged on this recently, hence this blog post. All three stances are just simply points on a spectrum. On one end is totally traditional. On the other is totally contemporary. And, depending upon degree, blended can call anywhere in between. They are all just different ways of Sunday morning worship expression. But what if we decide to go off the continuum? The assumption in all three of these things is that one of the most important things about church life together is the Sunday morning service. What if that's not the case?

Think about church life in general in most organized churches. Of all the time, money, and personnel invested in the church, how much of it is spent on a few hours on Sunday morning (or, if you're a mega-church, in coordinating all the various services over the weekend). Even if your church has other activities during the week (small groups, youth groups, etc), I'd be willing to bet that when it comes down to it, the lion's share of your resources are invested in those Sunday corporate worship experiences.

Before y'all start posting comments about "well, my church does this" or "my church does that", I acknowledge right up front that I'm doing a lot of generalizing here. There are exceptional churches out there that don't fall into this trap. And I think it is folks in those churches who can just click the "exit" button on this blog post and not read any further. But generally speaking, for quite a long time in the US, church has been all about what happens on Sunday morning. And, for a long time, this has actually been a good thing. When the culture around you supports communal efforts of caring for your neighbors, looking out for your friends, etc., the culture already supports church lived out and, in those times, all the church needs to do is provide the space for worship and some "support" systems for training.

But the American culture has moved beyond that. Again, generally speaking, our culture has moved to an odd blend of big corporate systems and individualistic needs. An individual has a need in our culture, they are encouraged to seek out a big corporate system (whether it is government, a non-profit aid agency, or, yes, even the church) and have their needs met. Relationships and communities are only there for social activities and even those are highly individualized any more (how many games and social activities are supported now by the internet where you don't even have to know the names of the people that you're interacting with?).

Into this culture, then, Sunday morning worship has become that "big corporate system" to meet an "individualistic need". Even the blended worship caters to this individualism in a way. But beyond that, with the focus still being on the morning worship and communities being fragmented, the morning worship has become more than just an expression of worship. It is that plus the community relationships plus the support time plus the discipleship ministries, all rolled up into one. Sunday morning worship has become the "big corporation" that provides needs for individuals and, as much as even the blended worship tries to combat consumerism in the church, it has played right into the same trap.

Do we abandon corporate worship then in this formalized fashion? Or do we try something else, some other point on the spectrum? What's the right answer here?

I think the answer is actually radically different. What if all those things we want to get out of our Sunday morning worship are refocused somewhere else? What if, instead of trying to get our community, our sharing together, our enjoyment of the "other", and all that other stuff from our Sunday morning experience, we make church about all the rest of the time? Worship time is then just another ministry of the church.

You say you want people to get teaching and training on how to live like Christ. Well, a good sermon can help, but what about those particular problems people face? How do people interact in order to understand and learn how to apply Christ's teachings in their context?

You say you want people to gather together in a community experience and share life together? Well, I don't think sitting in a pew staring at the back of other people's heads will do any good for that.

You say you want people to learn from the older generation and the younger generation together, to share experiences and to broaden our understanding of God by mutual edification. How does one preacher, a worship leader, and a few hymns do that?

Worship is only a small part of the church. It's important, but it is only a small part. I do believe that there needs to be a corporate worship expression of some sort in a Christian's life, but is it so vital that we must all be doing things in the same way at the same time? If these other needs of congregational life are met in other ministries of the church, does it matter if you have multiple services with different formats or a single blended service or whatever?

Your style of worship, how many services you have, even if you have a worship service, are things that are part of the particular contextual expression of your congregation. Some churches, because of their history and context, will find they need a traditional style if they are ministering to a lot of people who come from liturgical churches and find it difficult to worship in some other fashion. Some churches may need a contemporary style where there are people who don't have a lot of church experience and culturally connect to more contemporary services. Some churches may need a blended style because of their own history and struggles. Some may need multiple services in multiple styles because they need to meet many different people where they are. And that's the key. If the worship service is just one of many ministries of the church, then, as a ministry the needs of the people being ministered to must take precedence. Along with that, those other ministries of the church can then be given more attention. If the church is no longer focused solely on maintaining and operating an elaborate Sunday morning experience that meets all the needs of the various church members, then those other ministries that are specifically focused on those things can get the attention they deserve.

The worship service is just that, a means of serving others. It is a way that the church provides a space and a place for people to come together and worship God. Each congregation has different people in different contexts that they need to serve. To point out one way over another as the "right" way is missing the point. Serving means kneeling down and taking on a role of meeting people where they are in order to give them an means to experience god-centered worship. Different gatherings of Christ-followers are going to look different because, well, we're different. When turned around to an incarnational, missional view of the worship service being how the congregation "goes" to the people, then all these worship wars, all these arguments about "authentic" worship, all these ideas of being "relevant" and "seeker friendly" just go away.

The Heart of the Matter

2011-12-22T10:56:00.003-05:00

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Romans 12:14

“But I say to you who are willing to hear: Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who mistreat you... Be compassionate just as your Father is compassionate." Luke 6:27-28, 36, CEV

These are verses that have seemed to be a recurring theme in my life over the last two years. They have kept me firmly grounded as I deal with a difficult neighbor. They have been words to encourage a daughter dealing with a bully at school.

This week, however, in talking with my third grader, I realized why these ideas are so important. Why do I need to love my neighbor and be kind to those who treat me like dirt? Is it to make me look holier? To put them to shame? Is it simply to reflect Christ's own life? Is it just what I'm supposed to do?

Perhaps it goes way beyond all of that. When we allow ourselves to hate an enemy, disdain them, demean them, we dehumanize them. Even when our actions are obedient to these passages, if our hearts don't follow, we have closed ourselves off from these people. This is where Luke 6:36 enters into the equation: "Be compassionate, even as your Father is compassionate."

My third grader was teased terribly on the bus in kindergarten by a little girl who is now in her class this year. Apparently, this other child wants to be my daughter's friend now. My daughter has been resisting - after all, she was mean! But what if this other child has changed, grown up a bit? If my little one harbors that resentment, she does not allow for grace. I have suggested that she take another look, and give this little girl a second chance.

Without compassion, we do not allow people around us to change. We hold on to our picture of who someone is and, like a still shot, it never alters. But life is not a still shot. I am not who I was ten years ago. My life has moved me around, causing me to shift and change and grow.

Love your enemies. Pray for them. Bless them. Do good for them. Have compassion for them. Give them the space they need as they shift and grow. Look for God's image in them. Take it beyond the actions of obedience to an attitude of grace.

"Faith IS Action"

2011-11-30T21:05:00.001-05:00

The class I'm taking in seminary right now is about Apologetics and post-modernism. As part of this, our professor suggested we start looking at and thinking about the idea of "what is faith?" And, of course, to answer that, he pointed us to Hebrews 11. But he asked us to look at the chapter and think a bit about what we do not see in the chapter when it talks about the people who demonstrated faith. And, what we do not see, is that no one who was considered "faithful" is mentioned in giving a statement of belief in a particular doctrine but, instead, the are all acting. I asked some Facebook friends for their opinion and one friend, a Christian woman, gave an excellent perspective on this. With her permission, I am posting it here. Hope it enlightens a bit.

So, Hebrews 11:1 says “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” So that means we get to decide whether to “have” faith or not. Maybe “practise” is a better word. So having faith, of course, does not involve proof. So why should we choose it? Why should we believe in a God that we could just as easily have made up in our own heads as have been created by?

When children are asked to “believe” in Tinkerbell or else she will die, we don't have time to think it through logically. All we know is we can choose not to believe in her and she might die as a result or we can choose to believe in her and she might continue to live. And of course, not one of us is willing to be responsible for the consequences if we have chosen not to believe so we decide to believe at that moment. This is a result of an urgent call on our rational mind to help decide what to do with the need of the emotion mind. (They always do work best when in a fairly equal mix)

So now we wonder, “Is God just a Tinkerbell for adults?” If so, why should I believe in God or Tinkerbell?

What do we get out of believing in Tinkerbell? Well, for starters, if she does die, it's somebody else's fault! We did our part darnit! And we are rewarded for our faith by having her live. Yay! Because we like Tinkerbell and we want her to still be there for us as our friend and a piece of magic in our lives. So we get to keep that friend and her continued life confirms our faith.

So how does believing in God help us or reward us? Well there are a lot of rewards to a life of faith, starting with confidence that “My life means something.” “What I do matters.” The ability to keep simply getting up in the morning is made easier if we think there is some point to existing. But, beyond all of the emotional rewards, why should I choose to believe something without proof and play the self-delusion game?

When I walk down the street, suppose that I cross paths with 10 people. Let's also say that 5 of them smile at me and I, without even thinking, automagically smile back. We all have experienced a lifting of spirits by exchanging a brief smile with a stranger on the street. We get some sort of endorphin rush from it and spread the smile. So in this instance, we have at least 6 people smiling....depending how early in the process we decided to keep the smile and share it with however many are left of the non-smilers.

Now, instead, let's decide that I will walk down the street smiling the whole time. That means that all 11 people smile and feel better about their day; definitely, as opposed to the possibility above. So I've gotten a reward from my own brain each time and so have each of the others as we met. Nice.

So what happens when this is applied to faith?

When I get home and want dinner, I have to decide that I will cook dinner before I can eat it. Or I have to earn the money first in order to buy dinner. I have to decide that I will run the water before I get a nice hot bath. If I decide I don't believe dinner will happen tonight, odds are that it won't (unless I have a cooperative and understanding spouse or friend...and that probably required that I've been willing to pay for this in the past as well by doing similar favours as part of an ongoing relationship). So it could be said that I have to invest a certain amount of faith in the result by taking action before anything can happen. This is similar to the concept that, whether you believe you can or that you can't, you're right.

We have just created a reality.

But, if we are creating God's existence, then how do we justify faith that He/She created us and everything in the past? (Whether time actually exists or not? I'm not qualified or prepared to go there!) Therefore, paradox exists.

So if “God” does not exist, I lose all the rewards of faith and hopefully survive anyway and live a meaningful life in some other way. If “God” does exist, I can create my own positive environment and live a happier, more fulfilled life and it will be true because I made it so. Which still begs the question. Cause and effect. It can't have caused me to be if I caused it to be.

My next question is “Who put the food in the fridge?” It might have been me or it might have been someone else. But someone set up the potential for dinner. Someone put in plumbing and installed a bathtub. Someone made it possible for me to create my own reality by faith. Well, maybe not. Maybe it all just happened. If so, it's a pretty amazing happening. The way nature dovetails and cycles through phases and life keeps continuing and change keeps occurring while everything stays the same.

We have what appears to be unlimited growth potential as human beings. We continue to learn more about our environment every day and continue creating medical miracles and there doesn't seem to be an end in sight. We are so far from knowing it all at this point that we have no way to imagine how may eons it will be before we have a clue where the end point could ever be. There is no way to solve this mystery at this point in existence. At least not for us humans.

Perhaps if we can't determine the big truth here, we have to settle for the myriad of smaller truths that we do have? Perhaps we have to go with a working hypothesis and choose the most effective option? It has already been determined that people with some sort of belief system tend to be healthier and happier. We can choose to believe that God is only a human construct, though the word “only” in the context of what humans can construct may be inappropriate. We may need to believe in the evidence of our own eyes that humans can do miraculous things as it is, before we can believe in God. Before we can conceive that that we could have a creator, we may have to believe in the magic that we create in the universe ourselves, so we can see that there could be a bigger pattern. That our pattern that we are weaving everyday may be one small piece of a much huger concept; just like with fractals.

I guess for me, knowing that I will never, on this earth, understand the answer unless there is a God, knowing that choosing faith is pragmatic, effective, and fits the patterns as I can see them so far, knowing that if faith can create the reality, the potential must be there in the first place and I didn't put those groceries in that fridge and neither did any other human I can imagine, there is only one choice. Unless I choose to live in depression, fear, anxiety, hopelessness....and how can I choose that? So yes Tinkerbell, I do believe in fairies.

Thoughts? Opinions?

It's a gift!

2011-11-21T13:56:00.001-05:00

I give to you, at the start of this article, two very interesting and related scenes from the Peter Jackson directed film adaptation of Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring. Watch these first, and then read on.

The first one they have disabled embedding. You can watch it here

The second, and perhaps most relevant, is here

So, why am I having you watch videos about Lord of the Rings? I mean, besides it being my favorite fantasy series of books and, by far, the best films made...ever...

Well, perhaps this quote I got from a friend on Facebook will help:

We use political means or other avenues to try to solve the problems, and we end up like a person trying to put a forest fire out with a squirt gun. Let’s use the spiritual weapons that God has given us. -Greg Laurie

Here's the crux of it.

Boromir considered the possibility of using the immense power of the Ring to overcome the Enemy, not remembering that the very nature of evil personified in Sauron was inseperable from the Ring, that to use the Ring, you are essentially trying to use evil to defeat evil, a task that will never solve anything.

So, does it make sense then for Christians to expect that, using the worldly systems, guided by worldly values, and empowered by worldly mindsets, they will achieve something that is otherworldly?

Think about it.

The Beauty of Diversity

2011-11-19T21:56:00.001-05:00

Recently, I've had a number of conversations with people as to what church should look like in a worship service, how theology should be expressed, how do we explain our faith, etc. Everyone seems to have an opinion of which way to worship is the right way. Do we use high liturgy? Or is it a little more relaxed? Or a lot more relaxed? Do we meet formally at a church building or in our homes? How do we explain our theology? Should it be western Greek based logical progression or something more mystical and transcendant? Hymns or pop-culture-inspired songs? Tie and coat or jeans and T-shirt?

You know what's sad? It is questions like this that split the church time and time again.

Recently, I've started a plan from BibleGateway.com to read through the Bible in a year, Old and New Testament. Most recently, I've been through part of Isaiah, all of Jeremiah, Lamentations, and a bit of Ezekial from the Old Testament, and from the New I've been through all of Hebrews, 1 & 2 Timothy, and Titus. As I was reading through Hebrews, I couldn't help contrast the context of that book with the way Paul presents the faith in his other writings. More specifically, being that it's my favorite New Testament book, I did just some mental comparison of the book of Romans.

You know, it was kind of funny, but both Hebrews and Romans seem to have the same purpose, that being to give a basic primer and description of what the Christian faith is all about to a set of readers who need that basic level of instruction. If such is the case, you would think that the two books should look and feel and read almost exactly the same...but they don't.

Romans is most definitely written to a group of people more familiar with logical reasoning, a progression of thought from one point to another to prove a point and come to an ultimate conclusion. Paul, literally, starts at the beginning, with Creation, and progresses through sin, law, lawlessness, rebellion, grace, and through to the transformation that is salvation and beyond to what that transformed life looks like. It is very scholarly, intellectual, logical, and it makes sense from that perspective.

Meanwhile, Hebrews presents an entirely different description of what Christianity is all about. Instead of the logical progression of Greek and Roman reasoning, Hebrews spends a lot of time talking about heaven and earth and the representations on earth of the true kingdom, temple, and throne in heaven. It is a very mystical book, full of imagery from a ritualized, temple culture, describing priests, sacrifices, thrones, etc. And yet, it also talks about what is salvation, what a changed life is about, and then what that changed life looks like afterwards.

Can you really explain the same faith, that of Jesus Christ as Lord, in such two radically different ways?

Apparently so.

And yet here, 2000 years later, we argue about musical style. We argue about atonement theory. We argue about the specific relationships within the Trinity (did you know that the Orthodox and the Roman Catholic church pretty much split up over a single word?). We argue about what heaven is like. What hell is like. Is there heaven or hell? Have we ever considered, perhaps, that different people need different images and different metaphors and different phrases, and even different ways of explaining the same thing?

Here's a practical example. See, I'm, originally, a scientifically minded mathematician. My wife is a musician. And you thought the church had it bad. Really, my wife and I look at the world in such radically different ways that, quite truthfully, our discussions get, erm, energetic. But when we take a step back a bit and consider these fundamental differences in how we look at the world, all we can do, the two of us, is laugh and say, "Did we really just fight over that?"

So, we have Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox. And even those are split up. Protestants have Lutherans, Reformed, Methodists, Presbyterians, Baptists, and a whole host of others. Catholics have Vatican 1 and Vatican 2 and all sorts of different little sub sets. Orthodox have some divisions internal (although I confess, probably not NEARLY so badly as in the Protestant groups). And we even have folks who have said, "We don't like ANY of the groups out there so we reject them all and go our own way." You have to admit, this is all just so sad.

Does it really have to be either/or? This or that? Here or there? Something that I've found interesting in some recent discussions is that, when you really dive into the Scriptures, suddenly it's not "either/or" but "both/and". It is both faith AND works that characterize the follower of Christ. It is both solemn reverence AND celebration that are found in Christian worship. And don't get me started on all the "ands" that describe what Christ's death and resurrection can be described as (substitutionary, penal, Christus victor, re-capitulation, etc.).

Even the gospels have this subtlety to them. Compare Matthew to John and we have the same Jesus, many of the same stories, many of the same teachings, and yet described so differently. Why? Because different people need different ways of looking at things to come to the same understanding.

My point? Let's just stop with all the sniping, snarking, finger pointing, blame fixing, condemnation, and prejudiced stereotypes that we use. We are supposed to be all one body, right?

Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. - Ephesians 4:2-6 NIV 2011

Let's try and remember this.

Is this a joke?

2011-11-19T21:18:00.001-05:00

A Catholic, a Protestant, a Hindu, a Muslim and an atheist sat in a meeting...

Don't wait for the punchline because there isn't one. At least, not a funny one. Or, perhaps...well...

Anyways, this really happened. As best as I can determine it, at least. I could be entirely wrong about the men I was in the meeting with and their particular religious orientation. But that is neither here nor there.

The point is that this is becoming the reality in the United States today and, for that matter, in many areas of the Western World. This has already been the status quo in many countries in Africa, Asia and South America for many years. And, as the world continues its shrinking trend where travel between nations becomes more common, global telecommunications brings people together, and the lines between cultures become more and more blurred, this will become more the norm than the exception.

There are those in the Christian church, especially in the United States, who would mourn this state of affairs and fight tooth and nail to prevent it. "We must preserve our Christian culture! We cannot have these people coming in here trying to turn us into their kind of people." To some extent, I may agree, but only as regards to the constitution of our nation. There is such a thing as the rule of law and there is a foundational law in our country that needs to be considered in everything. But, I digress.

The point is not whether or not the country should allow people of other walks of faith among us, the point is that this is how things are and we have a choice to make. Are we going to feel threatened by this? Or is this a chance for us, in Christ's church, to show our mettle and prove to the world that we are confident in our faith?

You see, this is not the only time in history when Christians have had to live among other religions. In fact, this was the norm for churches like Ephesus, Thessalonika, Phillipi, Corinth, Galatia, and Rome. In all these places, there were Jews, followers of the Emporer cult, worshipers of the Greek gods, worshipers of the Roman gods, Egyptian mysticism and divinity cults, etc. Move ahead a few centuries and we have the Teutonics in Germania and the Druids in what is the United Kingdom today. Historically speaking, we have had a pretty special privilege for the past few centuries, both in the US and in Europe, of Christianity being, if not the specific religion of choice for the general populous, at least the religion that had the strongest influence on culture in general.

I guess it would be normal to look around and see a culture that has stood for a thousand years or more (that being, generally, Christendom) crumble as it has and feel a sense of fear and loss. But I think this is a golden opportunity for Christians in the West to rediscover what it really means to live the Christ-like life. Now we have to work at it, now we have to really spend the time and discern, as the cliche goes, "What would Jesus do?" because society is no longer driven, in general by those phrases.

So, how do we do this then? Well, we fall beck, first, to what Jesus said were the two most important things for us to consider when it comes to how to live our lives.

Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” - Matthew 22:34-39 NIV 2011

What is most important, really, is to devote ourselves to God with our entire being and to demonstrate this devotion in the love we show to our fellow humans.

But what do we do about all those non-Christians around us? Well, part of our work should certainly be the working out of the Great Commission, to make disciples of Jesus. But the rest of the time? You know, those times when you go to work, go to school, go to the market, interact with the government, with society, etc.? What about all those times?

Well, back to those churches in those cities I mentioned, Paul had some interesting advice. To Rome he said, in regards to the government and the other folks watching:

For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended - Romans 13:3 NIV 2011

to the Thessalonians

so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody. - 1 Thessalonians 4:12 NIV 2011

And there are many other passages to the same extent. Live at peace with others, as much as you are able. Do unto others what you would have them do unto you. Love your enemy, pray for those who persecute you. Live righteously so that you may be a city on the hill, a light to the world, salt to the earth.

A multicultural society is not to be feared. We are given confidence, as followers of Christ, that we are earnestly, honestly, faithfully seeking the truth. And because of that confidence, and because of the promises that he will go ahead of us into the world, there is nothing to fear. "They will know we are Christians by our love" as the song says... in fact, the whole of the book of first John essentially says the same thing.

Do we have to agree with them? Do we have to say, "Your way is just as good as mine"? No, we don't. But we also don't have to fear others, we certainly should not avoid them, and if we truly love other people as being made in the image of God, even if they don't follow the same God, that does not negate this simple truth.

Instead of xenophobia, instead of drawing lines between our societies, instead of building walls, lets let humans be humans. Share the truth of Christ in our deeds, in our actions, so that, when they look at us, they see that light, that salt, the city on the hill and they will be challenged to question, "What makes them different?" And be among them so that, when they do ask, we are prepared to answer. Always be prepared to defend the faith, as Paul wrote to Timothy. This is how we live, then. Not in fear, not in enmity with the "other", but as faithful ambassadors to the world of the Kingdom that we call home.

"i don’t wanna go to heaven if i cant get in"

2011-10-23T16:11:00.000-04:00

The title of this blog post is the "hook" line of a recent song by the band O.A.R. (stands for "Of A Revolution") called "Heaven". It's an interesting song with an interesting set of lyrics (you can read them here).

Quite truthfully, if you listen to the world around us right now, in movies, in the newspapers, on TV, on the blogs, on Facebook, etc., you'll here essentially the same message. Consider this particular set of lyrics from the song.

all i want is understanding
to live my life the way that i planned it
wouldn’t change a thing
man, it feels like heaven underneath my feet

Essentially, listening to this song, I hear two things.

Don't Judge Me
First, don't judge me. Don't tell me that my choices are wrong. Don't tell me what to do, where to go, how to think. Don't devalue me because of the way that I am. There's no one right way. You take this path, I'll take that path. It doesn't really matter. Any way is good so long as you chose it. "You close the gate, I hear the choir". You choose to shut me out and I'll hear the beauty.

This is a fairly underlying theme in Western society today in a lot of the current culture. So long as it means something to me, I can choose whatever way I want. "Everybody got a problem with the way I live". You say I have to live a certain way to get to heaven? Well, then, I don't want it. If I have to give up what makes me feel good, then I want no part of heaven.

Thinking on this, I remember the words of Paul. In both 1 Corinthians 6:12-19 and then later in 1 Corinthians 10:23-33 he points out that, ya know, you're right, you can choose whatever you want to do. You are given that freedom in Christ to make whatever choices you want to make. But remember this as you do: just because you can do something, that you have (as the NIV puts it) the right, does not mean you should do something. On one hand, you need to consider if what you want to do is actually best for you physically, mentally and spiritually. You may have the freedom to do it, but there are adverse effects that may happen that you need to consider. You can get fat from over-eating and get sick because of it. Sexual immorality may be damaging to families and generally to relationships all around. Lying builds distrust. You can do it all, you have the right to do whatever you want. But not everything you want to do is good for you.

On the other hand, you need to consider if what you want to do is going to hurt someone else. Obviously, physical, mental, or emotional harm to someone else is a big no-no. But Paul points out that there is a spiritual component. When you exercise your freedom, you may be causing someone else to make a choice that will cause themselves physical, mental or emotional harm. No, you're not doing it to them, but, through your choices, you may cause them to do it to themselves.

So, yeah, you know, there's something to be said about not judging others. But we need to consider that no person is completely atomic. No person is completely independent of the choices and acts of others. Our lives are formed and informed by the choices, actions, and decisions of others all around us. Some of it is more direct than others, but we can trace back any number of things to the choices that someone else made. Always we must take this into account and so, while this song says "Let me choose my own way", we must speak back to this thought and say "not everything is beneficial" to yourself or to others and, in fact, some things may really be harmful.

Give Me Love
This is the cry I really hear at the core of this song. The person writing these lyrics is crying out for love. There is a line that literally says, "All I wanted was a shot at your love." Please love me. Please understand me. Listen to me! Hear me cry! I want you to see me, to love me, to understand me, to hear me, to talk to me, to listen to me. Don't hold me at arms length because of what I do. All I want is love. Please, love me!

To respond to this, I give you a song:

This is what people want to hear. They want to know that they are loved, that God loves them, that we love them. That we want to be there, listen, walk with them. That there is a God who says, "Yes, you do some bad things. I love you." Notice no "but" in that. Just a simple fact. God loves us. It is for this reason that heaven is there, because he wants us there with him. The very reason for our creation was because of love. God's love is exemplified in the eternal Trinity, that love-encompassing three-some. And, as is the nature of true love, love wants to be shared. God wanted to be able to bring others into this love, to be able to share it. His intense desire to share this love overflowed into the act of Creation so that there would be more to be able to spread that love around.

Are we always deserving of that love? No, not really. But that does not change the love. Again, Paul points out in Romans 8:38

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is Christ Jesus our Lord.

Love that is truly of God is not dependent upon what we do to deserve it. Truthfully, if love was something that was earned, it wouldn't really be love.

So, to this song by O.A.R. I say, "You are loved." Nothing else needs to be said. This is not an argument. It is a simple statement of an absolutely fundamental truth. "You are loved". Your identity is not tied up in what you have done, are doing, or will do, it is in the fact that you are you and you are loved. Are you perfect? Have you always made the right choices? No. But you are loved. And everything else is a work in progress. And because you are loved, we'll work on it together.

Christians of the World Unite!

2011-10-15T17:40:00.000-04:00

Occupy Wall Street Protesters

A Tea Party Gathering in Boston

You know, I find it very interesting to watch the debate out there concerning the two most recent socio-political movements in the United States. On one side of the spectrum, you have the Tea Party movement. On the other side, you have the Occupy Wall Street protests. To be honest, from my view, they both have legitimate concerns. They are both protesting power structures in the United States. Who has the money? Who decides how it is spent? Who decides who does what with which thing and how often and to benefit which class in society.

Really, they are two sides of the same coin. If you think about it, they could probably, if they set their political differences aside, move this country SERIOUSLY back into a socially just track where the power structures are not centered on a particular elite group of people.

Got this linked in from a friend on Facebook

So, on some respect, both these movements are something that I believe followers of Christ can engage and converse with on some level. For the Tea Party Movement, there is an emphasis on morality, on taking personal responsibility for our lives and our mistakes and not foisting the responsibility off on others. It's about people taking care of people instead of governments and institutions doing so. For Occupy Wall Street, it's about governments and greed and corporations not ignoring their obligations to society, that power is given to people not for their own benefit but for the benefit of others. It's about communal responsibility for the world and about challenging materialism, greed, and the lure of more money.

However, I put this out there: NEITHER MOVEMENT IS CHRISTIAN.

I know that there are folks on both sides that will, at this moment, either rant and scream at me or put my blog on their "ignore" list because I must be blind. Can't they see that Tea Party/Occupy Wall Street is all about what Jesus wants?

There's a picture floating around out there showing Jesus driving folks out of the temple calling him the original Occupy Wall Street protester. There are people who use similar images of Jesus to justify their Tea Party protests and use phrases like "God Bless America" and so on. But you know, both of them I have serious problems with.

Occupy Wall Street - Let's look at this once. Here we have a bunch of people who are complaining about big corporations, big government, greed, and saying that they should give up their money and profits to share it around to those with debt and need. On the surface, that sounds good. But in what I've seen and heard, it sounds more like "Give us the money" rather than anything altruistic about taking care of others. In fact, there are stories coming out about how the restaurants and businesses in the financial district are losing their livelihood because they are getting no customers because people are afraid to go downtown any more. While the protests are protesting the big corporations, the business and franchise owners are going out of business. So much for jobs. Add to that the people running around with their iPhones, laptops, Gap jeans, sporting their J Crew and Ambercrombie fashions. Then you have the kids complaining about education when they are privileged to go to $200,000 a year colleges. While not all in this movement are like this, it makes me wonder about the true motivation. If this is really what they are all about, why are they wasting their time on Wall Street rather than taking some of that extra money they have and doing good with it? There's a rampant hypocrisy present here as well as a violent under-current where, if they don't get their way, you better watch your back. This is not the way of Christ. Jesus spoke out against power structures and the establishments of his day and called for justice for the poor, but he also lived a morally right life and lived out justice in his own every day actions. His words were backed up by his deeds and at no point in time did he forget that there were human beings involved. Even when he engaged people like the rich young ruler, the Pharisees, and others, he spoke to them as human beings and treated them like humans, not like mindless, faceless villains. The CEO's at the head of the corporations are people, too, and do not deserve how they are being pictured in society. Yes, they have made some bad choices, but haven't we all? So, as a graceless, hypocritical movement driven mostly by envy and a mindset of "I am as good as you" (see C.S. Lewis "Screwtape Proposes a Toast"), I don't think this is a movement that Christians can claim for their own.

Tea Party - How about them? Are they any better? Well, again, they are complaining about big government and the greed of the elite and the overwhelming almost totalitarian positioning of politicians in our government. Again, it is an anti-establishment movement, aiming at refocusing the United States away tax and spend politics and back to government remaining within the bounds described by the central law of the country. Along with that is the underlying morality of a sense of personal responsibility for your own choices and to not depend upon bail-outs, either to corporations or to individuals, to make up for mistakes. This all sounds well and good and, to be honest, I align myself more closely with Tea Party politics than with any other group out there. However, there's one really important problem that I see with this movement. Nationalistic pride and the idea of "This is God's country" or "This is a Christian nation" I see as serious problems for any Christian. While there is something to be said about the underlying morals and ideals of the country being based upon many of the teachings and understandings of the Protestant reformation and that, at the root of many of the ideals of the Constitution, are morals and ethics that can find their root in Christian theology, there has been only one politically organized nation in the history of the world that God himself established and that is Israel. And, really, even that is the Israel that was established by Joshua, upheld by the Judges, and initially ruled by David. Post-exile, even Israel couldn't necessarily claim God's blessing any more. As the apostle Paul puts it, Christians are aliens, strangers, foreigners, sojourners in this world. We are here, in the world, living amongst the people, but this is not our home. The ideals, the rules, the ethics, and the morals by which we live find their home in a Kingdom that is both here and not yet. As much as I like living in the US and am proud of the freedoms we enjoy, I realize that even the US is a temporary thing. It will not last forever. What we call our democratically formed republic is a shadow of what God's Kingdom might look like. It is distorted, imperfect and is certainly NOT the end of things. No human system can claim this, no matter how much they claim to be inspired by God's kingdom. Plato had it right when he commented that what we try and do in this world is only a shadowy reflection, warped and twisted, of the perfection that God has in mind. So, while our country is a good country, we cannot hold it in such a high regard that we think that it is God's blessed country and everyone else must emulate us. Add to that some of a similar hypocrisy that, what the Tea Party criticizes (government involvement) is something the Tea Party reaps the benefit of (public transportation, social security, roads, bridges, etc). Jesus did not support Rome, nor did he support the established Temple hierarchy, nor did he support the Jewish monarchy, nor did he put forth some sort of revolution or rebellion where he would supplant the existing power structures with one of his own. This was not the way of Jesus and we should not think that such is our way.

So... what does this mean? It means that we can take the good things from both these movements and use them to talk about the injustices in society, about reforming and redeeming the existing power structures, and about personal issues of personal morality, ethics, and justice. But we cannot take these movements and say one is more Christian than another, that one should be adopted by Christians and backed by Christians. They are political movements, aimed at politics, looking at changing earthly structures.

Think of the problems in our country as symptoms of a disease. There is greed running rampant. There are morality, ethics, and justice issues on all fronts. There are people killing others, either directly or indirectly. There are people taking power that doesn't belong to them or demanding power that they have no right to demand. There are people looking to earthly systems to fix their problems rather than looking to the spiritual realm for answers. The disease is sin, both personal as well as communal. Any socio-economic-political system put in place without addressing the disease is like putting bandage on a scratch when there is a cancerous tumor underneath. It's like giving someone over-the-counter cough medicine to treat the viral pneumonia. It's like giving ibuprofen to bring down the fever caused by viral meningitis. Treating the symptoms is a temporary problem. To bring about permanent solutions, you need to treat the disease.

And as I said, the disease is sin. When individual people sin, the result is an overall communal sin. Communal sin has as its root problems in the hearts and minds of people because it is people who make up communities. If you really want to change the world, you can rage all you want at the systems, the structures, the organizations that grow out of communities but it will not fix the problem, ultimately. So, what will fix it?

So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. Romans 12:1-2, The Message

So, by all means, speak out if you feel you need to. Speak against the injustices you see around you. But your words will mean nothing if you don't point people to the real answer. No amount of political movements will mean anything of any lasting value. As The Teacher points out in the book of Ecclesiastes, it's all just so much vapor. It's all temporary and meaningless in the light of eternity. The only thing that really matters is to live a righteous life. And the only way to achieve that is through the transforming power of the grace and mercy of God given us through the life, death, and resurrection of God's son, Jesus. Before we can change the structures of the world for any lasting good, we first need to change the people. We need to get out there and tell them, as Paul told the Athenians, "Hey, you are definitely a spiritual people. You have so much right. But let me tell you more about this Unknown God..." and then show them the Truth that is Christ.

Christians of the world unite! We have a mission, and it is not on Wall Street and it is not in Washington, DC. It is in the hearts, minds, and lives of the people we see every day. When the power of God breaks through in their lives, everything else will fall into place. People will start acting justly to their neighbors. People will start valuing ethics and morality over greed. People will start thinking more about how they can help other people than they will about personal gain. Christians off the world unite! We have been given a mission and we are late in the game, a mission to speak the truth and live like we believe it.

Remember, it's our job.

Consider the cost

2011-10-15T14:13:00.003-04:00

This picture has caused some interesting discussions.

Note the picture to the right. This is a very interesting thought provoking picture. As mentioned in another article while Jobs has done some good in this world, there's some question as to the celebrity culture surrounding famous people like him.

However, that's not the purpose of this article. This weekend (October 14th through the 16th), the iPhone 4s by Apple has been released.

There are estimates that over 4 million of these will be sold just this weekend alone. That's a pretty impressive amount. People were camping outside of Apple stores all over the country from the night before just so they could be first in line to get one when the stores opened. I overheard on the radio on my drive to work on Friday (the 14th) how there were some people who were using their iPhone 4 to film their entrance into the store where they obtained their iPhone 4s.

Think about that. They already have an iPhone 4 and they were going to buy the latest and greatest gadget. This got me thinking. How much money is getting spent this weekend on this latest incarnation of the iPhone?

So, I looked up online on the Apple store and checked the prices. According to the site, this model of iPhone sells from anywhere from $199 to $399 before tax. Before sales tax, shipping, apps, add-ons, cases, etc., this means that, if the estimates are correct, people will be spending anywhere from $796 million to $1.596 BILLION this weekend alone simply on this latest gadget. To give you a sense of scale, the US government spend nearly twice that per day.

Meanwhile, we have people in this country protesting about the lack of jobs, about the lack of justice for the poor, about the greed in the corporations in our country. This is one gadget. I don't know what the statistics are for other smart phones being sold on a daily basis. Or what the statistics are for the amount of money spent downloading apps, songs, videos, movies, etc. And yet we point fingers at the big corporations OR big government as somehow being the cause of all this mess. Perhaps they are. But let's consider this cost from a different perspective.

According to Answers.com, in the US today, a family of four will spend on average $100-$200 a week on groceries.
For my modest home in semi-rural, small town US, mortgage rates run between $600 to $800 a month. I'm sure that low-cost housing, when it comes to rent, probably runs similar if not less.
Filling a 12 gallon tank of gas once a week at an average price of $3.40 a gallon, is $163.20 dollarrs a month.

These are just a few little items just from our American culture. Depending upon what standard of living a family is looking at, these costs go up and down. Now, what happens if the wage earners in those families lose their jobs?

See, here's the problem with all this protesting about the economy. We look at these big corporations, these high-profile people, we look at the government and the institutions of our society and place all sorts of blame and responsibility on them for either causing the problems or for being greedy and unjust with their wealth.

What would happen if, instead of having to have the latest and greatest gadget, instead of spending almost $400 for a new gizmo that we don't really need, we look down the street to the family struggling to make ends meet and buy them a weeks worth of groceries? What would happen if we gave that $700 we were saving up for the plasma screen TV and paid someone's mortgage for a month while they look for work? What would happen if we bought $20 WalMart Jeans and used the other $50 we would have spent at the Gap to pay for a tank of gas for a friend so they can drive to the unemployment office?

And I haven't even done the research yet on the cost of helping someone overseas... but consider that, through Compassion International you can sponsor a child for no more than $50 a month. That's six children per iPhone.

Don't get me wrong. I'm a techno-geek and my first reaction of seeing the latest technology is "OOOOO! It's SHINEY!" But then I stop and consider... do I NEED it? My life is distracted enough already. Do I need to add to that distraction with one more cool item? Or is there something more important I should be spending my time and money on?

How about this: How about instead of looking outside of ourselves for injustice, instead of looking for some sort of scapegoat for greed, instead of vilifying faceless organizations, institutions, and corporations... how about we turn that extreme, angry, frustrated criticism around to ourselves and really take a look. There is something to be said about communal sin and community responsibility for justice. But communities are made up of people. If the people are not, on their own, living and striving for justice, why would we expect the communities to do so?

So, where should our mourning be? Should we be mourning for a man, great as he was? Or should we be mourning our own greed and materialistic fervor? And it's VERY easy to point fingers to others and point out their faults... but I look around my house... I'm typing this on a laptop I bought for over $800. My home PC that I'm listening to David Crowder Band's "How He Loves Us" cost us also about $1000. My satellite TV is costing us about $60 a month. Our cell phones, cheap as they are, are $70 a month. Do I NEED any of this stuff? I can spend a lot of time pointing out the faults and greed of others but I'd better be ready to explain my own actions.

So, next time we think its time to protest the government, or wall street, or the local mega-corporation, or millionaire/billionaire, etc... stop and think. How much have YOU done to fix the problem?

"Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.' “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’ “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’ “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” Matthew 25:41-46 NIV

I've said it once...

2011-10-11T13:48:00.000-04:00

I said it here. http://ballymennoniteblogger.blogspot.com/2008/10/whos-job-is-it-really.html
I said it again here...http://ballymennoniteblogger.blogspot.com/2008/11/whos-job-is-it-really-version-20.html
And again here... http://ballymennoniteblogger.blogspot.com/2009/08/have-we-lost-our-way.html
And here... http://ballymennoniteblogger.blogspot.com/2011/03/where-is-third-way.html
And, to an extent, here... http://ballymennoniteblogger.blogspot.com/2011/08/two-excuses.html

And, really, generally, the theme is constant in my critique of the church's role in American society...

But really... I have not heard it said more clearly than here... (H/T to Sam Wilcock for posting this at http://nolongernormal.wordpress.com/2011/10/10/government-or-church-whose-job-is-it/)

Really... Why are we championing political activism that is, essentially, continuing this practice of giving over to either the government or some other institution that responsibility with which we have been tasked? To paraphrase a few points from Mark T. Nation from his article in "Radical Ecumenicity" (edited by John C. Nugent titled "The Politics of Yoder regarding the Politics of Jesus" in 2010), here's a brief theological perspective. Nation speaks concerning pacifism but I think the ideas go beyond that narrow focus to church and state relationships in general:

"Christian ethics are for Christians", meaning that you can't expect someone or a group of someones to consistently act like Christians when they do not share the faith background that dictates such ethics. (Of course, not all Christians act that way either, but that's another topic)
"the short-circuited means used to 'Christianize' 'responsibly' the world in some easier way than by the gospel [has] had the effect of dechristianizing the Occident and demonizing paganism" - This is a little hard to follow but it means that if we want to redeem anyone, even the "other" in the world, it cannot be done in the absence of the truth that is found in the gospel of Christ.
"the church's responsibility to the world is first and always to be the church". Before we can demand that the world conform to the ideals of the central incarnation of the Kingdom in this world (the church), that incarnation first needs to BE the incarnation... we've gotta act the part, people... we have to be Jesus ourselves before we have any hope to try and get others to be like Jesus
"there may well be certain functions in a given society which the society in its unbelief considers necessary, and which the unbelief renders necessary, in which Christians will not be called to participate." In other words, there comes a point in time when Christians need to say "That's the way the world does things... but that's not our way" and step away.

Let's just stop it, please... Stop the politicizing of the church. Stop taking sides in the government. Stop trying to use a political party for our particular means (and I'm pointing my finger at Republicans, Democrats, Communists, Libertarians, etc.). Stop trying to justify voting in a particular direction as being the only "Christian" vote to cast. We have a job to do and all this politics is just distracting us from what is important. I mean, really... it's very easy... I mean, there was this guy Micah who caught on... It's really very simple...

But he's already made it plain how to live, what to do, what God is looking for in men and women.It's quite simple: Do what is fair and just to your neighbor, be compassionate and loyal in your love,And don't take yourself too seriously— take God seriously. Micah 6:8, Message

Everything else is just a distraction... we have a job to do... really, a VERY easy one...

Let's get to work...

A good man has died...

2011-10-06T21:09:00.000-04:00

And not who you think.

Does anyone realize that, just within the past week, another man died of pancreatic cancer, the same disease that killed the guy who died yesterday? I'm speaking of the Nobel Laureate, Dr. Ralph Steinman. Funny that his story is not told nearly as much as the inventor of the Macintosh computer. And pretty funny that the primary focus of HIS death was the embarassment given to the Nobel committee who has a policy of never giving the prize to a dead person, almost nothing about WHY he got the prize.

But, instead, this week, we are focusing on Steve Jobs who was a great innovator of technology. It's almost obscene, at least to me, the amount of accolades given to Steve post-humously. And all because he has found new and interesting ways to distract and entertain us (think about the general outcry for the iPad, iPod, etc).

I realize that the technology that he helped boost to the forefront helped many people, actually. I have a friend who's daughter probably would not be able to communicate to the rest of the world were it not for the kind of technology that Steve Jobs helped spawn.

While I respect Steve Jobs for his technical innovations, I have a problem with some of the hype going on with celebrities crawling out of the woodwork to give tearful testimonies of "Steve Jobs changed my life (sniff)" and with all the vigils and such... Yes, he was a pretty big name in the tech industry and a lot that's going on these days can be traced back to his innovations.

Meanwhile, however...

I have a friend who spends every Thursday and Friday in the local prison helping the men in there change their lives from "I'm never going to change, I'll always be a murderer" to "I'm loved and valued for who I am and I am not defined by my mistakes". And those men go on to actually help kids in the 'hood NOT make the same mistakes. How about that for changing people's lives? Or how about the people who are working in the slums, dumps, and cess-pools of the Ruwandan refugee camps helping people live just one more day without feeling hungry or scared... Or how about the men and women in Haiti who are doing nothing more than giving candy to little kids who need some brightness in their days of living in tents... many of them without all four of their limbs... or without parents...

And none of those folks, when they die, will get a lick of media attention. For some reason, this just feels wrong...

I dunno... just all those accolades for things of this world... I can't help but think about Matthew 6:19-20

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.

Perhaps I'm over thinking this... I'll probably catch flak for saying what I've said... But with all that's wrong with this world, to watch folks mourning about Steve Jobs when there are thousands dying every day in horrible ways... Just doesn't seem right...

A Critique of Koinonia from the Chinese Perspective

2011-09-15T23:32:00.000-04:00

I'm currently reading the book Introducing Asian American Theologies by Jonathan Y. Tan. As I was reading, this passage that Tan quotes from Asian American theologian, David Ng, really stuck out to me in light of the in-fighting between Christian groups and even within congregations.

To capture the richness of the New Testament sense of community the Chinese borrowed terms from Chinese understandings of family and community. These terms carry no sentimental sense of camaraderie and unity of like-minded agreeable folks who choose and create their own "fellowship," as is often the case in North American churches...The Confucian sense of family is that this unit is bonded together. But the bond is not by choice - we do not choose our parents or siblings, we are simply family and always will be - family is a "given". Were we to disagree or fail to get along, or even if one of us is a horse-thief (or a heretic), we continue to relate to each other and continue to be in solidarity. And, as a family, we are responsible to each other and for each other.

All I could think of was... wow... he gets it.. and here we sit arguing about music styles, specific doctrines, liturgical standards, etc... I am shamed.
What do you think? Does Ng have it right? Or is he missing the point?

A cross post...

2011-09-13T21:50:00.001-04:00

Rather than writing the same thing twice, please check out the most recent post at http://findingchristinfilm.blogspot.com/ Both a theological reflection and a film reading in a single post, so, why separate the two?

Two Excuses...

2011-08-28T16:42:00.000-04:00

I have heard spoken and expressed by many small churches in my experience two particular excuses when it comes to why they don't feel they need to grow in numbers.

Before I go there, though, one brief statement. Numbers themselves are not the final be-all and end-all of a congregation. Just because you can fill the pews 3 times every Sunday and twice on Saturday and boast a membership of thousands does not mean that you are a good church and have it all together when it comes to doing what you're supposed to do. There's a lot more to being a "good" church than just numbers. This is a topic for another day, but I just wanted to state up front that numbers are not necessarily the goal of a congregation.

So, that said, what are those two excuses. First, the one that I think is definitely legitimate and important.

Church X down the street has a membership in the thousands. That's fine for them. But we most certainly are not Church X.

This is VERY true. First of all, when churches compete, the Kingdom loses. It should not be the goal of one church to out-do another, nor should it be the goal of a church to try and take membership from another. When comparisons between congregations happen, this is inevitably the result. So Church X has larger membership? Big deal. The point of being a bastion of the Kingdom in the community is not to compare yourself with other gatherings of the faithful but to be faithful yourself.

The danger, though, is when we use this same statement to stand off and just do our own things. "We're not church X" turns into "They're big enough, they don't need us to be involved" or, for that matter, "They're big enough, what can we possibly add?" Congregations are not intended to be insular, I believe. If you look at Paul's letters and other stories from the book of Acts, different congregations were always reaching out to other congregations. They shared the letters around for one thing. They sent money to each other. They shared ministers, sending guys like Paul, Timothy, Titus, etc., to other gatherings to help share their talents, strengths, gifts and abilities. So Church X is big. Well, that doesn't mean they necessarily have all the talented people. You may have a "star" of the faith in your congregation that you can share. Or the reverse. Or, perhaps, your congregation is too small to have certain kinds of ministries but Church X has them. Should we stay separate? I don't think so. Nothing says anywhere that churches need to stand on their own. Why not volunteer with a ministry at another congregation? If your congregation doesn't have the funds, means, or resources, why not help out at another congregation? This does not mean you need to leave your home congregation, it just means that congregations can help other congregations because, after all, even across denominations, we're all one Kingdom, one Body and confess to One Lord.

Secondly on this excuse, someone pointed out to me the concept of the body of Christ in a slightly different bent. First of all, within a single congregation, there's a diversity of gifts and talents and such that makes up that particular body. And that combination of gifts, talents, abilities, strengths, experiences, passions, etc., creates a kind of DNA for that congregation (concept borrowed from Ed Stetzer). So, each congregation is going to have a slightly different DNA and so each congregation is going to have different characteristics that will lend themselves to different patterns of growth. In the larger context, to go along with what I stated above, this means that combinations of congregations make a kind of Kingdom DNA for any given community. The combination of fellowships and churches make for a unique mix that, in their combination, do a wonderful work of God in the community. When those churches remain separate, though, the Kingdom is incomplete and God's work cannot proceed as well.

So, this first excuse is over all pretty good. It acknowledges the differences in congregational DNA, it acknowledges that it is not a spirit of competition by which we are to live but a spirit of unity, and it opens up the doors of diversity so that churches can share resources and we can lift each other up in our communities.

Now, the second excuse, though.... I have a bit of a problem with it.

I think it's just fine for us to stay as a small congregation. After all, it isn't size that matters.

As mentioned above, the second part of that statement is, in part, true. Numbers is not what matters, really, when it comes to congregational health. A large congregation is not the same as a healthy congregation, nor is a small congregation a sign of an unhealthy congregation. However, consider this: What is to be the mission of the church in the world? Is it simply to maintain the status quo? Are we supposed to protect our traditional congregational setting and family atmosphere? Is our goal to make sure that we provide stability, constancy, and a historical presence?

I don't think so.

We are to go and make disciples.
We are to do greater things than Christ did.
We are to "draw all men to Christ".

Now, does this mean we're always going to be successful? No, I don't think so. There are a lot of other factors involved, primarily the idea of human free will where people choose whether or not they will follow Christ. So, the efforts of the church may be in good faith, but if there is a spirit of resistance in the community, things could be a little more difficult.

Even if the congregation is not actively out canvassing the neighborhood, specifically with evangelistic activities aimed at "converting" a lot of people, one item of evidence in the New Testament is that, when the church is being the church, the church will grow numerically, not just spiritually. Taking care of each other, taking care of the community around them, showing love to all, living up to a different standard than the rest of the world...all these things cause people to sit up, pay attention, and start asking questions. And coupled with prayer and bringing God's Spirit to bear means that the Kingdom will grow.

So, why is it acceptable, then, if the congregation doesn't grow? Again, remember, numbers aren't the goal. But in some sense, they are kind of like a temperature gauge of the health of the congregation. If there is godly, Kingdom-centered work going on in the congregation, if the people are living it out in their communities faithfully, if they are interacting with the world around them, being salt and light in their communities (and not just sitting comfortably at home), then the church would be showing a good "temperature" by actually seeing growth in numbers. People would be drawn in, wanting to see what these Christians are all about.

But if a congregation is fighting among themselves, if they are insular and sitting comfortably in their pews, if they look askance and sideways at people who are "not like us", if they choose to act at a distance giving just their tithes to the congregation and not getting their hands dirty, if they aren't relating to people as Christ related to people, then the temperature will be bad. Either the church will stagnate and not grow or shrink, or the church may even shrink as congregational members start seeking places where they can actually feel like they are working for the Kingdom. Read the letter to Laodicea in Revelation 3. Or, for that matter, there are a number of such letters in Revelation. Or, read 1 & 2 Corinthians, realizing that these are letters written to a church that need a LOT of correction... and when the first one didn't work, Paul had to write the second one.

Does this mean that, automatically, your church will explode into a mega church if you start doing the right things? Not at all. Again, there are a lot of factors that contribute to church growth. However, the excuse is not valid. I can't find anything that says that it's well and good for a congregation not to grow in numbers or at least try. I find the opposite. Where the Spirit is moving, the church grows, sometimes in large numbers ("and thousands were added to their number that day") sometimes in small bits and pieces. But the church is always growing and has, as it's goal, to bring all humanity to Christ.

So, the question I leave you with is this: If your church is not growing, why? Is there something that is unhealthy in your congregation that is getting in the way of the Spirit? Is there an attitude of "good enough"? Is there some barrier in the community that needs to be covered with prayer? Do you need to look at your DNA again and figure your shape so you can be the most effective?

But please... no more excuses.

Now What?

2011-08-28T14:01:00.000-04:00

Note: I first wrote this post back about 2 years ago after finishing a counseling course. As I continue to consider where God is leading me, these thoughts once again feel relevant to me.

Almost 20 years ago, on Halloween night, I made a committment to a bunch of brothers in the basement of my dormitory to follow a calling into ministry. We laid hands on each other and commissioned each other into God's hands and God's plans for our ministries in the world. The following spring I switched majors to Religion/Theology thinking that this would have me following this call. After a few months, I realized that I was not ready and switched back to math and promptly forgot about my calling for the next 16 years.

Four years ago, I was led by a number of events to pursue a more formal ministry and so entered seminary. However, I was adamant at that time that being a formal pastor was definitely out of the question. The traditional view of the "Jack-Of-All-Trades" kind of pastor was outside of my comfort zone and outside of what had been revealed to me as my gifts, abilities and talents. When asked if I thought about being a pastor I would answer that I didn't want to be a pastor as the traditional role defined. Basically, this shut down the conversation because, in effect, I was answering "no".

Now here's the thing: how much of my non-answer was born out of my personal preferences and comfort zones and how much of it came from God's plan for me? I'm starting to think that my own comfort played a great part in that answer. I'm not comfortable with people as people. I'm a theoretician, an analyst, a logical-thinker and, unfortunately, dealing with people is never a theoretical, logical thing that can be analyzed. It's messy, dirty, mixed up and crazy. It is unpredictable and full of pain, grief, sorrow, anger, and fear. To deal with people is to be vulnerable and open to getting hurt. You can feel soiled and dirty yourself when working with some of the more uncomfortable parts of the human condition. To quote Daffy Duck, "I'm not like most people. I can't stand pain. It hurts me." Whenever possible, I try to avoid those uncomfortable parts of living as a human and live in my nice little cotton wrapped world.

Six years ago, I got dirty. I spent time working with the refugees from Katrina as they huddled in the convention center in the city of Houston. The pain, fear, anger and sorrow they felt, I could not avoid it. Some of it got on me. As much as I have tried over the past six years, I cannot wash it off. My life has changed from that time period. I can no longer look at pictures of earthquakes in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran and not feel that tug of "why aren't you there?" I can no longer listen to stories of people dealing with fear and worry in our Western culture as they try and figure out what's wrong with their life. The cotton wrapping around my life has been pierced and I feel those bumps, those knocks that come from being human.

Four years ago, the dirt got personal. I found myself dealing with pain, grief and sorrow of my own. And not only that, I found myself taking on the pain, grief and sorrow of my father and my family and them to me as we lifted each other up, supported each other, and comforted and counseled each other as we said good-bye to my mother. The cotten wrapping got thinner, with more holes. I see grief in others and now I feel it along with them. I hear those fears, those worries, and I feel them, too. I hear those cries of "Why, God!?!" and I cry along with them.

But even with that, I still doubted. All the gifts and personality profiles I've ever taken have seemed to indicate that, while I'm good for teaching and such, those things that make up the rest of a traditional pastor (counseling, administration, leadership, etc.) were missing. If God wanted me to be a pastor, wouldn't He gift me with those things? Apparently, I had not been given those gifts or abilities so, I guess I was not shaped for that.

In the spring semester in school in 2009, I took a class on Pastoral Counseling. It's a required course for my degree (Master's of Arts in Ministry) so I had to take it. I looked on it as a challenging course, one outside of my normal abilities and gifts, and an opportunity to learn at least some of these skills in case I should need them. After all, I'm not going to be a pastor, so this is just to fill a degree requirement.

While it was a work intensive class with a lot of reading and assignments and other tasks, interestingly enough, it was not as difficult as I thought. I felt uncomfortable doing some of the things asked of me because, honestly, I had never done or considered any of this stuff before in the past. But my discomfort was simply that, discomfort. You know how you feel uncomfortable the first time you try weight lifting, no matter how small the weight?

Ability is a different story. Please, don't get me wrong, I'm not "tooting my own horn" here. I'm absolutely flabbergasted and dumfounded. My triad partners in class were saying regularly, "You're good at this, man" and commenting on my counseling interviewing skills. My assignments and such kept coming back with good scores and comments from my instructors telling me that I had great insight and good skills. And I sat and listened to all of this saying, "This can't be right. You can't mean that. You're just saying that so I don't feel bad. This cannot be true. Are you sure you're talking about me?"

I sat, then, after the class was done, with a grade I was not expecting, and with my pre-conceptions shattered. Who am I? Is that really me? Is that who I am? It's not my personality. It's not the way my brain works. It's not anything like what my gift surveys have come back with. How can that be me? There's gotta be a mistake somewhere. There's no way that could be right.

And there is this still small voice, whispering to me, "By whose definition of yourself are you living?" And I answer, honestly, "Mine". I have this picture of myself, of who I am, pasted inside my skull. But the corner is starting to peel away from the wall and there is something underneath, a different picture. It's not one I drew, but someone elses. It's a picture drawn by the person who knows me best. I cannot see all of it yet, but it is MUCH different than the one I drew.

This is going to take a lot of prayer, a lot of searching, and a lot of discerning. Am I seeing something where there is nothing? Or is God revealing to me what He wants for me? Is this a kind of twisted wishful thinking? Or have my prayers of "Show me your will" been answered in part?

Lord, have mercy on me.

"Implore, Beseech, Urgently Beg, Sincerely Ask, Plead: Be reconciled to God"

2011-07-08T23:14:00.001-04:00

"I am a glutton"

"Be reconciled to God"

"I prefer my class over someone else's"

"Be reconciled to God"

"I am a gossip"

"Be reconciled to God"

"I am a liar"

"Be reconciled to God"

"I am sexually immoral"

"Be reconciled to God"

"I am prideful"

"Be reconciled to God"

"I am divisive"

"Be reconciled to God"

"I am self-righteous"

"Be reconciled to God"

I can keep going here, you know. Really. Doesn't matter. Search yourself. Like me, you're going to come up short. Definitely something there that is holding you back.

See, we're called to be ambassadors for Christ. Paul himself was one when he wrote to the Corinthian church. Twice. The first time he kinda laid it all out, showing them some problems. They didn't get it. So, he wrote them a second time saying, essentially, "Look. I'm talking for God here, folks. You're seriously messed up and you're just not getting it. I'm here to tell you, if you want to do what I do and what we've ALL been called to do, get yourself right with God. Nothing else matters until you get that taken care of."

We can talk all we want about being a missional church and working out a missional "Purposeful Plan". But we're going to be so many clanging cymbals (thanks Ted and Co for this FABULOUS imagery) if we don't connect to the guy we're supposed to be representing in the first place.

This is what I heard when Ervin Stutzman gave his message tonight. And there I sat, stunned. I had spent all week begging and pleading for SOMEONE in the Mennonite Church to say, "Look, we need to get right with God first". And it started with Ervin himself. We cannot build bridges to the cross for the rest of the world if we're not building bridges to the cross for each other. And we can't do that when we're "speck hunting" in everyone else's eyes, whacking them with the plank in our own. Ervin said it best, "We need to take the plank out of our own eye and use it to build a bridge to the cross and bring someone else WITH us." We have to start with ourselves, first. And then we need to give the same message Paul gave to Corinth.

"We BEG you, URGE you, IMPLORE you, BESEECH you, PLEASE: Be reconciled to God."

Why? And Paul is great with this, because our sin has been taken care of. "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might be the righteousness of God."

Thousands of people then went forward, confessing by walking to the front of the ball room that they had sin in their lives, sin that needed to be addressed. While they are Christian people, they recognize the need for the continuous process of being changed, molded, transformed, and sanctified, a journey that lasts our whole life. They stood, humbly, before the deacons that were present, deacons themselves that received the same unction, and asked for annointing of oil. This annointing was both an annointing to heal as well as an annointing of blessing. The sin is confessed, the healing is received through the power of the Spirit, and the ambassador is blessed and commissioned to God and spread the message.

"Be reconciled to God."

I walked forward, quietly, watching as person after person received this blessing.

"Be reconciled to God"

As I walked, I thought, "What am I doing here?"

"Be reconciled to God"

And I heard the answer, "You're being reconciled to God"

"Be reconciled to God"

"What for?" I asked

"Be reconciled to God"

"You are an ambassador, someone who is sent to go and tell others about the person you call Lord and to represent His wishes"

"Be reconciled to God"

I almost stopped there. I'm not worthy. This is not for me.

"Be reconciled to God"

I stood in line waiting my turn and I noticed something.

"Be reconciled to God"

The deaconess annointing the people in front of me.

"Be reconciled to God"

Why is she weeping?

"Be reconciled to God"

And I realized...because she is reconciled to God and is doing her part. By annointing us with oil, she is spreading that ministry of reconciliation. She's acting it out, showing everyone, "It's okay. God loves you. God wants to bless you. And I'm part of it." And I saw, in her, the same enormity of purpose... she was chosen, a simple person, to be God's representative... to me.

I wept as I asked her to annoint my hands and my head. I wept as she prayed blessing on me as the oil was placed on my forehead in the shape of that instrument that took away the sins of the world, the cross. I wept as she prayed blessing on me as the same symbol was marked on my palms.

I wept as I walked back to me seat, realizing that my world is not going to be the same any more... I no longer represent myself. I am an ambassador for God. It's no longer about me. It's all about him.

"Be reconciled to God"

I must ask it now. I would not be a good ambassador if I didn't.

Are you reconciled to God?

Well, are you?

Spiritual Formation at Last!

2011-07-08T10:56:00.001-04:00

Finally, and ironically, what I feel to be the first and highest priority of both the church universal and the Mennonite church, was addressed this morning in the delegate sesssion. Isn't it rather strange, really, that while the denomination and I agree that Spiritual Formation is THE highest priority off the church, that it is relegated to the last full day of the convention?

Overall, what I heard in our table discussion was extremely positive on the subject. I know I had been lambasting a lot of the way things are handled this week. That's something that I need to think about a bit more. But this topic was a very good one. Our table talked a lot about how to interpret the Bible as the focus was on a Biblically based emphasis of Spiritual formation. We discussed a lot about the post-modernistic view that gives doubt to a lot of the black-and-white line drawing we like to do and how we can address the existance of Truth without "beating people over the head with the Bible".

I think what was proposed by the executive board falls a little short though. It's a lot of new programs, new resources, new things to do. And you know, it's good to have such things, but do we need yet one more program? Instead of trying to create a new lectionary, or a new program, or some sort of new effort, one thing our table came up with that I think would do an AMAZING thing: teach people how to study the Bible. This is, I think, a lost gift of the Anabaptist church. We are a church that has, at it's roots, a love of Scripture and a desire to have everyone engage scripture to instruct, enhance, speak life into our lives. And yet we don't really understand what we read any more. Or, if we think we understand it, we don't know how to apply it to our lives.

Perhaps this is where someone like me comes in. I know Jim Longacre has already taught one class taking some of our folks in the congregation through basic scripture. Perhaps we need more of that? There seems to be a hunger for it, even in our church of long-time Christians. So, it's time for me to actually do my job as Christian Education Chairperson and see what I can do about resourcing a class like that at church.

Pray for me, I know I'll need it.

Intercultural Transformation is the way we need to go... oh, except for when it comes to leadership training

2011-07-07T22:06:00.001-04:00

I'm going to try and not ramble on this one.

See, we spent yesterday talking about intercultural transformation, of being able to listen to different people from different background and cultures. And, it showed in part today in our discussions about leadership transformation. It really was encouraging to hear around our table about how we can try and train leaders from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds, about how we can make sure that we don't make leadership training difficult to obtain for those with limited financial means, about how we can accommodate different languages, different learning styles, etc. I think our discussions yesterday had a very good effect.

But here's the odd thing. The day before we talked about those intercultural relationships. We even had a Lutheran minister come in this week and talk about the reconciliation between the churches. We had a letter read by a bishop from the Eastern Orthodox church affirming the sharing of relatonships between the churches. These were great things. But to suggest that leadership training can include financial assistance for people to attend non Mennonite schools of higher learning. "Yeah, that's nice. Okay, back to talking about EMS and AMBS."

Really?

Here's something a wonderful woman shared with me today (okay, it's my wife): "You're getting a broader view of faith, stretching your ideas, opening your eyes to other faces of God in the world. If you only study what you already know, how could you call that growth?"

I've been a Mennonite for 38 years, I was born and raised in the church, I've been steeped in Anabaptist theology and I've read The Naked Anabaptist, Jesus Matters, and several essays by John Howard Yoder and other Anabaptist theologians. Do I really need to go to a university or seminary that will just teach me more of what I've already been immersed in? For that matter, does any Mennonite leader need that? If the leader does not have the history that I do, perhaps yes, so they can understand these people they are being called to lead. But why not establish funds, scholarships, etc., to send young Christian leaders to other Christian seminaries and institutions? Shouldn't we encourage growth wherever it can be found? We have wonderful institutions in the greater church full of excellent theologians and godly men and women that don't have the word "Mennonite" in their name. Maybe, as we look at being a more "missional" church, we should start looking at other "missional" churches and their institutions so that we can continue to learn together.

Just some thoughts.

We need an evangelism epi-pen...

2011-07-07T10:57:00.001-04:00

"We love service, we flirt with peace, and we are allergic to evangelism." -Andre Gingerich Stoner, MCUSA Convention.

This quote resonated with me today during the opening discussion on one of the priorities of MCUSA's Purposeful Plan, that priority being the Holistic Christian Witness. Quoted below is the outcome we seek:

The church witnesses to the wholeness of God's salvation made possible through the gospel of Jesus Christ via a seamless integration of activities such as:
Sharing the good news of new life in Jesus Christ
Planting and nurturing kingdom communities
Developing a missional identity
Supporting churches and their witness in many different settings
Seeking peace with justice
Engaging in health and human service ministries
Integrating evangelism, service and peace witness

Over the past couple of days, there's been a lot of discussion about issues of intercultural transformation and missional church but it has all been in discussion around the issues of service, peace, justice, tolerance, and reconciliation. Now, these are ALL good things, really, but there's something missing.

The quote above hints at the something missing. We talk a lot about the things that we do as a church that we feel are part of the Kingdom, but when it comes to expressing the reason why we do the things we do, for some reason or another, we have a VERY hard time doing that.

What's really troublesome to me was that, even with that statement being made before the discussion time around the tables and the open mic time, during that discussion period what did we talk about in regards to holistic witness? Service and peace. Where was the evangelism, the church planting, the spreading of the word? Where was the "seamless integration"?

Again, we talk a great talk about what it is that we do as a church, but we avoid the context of why. In the post-modern, post-Christendom world, what society does NOT need is another organization focused on service and peace. In US society, such organizations these days are a dime a dozen and not even all of them have Christ as the center. By stressing that aspect of our church, instead of standing out as the city on the hill, the light of the world, the salt of the earth, we blend into the background.

At the beginning of the session on holistic Christian witness, a man introduced himself as "A Christian by choice, a Mennonite by conviction". We need to remember that, first and foremost, we chose to follow CHRIST, not Menno Simons, and that should be what is fore-front in our lives always.

Buddy of mine Scott Roth told me over dinner tonight something on the lines that no Christian would ignore the issues of peace, service, and justice, but they FIRST need to be connected to Christ, the source and center of the love and grace that gives us the PURPOSE behind peace, service and justice. If we connect people to Christ, everything else will fall into line.

Lesslie Newbigin states in "The Gospel in a Pluralist Society" that we cannot pit words and actions against each other. We cannot say that the "true" church is about action, or that the "true" church is about words. They feed off of each other. Actions must be such that the elicit questions that require words for response. Words must be followed up with and lived out in action. However, what I heard today in the delegate session was a lot of talk about actions, about living in justice, about being peacemakers, about serving others, but our statement said "seamless integration" of a list of activities, the FIRST of which is sharing the gospel.

Our allergy made itself felt today. We avoided the topic. For some reason, it's way too uncomfortable to talk about. Meanwhile, Mennonites in the global south have a hard time shutting up about it. Conrad Kagey gave a presentation resently at the seminary about church growth in the global south and what stood out to me was how eager Christians in those communities were to evangelize and spread the gospel. Has Christianity become so common-place to us that it no longer excites us? Are we no longer driven to tell others about this WONDERFUL thing that causes us to act in counter-cultural ways?

Someone pass me my epi-pen, I'm tired of this anaphalactic shock and asphyxiation. I'm ready to breath the word of God again... Let's go.

Day 3, an Addendum, the Memory Lives

2011-07-06T23:46:00.001-04:00

Realization: I don't remember if Dad made it to Columbus in 2009. If he didn't, this might be the first Mennonite Church USA convention that one of my immediate family attended since Nashville.

And what have I discovered? Mom is here. She was mentioned in yesterday morning's delegate session in a presentation about Puerto Rico Mennonite Church Conference. And that's just a start. I've talked with Everett Thomas and Sandra Perez this evening and Edie Banks yesterday and on all these occasions I've heard that Mom has been on people's lips and minds all week so far. Mom's legacy lives in the New York City Churches and people look to what she started as their inspiration to move forward in what the church is doing.

Mom, I'm glad I was here, if for no other reason than to hear, again, the impact you had on the church and the inspiration that you brought to so many. Thank you for paving the way forward and for inspiring so many, myself included, to move the church into the 21st century.

We Are The Church Day...or are we?

2011-07-06T20:33:00.001-04:00

I'm loving the multi-cultural flavor of today's convention. I'm ethnic Swiss/German Mennonite but, honestly, I've never really felt very Swiss/German. I like my soft pretzels, my liver and onions, and my shoo-fly pie...but I also love my tostones and aroz con abichuelas, I love my creole rice and beans, gotta love thai food, Nawlin's Cajun cooking, and that peanut sauce at the thai restaurants? To DIE for. Being born on an island that has a very non-European flavor to it (Puerto Rico may have Spanish roots but it's not Euro-Spanish at ALL) has a tendency to give you a jump start in relating to other cultures. Top that off with frequent excursions into inner cities as a kid (following my Mom around), spending a week with NOLA refugees after Katrina, and just simply enjoying the diversity of non-Mennonite cultures in high-school, college, and grad-school kinda makes me a little less Eurocentric.

So I resonate greatly with the idea practicing cultural sensitivity and being aware of people of other cultures among us. My pastor and I talked over lunch today about how we can do that in our own congregation. We run a pretty Euro-centric service but how can we be more "welcoming" to others? Can we be welcoming to hispanics, africans, asians, and so on in our congregation by making sure our Sunday morning events have a multi-cultural flavor? For that matter, even within "white" culture there are myriads of sub-cultures, if we're going to welcome those sub-cultures and make sure we speak to them, how can we change what we do in our worship to make sure that we present someplace that anyone, no matter what culture, can come and find something that speaks to them? As someone said in the delegate session this morning, that's gonna be messy, but we worship a God who makes beautiful things out of mess.

But one thing was distinctly missing all day. There was a lot of great inclusive language, a lot of listening, and a lot of talking about being welcoming. But what was missing was anything that mentioned WHY and talked about the changed life that we are supposed to embody that makes living inclusively no longer a challenge. We heard three different people in our worship today share excellent testimonials about being sensitive to other cultures, being aware of our shared past (even the ugly parts), welcoming the gift of disequilibrium, and exemplifying a "lay down your life for your neighbor" lifestyle in the midst of racial/ethnic/cultural tensions. But I heard very little Scripture, and very little about the changed life that gives us the ability to live that radically.

I was talking with an EMS theologian before the worship time and it was interesting to hear him reflect something of the same. We can preach a ministry of reconciliation and we really should. It's EXTREMELY important to do so. But he and I both agreed that the Mennonite Church is becoming very focused, at least this week, at the reconcilation of the horizontal (human to human) and very little on the reconcilation to the vertical (divine to human). Those three speakers this morning? With a couple of minor shifts, they could easily have been spoken at any secular anti-racism conference. It's interesting, actually. I wrote an EXCELLENT paper, apparently, on the Mission of God and even articulated what my professor said was a VERY good definition of that mission. But he said essentially the same thing: There are probably Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and even Atheists who would find no problem with the messages from today. This is not horrible (it's good that we can speak to them in a way that they would agree), but are we really speaking, then a CHRISTIAN message? A CHRISTIAN definition of the mission of God would put Christ at the center, the ONE thing I left out. A CHRISTIAN message on anti-racism should do the same. Perhaps I missed it, but I heard very little mention of Christ in our messages today, even thought they were good messages.

So, we're celebrating "We Are The Church Day" today and the concept behind it is good. But can we really call ourselves the church of Jesus if we don't put Jesus as central in anything we talk about? I mean, really, as Anabaptists that's the one thing we pride ourselves on. If Jesus is supposed to be so central to Anabaptist thought, faith, and theology, why is he pushed to the background in so many of our discussions?

Again, perhaps I missed something today, perhaps something more was said in some of the seminars (loving what I'm seeing on twitter actually as I write this), but I worry that we're losing that one thing that actually makes us a "church" and we risk becoming just another social club. Heaven help us if we do.

Contention and Division in the midst of Reconciliation: a Reaction to Reaction

2011-07-06T10:52:00.003-04:00

This one is going to be brief. I promise.

I've rediscovered one of the reasons why I've avoided being a delegate at past conferences and conventions, including conference level gatherings: When a decision is made by the church governing body, those who did not get their way react with anger, fear, and hurt attitudes.

But wait, didn't Shane Hipps tell us something about that on Monday night? Yeah, I'm sure he did. He said that such emotions, while we recognize they exist, are emotions that when used as the motivation for action, divide the church rather than unites the church.

A decision is made after voices have been heard and time is spent in trying to understand (the idea was put out months before the meeting) and yet, even after months of time to discuss, pray, and discern, when the decision is made, people react out of anger, hurt, and fear. Instead of coming together, suddenly we divide.

Doubt? Go look at the twitter feeds right after the Pittsburgh Experiment was adopted.

Irony anyone?

Reflections on Day 2, Mennonite Church USA Convention

2011-07-05T14:07:00.001-04:00

A lot of stuff has been going on today so, to try and create a complete and coherent article that sums up the "one thing" about today is pretty much impossible. So, instead, I'm going to offer a few little thoughts in kinda a list. So, here goes:

When we "converse", we "abide" or "keep company with". If we enter into conversation with people about difficult topics, are we REALLY conversing if we choose to seperate, or is it better to walk with people?
Mennonites have been doing "missional" for decades without knowing that we were. However, Mennonites are in the same danger as the rest of the church in trying to "program" missional. We spent a lot of time on structure in the past 10 years and not a lot of time living it out. One thing I hope we come to realize is that the rest of the world has started to look at the Mennonite Church as the model for missional living. We've been doing it right all along. We need to not get lost in the programs and mission trips and organizations and such and forget the witness of my ancestor in Switzerland who was put in prison, not for running a formalized church institution or by running a missions project, but for living out a genuine Christian life and helping a neighbor from the next field over do the same.
Missional is about being sent, about going out. We can react out of fear in the evidence before us of a "graying" denomination and declining church attendance and try and focus on "growing" our churches. Or, we can act out of faith and continue to seek for where God is already working in the world and join him there.
Being missional may mean needing to give up some of those things that we think identify us. Someone said something like "passing the baton" and letting go of things that need to change. Not because those things are bad or didn't work or aren't effective. At some time they were VERY appropriate. But the world around us changes and sometimes what was appropriate 20 years ago may not work so well any more.
The church is not limited to Mennonites in the USA. There are Mennonites in Canada and Mennonites in Puerto Rico. There are Mennonites ALL OVER the world and, quite frankly, they don't look or act ANYTHING like us. To identify Mennonites by what we see in the convention hall at Pittsburg is cheapening this global phenomenon of Anabaptist character.
My parents... really... my parents were instrumental in bringing the Puerto Rican Mennonite Church into relationship with Mennonite Church USA. I was deeply touched to hear from the front of the assembly this morning the testimonial, 4 years later, of how much my mother and father contributed to this part of our church growth.
For that matter, church is not limited to Mennonites... period. Lutherans recognize the Mennonite character and, while apologizing for their part of the persecution in the 17th and 18th century, have come along side Mennonites and begun to look at what it means to live Christ like lives in this world. Eastern Orthodox have come along side. Church of God congregations have come along side. We can no longer live in our silo and think that we have a corner on the "good way" of the world when there are so many other streams of Christianity that, while different, are trying to live out the same mission and, in many ways, succeeding where we do not.
When building bridges to Jesus, we cannot forget our foundations. Our bridges to the new life in Christ cannot be built if we neglect what they are built upon. This was an important message in the adult worship that we cannot forget. I will disagree with the speaker on one thing. She called our foundation serving and loving others who are hurting and damaged. That is VERY important. We cannot neglect that and it is a foundational part of the Mennonite Church. But there are plenty of non-Christian organizations out there who do the same thing. Are our foundations then any different? I say so. While that may be our foundation, we cannot forget the bedrock that is beneath that foundation. Jesus the Messiah is that bedrock. Ultimately, it all come back to him. If we try and build our pilons of our bridges in the silty, sandy river bed without driving them down to the bed rock, the bridge will sag and sink and do, ultimately, no good.
My own take on bridges: All bridges connect two points. In order to build a bridge, you do need a foundation, but you need to know the "from" and the "to". Everybody who needs Jesus has a from, a place where they are starting out. That place is a little different for everyone depending upon culture, generation, past history, etc. Any good engineer will research that anchor point of the bridge to determine where the best places are to anchor the bridge and start construction. Equally important is the anchor point on the OTHER side, that new life in Christ. Again, if you're going to build an anchor there, you must spend time understanding that new life, what it looks like, what's important about it, what's GOD'S intention for it, before you can start building your bridge. And, for that matter, even the bridge that closes the gap may look different depending upon the distance between, the height requirement, wind conditions, materials available, the load it needs to bear, etc. And all of this? It needs to be built according to the plans written up by the ultimate Architect. We are to follow His lead and His purpose and His guidance in all this. And that, sometimes, means that what WE think is the best way isn't necessarily going to work.
Mennonite Men need something different than the warrior approach to Christian spirituality. While men need to try and remember that they ARE men and that they need to overcome some of the excessively female perspectives of "proper" Christian spirituality, there are other metaphors that will work as well that don't require a warrior mentality. In my mind, I remember that, in Lord of the Rings, the warriors couldn't defeat evil. It took someone with bravery and self-sacrifice to do that, not a warrior with a sword or a king with a crown.

These are just some of my thoughts. Obviously, over a thousand words later, it's been a VERY full day. Lots of things to think about. I do hope that the Mennonite Church does not lose sight of Jesus while trying to figure out how to be this denomination.

Stay tuned tomorrow for more. And, if you want, you can follow my tweets on twitter @tristaanogre. You can also observe directly at http://pittsburgh2011.digitaldelegate.net/. Come on by and listen in.

Ministry of Reconciliation, Convention Day 1

2011-07-04T23:49:00.000-04:00

So, tonight started the 2011 Mennonite Church USA and what a start to it. Shane Hipps gave the opening worship message, introducing the theme verse and talking about the ministry of reconciliation. I wish I had the ability to transfer the entirety of his message into this blog. But I can't.

However, here's the key point:

All the difficulties and differences of the 2000 or more years of God's people trying to get along can be summed up in the conflict between those seeking justice and those seeking purity. However, what God calls us as his people, as per Paul in 2 Corinthians 5:17-20, minsters of reconciliation where, instead of infinite division after division, creating a cancer of sorts, we have healthy relationships, bringing people together, learning to live in love while disagreeing. Instead of the left/right, conservative/liberal, etc, etc, etc, divisions that are plaguing the church, we live together understanding that while we'll disagree, we are all new creations in Christ and hold Jesus as central in our lives. We can no longer play the victim card any more. Whether we're threatened by a lack of perceived purity, or threatened by injustice, this can no longer be the way we live.

These are good things from Shane and I think they are greatly important in a healthy church. We've adopted too much of the world in our dealings in that we are following the natural bent of reacting out of fear, anger and hurt, we need to move through that to living and working together for God's Kingdom in love. This is what Mennonites have always been about, loving our "enemy".

But, to be honest, Shane's message I think left out an important part of the 2 Corinthians passage or, at least, under-emphasized it. While we are to be reconciled to each other in love, the message of reconciliation is to be reconciled to God first. I know that there are those that would call me someone coming down on the side of purity against the side of justice, but something that I've come to understand about the mission of God is that the mission is not to just get everyone to get along and live together peacefully. It is to have the whole world reconciled to God to not just continue to live as they are now, but to be restored to the proper relationships that God intended from the beginning. There was a creation and an order to that creation from the beginning. And it was a good creation and that creation had built into it relationships between God, man, and the rest of the created universe and those relationships were good and they all stemmed from that perfect community of the trinity, the three-in-one.

But mankind decided to break that relationship and try and do things on their own. It is from this breaking of the proper relationship between man and God that all the other broken relationships have stemmed. In order for reconciliation to happen between people, those people need to first find the reconciliation with God, the repentance before God to no longer try and go it on our own. Along with that, we seek forgiveness from God for our seeking of autonomy away from him. And, in truth, we need to in our hearts forgive God for all those perceived slights, those things that we thought should have gone one way but went differently. While God cannot do wrong, by definition, we have our perceptions where we need to seek forgiveness in our hearts.

Only when we start that seeking of God and reconciliation with him can we see clearly to reconcile with man or reconcile with creation. Shane did mention this in passing in his message and, for the context, perhaps it was necessary to emphasize man to man reconciliation over man to God. But we cannot, in the process, lose sight of that primary relationship. The greatest commandment, as Ted and Co mentioned in their little sketch, is to love God first with everything that is in us. And the second comes from that, love your neighbor as yourself. If you're not first seeking God (Matthew 6:33), none of the other proper relationships (turning the other cheek, not worrying, not hating, not coveting, being peacemakers, being merciful, etc) will ever happen.

So, while we build bridges for others to find the cross this week, let's also not forget that God has already built a bridge for us to reach him, that being the cross itself. As always, our primary mission in this world is God's mission: to reconcile mankind to God and restore those right relationships that should always have been in the first place. If the church can exemplify this, then everything else will fall into place.

The More that Things Change...

2011-05-29T17:22:00.001-04:00

Something in this morning's sermon prompted my to start thinking about this topic again. I'm not sure exactly what it was, but something triggered me to think about some of the pitfalls that I think the American church has fallen into and how similar they are to the mindsets of the different groups of Jews in Judea of the time period when Jesus walked among us. All of them had a desire to see God's rule come into fullness here on Earth, they just disagreed as to how they were to do it. Here's just a quick overview:

Pharisees - Torah was to be followed as purely and as perfectly as possible. A lot of time and effort was spent in trying to figure that out, not to be legalistic, but to try and figure out what living in the covenant of Torah looked like so that, if they got it right, God would bless Israel again, kick out the oppressors and they would again have the position of God's blessed nation.

Sadducees - Torah was not necessarily to be followed like the Pharisees did, but they spent their time within the power structures of the world to make changes within those structures so that Israel would regain prominence in the world. This meant working within the Temple system, the Roman government, and the monarchy of Israel, establishing political power and working within those political institutions to bring about Torah rule, not just in Israel, but in all the Roman world. Again, they thought that if they could get everyone to be on board with Torah and that Israel's political power would be able to exert that Torah influence on the world, God would again bless their nation.

Zealots - Torah was a promise that Israel would be a powerful kingdom again and that Jews would have their independant nation. Taking inspiration from the promises in Torah and in the historical books of God's conquering reign, the Zealots (and there were a lot of groups that could be classified that way) worked within the ideas of military might to purify Israel, cleanse it from the pagan influences of the world, and establish the Kingdom of Israel once again. If they could do that and have a pure nation again, God would again bless their nation.

Now, these are over-simplifications of these three positions and, just like with most world-views and mindsets, there are whole ranges of spectrums of various positions within these. But actually, if you take a close look at these ideas, they seem to resonate within the church as well. Let me call these the 21st century versions.

21st Century Pharisees - There is, at least in the US, numerous Christians who spend their time trying to figure out what the best Christian behavior looks like. What should we dress? What music should we listen to? How should we be baptized? When should we be baptized? Who's allowed to take communion? What is the correct interpretation of the sotoriological action of Christ's death on the cross (okay, big words there, but you get the point)? In the process of figuring these things out, there's a lot of line drawing, a lot of "You're in" or "You're out". To some extreme levels, there are people who advocate completely withdrawing from the world around us, much like the Pharisees did. Don't associate with those people, if you do, you won't look like a proper Christian and you'll damage our witness. Even among these Pharisaical Christians, there's arguments where they argue amongst themselves, drawing lines even between Christian groups. "Oh, those Mennonites, they're all works based. They aren't REAL Christians". Or "Those Catholics, they are all idol worshipers and worship the Virgin Mary. They can't be REAL Christians". You get the picture. Why do all this? Well, if you are going to be a Good Christian and be able to establish God's Kingdom (either now or later), you need to make sure you get these behaviors all right or you won't go to heaven or even be part of the Kingdom. The whole point is to figure out what holy living LOOKS like and really be sure about it so that we can make sure we point out to people how they are NOT in the Kingdom so that we can show them how to really be in the Kingdom.

21st Century Sadducees - Now, before you get all in a tizzy on this one, there is not a single political party in the US where Christians don't take this viewpoint to some level. Whether you are Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Socialist, Communist, Green, etc., there are Christians in those parties that see the use of the political power structures of our society as the means to establish God's Kingdom. The only difference is what the emphasis is. For some, it's establishing structures for social justice in the political systems and governmental systems so that, through those systems, God's Kingdom can be realized in the justice for the poor and oppressed. For some, it's establishing societal rules of moral and ethical behavior in things like marriage, finance, and family life so that God's Kingdom can be realized in a moral society (a bit of an overlap here with the Pharisees). And really, again, it's all levels of degree between those two ends and all sorts of stuff in between. The point of it is, as with the Sadducees of the 1st century, is to bring about God's Kingdom through the political power structures of our day. After all, we're in this world, might as well "redeem" the tools of the world for God and bring God's blessing upon it.

21st Century Zealots - We've gotta rebel, make some noise, raise a stink, get in their faces. This world has got to change. Doom and gloom to those who aren't Christian and it serves them right when things go bad for them. Political protests, social sit ins, etc., characterize this group. Again, there's some overlap here with the other two, but these guys, just like in the first century, are very aggressive about bringing about God's Kingdom. Whatever it takes, even, for some, if it means taking up arms and using military might and violence, it is necessary to bring about the kinds of changes in society that would then characterize the Kingdom. We are so far from the Kingdom now, it's going to take some SERIOUS radical work to get our country back on track.

But here's the thing, just like in the first century, Jesus had a lot to say about these kinds of ways about bringing about the Kingdom. The Kingdom is not about separating people based upon righteousness and marking people as "in" or "out". The Kingdom is not about establishing religious based political power to bring about righteousness in the world. The Kingdom is not about chaotic and disruptive protests and interventions to force people to accept Kingdom rule. The Kingdom is something different. The Kingdom is about God on a mission. It is about covenant and creation. It is about the world not being something that WE change, but something that in which we participate as God originally intended. The community of believers lives righteously in correct relationships with the world, touching loves, reaching out into the darkness and even stepping into the darkness (as Jesus did) to walk with a hurting world and, by sacrificing our own lives, our own desires, our own ideas, bringing God's blessing to others. The Kingdom is not something that is made by law, by politics, or by violence. It is something that is just, simply lived.

When we live the Kingdom, as Jesus lived the Kingdom, everything else just falls into place. It may affect our voting. It might affect our behaviors so that we live differently and have a different moral and ethical code. It may ask is to do something that is unpopular, not to force others into action, but simply because it is the Kingdom thing to do. But most of all, the Kingdom is certainly not a nation of this world, it is not a particular denomination or flavor of Christianity, and it is not an activist movement. The Kingdom is a Way. Jesus is that Way. Jesus is the Truth of that Way. And, through that Way, we can finally live as we were always intended to live, as human-shaped image holders of God.

Created and then Formed

2011-05-22T17:46:00.000-04:00

I had a chance today to have an experience worshiping with some wonderful brothers and sisters from Solidarity and Harmony church in Philadelphia. Previously, they visited our church in an Urban/Rural exchange through Franconia and Eastern District Conferences. What an experience! If you, my readers, ever get a chance for a cross-cultural worship experience like this, please take advantage of it.

In any case, this morning's service opened up with a teaching by Pastor Bernard on the first 7 verses of Isaiah 43. There were two things that Pastor Bernard opened up to us in our conversations today that really brought a wonderful meaning to this passage, both in the opening verse.

First, note that both the name Jacob and the name Israel are invoked. Many folks familiar with the stories of the Bible will remember that Jacob and Israel are essentially two names for the same person. Jacob means "the tricky one" and Israel means "one who struggles with God." It's kind of interesting that we have two names for the same person invoked. It could just be poetry, but stick with me here a moment.

The second thing is the verbs used in that first verse. For Jacob, the verb is translated in English translations as created (and, apparently, the same distinction is in the French/Creole translation). For Israel, the verb is translated in English as formed. Now, you could say that they are the same word, just two synonyms, but there's a subtle difference that, when coupled with the two names, brings out an AMAZING meaning.

Jacob was born as Jacob. It is how he was originally made, created. His genetics, his family, his person started out and was created and conceived as the man Jacob. Not exactly a righteous man at first, a bit of a deceiver, liar, trickster, and down right underhanded. But God sought him out, worked with him, dealt with him, and even wrestled with him. Finally, after that wrestling match, God gave him a new name, a name that showed that Jacob had been changed. Jacob was no longer the man he once was, he was something new. He was now Israel, not because he was born that way, but because God, through his interaction, formed him that way.

Our discussion really took off at that point as the rest of the passage talked about coming through the waters, across the seas, protected by the fires, and that God was with them always through that. Through Israel, God would bring all people from all over the world to him, to join with him, called out by name and chosen by him.

As this teaching continued, I couldn't help but look around and think, "Here we are. Before, we were whites and blacks, Swiss Germans and Haitians, French speakers and English speakers. That is where we started, how we were created. But look at what we've become!"

The Kingdom of God was represented this morning in that small store-front church in Philadelphia, not because we were all the same, but because, through our relationship with God, we had been formed into something new, something that wasn't from our creation but from our transformation through the Holy Spirit given by the Son.

Wow.

And think, that was just two small congregations. When the final redemption comes, how GLORIOUS that will be when "every tongue, tribe and nation will come together and sing "Worthy is the lamb!"", not because that is how we started out, but because that is what we are transformed to become.

Worthy is the Lamb! Glory to God!

Review: "What Happened to My Little Girl"

2011-05-15T17:29:00.001-04:00

Note: I received this book for free from Zondervan in return for this review. However, this did not influence my review of the book and I have attempted to be fair and impartial in the review.

What Happened to My Little Girld: Dad's Ultimate Guide to His Tween Daughter

After finishing this book this morning before church, I went up to my wife, with tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat and said, "I wish I had this book three years ago."

I am the father of two wonderful girls (and when I let them get online on their own, I hope that they'll already know and understand this). One will be 11 in just a couple of weeks, the other is 8. For the eleven-year-old, I sympathize greatly with Jim Rue in this book. There are times when I feel like it is too late, that I've made too many mistakes and that the damage has been done. And perhaps it has. But that's one thing that Jim does in this book in that he, as a father himself, has his own regrets but he does share a hope at the end that I think all father's should read.

So, what is this book about? Basically, if there is ANY book that a father of a tween should have memorized or engraved on the inside of his eyelids, this is it. Of course, I haven't read many books for dads of tweens but perhaps that's because there aren't very many, at least not from a Christian perspective. Essentially, this book walks you through the murky, messy thoughts and emotions that go through your daughters head in the pre-teen years. The way Jim and Nancy Rue do this is through anectdotes (both true and made up), subtle humor, and a good bit of blunt honesty about how lost dads get when dealing with their female daughters. Mixed into this all are scripture references that give a Biblical guide to the fact that, yes, what your daughter is going through is healthy, normal, and actually not that bad. When we as fathers despair at whether or not our daughters will grow up to be proper, godly, young women, it is so refreshing to be told, "Don't worry. It's normal. Take it easy and be gentle and really, it will all work out."

Probably the most useful chapters for me were the chapters on the emotional roller coaster of the tween years ("She'll Be Crying In A Minute"), her self image ("Who Is She Today?"), and the inter-relational mess of tween girl friendships ("Dealing with Girl Drama"). My eight-year-old has started dealing with the complex friend relationships and I actually got to use that chapter just the other week. My eleven-year-old also has some of that girl drama going on but for her, the self-image and emotional turmoil have especially been a trial for me to get a handle on.

The best tools I found in this book were the self evaluations of my understanding of my daughters that come with each chapter. I am a clueless father, or at least I think I am, so it is nice to be able to have some place to go to get a general idea of how clueless (or not) I really am and then get some good, practical, experienced advice as to how to become less clueless. To be honest, I'm not as bad off as I thought I was. It helps, I guess, to have a wonderful wife as a partner in this journey who has been great at giving me those little glimpses into the minds of my daughters.

The only complaint I have about this book is that it is definitely written towards dads whose tweens are immersed in the culture and involved in the KGOY (Kids Getting Older Younger) marketing blitz. While my girls are not completely sheltered from this, they don't seem quite as over-run by the pressures of the "popular" culture. Perhaps this is not so bad, that I can take comfort that my life with my kids might not be as rocky as for some other dads. But there is a subtle fear inside me that maybe I'm sheltering my girls TOO much, that perhaps I need to loosen up a little bit and let them explore these strange weird clothes, music, and TV shows that all the other girls are involved with. How can my Mini-Women discover who they are if I don't let them explore it (part of that "Who Is She Today?" chapter of things)?

Over all, if you're a dad of a tween daughter (or daughters, like me), this is an excellent handbook. If I could do so, I'd have this with me at all times. Next time my daughter bursts into tears or rolls her eyes at me, I can whip out the book, flip to the right page, and know EXACTLY what I need to do... or not. Don't want to get the "DAAAAAAAD!" voice, either.

In any case, the last chapter of the book, as I mentioned above, gives me hope. Jim Rue was not a model father either (something that gives great credibility to the advice of the book, learning from mistakes), but the letter that he shares from his now 30-year-old daughter tells all fathers that, no matter the screw-ups, as long as your daughter KNOWS you love her and you do your best to show it, she appreciates you and that you tried. God can redeem even the major faux pas of the past.

Oh, you want to borrow my copy? Not a chance. I have 2 years until teenager with one daughter and all of the tween years with the other. I need all the help I can get to remedy the past with the first and to not repeat the mistakes with the second.

So... what do we do?

2011-05-02T21:01:00.002-04:00

A couple of months ago, a Jewish family in Israel was brutally murdered in their beds, including their infant child. Following that horrific event, we were treated to images of people in certain areas of the world celebrating this killing with cheers and the passing around of candies. This celebration of death had been decried and condemned by many people.

Last night, five more human lives were taken. In this case, the circumstances were different. However, once again, we have been exposed to image after image and video after video of people celebrating at least one of these deaths... this time in our own country.

I agree with the idea that the taking of a human life is regrettable and something to be avoided whenever possible. Our world, however, has a lot of broken things and, with these broken things, sometimes there are broken actions that are taken. We also cannot ignore that, at times, God has allowed and even used similar things towards achieving his purposes (just read the book of Judges sometime). Question: was the killing of Osama bin Laden guided or allowed by God or was it man taking matters in "his" own hands? This I cannot answer and ask that we do not presume to know God's mind on this.

However, I do believe that, to God, all human life is precious, regardless of the choices any human has made or actions they have done. Why else would Paul have pointed out how the Anointed One died for mankind "while we were still sinners"? Our sins do not change our value in the eyes of God and so even someone like bin Laden is a precious creaion. In light of this, while it seems that the "natural" consequences of Osama's life-choices may have caught up with him, I cannot join in the revelry of death. To do so would, first of all, go against the idea of the value of all human life. Secondly, it would put me on par with those who celebrated the murder of that Jewish family.

I do have mixed feelings. I sympathize with those who are still grieving over their loss on September 11th, 2001, that there is some closure to those events (although incomplete). And I sympathize with the national relief that one serious threat to our nation has been removed (albeit there may be additional threats that my rise as a result). But I cannot rejoice in death. A human life was taken and that person now no longer has the opportunity for reconciliation with his fellow man nor with his Creator.

I pray that the world can move on now and find its way to God's peace and that, in the process, no more lives need be taken. Realistically, though, I know that until Jesus' return and his profound royal presence is felt among us, such things will continue to happen. God have mercy on us all.

Some other scripture verses that talk about some of this (note that even in light of "Old Testament Justice", the scriptures and the prophets have something to say):

Proverbs 24:17
Matthew 5:43-48
Ezekiel 18:21-23 (interesting if your read this whole passage that God's justice goes even towards the "righteous" if they do wrong.... No one is immune from God's "justice")
Ezekiel 33:11

A couple of other quotes as food for thought:

I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. - Martin Luther King, Jr.

O God, the Father of all, whose Son commanded us to love our enemies: Lead them and us from prejudice to truth: deliver them and us from hatred, cruelty, and revenge; and in your good time enable us all to stand reconciled before you, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen - Prayer For Our Enemies from the Book of Common Prayer

Yet Another Psalm... and a response

2011-04-10T15:00:00.006-04:00

Some of you who know me personally may know of the trials of the past week. It was a dark time for me, especially Thursday when I posted a paraphrase of Psalm 22. There are people who would talk about the events that led to my present circumstances as being just life, just what happens, nothing special, etc. Some would explain away the amazing way things came together as my "having talent" and just being smart about my choices. Some would just place it as the random things that happen and that really, it's no different than any other random set of coincidences.

And, ya know, they COULD be right. But see, that's what faith does. Hebrews 11:1 defines faith as "confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see." Sounds kinda trite, doesn't it? A good excuse to explain things away. But see, in order to be able to see the underlying things that go on, to be able to see those amazing events converge, you first need to have a mind open to the possibility that there is something else going on. You don't have to have proof, you don't have to have concrete evidence, you just need to have the willingness to look. Many people have acted on faith in the past (Hebrews 11 is full of some of those stories), where people have acted on something without definite proof and that faith was rewarded not only with the thing they were hoping for, but even proof of it. Many times, even in scientific endeavors, to prove something is true, you need to first act like it is. Sometimes you are shown to be right, sometimes not. But faith is necessary to take that first step.

Carl Sagan, agnostic that he was, had a lot to say about faith. The movie Contact is an interesting study of faith, of believing even when the world is against you, even when all common sense tells you that you are foolish. Jodie Foster's character, Dr. Arroway, has this memorable quote in response to a challenge that she faked the entire trip to Vega, a challenge to deny it happened:

Because I can't. I... had an experience... I can't prove it, I can't even explain it, but everything that I know as a human being, everything that I am tells me that it was real! I was given something wonderful, something that changed me forever... A vision... of the universe, that tells us, undeniably, how tiny, and insignificant and how... rare, and precious we all are! A vision that tells us that we belong to something that is greater then ourselves, that we are *not*, that none of us are alone! I wish... I... could share that... I wish, that everyone, if only for one... moment, could feel... that awe, and humility, and hope. But... That continues to be my wish.

See, those of us that act on faith, that make those journies into the unknown, come back as changed people. It is out of this that we then speak on our faith, that we are changed people and that change itself is evidence of the proof of our faith. Dr. Arroway had faith that there was other life out there, it was proven out to her, and her life was changed by her experiences... even when the rest of the world was against her, she maintained her faith and lived out her life according to the changes she experienced within herself.

This is what we as Christians are called to do. We can spend as much time as we like arguing, trying to prove the unprovable, trying to justify the foolishness of believing in something so preposterous as a Supreme Being who created the universe out of nothing, who came down in the form of a man to show us what it means to be a human being. But that time and those arguments will really do nothing, nothing at all, in the face of the world who sees no evidence. So, our first task, before anything else, is to live out our changed lives. Our faith takes us into change, we then need to live that change so that the very evidence that proves our faith is expressed, not in words and logical arguments, but in our very lives. When we act as unchanged people, we are basically telling the rest of the world that our faith is foolish. But when we live the changed life, live it out every day in EVERY way, then there is no denying the change and the people of the world around us will be forced to stop and ask, "What happened to them?"

I was spoken to, taught, refined, and changed by that intense week. I'm still trying to figure out what exactly happened to me, but I know, within me, something is different. I hope to prove it out in the coming days, weeks, and months. One thing that has been made clear to me, though, is spelled out in the 23rd Psalm which I offer up in this paraphrase:

God, my guide and protector and provider!
I am safe now, cared for and provided for.
The world is now a safe place, quiet and refreshing.
I feel you beside me, walking with me,
taking me where it is safe and calm.
You are taking me where you need me to be,
where I can be your representative.
In the depths of my dark times, I'm not scared any more.
You protect, guard, guide, and disciple me
and this is a comfort to me, knowing you care so much
Even when the rest of the world seems against m
you've put a feast of opportunity and possibility in front of me.
I feel your love pouring over me, in me, and through me
until it overflows and there's nothing I can do but spread it around.
This will be with me forever, that I will always remember how
you took care of me.
In return, all I can say is this: I am yours, Lord, now and always.

-Psalm 23, Rob Martin Paraphrase

A Psalm Revisted

2011-04-07T20:36:00.001-04:00

God? God?!? GOD WHERE ARE YOU?!?!
Can you even hear me? Are you within the sound of my voice?
All day today I've been calling out, but all I get is silence.
And every night I cry and cannot sleep.

You're the king of the universe, everyone sings your praises
My parents, my grandparents, they all looked to you for help and you did help them
I heard them pray and they were answered. They didn't look foolish because you helped them

But all around me I see the looks, those eyes that say, "what happened to him?"
They wonder what I did wrong, what failing do I have that brought me to this place
"Let's see if God will help him. Let's see if God actually is proven right."

But I remember that you made me, you brought me to being.
From my earliest days, I looked to you. My parents
brought me up to trust in you.

Don't leave me here, alone! There's so much weight on me!
As much as they want to, no one can help me.

The bills are waiting, lurking, surrounding me.
Those debts that want to suck away my life.
It unmans me to think about what will happen
Inside I'm quivering, melting, dissolving in my despair.
I can't enjoy even my morning coffee, it's so bitter in my mouth.

Those demons of fear, anger, despair, depression,
they surround me and tear at me, constantly.
They whisper those fears back to me and speak
of the terrible things that will happen if life does not change.

Don't leave me here, God.
I depend on you, even now. Come, hurry, help.
Save me from these fears, these dark thoughts.
Provide for me, Jehovah Jirah.
Protect me, my strong tower, my rod and my shield.

Even now I know you are God. You provide.
History has proven that you have come through.
Hey, everyone, I have a strong God!
He WILL take care of me, he has heard me.

I can't wait to hear the praises from everyone when
you are proven to be a provider.

This will be my testimony, from here until the day I die,
everywhere I go I'll tell everyone how you sustained me and
helped me even in the darkest of hours.
You ARE the King, and everything belongs to you

The rich, the poor, the despairing, the dead and dying,
Everyone will know you are God.
I will tell my children that you are a provider, a protector
and they will tell theirs, and so on, so that your name will
never die out so long as your story is told that yes,

You heard me. You did it.

-Psalm 22, Rob Martin paraphrase

A little cross-promotion

2011-03-29T14:38:00.000-04:00

Some of y'all who follow this blog might not be aware that I have another one. Rather than cluttering up this one with film readings, I created a blog a short while ago called "Finding Christ in Film". I just posted a reading of "The Adjustment Bureau". Check it out here.

An Open Letter - How to Love Your Neighbor

2011-03-13T17:07:00.001-04:00

To my fellow child of God who lives next door,

Hello, my brother. It's been a while since we've actually spoken more than a greeting over the fence. I am a little sad about that because I think I know why and I am afraid that I am a part of that reason. This makes me even more sad because I find myself in the difficult position of trying to weigh in the balance the needs of many different people and many different relationships.

You see, I realize that there is something that I'm doing that irritates you. To be honest, for the life of me, I cannot fathom why that is the case. I can guess and try and figure it out but without any real conversation, that's all that it remains, a guess. Because of that, there's nothing that I can really say about your motives, your reasons, your needs in the situation and all I can assume is the best. I am called by my Lord, Jesus, to "love your neighbor as yourself" (Matthew 5:42-44 and Luke 10:25-37) And one of the characteristics of love is to always trust and hope and to always persevere (1 Corinthians 13:4-7). Other places we are told to do our best to get along with everyone (Romans 12:17-18). So, this is my aim, to think the best of you, to love you, to pray for you and, as much as is my responsibility, get along with you. And truthfully, this is what I'm trying to do.

I will not say I am faultless in my relationship with you. I have not always been graciously minded towards you. There have been times when I've done things specifically to irritate you out of spite. And, while she is her own person, my wife has done these things as well and I am at fault in that I've encouraged this. These are not the ways that we should love our neighbor and, for these attitudes of mind and for our misdeeds, I'm truly sorry. I wish we could take back the things we've said and done but, unfortunately, once words are said, it's extremely hard to "unsay" them. All we can do is beg forgiveness and hope and pray that we can do better, for our part.

I wish that circumstances were other than they are, that my actions as I live my life would not irritate you. I wish there were a way to do what we need to do to live our lives without causing you to be angry with us. I know this is going to come across as excuses for not showing you love and respect but I hope you can trust that this is not the case. There are other relationships involved that my wife and I need to consider when it comes our current situation and we're trying to do our best in balancing our actions against all the relationships that we have and doing our best to treat everyone as best as possible. To be honest, it's not that we love any of our neighbors more or less, at least not in our intentions. It's more about weighing out needs and trying to figure out who has the greatest need.

On one hand, we have been given the use of someone else's property for a time. This is a need of ours as we try to live more simply in a day and age where the world seems to call us to live beyond our means. We are blessed by this gift from a friend that we can do some other things that we feel called to do and that we can still live our lives the way we feel like we should. But in return, we feel responsible to be good stewards of this gift we have been given. It is not our property so we do need to make sure we care for it and treat it well. This limits some of what we can and cannot do with this property. Some choices we could make would put this item of our friends at risk of damage, some choices would even be against the law and cause our friend to have to deal with certain legal difficulties. There is an obligation to us to do with what we've been given what would be in the best interest of the person that is the giver.

On the other hand, there are other people, other neighbors involved with their own needs. These other neighbors, I will admit, have had some relationship difficulties with us in the past as well and so our need to keep that relationship going, to heal the past hurts, and to be able to live at peace with them has to come into our choices. But, in addition to this relationship healing, these other neighbors have needs that are more long term than the temporary need we have. Our actions and needs are short-lived and only, truly, an inconvenience to us while their needs are long term and less of a matter of convenience and more of a necessity. So, with a growing and healing relationship as well as balancing our convenience with their needs, we have an obligation to these relationships that weighs heavily on our decision making.

But where do you come into this? Again, all I can do is guess. I wish we could talk, I wish that we could discuss what is going on so that we can understand each other and come to something perhaps of a mutual understanding. So all I can do is guess. In my guesses, the only thing that I can see about the situation that is problematic is that we are doing something that somehow removes a convenience from you and does not intrude on a need of yours. I wish I could understand why this is a need of yours but without conversation and dialogue, this difficult to do. I want to be able to get along with you, I want to be able to work this out and figure out a way that everyone's needs can be met. I so much want to have this dialogue but I feel shut out, that there is no opening there to discuss with you the situation aside from capitulation which does no good. But, for now, because all I can do is guess, I must act as I have been in the best interest of a larger community than just you and my family.

So, here we are, trying to figure out what to do. Are we doing the right thing now? I hope so. I pray so. I'm trying to find my way through this. It is not easy. Perhaps our persistence in our path is the wrong thing. I don't know. It's so hard to say. Our we being treated unjustly and unfairly? Or are we the unjust and unfair ones? I do know that I want this dialogue to happen. This is truly my desire, to live at peace with you, a peace that is not one that comes from avoidance but from working through problems to truly live in community with each other. I don't know of an easy way to bring this about. I'm praying, as are others, that somehow God's Spirit will move in this and bring about, in some way, a healing of our relationship. This is my deepest desire.

I pray that you are well, that your life is blessed, and that God will continue to look on you with favor. I pray that God will enter into our relationship and, through His power to redeem, that something good will come out of this for both of us. My God bless you and keep you, my he make his face to shine upon you, and give you peace.

Sincerely,

Robert A. Martin

So you think you can't help someone

2011-03-08T14:58:00.005-05:00

This article from Christianity Today came to my attention during class today (Dr. Marks mentioned it). After reading it, I almost wept at this one quote:

The truth is that Christians give to big giant buildings, to churches that cost a hundred million dollars, and we put our pastors on jets to fly them around the world where the money should really be going to those listed in Matthew 25:31-46—the orphan, the widow, the hungry, the cold, the poor, the sick, and the imprisoned. And we have failed to do that.

Why This 'Secret Millionaire' Went Public | Movies & TV | Christianity Today

This bothers me, seriously. I don't know how many times I've heard "Oh, I'm not gifted that way" or "What good can I really do?" or "That problem is too big for me." Even this millionaire person recognizes that those three statements aren't true. It doesn't take a millionaire to change the world.

Let me share a story. I know we're not supposed to let our right hand know what our left is doing but there comes a time when the testimony of a believer does a lot to motivate someone. I've told this story before so if you've heard it before, bear with me. If you haven't heard it, think about when you may have been in a similar situation.

About 19 years ago, Heather (my wife) and I were privileged to go on a day trip to the Philadelphia campus of Messiah College for a tour followed by a showing of the production of "Les Miserables". A fantastic play and we enjoyed ourselves thoroughly.

We were on our way out of the Forrest theatre with our group of Christian friends from campus and we were "accosted" by a beggar on the street. This tall, thin, smelly, lanky black man had a styrofoam Hardee's cup and was begging money off of the patrons leaving the musical. Of course, some people gave him a coin or two or a dollar or two but not many. And, of course, his trick was to occasionally pocket the money so it didn't look like he was taking in a lot.

As our group of Messiah college students passed him, it struck me: not one student stopped or gave him anything. Not even the faculty member hosting our visit did anything. We just passed him by. This bothered me for some reason. Aren't we supposed to take care of the neighbor we meet on the street? Yeah, he'd probably spend it on booze or drugs or something else equally unsavory...but really, aren't we supposed to do what we can?

I stopped and reached for my wallet and opened it up, looking for maybe a dollar or two. I had one bill in my wallet, a $10 bill. Not like the guy could break it for change. Oh, great. Now what. Do I give him a $10 bill? What a waste.

But that nagging little voice just wouldn't leave me alone. So, I folded up the bill as small as I could, slipped it into the cup, and continued walking.

About half a dozen steps away, suddenly, the guy starts shouting "Hallelujah! Praise God!" and dancing in the street. He was prancing and dancing like a little child with this HUGE grin on his face. "I can buy a new pair of shoes! Hallelujah! I can get a new pair of shoes!"

He dashes over to me and drags me into this increasingly large circle of spectators, stunned and aghast at the scene in front of them. "This man," he calls jubulantly, "this man just bought me a new pair of shoes. Look at my shoes!" He hold up his feet for view. There on the ends of his lanky legs are a pair of the most beat up, holy, trashy, ragged sneakers I had ever seen, held together by tape and hope.

"Down at the thrift shop there is a pair of shoes my size for $12. This man just gave me enough money to get a new pair of shoes!"

He started pumping my arm and grinning into my face. "Thank you, sir! God bless you, sir! Believe me, you want to trust me? Come back tomorrow. Come back to this place tomorrow night, I'll have my new shoes. I'll prove it to you." With that, he skipped away, dancing and prancing into the crowd. I think he was done begging that day.

I didn't get down there again the next day but no doubt, I'd believe he was there as he said he would. I wish I could have been there.

Think you're little bit doesn't help? Think you can't do any good with your bit of pocket money? Remember the pair of shoes....

When believers grieve

2011-03-05T18:48:00.001-05:00

Short one today.
Consider this song.

Now, think about this...
When some people grieve, the grieve as if it's someone they will never see again.When Christians grieve, we don't grieve as others grieve. In fact, that's a scripture passage:

Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage one another with these words. 1 Thess 4:13-18

Just something to think about...

Jesus on taxes

2011-03-04T10:51:00.001-05:00

Before I get too deep into this, one thing that stood out in my theology classes at seminary is that, when approaching the study of theology, one must ALWAYS remember that we come to the text with our own bias that comes from our experiences, the culture around us, and our mindset at the time. So, as I approach this subject, I recognize the following things:

American society is extremely polarized today concerning the issues of taxes and appropriate use of public finances. Any topic concerning these in current society will be seen through a lens of extreme bias from one spectrum end or the other.
I have, in the past, expressed certain bias for a political spectrum and I am still struggling with overcoming that bias with a mindset towards Kingdom thought and not worldly political thought.
My religious tradition has a lot of history concerning the topics of taxes, government, worldly powers, etc. I have been steeped and marinated in that tradition for all of my 38 years of life and it is hard to separate my thoughts from these years of teaching.
We are living in an increasingly Post-Christendom society and so there are these conflicts between the Christendom mindset and the reaction against Christendom in all the conversations.
Anyone who reads this post is going to have these same four items to deal with in their own lives and will need to face the same struggles I have to set aside what we THINK is the truth and be open to trying to understand what IS true.

So, all that said, I was pondering on my walk this morning more in the idea of the role the church places with the state. Obviously, the idea of taxes and how those tax revenues are spent are top in the minds of a lot of US Christians today. And actually, this is as it should be. We are ambassadors to the world, after all, and we need to speak with a voice to that world. The Sider Center at Eastern University is co-sponsoring a petition on this very topic.

The problem I see, and something that I expressed in a post earlier this week, is the degree to which we equate the worldly political processes with the mission of the church. In fact, both sides of the political spectrum, right and left, are guilty of this. The right says "Cut taxes and stop spending. We need to be fiscally responsible to be good stewards." and the left says "Raise taxes, spend more. We need to compassionately take care of the least of these." And you know, the reasons they give are definitely biblical. But are the means?

As I was pondering, two stories about Jesus and the issue of taxes came to mind. The link is below. I'll let you read them yourself.

Matthew 17:24-27, 22:15-22 - Passage Lookup - New International Version, ©2011 - BibleGateway.com

Notice that in these two passages, Jesus says nothing at all about whether or not taxes are right or wrong, or whether or not the amount of the taxes are right or wrong. In fact, both of these stories Jesus gives essentially a non-answer on taxes. He pays them, he says that there is actually a responsible factor on paying them, but he doesn't give any commentary on the morality of them. That is very curious to me. Normally, if something is important for the righteous life, Jesus would give something pretty definitive. But in the first story, there's this kind of "What do you think?" leaving the question open and letting Peter kind of wrestle with it and then he pulls a magic coin out of a fish as if to say, "Whatever. We'll let God take care of it." In the second story, he never really answers the Pharisees. They wanted a definite moral standing on "Should we pay taxes?" and Jesus kind of left it hanging out there with a rather ambiguous statement. What is really God's and what is really Caesar's?

As I reflected on this, it occurred to me that, in the context of everything else Jesus was dealing with around these stories, that the question of taxes really didn't enter into it. Jesus teachings were about how to love your neighbor, about how to love God, about what the Kingdom looked like, about the contrasts between the values of the world and the values of the Kingdom. For Jesus, these matters of whether or not to pay taxes and the moral stance on it really didn't enter into his conversation. Yes, Jesus talked about money and the poor, but taxes and government? Other than the Kingdom, there really isn't much to say about government.

Even Paul takes a rather ambiguous stance on government in Romans 13:1-7. Do what is right. Give honor and respect where they are due. But when it comes to whether or not a government authority is valid or righteous, I don't think this passage really addresses that. For that matter, consider the context of the oppressive Caesar's and the kind of world that the Roman Christians lived in and this becomes an even more radical passage in that even that corrupt government is something that should be given honor and respect. Weird, huh?

So, all this to say the following: I think both Jesus and Paul were concerned less about what the earthly governments (including the government of the religious Temple establishment in Matthew 17) did and the processes that they employed and more concerned about what the people of God in their communities did. Whether or not taxes were paid were not as important as to whether or not God is in charge. Both Matthew passages and the Romans passage put that above all. God has the ultimate authority in all things and our first and foremost concern should be in living our lives righteous before God.

What does this mean for us today? Well, to be honest, I don't think it really supports either the political left or the political right definitively. I think the stance in US politics that you take falls under what Paul calls in Romans 14 "disputable matters". You could argue either way and still be right (or wrong). But consider how Christians live their lives in countries that are not nearly as "Christianized" as the US, such as India, Pakistan, China, Iraq, and Egypt, and suddenly what the government does or does not do pales in comparison. Here are people giving their lives, their money, their everything to move the Kingdom forward, even in the midst of great personal poverty. The justice of the government over them and whether or not it's acting in a Christian fashion really does not make any difference as to what they are doing with their lives. The government may be doing great things in dealing with the poor... or not. The government may be doing great things in advocating for the oppressed...or not. But Christians in these places really don't seem to care what their government is or is not doing.

So, what do we do about it? I say live under our convictions as to what we think the government should or should not do. Vote or not. Stand for Republicans or stand for Democrats (or independent or whatever). However, I think a re-prioritization should be in order. Instead of making the primary mission of our lives be to transform these earthly institutions, we should instead look at what we as the community and body of Christ are doing to be faithful to the way in ways that do not involve earthly politics. This should be, I believe, our primary focus and goal. Christ's life on earth was spent out amongst the people, working within the communities, redeeming right relationships across all strata of the socio-economic systems of his day. Roman soldiers, Roman governors, Sadducees, Pharisees, etc. They seemed to be more of an annoyance, inconvenience, and impediment towards what his true mission was. He addressed them, he talked with them, but he basically put them in their place by giving them non-answers. The conversations about "morally right" government didn't really come on his radar while there were people who were sick, hurting, lost, and confused around him. We live in a world with the same kinds of people around us. Are our conversations about government really that important? Or are there more important things for us to worry about?

This is not an easy road, by far, but I think we're up to the challenge. How can we, the church, the body of Christ, care for the poor? How can we, the church, the body of Christ, free the captives? How can we, the church, the body of Christ, heal the sick? The answer to these questions is going to look different in different circumstances with different people in different communities but where the redeeming power of God is present, creative and amazingly miraculous answers will emerge.

Higher thoughts

2011-03-03T09:04:00.001-05:00

I saw today's verse of the day from BibleGateway.com and I had just a couple of thoughts. Check it out:

⁸ “For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the LORD.
⁹ “As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.

I read this and, as I wonder, I think about what we try to do every day. Every day we try and apply our human reasoning to life, to try and figure out, through our own abilities, what to think, what to believe, and how to put it into practice. But this verse implies that, at best, we can approximate what God intends but nothing we can do out of our own power will ever come close to God's worldview.

The rest of the passage gives the answer, though. God's word, when it pours out on us, causes amazing things to flourish. It causes worship, even in the nature around us. It starts amazing things in people's lives, like flowers in the desert. And everything that happens from this outpouring of God's word has some part in achieving God's purposes.

We are recipients of that word and, as such, we need to examine ourselves. Are we seeing the flowers, the seed, the bread? Or are we trying to do our own things? Are we trying to align with God's thoughts, with God's ways, or are we trying to forge off on our own? How do we get back to God? Verses 6 and 7 give the answer:

⁶ Seek the LORD while he may be found;
call on him while he is near.
⁷ Let the wicked forsake their ways
and the unrighteous their thoughts.
Let them turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on them,
and to our God, for he will freely pardon.

Let's look for God's ways and listen to God's thoughts and perhaps we, too, can bud and flourish from the outpouring of his word.

Where is the third way?

2011-03-02T22:08:00.003-05:00

I am disturbed by the direction the church is going these days. I wonder if the leadership has remembered that while John Howard Yoder taught that the church should not retreat into quietism when dealing with the world, he also taught to "Let the church be the church." We also forget our own confession of faith that expresses, pretty clearly to me:

"Even at its best, a government cannot act completely according to the justice of God because no nation, except the church, confesses Christ's rule as its foundation."

Or, for that matter, let's go back 400 years to Schleitheim in 1537:

"The government magistracy is according to the flesh, but the Christians' is according to the Spirit; their houses and dwelling remain in this world, but the Christians' are in heaven; their citizenship is in this world, but the Christians' citizenship is in heaven; the weapons of their conflict and war are carnal and against the flesh only, but the Christians' weapons are spiritual, against the fortification of the devil."

And here we stand, advocating for government agencies that will use "the sword" to enforce the laws, either on the right or on the left. These are not the tools of the body of Christ, but the tools of the world. I really am rather ashamed that I have participated in this political mess. But you may note that, of late, my words have been to call people to consider living a life that is different. We consider ourselves the "Third Way" when it comes to how we deal with things. In the old days, it was Protestants and Catholics and the Third Way... now, I wonder, if it's Republicans and Democrats... and the Third Way. There's GOTTA be a better way than this...

Some may criticize me for taking a high ground of moral superiority... but the thing is, I'm far from the perfection I speak about. But I'm sitting here and I'm looking at my own past and I'm looking around and my heart is breaking and I say, "Is this all there is? Is it all just political maneuvering? Is there nothing more than this?" And the answer is, of course! "Seek first God's Kingdom and His righteousness. And EVERYTHING else, all this peace stuff, all this justice of caring for the poor, all this stuff about loving your neighbor and your enemy, all this stuff will come to you."

I fear that the Mennonite Church has lost sight of this. We hear "Seek first God's Kingdom" and we think "Let's make the nation of this world into God's Kingdom". This is what the Lutherans, the Catholics, the Reformed, and many others did back in Europe and my ancestors died for standing against that very thing. Can I really just sit back and watch as my faith tradition takes this road?

I'm grieving... really... I'm typing this and my eyes are stinging. I'm surprised at my own emotional reaction to this... epiphany.

Kyrie Eleison. Christe Eleison.

PROUD DADDY!

2011-02-26T12:24:00.000-05:00

I want to share with you all something that has been happening recently. I think it's important you hear this, not because of anything I've done, but because of something that God is doing.

Those of you that are Facebook friends with my wife and I know that we have been having a difficult time of things with one of our neighbors. I'll not go into the details but suffice it to say that, despite our best efforts to live out the following passage from my favorite epistle of Paul:

17 Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. 18 If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. 19 Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. 20 On the contrary:
“If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”
21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Romans 12: 17-21, NIV 2011

This is not necessarily an easy thing to do. Our neighbor is not very approachable and, I would say, displays a lot of passive aggressive tendencies. To be kind to someone, to show them love, to do good for them, first they need to allow you to speak with them.

In any case, the problems have escalated to the point that they are now affecting our eldest daughter, Charis. So, we're trying to help our daughter live the Christ like way (she's professed belief in Christ but hasn't accepted baptism yet) so my wife, Heather, has been talking with her about it. Here's what my wife has reported about what's been happening with our daughter:

Once again, Charis has absolutely blown me away with her grace and maturity. She wanted to keep her curtains closed all the time, because of [what's going on]. I asked if she could ignore it, and she said yes. I then suggested that if she sees it, she should pray for him, and related that I slept poorly last night, waking up angry at our neighbor, but that I would stop to pray for him each time. When we discussed the fact that he is all alone - even his family has turned away from him, because of his anger - and the fact that the anger and loneliness feed off each other, she grew quite thoughtful and said, "Then I guess he needs us to love him a whole lot." I'm so proud of her that I could burst.

All I can say is this. I'm a proud father, not because of anything I've done, but because of the way my daughter is living up to her name. Such grace! Such beauty! Her name, Charis Ileana, literally means "grace and beauty". All I can say is that either Heather and I are doing something right in the raising of our children, or we have been given an enormous measure of grace that, even when we screw up, somehow God's Spirit is redeeming it and making my daughter a beautiful young woman, both inside and out.

Theological Thoughts from a Former Juror

2011-02-23T22:25:00.001-05:00

Finally, I can talk about it.

For the past two days, I've been performing my civic duty, providing a jury of peers to a man accused of a crime. I was Juror #6 and, at the end, I was also the fore-person who delivered the verdict to the judge. During the jury selection process, though, there was a young conservative Mennonite woman who, when asked by the attornies if anyone had any grounds they thought would recuse them from serving, stood up and expressed her theological thinking about it.

On reflection, I wonder... why would a conservative Mennonite have such a conviction? I know that, historically speaking, the more conservative groups of the Mennonite tradition have refrained from public office, voting, etc. To be honest, I never understood this. Perhaps it's my more "liberal" upbringing that has poisoned me to consider that it's okay for a Mennonite to be involved in the various functions of the secular government. But when I've asked this question in the past of some people that I thought would know, I didn't get very clear answers. So, anything I may think about the reasons for this stance is purely conjecture and subject to correction.

That said, I was thinking about the context of the situation in the courtroom and that the woman's response came in that she could not follow the judges instructions that the defendant is innocent until proven guilty. I was pondering this today on my drive to the courthouse and while waiting for the case to start. Is that the reason? Is it because we in Christianity believe the opposite, that all humans are guilty and that nothing can really, ultimately prove our innocence? We are made innocent by Christ's act on the cross, but we are still, if taken on pure fact, guilty. Romans 3 tells us that there are no righteous people, that everyone has fallen short. There is no one who does not have, in some way, some act, action, attitude, etc., that is unrighteous. We're all guilty.

But in pondering that, I wonder...what right do we have to determine if someone is guilty? Who is the ultimate judge, the law-giver, the law-maker, the standard against which we are measured? Certainly not another human being, but THE "human", the Second Adam, Christ himself. And God is the Judge (although Christ has been given that office as well, to judge "the quick and the dead") so ultimately he's the one who will make the determination. So, for me to sit in a courtroom and say "Guilty" or "Not Guilty" am I then usurping God's power?

Or, wait a second, where does grace come into this? Ah, THERE it is... that's what I was looking for. See, along with being the righteous judge, God is gracious. It is by grace we are saved through faith. Grace is what ultimately says, "Not Guilty". Grace, though, by definition, is a gift. And as Miroslov Volf points out in his book Free of Charge, the giving of the gift is only half of the process. The gift must be accepted and received in order for the receiver to truly gain the benefit of the gift. So, God is giving us grace. He is saying, "Because of my Son, Jesus, I'm going to consider you innocent until proven guilty." We then have an accuser, The Enemy, who then does his best to prove that we are guilty, bringing up countless evidence that we have fallen short, even doing everything possible to trip us up and prove the accusation by our own misdeeds and mistakes. And, probably more often than not, we do two things. First, we reject the generous gift of grace and choose instead to believe The Enemy that we are guilty, miserable, rotten people deserving of death and hell. Secondly, because of the rejection of that gift, we then proceed to act that way. Why not? We've already been proven guilty, might as well act that way.

But see, if we accept the gracious and generous gift of a clean slate, then we have another obligation, born out of that grace... gratitude. Suddenly, we realize how HUGE the gift is that we've been given, as unworthy as we are to receive that gift from the great judge. So, we choose to instead align our lives with that gracious expectation, not because of a set of rules, but because we want to show to this gracious, magnanimous, loving God that we are really worth of that gift.

"Innocent until proven guilty" works, then, with a gracious Christian perspective. The ONLY place we can receive that concept, truly, is in the court of the great judge. As SOON as we step through that door into God's courtroom, suddenly we're innocent. When our accuser tries to prove guilt, our defender, Jesus says, "You have not met the burden of proof because I've shown it to no longer be relevant." So long as we are in God's courtroom with Jesus as our defender, we are innocent, flawless, and free.
Who's YOUR defense attorney?

What does the "Anti-Empire" look like in practice?

2011-02-15T15:25:00.000-05:00

January 30th, I gave a sermon at Bally Mennonite Church about the beatitudes in which I teased out of the this familiar passage an expression of the Kingdom of God that goes counter to the values presented by the "empires" of the world, including, by not limited to, national governments, state governments, and even corporate institutions (which may include the church and church denominations). You can listen to it here but these are the comparsons I found:

Strength vs. Poor in Spirit - The attitude of being able to do things without reliance on others, especially God versus the attitude of being relying on God for everything and feeling insufficient in your own power.

"Stiff Upper Lip" vs. Mourning - The stoicism of society is that emotion is not valuable and is to be avoided. In the Kingdom, though, mourning is a reason to be blessed because through mourning we have connection to others with shared experience and can find God's Spirit in that.

Ambition vs. Meek - We don't have to be the best at everything and have that ambition to strive to be top dog. Meekness gives us the freedom to connect to others and, communally and with God, achieve more than we would do on our own.

Self-Actualization vs. Hunger/Thirst for Righteousness - Self actualization implies that you can "get there", that there is an end to aim for and there is nothing more to achieve. But if you hunger and thirst, you know that there is always something more to learn from God and from our relationships with others.

Retribution vs. Merciful - Retribution is giving punishment, demanding justice, and demanding repayment. Mercy goes beyond the absence of retribution but goes towards actually living generously and charitably even in situations that may seem to demand retribution.

Liberty vs. Pure in Heart - The emphasis on liberty both in Ancient Rome and in USA society is freedom to do what you want. Pure in Heart realizes there is a right and a wrong and, more specifically, that even the motives and the reasons why things are done are important in our actions. A pure heart knows that there are right things to be done using the right methods for right reasons, and the humility to seek God in that to discern those right things/methods/reasons.

Peacekeepers vs. Peacemakers - Peacekeepers keep people apart to prevent and avoid conflict. Peacekeeping also chooses sides. Peacemaking, though, brings people together that, instead of avoiding conflict, creatively works through conflict to make peace in a situation.

"Keep your nose clean" vs. Persecuted - In empire, there is effort to avoid offense at all costs. "Don't rock the boat". In the Kingdom, speaking truth may offend and may make people uncomfortable and angry. Truth can be unpleasant to face, either in personal relationships or in society in general. And many times, this results in persecution.

So, with these principles, here's the question: What in the WORLD does this look like?

See, I can't answer this question for everyone. Everyone is in different situations, different releationships, different communities. They are all in the Kingdom of God, but representing the Kingdom in different contexts. For me to answer this question for others is to presume that, somehow, I know what's best in those diverse situations. So, here's my challenge for you, thinking creatively, please add in the comments on this blod what does living by "anti-empire" principles look like in your context? What changes would you need to make in your life, in your way of approaching the world? What does church practice look like in this light (community is important)?

I look forward to your responses.

He Has Shown You

2011-01-31T08:26:00.002-05:00

Have you ever noticed how different a passage sounds when it's read in the greater context? Consider this verse: "He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." (Micah 6:8) I'm sure many of you know this verse, as I do, as a pretty little tune we sometimes sing at church.

But what is the context? The entire book of Micah is God's word of judgment on the people of Israel and Judah. Micah calls the people out on their greed, their dishonesty, their idolatry, their murders and thefts and immoralities of all kinds. Then he tells them how God is going to destroy them and bring them to their knees.

Micah chapter 6 begins with God telling the people that He has heard their complaints against Him, and then levels His own charges at them:

³ “My people, what have I done to you? How have I burdened you? Answer me.
⁴ I brought you up out of Egypt and redeemed you from the land of slavery.
I sent Moses to lead you, also Aaron and Miriam.
⁵ My people, remember what Balak king of Moab plotted and what Balaam son of Beor answered. Remember your journey from Shittim to Gilgal, that you may know the righteous acts of the LORD.”

The response of the people is predictable - more offerings! More blood sacrifice! More incense and oil and wine offerings! I'll even give up my first born child! But Micah says, No. He has shown you. He has done for you what He wants you to do for Him. What He desires of you is not simple actions, not obedience out of duty with no heart connection behind it. It's simply not enough to go to church and Sunday school every week, pay your tithes, sing the songs, be on committees, and read a brief devotional before dashing off to work.

So what has God done for His people that He desires from us?

Act justly. Look out for your neighbors. Help those in need - not from afar, but on a personal level, getting involved in the lives of those around you. Don't try to claw your way to the top, demanding your fair share along the way, but take the time to uplift those who are struggling and share the gifts and blessings you have already received. When a young single mother showed up at our church, poor, hungry, and in need, our church did not just refer her to the social services departments for our county (although we did do that). We didn't hand her a check to cover her next month's rent. Instead, my congregation collected household items that we each had in excess, and gathered enough to fully furnish her apartment and stock her pantry. Beyond that, certain women took it upon themselves to befriend her, mentor her, encourage her, and support her emotional needs as well.
Love mercy. This goes beyond overlooking offenses. To love mercy is to long for reconciliation rather than retribution, to eagerly and cheerfully extend forgiveness. It is loving those who hate you, and doing good to those who persecute you. Loving mercy is praying for your rude neighbors, and looking for ways to do something nice for them, not with expectation of kindness in return, not to make them feel guilty, but simply to extend love to them.
Walk humbly with God. My family enjoys walking the nature trails of nearby parks. When my children were younger, they would dash down the paths, heedless of our calls to stay with us. Often when we caught up to them, they were confused and lost, uncertain of the next turning of the path. They would run to us and stay with us for a brief time, but then in their eagerness they would dash away again. How my husband and I longed to have them walk with us! We could show them the way so they would not be afraid; we could take an easy pace, so they would not become weary; we could show them the small lovely things along the way - the patches of tiny flowers, the quiet chipmunk, the tracks of animals in the loam, the song of the wind through the treetops. This is what comes to mind when I consider what "walking humbly with God" looks like. Let Him take the lead and set the pace. Allow Him to show you the little things of beauty in each moment.

He has shown us, my friends, what is good and what He truly desires from us. It is our hearts.

What happens at Spruce Lake...

2011-01-24T17:06:00.000-05:00

...stays at Spruce Lake.

Just kidding. Actually, it was an experience that has the potential for changing lives and forging new and stronger relationships. But of course, those of you who have been on Bally Mennonite Church's annual adult winter retreat at Spruce Lake Retreat probably already knew that. But for my wife and I, this was our first time and I thought I'd take a little bit to give some observations of what makes this experience worth while and something that any adult at Bally should consider doing. For that matter, for my readers outside of the local area, if your congregation has a similar retreat or experience and you have not participated in the past, perhaps my report here will give you that motivation you need to give it a try.

I could go into detail about the specifics of the teaching but ultimately that's not necessary. Each speaker with each group brings a different message and teaching to retreats like this, as I understand it, so the specifics of our teaching this past weekend, while meaningful, aren't really the focus of this article. What was good about the teaching for us this weekend was how we interacted with it.

See, there was a variety of ages present from late 20's/early 30's up to 70's. There were married folks, married with kids, and unmarried. Male and female were represented. Conservative and liberal. Literal bible folks and interpretive bible folks. All walks of life, all manner of folks, all levels of education. In the midst of all this, our speaker spent time teaching us some very interesting insights on life and, while we all got different things out of the teaching (as expressed in our discussions), by coming together in this fashion, sharing all these multiple viewpoints, even when we disagreed, we came away with a much bigger, fuller, and deeper understanding of the teaching than if the group was homogeonous. Some people said, "I just don't see that". Others said, "I saw lots of things". Some expressed deep personal stuff. Others enjoyed a more light-hearted view. And in it all, through it all, under it all, breathing into it all was the one thing, that one amazing thing that characterizes any gathering of Christ-followers truly dedicated to Jesus.

Love.

"Wherever two or more are gathered in my name, there I am also" as Jesus put it in his words. How does he do that? By his love. We all received his love and so we were all equipped to share that same love. Grace comes into it as well, but even God's grace is an expression of his love. Ephesians 4:3-5 describes it like so:

³ Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. ⁴ There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; ⁵ one Lord, one faith, one baptism; ⁶ one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

Coming away from that weekend retreat I certainly felt a greater sense of this body unity than I had experienced in the past. Sure, I've spent time with these people before, but this give and take in our discussions, guided and led by grace and love, brought us that much closer together than any other experience.

This is something that I think can be applied to even the regular Sunday worship service at any church. It seems, at times, we strive for "Everyone is the same and everyone thinks the same" even when it is not true. We make that assumption and act on that assumption and what ends up happening is that, when those differences arise, defenses go up because here is something "foreign" regardless of whether or not it had always been there. I think a church can truly find that unity of the Spirit, that bond of love if we change that assumption. Instead of coming into church on Sunday morning saying, "Everyone here is like me", I think we should come to the gathering saying, "There are many different people here. What can I learn today?" That extension of the grace we have received to the others in our fellowship will go a long way to building those bonds of unity.

And beyond just that attitude, as congregational gatherings, perhaps we should create places and opportunities to graciously express and share our many views for two purposes. First, so that, in sharing, I can test my ideas with the body and make sure that the spirit in which I am acting is of God and not of my own doing. But even more importantly, in LISTENING to others sharing, approaching that listening time with openness to hearing the life journey and the stories of those other people, to rejoice in victory, to mourn loss, to struggle with doubts, to exalt in revelation, and to sit in silent awe when silence is what is needed. This is what happened at Spruce Lake this weekend. And not just during our "formal" sessions. This we experienced in the discussions over shared meals, games, puzzles, crafts, etc. We lived together in community, not as a bunch of people who are EXACTLY alike, but as a gathering of the children of God, travelling together in our journey.

The retreat name USED to be called the Sojourner's Retreat...I think the name still fits.

P.S. A few other things I learned this weekend:

1) Ricky is a VERY quick study in games of strategy.

2) Do not get between Jim and the ping-pong ball.

3) We must not commit the sin of turning your back on the empty coffee urn.

4) You know when fun is being had when you hear Nancy's snort.

5) PTBA means "Proud To Be Australian"

Joined a Network

2011-01-23T20:52:00.001-05:00

Just thought I'd give a quick shout out here to a network of bloggers I've just joined. Most people think "Mennonites? They have blogs?" As if we still ride around in horse and buggies and such. Well, there's a network that has been pulled together of a bunch of Mennonite pastors, missionaries, ministers, and theologians that all have blogs where they put up all sorts of thoughts. If you're curious about what's going on, check out http://www.anabaptistblogs.com/

See ya around the blogosphere!

"Almost Christian" Response - Part 1

2010-12-28T14:21:00.000-05:00

How ambitious of me! Two series on my blog at the same time! While I'm working on my next post on the Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective, I'm reading the latest book by Kenda Creasy Dean titled Almost Christian (you can get it from Amazon.com, Published by Oxford University Press, 2010). This is a fascinating book and a rather telling commentary on how our church disciples (or doesn't disciple) our youth in Christian faith, doctrine, and practice). I'm working my way through the book so I'm going to post this in a couple of different articles. There have been other reviews on line by other authors (you can find a pretty extensive discussion of the book at Scot McKnight's Jesus Creed Blog). But here's my take.

This post is going to be primarily about chapters 1 which sets up some of the information about the teens and youth in the church. Now, my friends have pointed out that this book is targeted mostly to those within the walls of Christendom and those of us who have started breaking through those walls and started to venture out into the wild world may be more on the lines of "well DUH!" as we read this.

Essentially, Kenda is introducing a problem. The problem doesn't seem, at first, to be a problem because, after all, the teens in the church are typically good, nice, well behaved, moral people. This is what we all want after all. But the question is how deep is this morality of theirs and is it truly grounded in Christian values or is there something else going on?

Kenda introduces the idea of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism as a symbiote or parasite within our churches. It is a religion that is, essentially, replacing Christianity in the American church. There are several beliefs in MTD that I'd like to comment on.

A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over life on earth. On the surface there is nothing necessarily wrong with this belief. All Christianity essentially believes this. However, implied in this is a kind of benign, unintrusive god who just makes sure things run well and smoothly and that everything works as it should. A god who is intimately involved with creation is not part of MTD.
God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions. Again, on the surface, this is rather innocuous. But "niceness" means that there is no confrontation, there is no disagreement, there is no room for someone to say, "But God says we should/shouldn't do that". It implies, again, a god who doesn't really care about the specifics so long as everyone gets along. All religions are essentially the same, at the core, right?
The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself. This is where things really start to go south. Christianity is not about the self. Christianity, if you really want to look at Christ as the author and example of our faith, has nothing to do with personal comfort or self-fulfillment but has EVERYTHING to do with sacrificing the self for the well being of others. For that matter, where does the "good about oneself" come from? In Christianity, it is about how we fall in the order of the world and in relationship with each other. It is about realizing the proper place of relationships and your proper place in the world, not about some sort of self-worth that comes from achievement or activity. Happiness is not Christian, at least not the happiness of the world. Joy is Christian, but joy as found in Scripture is full of pain, suffering, and grief. It is joy that is found, not because everything is working right, but because, even when everything is going wrong, God's love still fills and overflows.
God is not involved in my life except when I need God to resolve a problem. Here is the "therapeutic" part of things. God is the problem solver, the great mediator. He is the guy who comes down and "fixes" things that I've messed up and then let's me go off on my own again. Feeding the poor? That's a "nice" thing to do, but I don't have to get too involved, right? God doesn't need me to be about him all the time. There's so much of my life going on that God really doesn't want to know about all those little details about choosing a career, deciding what clothes to wear, what movies to watch, how to treat my siblings, how to treat my friends, etc. But see, Jesus talked about selling everything and following him. Jesus talked about the entirety of life being centered in him. We are to abide in him which implies that we are fully engaged and involved in him in everything we do, not for our own good again, but because "As the father sent me, so send I you." The purpose of my life is to move follow Christ into the world which means that he needs to be involved in all the details of my life, not just when a problem comes up.
Good people go to heaven when they die. And here is the final piece. How often have we heard this argument in our society? "I'm a good person. What do I need Jesus for?" Our kids are essentially telling us the same thing. Keep my nose clean, don't drink, don't smoke, don't have sex outside of marriage, give to the church, go to Sunday School, get good grades, and do some charity work. If I can do all that and essentially weigh down the "good" side of the scale more than the "bad", God is merciful enough to let me in, right? Well, if that were the case, why did Jesus die? Why was such a sacrifice needed? For that matter, what about the Holy Spirit? If we can be just good enough, what do we need the supernatural help for? It's not "goodness" that gets us to heaven, it's "Christ-ness". And "Christ-ness" only comes if you are following Christ and bringing his light into every part of your life.

Most of chapter 1 is then going through and describing these things in more detail. But you see, most of us would sit back and say "Yeah, we know all this. Well, we just need to get a better youth ministry going here to get this fixed". Here's the kicker. Kenda points out that the fault is not in the kids or in the failure of getting just the right ministry together. The problem is in the failure of the church at large to do more than just teach a ho-hum faith. We are at fault here. We are not modeling a faith. We are teaching, in our churches and in our Sunday schools, good morality and good self-esteem teaching but we're not teaching the sacrificing and radical faith that moves people out of comfort and "niceness" into actually engaging the world. We've been infected in the American church with this parasite of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism because we've given in to the cultural pressures that come from living in a pluralistic society. "Can't we all just get along?" While we want to show love to the world around us, perhaps we've become too accommodating.

As an Anabaptist, this saddens me. I look at the Mennonite Church USA today and I see much of this among our youth. While we have a few who go into Voluntary Service or STAT or other situations, how many of them are truly engaged in their faith in their everyday lives? The once a year mission trip is a great therapy to make sure that we're being "nice" and taking care of others, but what about in the halls of school? What about on the street corner? What about at the dance on Friday night? What about in the video arcades or online chat rooms? Where are we when it comes to being that "peculiar people"? Perhaps the Mennonite church has a greater percentage of devoted youth than other denominations, but I see the trend happening. One of the things that starts the trend is the segregation of the ages. The kids and the youth are given a special place in the church, away from the adults and their struggles, and are nurtured into a nice "let's all get along and be nice to each other" place. Meanwhile, they are insulated by the struggles and trials that the adults have in trying to live out their lives. The youth are being taught good morality, but they are not having modeled to them in the everyday teaching and discussions about how the faith really impacts lives. For that matter, the central teachings are kept out of the children's hands. After all, deep theology is for the mature, right?

Kenda wraps up this chapter with an important point. That being that we treat adolescents as a seperate species. We aren't treating them as people, albeit less experienced ones, who need as much of the theological grounding as adults. They don't have the opportunities to learn under the mentoring of the more mature adults and so they don't learn how to take those tough beliefs and live them out. Instead, our culture infiltrates their thinking and, while they may have some belief in God and God's morality, it doesn't really mean much.

See, I saw this first hand. In a discussion with some of our youth, I posed the idea of engaging with non-Christians, being there with them, being the presence of Christ among them. And I got what sounds like a great piece of wisdom. "Well, we don't want to be dragged down with them." Would our youth fear getting dragged down if they had a strong faith foundation to begin with? Instead, we teach them that they need to be insulated from the world and grow up big and strong. And what we have left is a generation with the idea of being good is what matters and we should get along with everyone instead of a generation engaged in a mission of "God and make disciples".

We're losing our youth, and it's our fault.

So, questions: How can we turn this around in our congregations? How can we reestablish the Anabaptist fervor of being Christ-like in an UnChristian world, even to the point of death? What changes can we make in our ministry to our youth?

The Breath of God: A Commentary on the Mennonite Confession of Faith, Part 5

2010-12-06T14:37:00.000-05:00

I was originally going to open this blog post with a discussion on the meaning of "God-Breathed" as used in the book of second Timothy. I was then going to go into a long discussion on the history of Scripture, where it comes from, etc. Man, that was turning into a long blog post. So, scrapped it all and here's the new one.

As the title mentions, this is my next installment of my commentary on the Mennonite Confession of Faith. This one is on Article 4: Scripture. I did a quick poll on my Facebook page not that long ago asking my Christian friends to briefly state how important the Bible was to Christian faith. Overwhelmingly, everyone commented that it was very important. Comments like "On a scale of 1 to 10 it's an 11" or even higher abounded. There were two comments, though, that really started the thought processes for this particular version of this post. One was from an Eastern Orthodox friend who called scripture "First among equals". The other was from another friend who questioned the organization of the canon and the emphasis that some place on different books. These two comments kinda jump started some of the thinking on this article.

The Confession of Faith does place the Bible as the central source book for our faith. The confession says:

We acknowledge the Scripture as the authoritative source and standard for preaching and teaching about faith and life, for distinguishing truth from error, for discerning between good and evil, and for guiding prayer and worship. Other claims on our understanding of Christian faith and life, such as tradition, culture, experience, reason, and political powers, need to be tested and corrected by the light of Holy Scripture.

But my Eastern Orthodox friend and others of the high churches would challenge this somewhat. There is a danger here that comes out of an individualistic society where there is a lot of emphasis on each person coming to the Scriptures individually and coming to some interpretation of them that may or may not be in keeping with what has been taught by the church over the centuries. I would say that a lot of what is happening in the emerging church movement and some of the post-modern thought coming into the church comes out of this individualistic "throw out everything but my interpretation" view of scripture. And this, I feel, is a bad thing. A lot of this thought is rooted in the Enlightenment in Europe and continued through modernism. It's rather sad that post-modernists who eschew modernistic ideas are still trapped in this idea that individual interpretation matters.

So, to challenge this, we need to spend some time understanding WHY we have the Scriptures we do. In short, they are part of the Christian Tradition, handed down over 2000 years, as the way of communicating the teachings of Christ. When Jerusalem fell around A.D. 70, the Christian church found itself scattered over the Roman empire without much in the way of a central point of focus where they could go and get established teaching. The apostles themselves were scattered and many of them were being martyred either by the Romans or by the peoples that they found themselves ministering to. So, the apostles did their best to train up successors, teaching them what they had been directly taught by Jesus himself. In turn, their apprentices trained others, and so on, and so on. This is the idea of apostolic authority on which Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Christians understand as to the reason why the Patriarchs and the Pope have such absolute authority when it comes to the teachings of Christ.

But even early on, this apostolic authority had challenges. There were men who were teaching things that were certainly not within those apostolic teachings and yet they claimed apostolic authority. How were these men to be tested to make sure that what they were teaching was true? That's where the "canon" came in. See, the "canon" is the set of writings that the church had determined was the set that truly represented the written body of the apostolic teachings. In fact, that was a major standard in determining whether or not a book was to be included in the Christian set of writings: could it be traced to a specific apostle or traced to teaching gathered from that apostle? That's kind of why Hebrews was very late in being accepted as canon because it was hard to determine who the author was.

So, the church gathered together these apostolic writings to be used as standard (that's what the word "canon" means) by which teachings could be tested. So, before Luther started the Reformation with his act of vandalism at Wittenburg, there was already in place in the church this standard by which it could be determined whether or not a teaching had apostolic authority or not. This did not negate the teachings of the Pope or the Patriarchs but, instead, buttressed them against the winds of change in the world so that, no matter how many years went down, there was a standard by which the apostolic authority could be upheld.

Notice that? Notice that the Bible does not NEGATE the teachings of the church over the centuries? That means that there may be other writings, other authors, that came after those books as they were written that may contain apostolic teaching. Origin is the first that comes to mind. There are others. There is a wealth of writings and teachings and documents and such from over 2000 years of Christian thought that are available to us. For that matter, there is still the church. The Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics have centuries of teachings and theology that can be traced over the 2000 years back to the apostles and the central teaching that has been handed down from generation to generation. Even the Protestant churches can lay claim to a wealth of writing and thought handed down. To say that the books off the Bible are the only written texts we need as Christians to depend upon does not give proper respect to all the centuries of men and women who have wrestled with issues and ideas in their own contexts and cultural situations, trying to find the application of the living Word to their lives.

For Christians today, then, we need to be very careful with any independent and individual interpretation of Scripture. For us to take something from the Bible and say that the ancient interpretations handed down of the centuries is wrong is something that must be approached with great humility and trepidation. This does not mean that we should not question. The very reason given above for the emergence of the canon means that we should question teachings to determine if they stand up to apostolic authority. But we should do so with humility, recognizing that authority that is also present in 2000 years of church tradition.

The Mennonite Confession of Faith, I think, gives some good advice to anyone who attempts to interpret Scripture. In the first paragraph, we read "We seek to understand and interpret Scripture in harmony with Jesus Christ as we are led by the Holy Spirit in the church". Notice that even this very Protestant tradition of the church stresses the importance of being in harmony with the church at large and the dependence on the Holy Spirit in the task of understanding scripture. It's not something that is done by individuals, but something that is done with God. The last sentence of the article stresses this again as it says, "Insights and understandings which we bring to the interpretation of the Scripture are to be tested in the faith community." I would challenge Mennonites (or, for that matter, ANY Christian tradition) that this faith community mentioned here include any Christian tradition outside of our own. Yes, we have been taught something, but what does Martin Luther have to say about it? What does Pope John Paul have to say about it? What does Origin have to say about it? What to the Orthodox Patriarchs have to say about it? If we believe the church community is bigger than just our individual congregation and denomination, then when we attempt to understand the apostolic teachings presented in Scripture, we should take the time to give honor to those who have gone before in the same journey.

There is one question that remains: How do we make the determination as to whether a traditional teaching handed down by the church over the centuries is core to the apostolic thought and how do we discern that it was a cultural teaching for a time? That is where the real problem comes in. All of the major Christian traditions have this fault, really. Someone had a situation in a place and a time that required a particular answer. They discerned in the community of the church, tested with the standard of Scripture, and came up with the answer. Unfortunately, over the centuries, the question gets lost and all we have left is the answer and it gets mistaken for being on par with core theologies. From my own tradition, the use of instruments within worship services is one such thing. Plain clothes another. And let's not forget method of baptism. All these things had a reason, had a purpose for being taught a certain way back in the day. Is that reason still present? Is it still important today? Is it really core to the teachings of the church? Or was that a tradition for a time, born out of cultural necessity? This is, unfortunately, where the church has been divided for centuries. Schisms and arguments about in all traditions where one person or group of people challenge the tradition. One group claims the apostolic authority that comes from the tradition of handing down teachings from one generation to the next, the other group challenges that using the canon of Scripture to question whether or not the traditional teaching is core or whether it was a cultural necessity that is no longer necessary. Of course, there are other reasons for schisms but in the little bit I know about church history, it seems that this challenge of tradition is core to most of the major schisms.

So, what do we do? Well, there is one thing to remember. Our faith is not grounded in a church tradition, our faith is not grounded in a book, our faith is not grounded in a particular interpretation of that book, but our faith IS grounded in a LIVING Word. Jesus is that living Word. And we do have access to that living word through the indwelling of God's Spirit in us. And, for that matter, that Spirit is common among ALL of us and we are supposedly bonded together in that Spirit through a bond of grace, love and mercy. We are one in that Spirit.

I could go on and on about interpretation but really I think the key point is this: the Bible, as we have it, should not be something that we idolize and have it stand alone as the ONLY authority on Christian teaching. This does not give respect and honor to the apostolic authority of the teaching of the Church over the centuries. But we should also not take that apostolic teaching as the ONLY authority either. That does not give respect to the reason why the church fathers felt it necessary to bring together the canon. Instead, the canon of Scripture should be, as my Orthodox friend pointed out, the "first among equals". And really, I think our Mennonite Confession speaks to this strongly. It says in the commentary, "All other claims to represent an authoritative word on matters of faith and life must be measured and corrected by Scripture through the guidance of the Holy Spirit in the community of faith." My commentary on this confession goes along with this.

The question I leave you with: How has your own tradition been tested against the canon of Scripture and the tradition of history? What parts of your traditional teaching are core to the apostolic teaching and what parts are things that were for "a time" and are subject to correction based upon the apostolic authority of the teachings of the church and the tested against the standard of the canon of Scripture?

North American Mennonite and Eastern Christianity

2010-12-01T21:02:00.001-05:00

Last year, I took a course in church history, discussing the three main threads of Christian tradition (Eastern, Roman Catholic, and Protestant) during which I needed to write a paper discussing my own church tradition in comparison and contrast with one of the other main traditions we studied. I've had a lot of conversations with people from many of these traditions so I thought it might be a good thing to republish this paper. Here it is. It's long, but I think it's relevant to the idea of a unified church.

   In the early 1700’s, a number of Swiss Mennonite families immigrated to the colony started by William Penn in the hopes of religious freedom. There were a number of groups that came over, actually, some Mennonite, some Quaker, but all seeking the same thing. In their original homeland of Switzerland and, for some, Germany, their practice of a faith grounded in the authority of Scripture and on living a life dictated by conscience based upon that Scripture was subject to persecution by the state-church. The idea of a place where they could practice their beliefs without fear in a land similar to their Palatine homeland attracted hundreds of these farmers to the lands along the Susquehanna, Schuylkill, and Delaware rivers. When they came, they brought their beliefs and established Mennonite communities in areas with names like New Holland, Bird-In-Hand, and Paradise.
   Among these families were my own family ancestors. Several family members immigrated on various ships at various times into Philadelphia and settled in the Lancaster County region of Pennsylvania. Names like David, Jacob, and Christian Martin can be traced as ancestors for a number of people in the Mennonite churches in that region. My family has ministerial roots as well in the Mennonite church. As for myself, I have never been a member of a church other than one of the Mennonite denomination. I have attended several different Mennonite churches in my 37 years including a missionary planted church in Aibonito, Puerto Rico, a charismatic Mennonite church (Petra Christian Fellowship at the time was a member congregation of the Atlantic Coast Conference of Mennonite churches) and some more traditional Mennonite congregations while I was in grade school, college, and my current home congregation. All this goes to say that my faith and my life practice in the Christian tradition has been deeply shaped and formed both by my own current church tradition as well as from the centuries of history within my own family within the Mennonite church. I believe this is important to understand in any discussion of my personal church tradition.
   Most of the basics of Mennonite theology have not changed a lot since Menno Simons and other Anabaptist founders in the 16th century. There have been a number of church divisions over the past five centuries of the Mennonite church on differences of practice and theology. Everything from the practice of the ban (shunning), participation in general society, style of dress, church leadership structures, and other general practice ideas have been given as reasons for the various splintered groups of Mennonites and other groups that have Mennonite roots. But despite all these different sects, Mennonites all have the same basic beliefs and can point back in history to documents like the Schlietheim Articles (1527) and the Dordrecht Confession (1632) as foundational documents from which the Mennonite church has based their theology.
   At the core of Mennonite theology are three basic points. First, from the Anabaptist roots, Mennonites firmly believe in the baptism upon confession of faith as being the only true baptism. From the Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective, published by Herald Press in 1995 and affirmed by both the General Conference Mennonite Church and the Mennonite Church, the church believes:

Christian baptism is for those who confess their sins, repent, accept Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, and commit themselves to follow Christ in obedience as members of his body, both giving and receiving care and counsel in the church. Baptism is for those who are of the age of accountability and who freely request baptism on the basis of their response to Jesus Christ in faith. (47)

Secondly, the Mennonite church believes in a life lived around the Bible as the primary source of truth and understanding of the revelation of God and of his purposes. And thirdly, Mennonites believe strongly in Christ as the example of what the Christian life should look like and base their actions on Jesus as the standard.
   While these three points can be shown to be true of many denominations, it has been my experience that the third point, a theology that focuses on the life and teachings of Christ, is the primary distinction by which Mennonites consider themselves as different. This is not to say that other traditions do not teach the importance of the Christ-like life. However, there is a much heavier emphasis on the life and teachings of Christ, generally speaking, than in other traditions. Specifically, the Sermon on the Mount as given in Matthew chapters 5 through 7 is frequently referred to as the set of standards. In fact, the Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective frequently references those three chapters of the book of Matthew as the one of the scriptural bases for many of the articles. From these three chapters, the Mennonite church draws a lot of theology for peace, justice, non-resistance, and love of enemies. Paul Lederach in the book A Third Way indicates that this, the life and teachings of Jesus, is the Mennonite way of talking about the centrality of Christ. Instead of focusing on the events of the crucifixion or the resurrection or both as the central work of Christ, Mennonites look to the entirety of the text of the gospels. The life, teachings, and ministry of Jesus as documented in the four gospels cannot be separated from the death and resurrection. For Mennonites, the whole of the life of Jesus is important in understanding the Christian life and God’s saving work.
   During the course of this class in studying the different church traditions and their histories, I found myself resonating more with the doctrines and theologies as described by James Payton concerning the Eastern Christian tradition in the book Light from the Christian East. The Anabaptist tradition was and is radical in comparison to the more “mainstream” Protestant churches as well as the Roman Catholic Church. Therefore, I am not surprised that the Eastern Orthodox tradition struck some good chords with me. Anabaptists already consider themselves the “Third Way” when it comes to Christian spirituality so to hear about this other “third way” in such detail was refreshing. There are a couple of things in the Eastern tradition that really stood out to me that I think the Mennonite church in the United States can learn from and enhance our own understanding of the Christian life.
   First of all, before the whole idea of missional theology and post-modern thought really became popular in the evangelical world, Mennonite and Anabaptist theology already started thinking about how God is unknowable and surpasses human understanding. In the first article in the Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective, the authors point out that “God far surpasses human comprehension and understanding.” In the same article, the commentary describes the importance of recognizing that God is both unknowable and knowable at the same time. The earlier Mennonite Confession of Faith published in 1963 by the General Conference Mennonite Church also implies this tension in Article 2 on Divine Revelation. This tension is something that I have wrestled with for years as a scientific scholar. I am trained formally in the sciences of mathematics and, to some extent, physics and the inability to apply my reason to understand something is difficult for me to accept.
   The Eastern Christian understanding of the need for negative or “apophatic” theology when talking about God speaks to this tension recognized by my Mennonite tradition. The Eastern church believes that “talking about God”, while it can be exercised to an extent through positive theology, must have an aspect of negative theology. Because God is incomprehensible to the fallen human, there are therefore things that a human being cannot comprehend. So, apophatic theology is a necessary exercise in order to be able to discuss the incomprehensible God. While we cannot comprehend exactly what God is, by using God’s revelations of himself, we can discern what God is not. The Mennonite tradition I’ve grown up in recognizes this mystery about God but it seems that we could go a lot further in this discussion of what God is not. It seems to me that in the current Mennonite church we spend a lot of time discussing God in human terms and concepts and we are getting lost in trying to explain things. We separate ourselves from other Christian traditions because our interpretations of Scripture differ. In fact, most of the schisms in the Mennonite denomination over the centuries are over interpretation. I wonder if we revel more in the mystery of God’s revelation and depend less on our understanding of it, much like the Eastern Orthodox do, perhaps we will show a more unified church.
   Secondly, and probably the biggest item I think Eastern Orthodoxy can contribute to the Mennonite tradition is on the concept of the wholeness of salvation. As mentioned above, Mennonites look at the entirety of the life of Christ as central to the gospel and the way of living out the Christ-like life. Salvation is not as much an event at the end of a series of steps, but a transforming process that lasts for all of life. Paul Lederach again says in counter to many salvation messages that salvation is not an intellectual exercise of accepting a series of propositions but is instead a whole body experience, lived out not just in the mind but in the complete human, not separating the soul from the body in the salvation experience. This appears to coincide with the Eastern idea of the incarnation and recapitulation as part of the accomplishment of salvation.
   For the Eastern Orthodox, salvation was not just achieved by the death or resurrection of Christ. The Orthodox even emphasize that the two combined aren’t enough. The incarnation was an important factor in the accomplishment of salvation. The Eastern Christians stress the incarnation in that, by becoming fully human and having the gnomic will of a human, Jesus was able to live the sinless life because that gnomic will was subject to the will of God and, living in such a harmony with God, Jesus was unable to sin. Additionally, this incarnation of Jesus embodied a hope of eternal life which overcame the fear of death that drives man to sin. Also, the recapitulation of the second Adam brings the rest of creation into line with God’s will. So the salvation that came through Christ is a whole life salvation.
   Mennonites can easily embrace this. We at times come under the same criticism as the Eastern Christians as what we do looks like legalism and a salvation through works. From the Eastern Christians we can build on our understanding of the life and ministry of Christ as being a central point of the gospel. Without the incarnation and subsequent example of Christ’s life, we would have no direct example of what it looks like to experience the whole life transformation of salvation. Without the second Adam, we do not have the hope of a creation that is remade. The Mennonite flavor of the centrality of Christ is enhanced and expanded by the Eastern views of the accomplishment of salvation. But I think the Mennonite theology can then go beyond that one more step. With the heavy emphasis on Christ as the example and leading that life in this time, Mennonites very easily slip into a legalistic set of rules of how to live out that life.
   This is where the Eastern perception of grace as an emanation of God and, therefore, part of God and the idea of deification can help. Over the centuries, as I pointed out above, the Mennonite church has had many schisms and divisions over the application of the Christ-like life and how it looks when it is lived out in the current context. There are so many arguments and divisions and they are all about which work is the better work to do and which ones are not as important. But the Eastern Church speaks a very profound word of grace. As Payton points out, the Eastern concept of grace is not something that is poured out at arm’s length and is an impersonal gift, it is the actual indwelling of God within the person in a mysterious way as the emanation we call grace. This is the God that is the creator of the universe and by this very personal, very intimate indwelling, the human person can be transformed into what it was originally intended.
   A thought I had to myself when I read this was what better being to transform me than the being that created me in the first place. To have God, in the emanation of His grace, deeply in the center of my being is wonderful idea and it is a great way to think about it. And then, because God is in us, we can then be transformed more truly into that image that we were at first. This deification process allows for us to slowly work towards that perfect image while still allowing for the failures that come from the brokenness of being a human. The Mennonite church can take this idea deep to heart. We strive to live as Christ would live, this being the central theme of our theology, based upon his life and teachings. But I often feel as if we have an underlying sense of despair to this. By understanding grace and deification as the Eastern Christians do, I think we can still keep our emphasis but add to it the hope that comes from the knowledge that we are being transformed, personally and intimately, by God himself.
   The Mennonite Church can learn many things from our Eastern brothers and sisters. We can learn to revel in the mystery of the unknowable God and feel comfortable in that through apophatic theology. We can take the hope that comes from the perfect incarnation and recapitulation and apply that hope to living the life based upon Christ’s life and teachings. And we can rely on the grace and transforming deification of ourselves through that grace to know that we will be transformed into the images of our Lord that we desire to be. There are many more things that I think the Mennonite Church, especially the Mennonites in the United States, can find to enhance our own understanding of God and his saving work. Perhaps in years to come as the Eastern Orthodox tradition becomes more prevalent in the west, we will see Mennonites and Orthodox partnering together in teaching this transforming life.

Bibliography
General Board of the General Conference Mennonite Church and Mennonite Church General Board. Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective. Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1995.
Lederach, Paul M. A Third Way. Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1980.
Mennonite General Conference. Mennonite Confession of Faith. Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1963.
Payton, Jr, James R. Light from the Christian East: An Introduction to the Orthodox Tradition. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007.

Why I'm going to seminary

2010-11-08T23:23:00.000-05:00

You know, some of you may already know the answer to this. There's a lot of history behind this choice of mine (check out a post made 2 years ago). Recently, there was an article written by David Fitch at his "Reclaiming the Mission" blog concerning "On Why I'm Not Ready To Give Up On The Seminary Yet" to which I responded. Admittedly, there's a bit of a switch in my historical reasons for entering seminary (it's what future pastors do) to my current reason (it is what anyone hoping to lead a group of Christians does).

See, as I pointed out in that comment:

I am a Masters of Arts in Missional Ministry student at Biblical Seminary in Hatfield, PA, and I will say that such a seminary education has been amazing in training me up for the type of leader you expressed in your other post. I'm not being trained in "this is the RIGHT way to do things and the right way to interpret" but I'm being trained in how to relate theology to context, how to go out and be involved in the already-present mission of God, and how to approach church leadership from a "sent" perspective.

This is what a seminary education is supposed to do in our post-modern, post-Christendom world. It's no longer a landscape of knowing the list of rules and procedures and such to follow to keep a church going. A new set of skills is needed, one that encourages men and women to creatively engage and lead the church into participating with God's mission.

And that training isn't just for people seeking a Master's degree of sorts. Nor is it for the highly educated of any sort. It's not something that is only for a certain group. There are all SORTS of opportunities for lay leaders, pastors, and just regular church attenders seeking more training, more information, and a deeper understanding of God's mission.

Do you want to know more? There is an opportunity for anyone in the area to step onto the campus, meet some great people and learn more about what missional seminary education has to offer. Biblical is holding an Information Night on their campus on November 16th from 6:15 PM to 7:30 PM. Come on by. You might be surprised as to what a seminary education has to offer. More information can be found at biblical.edu or you can click on this link to their PDF for information.

A Triune Community - Confession of Faith Commentary Interlude

2010-10-21T09:23:00.000-04:00

I've been giving commentary on the Mennonite Confession of Faith recently and the last three articles on that topic have been on God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. This article, however, takes a brief hiatus from the strict order of articles because I want to spend some time reflecting on the Trinity as a whole.

The Confession of Faith in the commentary on article one spends some time discussing this concept of the Trinity. However, there is nothing that specifically speaks to what the concept of a triune God means when it is actually considered in how we apply our faith. There is a lot to be said in many of the other articles that can relate back to this Trinitarian concept but I would like to spend some time in a high view here to lay some ground work on discussions on Sin, Salvation, Church, etc.

First of all, there needs to be some respect given to the difficulty of even the idea of a Triune God. After all, along with Islam and Judaism, Christianity is a monotheistic religion. We believe there is only one true God. How then can we say that there is this Trinity of three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit? This seems contradictory from a purely human reasoning. Centuries of church tradition and volumes of books by many church fathers, philosophers, theologians, priests, monks, etc., have been spent in trying to make sense of this. As the commentary on article one says terms like "essence" and "substance" and even that they are three persons in one person have been debated back and forth ever since the beginning of the Church. Recent discussions I've had with some friends on Facebook even talk about hierarchy within the Trinity, what it means that the Son is "generated" and the Spirit is "sent" and how the Father relates to these. Scriptural arguments are passed back and forth for all different positions on what this idea of the Trinity means (keep in mind, the term "trinity" or "triune" does not appear ANYWHERE in Scripture) in an attempt to prove or disprove certain positions on Trinitarian theology. But I think, with all this, all Christians must come to one particular stance on what the Trinity really is:

We don't know. Nope. Not a clue. Nada. Beyond the ability of our human minds to truly grasp. We have some ideas, we have some glimpses, but nothing that we can stand on and say "Yes, I can fathom God in His (their?) entirety." One way that I've heard it put, how can a pot, being a thing created, comprehend within its context, the nature of the potter who did the creating? If it could, it could then be a potter itself. So, we need to be satisfied with our faith, our trust that God makes sense to God, even in the Trinitarian mystery, and apply that faith then to matters that we do actually have the ability to understand.

So, we assume, by faith that there is this Triune God, backed up by references in Scripture to the three persons and supported by over 2000 years of church Tradition supporting this view. The next question we then must ask: So what? I mean, really, what difference does this make in the whole scheme of things? Is Trinitarian theology THAT important to Christianity that we even have to mention it? Actually, yes. Here's how.

In Genesis 1, we get to listen in to God's thoughts a bit here. God says that God is going to create humanity (yes, I know, most translations say "man" but I'm trying to be inclusive here, okay?) in God's image. Note that every translation I could find talks about, in this passage, a plurality of humans, not a single person. Yes, Genesis 2 talks about creating Adam, but Genesis 1 references all of humanity. I found this VERY significant. If God were talking about creating individuals in God's image, then we could say that I alone, by myself, no one else with me, could be the image of God. Perhaps that is so. But if that's the case, why then does so much of Scripture have to do with people getting along with other people and relating to other people in partnerships to be more like God wants them to be? Even in Paul's writings in the New Testament, he talks about the church as a group of people being the body of Christ, acting as a body in the world, living in a community with the Spirit of God among them, and how that Spirit brings them together in a unity that is, at the same time, diverse.

What does this have to do with the Trinity? Everything. To say that God exists in an eternal community, bonded together by an interrelational, self-sacrificing, gracious and generous love, adds a whole new perspective to being made in God's image. In other words, to truly be in God's image, humans need to exhibit that exact same kind of eternal community, bonded together by an interrelational, self-sacrificing, gracious and generous love. Only in this kind of community can we REALLY be said to be in God's image. God's image is one of harmonious co-existence.

But even more than that, because notice that this eternal community of the Trinity was not satisfied with just maintaining its own community. The generosity of that love overflowed in that the Trinity, simply from the natural effect of grace, desired to share that communal love with someone outside of the community. That communal love spawns more community and so the Universe came into being for the purpose of being able to share that grace and love with others outside of the Trinity. This much I have found and treasure in my conversations with and studies of Orthodox theology. For God so loved, God wanted someone to share the love with, so God created others to express this same love to. We are those others. And, even, all of Creation plays into that. The phrasing here is clumsy because can God have a want that only we can fulfill? Again, some of that mystery coming out. But now we have a point of reference. We were created to be in community with the Trinity in the same way that the Trinity has community in itself. And we are then called, as well, with the rest of Creation, to be in community with other humans and with the whole of Creation, again in the same fashion that the Trinity us in community.

For me, this is profound. This has immense impact on what it means to be the community of believers. Christian mission takes on a whole new perspective as being not so much a matter of service to others or even bringing about individual conversions, but a matter of establishing that Trinity-flavored community with others and drawing them into that community with God. The Ministry of Reconciliation, as mentioned by Paul, becomes less of just a passing comment and more of a central idea of what we are supposed to be about. When humans fell, it wasn't just individual rebellion, it was humanity stating that they no longer had need of that relationship with the Trinity. And, for that matter, it was humanity saying it didn't need relationship with other humans, even. The intense individualism that we see in the history of the world (not just in the current age) is characteristic of this separation. So, when we talk about being the church, doing missions work, serving others, evangelizing, "the Good News", the Gospel, even our worship services, everything we then do as Christians takes on a whole new context when we look at it, not as individuals establishing individual relationships with God, but as communities working together in that Trinitarian love and pouring that same love out into the world around them. And, because humans are different sizes, shapes, colors, ethnic backgrounds, cultures, personalities, etc, this community is infinitely diverse. We no longer need to fight over all the petty things that we've fought over since the dawn of time because we, together, as a whole, are the image of God. "There is no longer Jew nor Greek, male or female, slave or free," instead, all of us together, in this infinite diversity, give witness to the image of God and, when we come together in that infinite community, we are closest to God.

As I dive further into my study and discussion of the Mennonite COF, this perspective will be played out in my commentary. But I think we can look at our lives around us now and think "How am I being part of that image of God" and start to put this mystery of the Trinity to practical application in what we do in churches, our families, our workplaces, and our lives.

Worry about today

2010-10-02T17:29:00.004-04:00

As much as my wife is across the room being her normal, humorously sarcastic self, I can't help think, as she talks about "worry", about a verse from the sermon on the mount:

²⁵ "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? ²⁶Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? ²⁷ Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

²⁸ "And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. ²⁹ Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. ³⁰If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? ³¹ So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' ³² For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. ³³ But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. ³⁴ Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Now, I know that there are some who read what I say and think "He doesn't care about the poor! He doesn't care about the sick." Well, if you say such after this post, I'll personally come down there and love all over you.

Too much of our society is spent in trying to fix the problems of tomorrow. Social security for when we retire (will we have enough money, will we survive, can we still be able to live comfortably, what will we wear, what will we eat), medical insurance for in case we get sick (what about surgery costs, cancer, an accident, a serious illness, mental illness) what we will eat (where am I going to get money for food on the table) our housing (can I make my mortgage payments, where will I live, can I pay my rent). Some of these problems do show up in the today, I am not dissing that. There are too many people who don't have enough that they truly DO worry about today. But how much of everything else is the concern for tomorrow? Social security, health care, welfare, unemployment concerns, job security... all these things that we need to "fix" for social justice because, what if...? What if...? What if....?

Well, what if, instead of trying to worry about tomorrow (which, as far as we know, may never come) we take care of today. Know a family with medical bills TODAY? pay them TODAY. Know a family who can't make their rent TODAY? pay it TODAY. Know a family who doesn't have food for supper tonight? Take them food TONIGHT. Don't worry about tomorrow... tomorrow will take care of itself. Worry about TODAY.

Be Bold

2010-09-14T11:04:00.004-04:00

"Therefore, since we have such a hope, we are very bold." 2 Corinthians 3:12

I have been put to shame, brothers and sisters in Christ. I am not bold in my faith. I am shy (afraid? ashamed?) to speak openly and freely of my faith, of my hope, of my salvation through the blood of Christ. I may have thought I was open about my faith, but I have discovered that I was wrong.

I recently began reading a book entitled "Jesus Freaks" by DC Talk and Voice of the Martyrs. It is a book filled with story after story of men, women, and children who have been tortured, beaten, imprisoned, or killed for their faith. Many of the stories took place less than twenty years ago in places such as Pakistan, China, and Cuba. These are people who worshiped, witnessed, and prayed openly and without shame, regardless of the consequences they knew awaited them. Many of them were imprisoned and tortured time after time, only to return to their ministries as soon as they were released. Many of them used their time of imprisonment to bear witness to their captors and fellow prisoners, effecting the total life transformation of those who were their enemies.

In reading stories like these, I liked to tell myself that, if it came down to it, yes, I'd be willing to suffer and die for my faith. Sure, I'd go through that and not recant. I'm sure I could be strong. But now I'm not so sure. I am not certain of how strong my faith truly is; would I have the firm reliance upon God's love to suffer such torments as these? I don't honestly know. I suppose one never knows until one is there.

Allow me now to explain to you what has put me into such turmoil. Towards the end of "Jesus Freaks" is a story entitled "Take the Oath." It tells the story of 12 year old Valya Vaschenko, in Communist-ruled USSR in the 1960s. Valya's school director decided it was time for her to take her oath and become a member of the Communist children's group, the Pioneers. Valya refused to take the oath, and stood silently. The director had the authority under law to decide for her, and read the oath since she would not. Partway through, Valya began to pray, loudly and fervently, and to sing hymns, preventing the director from completing the oath being made in her name.

The book continued with this commentary:

Again and again, in Russian schools, Christian children would stand up in class to pray out loud and to witness. These children were beaten and forced to leave their families, but others followed their example.

In 1963, prayer was banned in American public schools. What would have happened if American parents had taught their children not to submit to this decision? They would not have been beaten, and their parents would not have ended up in jail as in Russia.

Here in the United States, the First Amendment of our Constitution guarantees us freedom of speech and freedom of religion. What have we done with that freedom? Must we wait until it is taken away as it was in Communist Russia or other dictatorial societies before we grow bold enough to stand up and proclaim Jesus before others?

Peter and John were arrested for preaching the Gospel. The rulers instructed them to stop, yet they refused. Paul and Silas were arrested and severely beaten for preaching the Gospel, yet they continued anyway. Time and again the apostles were stoned, beaten, and imprisoned for preaching in places where the rulers had forbidden them to do so. All of the apostles, with the exception of John, were eventually martyred because they refused to be silent.

What has happened to the American church? What has happened to the American Christian?

The rulers of our day tell us our children may not pray aloud in school, our teachers may not have a Bible in the classroom, our valedictorians may not even mention God or Jesus in their addresses.

The rulers of our day tell us we may not proseletyze in our work places.

The rulers of our day tell us we may not pray on the steps of the Supreme Court building in Washington, DC, or sing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

The rulers of our day tell us that we may not receive a degree in psychology unless we recant our religious beliefs regarding sexuality.

Is it so outrageous to think that a time may come when the rulers of our day will forbid restaurant patrons to pray aloud before their meal?

How can we claim to be bold in our faith? The Body of Christ in America has fallen asleep! Are we afraid of persecution? Or are we simply afraid of losing our friends, our positions, our jobs, our tax deductions for our churches? Are we afraid of looking different, standing out, not fitting in? Are we afraid of being called narrow-minded, homophobic, or weird? Are we ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, or are we simply too limp and flaccid in our faith to be able to stand up for Truth?

We, as a Body, have become tame. We go along meekly, giving in, lacking boldness, not realizing that our obedience to the rulers of the day are causing us to be disobedient to Christ, who told us to "Go out and train everyone you meet, far and near, in this way of life, marking them by baptism in the threefold name: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Then instruct them in the practice of all I have commanded you." (Matthew 8:19, MSG).

Understand, brothers and sisters, that I put myself to this test myself, and fail miserably. I go with the flow, I try to be nice, I don't rock the boat or make waves. I make sure I follow the law and do things the way I have been told I need to in order to not offend anyone. However, 1 Corinthians 1:23 says, "when we preach that Christ was crucified, the Jews are offended and the Gentiles say it’s all nonsense." (NLT) People will be offended at the Gospel of Christ, because it tells them they don't have it all together and they have problems they can't fix. People will think it's stupid, because it's upside-down and inside-out and unprovable by scientific methods.

There is so much conversation about the irrelevence of the modern church, the shrinkage of the American church, and seeking the reasons for it. Most of the ideas I've seen to try to "grow" the church revolve around being modern, in the culture, fresh... Flashy presentations, loud, exciting music, non-traditional (read: not boring) sermon styles, coffee bars, and so on. Okay, so that's not all wrong. Nothing the matter with trying out new things. But the question is this: Are we shrinking because we're outmoded and old-fashioned, or because we have sidelined ourselves, muzzled ourselves, outsourced ourselves, silenced ourselves on anything controversial, sanitized ourselves to the point where nothing LIVING remains? Are we shrinking because we are no longer just in the world, but truly part of it?

We cry about social justice, caring for the poor and the needy. We demand that the government - the corrupt, wasteful, rulers of the day - take care of all our social ills. After all, it's too big for the church to handle. Yet, according to theologian Ron Sider, if every church member in America tithed, the Christian church would have an additional $143 billion. The average church member, across all denominations, gives 2.6%. Only 6% of people claiming to be "born again" actually tithe. Is this the best we can do? We are the hands, feet, and voice of Christ. We are to be the ones who, in relationship, give generously of our time, talents, and resources to our neighbors in need. This is the way to show Christ's love, not through the faceless charity of governmental programs.

We hear about the persecuted church around the world, but I ask you: Which church, truly, is the freer? I wonder if we have so shackled ourselves to the idea of being "mainstream" that we are more enslaved than the churches that meet in secrecy.

We also need to be careful about destroying our own. When people try to speak boldly for God, too often we end up discrediting them. They're not our denomination. They're not our political party. I don't agree with everything they say. I'm just not sure about his credentials. If we can only listen to people with whom we agree 100%, we may as well simply talk to ourselves. If someone claims to be speaking some Godly truth, listen. Test those words. Judge the words against Scripture, and see whether they ring true. The vessel may be broken, but the wine may be good.

Jesus gave us some wonderful words on this, when the disciples informed him that they stopped a man from casting out demons because he wasn't "one of them": Whoever is not against us is for us. (Mark 9:37-39) Also, in Acts, Paul, along with his disciples Priscilla and Aquilla, came across a man named Apollos who was preaching, but not the full truth of Christ. They did not malign him, discredit him, and look for all ways of silencing him. They applauded him for being bold in his faith, and instructed him in the true Way of Christ.

Be bold. Speak the truth in love. If it means civil disobedience, then go joyfully into it. Let us truly revive the American church, and strengthen the Body of Christ worldwide, so that we are not Laodicea, who gets spat out for being lukewarm and tasteless.

Something New - An Examination of the Mennonite COF, part 3

2010-09-05T16:08:00.001-04:00

I'm sorry it's been so long since I've continued this blog series, but there are two reasons for that. First of all, this summer has been a very busy one with lots of vacations and such so, sitting down to put a few words together to comment on the Holy Spirit just didn't happen. However, probably more telling, is that to comment on the Holy Spirit one needs to have some understanding of what exactly it is. And here is where I fall flat and, I fear, many theologians also struggle. How do you wrap your mind around something of pure Spirit and such a foreign spirit to us humans to try and explain it? In this, I think our the Mennonite Confession of Faith does the best it can do in that, rather than trying to define what the Holy Spirit is, it spends much of it's time defining what it does.

There is a lot of things that Holy Spirit does according to the Confession and I see nothing wrong with any of those. It empowers and it equips. "By the power of the Holy Spirit, the church preaches, teaches, testifies, heals, loves, and suffers, following the example of Jesus its Lord."

The next paragraph hints at something thought that I think Paul states best in the opening verses of Romans 12.

¹ Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is true worship. ² Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

So, here's another thing that the Spirit does. The spirit transforms. There are a lot of things that followers of Jesus are asked to do. There are so many good works that need to be done. But the example of Christ is that each situation needs to be treated differently. When calling sinners back to righteousness, sometimes it's confrontational, sometimes it's gentle forgiveness, sometimes it's just an expression of love. The Pharisees, Zaccheaus, and the adulterous woman, respectively, were all treated according to their individual situations. Christ was able to "test and approve" God's will.

The Christian way, if we don't have something happening inside of us, is just another list of rules, similar to what Moses gave the Israelites. Or is it? If we read the verses from where Jesus got the Greatest Commandment, we find the following:

⁶ These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. ⁷ Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. ⁸ Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. ⁹ Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

This passage implies that law was not simply a list of rules, but something that characterized life. That it wasn't just a matter of being legal and lawful, but that the very system by which the Israelites lived would be so ingrained that it would be visible in every part of their lives. Some Orthodox Jews take this to the extreme and actually do the writing and tying. But Jesus, as I read the Gospels, lived a life, not by a list of rules, but a righteous life that was a sign of an internal difference.

This transformation is something that cannot happen if we just have a relationship with the Holy Spirit. One thing that I've come to appreciate in my conversations with an Orthodox Christian friend is this mystical idea that it's not just the Spirit and the physical human, two separate things somehow interacting, but that there is this strange, mysterious, merging and melding of the two in a way that is inseparable. That when we are told by Paul that we are one with Christ, it is more than just a relational "one" but a literal "one". The Holy Spirit is the way this happens because, in a Triune God, if we have one eminence of that God in us, we have the whole One in us.

There are degrees in which this happens. We humans resist this merger. This is why Paul talks about the Christian way being a journey, a race, a struggle, a fight, and so on. We have the Holy Spirit poured out on us and it is insinuating itself into our lives, but we fight it. The human spirit in us tries to continually exert its own power, its own will, and resist that Holy Spirit that is trying to help us change. And that change is to become a completion of the image of God in which we were created. I like Scot McKnight's term of "cracked icons". We're made in the image of God but we haven't become completely LIKE him. And this Spirit that we are given is the means by which we a sanctified and deified to the point where there is no discernible difference.

Consider the term "Christian". This was given to believers and followers of Christ, not by themselves, but by others who looked at them and said, "They are little Christs". The Holy Spirit is what enables this in us. By the transforming power of the outpouring of that grace, we are no longer individual humans, trying to exert our individual wills, but we are truly living in community with our God in such a way that no one can mistake who it is that we are relating to. There is a reason why the marriage imagery is used in expressing the relationship between God and his people. Aren't husband and wife to be "one flesh"? And if the Church is the bride of Christ, aren't we to be identified as being "one flesh" with Christ?

The Confession of Faith covers a lot of ground in describing what the Spirit helps us do. But I think, in order to be able to move beyond the list of rules, we need to look at this "how" the Spirit helps us do that. I can't speak as to the mystery of what mechanism the Spirit uses. But, for us to live the way that we think we should live, the Spirit comes upon us and changes us so fundamentally that, when it comes to interacting with the world around us, we cannot help but act in a way in keeping with God's will. That is a wonderfully mysterious thing and, in a world where people are looking for so much in the self-help publications or looking for the latest fad of personal improvement strategies, perhaps it really is that simple. Open yourself to the Holy Spirit and you will be transformed into a "little Christ".

United States National Religion

2010-08-09T13:01:00.000-04:00

I'm guilty of a form of idolatry. It is really rather insidious. It has a guise of being in keeping with the Kingdom but it ends up taking away my time that I should be doing following Christ into the world. I listen to a whole different set of priests. I read a different set of scripture. There are even temples and altars where, if I wanted to, I could go worship. Through this idolatry, I claim that I can change the world for the better, that if I just figure out the right way to think, the right people to follow, the right ways to act, then the world will be redeemed. I spend hours at this, literally at times.

I don't think I'm the only one. Thousands and millions of people in our country follow this idol. It consumes them. It causes marital strife. It breaks up the fellowship of believers. It causes divisions and factions, both within the church and without. Hateful things are said in the name of this idol because, just like with any religion, there are different ways of viewing the same thing and sometimes things are up to interpretation.

This idol is actually global. There are people all over the world consumed by this form of worship. Depending upon what nation you live in, there are different ways in which it is practiced. But, essentially, it all comes down to the same thing.

What idol am I talking about? One word: politics.

Think about it. How many times have you been lambasted for voting a particular way, or listening to a particular commentator, or reading a particular online blog, or any number of things? How many times have you been criticized at not being a "good person" or, for that matter even, a "good Christian" just because you support a particular party, platform, or candidate? This idol knows know political party. Democrat Christians yell at Republican Christians and vice-versa. Progressives attack Conservatives. Left and Right. Blue and Red. We have become obsessed in our churches with aligning ourselves with a particular expression of politics to the point where politics is preached from the pulpit, it's published in our church newsletters, it's documented in our church publications, and it's spoken about in the fellowship time on Sunday morning. And, again, no side is guiltless. I would not even say one particular side is any better or worse than another.

Please don't get me wrong. I do believe that we have a responsibility to speak the gospel into our culture and that includes to speak the gospel to the people in our government. But when it becomes an all consuming passion of "I'm right, you're wrong", then it becomes an idol. We start categorizing each other by party. We start looking for ways of defending our position through Scripture and other teachings. It becomes a goal to prove that OUR way of looking at politics is somehow more Christian than another. We write letters to newspapers and Congressmen/women to try and convince them that OUR way is somehow more Christian than THEIR way and so on.

And the result? We look like a bunch of whining, argumentative, bigoted (both sides), unforgiving, petty, malicious, vicious, nasty people who will shoot down, knock down, run over, blast, insult, slander, and libel anyone who does not agree with us. And yes, Mennonites do this to. And Methodist. And Baptists. And Catholics. Need I go on?

Meanwhile, people go unfed. People go without sufficient clothing for the winter. People go without homes. People can't afford to pay medical bills. People sit and cry in the dark because there is no one there to show them any semblance of love. People live in fear of their mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, husbands, and wives. People live in the darkness of the depression because, to them, there is no hope. And we see this and we do our politics, claiming somehow that politics will solve these problems. We have plenty of food, LOTS of clothes, extra money to go on vacations, to movies, out to eat, etc. We spend our time watching football, baseball, soccor, playing video games. And we do our politics because that will fix it all. Guess what? It won't. And it hasn't yet, neither here in the US or anywhere else in the world. And that goes for right, left, conservative, liberal, etc. One group says more government will fix these problems. One group says less government will fix these problems. One says more laws to regulate things. One says less laws. One says more enforcement of laws. One says less enforcement. Well, they are all wrong because there is only ONE who can fix it all.

Remember, this blog is not about politics and there's a reason for that. We are not supposed to be about politics. We are supposed to be "boots on the ground" people. The politics of Jesus time did not allow for people to do the work of the Kingdom. Nor did the politics of Paul. Or the politics of anyone in the first century or so of the church. In fact, the politics of the world didn't really become a factor in allowing the Kingdom to move until Constantine and then, instead of the politics assisting in the Kingdom, the politics took over the Kingdom. Then we just got a NEW set of politics that either you followed the specific church of Constantine or you were not in "the Kingdom". So, for over 2000 years, politics has been more a hindrance and enemy of the church than a helper.

And here we are, still trying to do things using the world's system of politics, laws, government, etc, to try and shoe-horn the Kingdom into the world.

So, I'm calling it what it is. It is an idol. We have put up an idol of the world system of government, politics, etc, that somehow that human system is going to usher in the new Kingdom. To make our government equivalent to the Kingdom is to repeat the mistakes of centuries past where human government, under the guise of being "The Kingdom", due to the corrupting nature of power and the propensity for humans in power to give in to that corruption, perform atrocities like the Crusades, slavery in the US south, the Inquisition, the oppression of the Native American nations both in North and South America (go watch the move "The Mission" sometime to see how church and politics did "kingdom" work), and countless other oppressive, selfish, and evil practices, all done in the name of Christ and the Kingdom.

The Kingdom is already here, among us. It is in our grasp. We hold it in our hearts because the Spirit that comes from God molds us into it. We are the Kingdom. The world can be influenced by us and we can have a voice in the "politics"... but what should rule our lives is not the desire to make over the world systems in Kingdom image, but to live like citizens of the Kingdom no matter what world system we find ourselves in. All the martyrs of the past knew this in their hearts. They lived in the Kingdom no matter what the politics. Some died in the Kingdom because of the politics. Some died in the Kingdom because the politics professed to BE the Kingdom and killed them for it. The Kingdom is here. We should live like it. Move ahead. Be the Kingdom.

And how will the Kingdom fix it all? Because lives change. Hearts change. People get redeemed and they look around and they see what God sees and how they are supposed to act and live and be and move. Changed lives see hungry people and buy them a hamburger. Changed lives see a man with no shoes, begging for money in the city and buy him a pair of shoes. Changed lives see the homeless and offer them the extra room in their house. Changed lives see the people struggling to make ends meet while the bills pile up and they quietly pay off the bills and remove that stress. Changed lives climb into the darkness with the lonely and scared and depressed and sit with them in the dark, holding them and giving them the comfort that comes from presence and love. Changed lives speak into the violence and fear in the family, showing love to those who need love and intervening where necessary, even giving up their own safety.

And how do lives change? By the Spirit. And how do we get the Spirit? Through Jesus. And how does that happen? People speak, people give witness, people are out there showing what Jesus can do by their actions. All those changed lives doing things? That's Jesus. When the changed lives do things, people see Jesus, people want to know about this Jesus that gave them hope. And the people with the changed lives share Jesus.

All the kingdoms of this world will pass away, even the "mighty" USA, but God's Kingdom will continue. I prefer to try and live for the permanent Kingdom rather than the temporary. And for those of you who will criticize that I'm calling for quietism be assured that I will still have my Kingdom views influence what I do in the world of politics, but no more will politics become equal to the Kingdom. Instead, I strive for the goal, I press on, I desire the greater gifts of love, faith and hope. I allow my life to change and, as it changes, I get up, get out, and do what changed lives do. Go, into all the world, and make disciples.

The idol of politics is no more.

Written On Our Hearts

2010-07-23T16:51:00.001-04:00

Short one. I mean, a REALLY short one. I put this on my FaceBook status but I personally think this idea is important enough to put it out there in every outlet I have.

I am becoming increasingly convinced that what the world needs is not more laws imposing right-living from the outside, but more trans-formative love inspiring right-living from the inside. Laws can be avoided, ignored, or worked around. A changed heart goes with you everywhere.

"Write these commandments that I've given you today on your hearts. Get them inside of you and then get them inside your children. Talk about them wherever you are, sitting at home or walking in the street; talk about them from the time you get up in the morning to when you fall into bed at night." Deuteronomy 6: 6-7, The Message

The Star-Breather Loves Me

2010-07-18T17:15:00.002-04:00

It had been at least 21 years since I had last been to a Creation Festival. Yes, I’m that old. I date myself when I mention that the concerts included Amy Grant, Russ Taff, Steve Taylor, and others. In fact, to be honest, that’s what I remember from 21 years ago. I don’t remember the speakers or the evenings at the camp. I guess being 16 years old filters the world down some. And now at age 37, there are some things that stood out.

First of all, looking around at all the different people at Creation, I marveled at the diversity of the people there to celebrate God, His Creation, and His people. There were infants probably no more than a few months old all the way up to the people who could claim to have seen close to a century. There were your wild folks with strange hair and even stranger clothes. There were also men and women there with head-coverings and plain clothes. There were young men riding skateboards and playing hacky-sack. There were young women wearing “Twilight” T-shirts. There was no particular standard of what people looked like or acted like. And that was an absolutely wonderful expression of how all-encompassing God’s love is. Who you are, where you come from, these things have no meaning when it comes to God’s love.

Secondly, there was a sense of community that I have not experienced anywhere else. Quite certainly we brought a community with us at our camp-site with people helping out, fellowshipping together, watching out for each other, and even helping to take care of each other’s children. But beyond that was the community that extended beyond just our little camp site. One afternoon I found myself tossing a football with a bunch of kids from a neighboring camp site. They were absolute total strangers, but this didn’t matter. People visited, wandered, talked, laughed, joked and shared with each other. But there was even something more amazing. There was no fear. I honestly didn’t feel any fear while there. I was in a community of tens of thousands of people and I could honestly say I could be myself, my family could be who we were, and our children were ultimately safe.

However, probably the thing that stood out the most was the unity of message. From day one, the message was loud and clear that there was someone who loved us and that love was enough to take care of anything that we could possibly encounter. I wish I could share all the messages in their entirety with you. It was a constantly building theme all week. Love, love, love, love, love. It was a resounding, constant theme in every message from every speaker in every possible way. The music covered the entire gamut of style choices but each artist, each band brought out that same message: you are loved.

First of all, no matter who you are, no matter what your past is, you are loved. That was the first message of the week. Reggie Dabbs shared his personal experiences of growing up in Philadelphia and his own sense of self-worth. And he shared how, despite his horrible past, God loves him. What you’ve done, what the world tells you about your worth does not matter in the light of God’s love. All the judgments and values of this world could not stand up against God’s love.

Other speakers went along with Reggie’s theme, taking the foundation that Reggie established and building on it. God loves you. But something else came out. That love does not care who you are, how you act, what your past is, or anything like that. But that love is too big to leave you that way. God’s love wants you to grow into the you that God intended you to be. Because of God’s love, you receive power to overcome your past and your problems. Your past, your pride, your pain, and your problems, none of these can stand up to the power that comes from knowing God’s love for you.

But then the theme moved beyond the self and into community. Reggie hinted at this in his opening message when he pointed out the idea of “I got yo’ back”. God’s love for us explodes into the community around us as we take care of each other and step out of our comfort zones and make sure that there is no one left out. God’s love motivates people to share that love in a practical, tangible way in the world around them. As repetitive as it seemed, this came out as the reason why Compassion International was so strongly pushed at Creation. This was a realistic opportunity for people to take that love and do something with it.

God’s love played out tangibly, however, was not enough. I believe it was Greg Stier that pointed out that social justice isn’t really just if we don’t do something to bring hope. Other of the speakers shared about the transforming power of God when it enters into a community. It does no good for someone if you feed their belly but they are still hungry for God. It doesn’t do any good to free a prisoner physically if they are still trapped in their past. One of the speakers shared about how the family he came from was part of an organized crime family and that, once people started changing their lives through the transforming power of God’s love, suddenly the entire community turned around. The real kicker about this came through in a very interesting question: If we really believe Jesus is the way to change lives, then why are we not out there sharing Jesus?

Probably the biggest impact, for me, of the week was Louie Giglio’s message on “How Great Is Our God”. Taken from Psalm 33, Louie pointed out the sheer enormity of the universe by describing four stars that are so enormous that we cannot even begin to fathom them. And these were just four stars in a galaxy of millions of stars in a universe of millions of galaxies. And God, who “breathed out the stars”, knows me. He loves me. He cares for me. He is looking out for me. And He wants me to relate to Him. This was absolutely mind blowing. The Star-Breather didn’t just stop with asking me to come to Him, He loves me so much that He gave up the immensity of the universe to become one of us and to show us what His love really looks like. Here we were, watching the sun set (one of the stars mentioned, by the way), looking at the mountains around us, seeing the crowds of people with their hands raised, simply worshipping our Creator, and realizing that in our tiny little corner of that enormous universe, God was there with us.

I came away from Creation with an incredible feeling that life was not going to be the same any more. The Star-Breather loves me. What I’ve experienced in the past has no hold on me anymore. The Star-Breather loves me. The pain that I’ve harbored in my life no longer controls me. The Star-Breather loves me. No problems that I could ever face can take me away from that love. The Star-Breather loves me. The self that I am right now does not have to be the end of the road. The Star-Breather loves me. That love overflows me so much that it cannot be contained. How can I be silent any longer? I have encountered the Star-Breather and have found that He loves me. The Star-Breather is about changing lives. That is where I want to be. The Star-Breather loves all of us and I want to tell this to the world.

What happened?

2010-06-04T21:38:00.002-04:00

It seems to me that there are competing values among people in the church today, at least as far as I understand it.

On one hand, we have the value of social justice: care for the poor, the disadvantaged, and the oppressed. This is being lived out in programs, both private and public. The other value, though, is that of stewardship of resources: wisely using money, time, people, skills and gifts. Do not spend more than you have, spend what you have wisely where it is most needed, and don't waste anything. It seems that the first value is trumping the second. Aren't they both supposed to be things that followers of the Way are supposed to hold as central truths?

Additionally, I remember a time when the church held as a higher value the value of teaching, training, and helping over giving handouts. I remember there was once a man who came by our church one Sunday morning after service asking for money. Our elders said that they wouldn't give him a handout but they would drive him someplace to get a meal, help him find a room, help him find a job, etc. They wanted to relate and to help. The man stormed off in a huff. But I remember, very clearly, how my parents explained it to me. They didn't want to give money away without knowing how it was going to be used. They wanted to use their resources in a meaningful, healthy, and useful way and to do so in an environment of relationship.

What happened to this?

Please note, this is NOT about political party, government, society, or anything else. Be forewarned, I will remove all comments to this blog to that effect. This is, however, about how we in the church are living out our stewardship of our resources. Sometimes this plays out in what we support in government, sometimes this plays out in how we handle our business as a community of faith. No matter what, we are called to live out our values and beliefs in all aspects of society. We cannot live in good stewardship with our personal finances but advocate bad stewardship in other areas. Nor can we live out a life valued on being generous with our gifts and resources with our public life but ignore the needs within our own communities. Our walk, our Way, is supposed to be all encompassing in all areas of our life.

I am not perfect in this. This is part of what was running through my mind when I wrote the post found here. There is a lot in my life that needs to change and it is going to be VERY difficult for me to do so. But these two values are values instilled in me from very young by my parents, my grandparents, my aunts, my uncles, and my church. They can't all have been wrong... can they?

The Word made Flesh - An examination of the Mennonite COF, Part 2

2010-06-01T21:55:00.005-04:00

To be honest, in reading this article, there's not a whole lot that needs to be added. I think the framers of the confession did a remarkable job of wrapping up a lot in a very short piece.

However, what I would like to comment on is something that seems to have received lesser emphasis in our current culture. This article talks a lot about Jesus' acts and what he did and achieved as a human among us. It deliberately talks about him as someone other than God the Father. He's a prophet, a high priest, a king, a servant, a Savior, the Son of God, the incarnate Word, the Lord and final judge. But there is something that gets passing mention that I think is important to re-emphasize.

See, in today's pluralistic society, people like Jesus are a dime a dozen. There are so many religious figures that people can point to as a "good person" or a "prophet like no others" or an "inspiring figure". People can be disciples of almost anyone, any great teacher. What sets Jesus apart from all the others?

I think the COF points this out when it says

As fully divine, he is the one in whom the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. During his earthly life, Jesus had an intimate relationship with his heavenly Abba and taught his disciples to pray "Abba, Father." He is the image of the invisible God, and "all things have been created through him and for him, for he is before all things.

But I think that something brought out in the commentary needs to be brought fore-front in our theology discussions in the church. The commentary points out a passage from Colossians 1 as specifically discussing Jesus divinity. We recognize one God. We recognize one creator. With one God and one Creator and Paul being a VERY Jewish man also steeped in Monotheism, these statements in Colossians bring us pause.

¹⁵He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. ¹⁶For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. ¹⁷He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. ¹⁸And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. ¹⁹For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, ²⁰and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

Note the parts that I've accented. While there can be debates about other passages about Jesus being a person, perhaps not God but some other being lesser than God, these words of Paul seem to indicate that Jesus was the Creator. Also, to have "all his fullness" dwell in a man seems to be beyond just some portion of a spirit laying on Jesus but an indwelling of the complete divinity of God.

This is something that I admit that I'm not an expert on: the divinity of Christ. But Paul was an expert on the Judaic YHWH and, with his Pharisaic training, I cannot imagine him switching over to a polytheistic worship. Also, his Damascus road experience showed that he recognized Jesus for who he was. "Who are you, Lord?". A Jew would not call any being Lord except for YHWH.

I leave the major theological arguments to others who are more well trained than I am. However, I do think that this is something that we need to emphasize in our churches. Jesus was a great man, but he was more than just a man. Without the divinity of Christ, there is a lot of our theology that just falls through. If just any man could live so purely just by talking with God more, why did do we need to rely on Jesus? Why can't we just do it ourselves? If Jesus was some sort of angel or something, why would God who gives the command "You shall have no other gods before me" allow worship of Jesus on equal with him? For that matter, if Jesus was just an angel, what would be the point of the crucifixion or even the incarnation? The theology of the NT relies on God's identification with man through the incarnation as proof that God loves us. "¹⁵For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin."

In our post-modern/post-Christendom culture where people are seeking everywhere for someone to believe in, a God who cares, and a way that gives hope, Jesus as just a man falls flat. But Jesus as God, who came down among us to identify with us, that rings solid. God condescended. God came down among us to our level because God realized that, in our humanity, due to our falleness, we could not understand how to relate to him. We needed Jesus to put a face to God, to bring God into reality, to make God relatable.

Some ponderings

2010-05-19T15:53:00.001-04:00

Okay... I know I owe a post on Article 2 of the Confession of Faith... life has been strange lately.

In any case, something my wife mentioned today made me wonder some stuff. Here are some questions that I think the Christian church in the USA needs to seriously ask themselves. Likewise, these are fair questions for any Christian in any society today. Please note, these are not political questions, these are ecclesiology and missiology questions. They apply no matter what the politics, governmental structure, economic philosophy, or what not that you are currently living under.

If your government were to fail utterly today and a tyranny that is unfriendly to the mission of the church arise in its place, what would you, as a Christian, do differently?
If there is something you would do differently, why aren't you doing it now?
What is preventing you from making those changes in your life?

I personally need to think very hard and very carefully about these. The answers may be a lot harder to deal with that appear on the surface.

If you are challenged by these questions, please comment here or on the corresponding FaceBook link. Let's start this discussion now, before it becomes necessary.

"I AM" - An examination of the Mennonite COF, Part 1

2010-05-03T22:47:00.002-04:00

One of the ideas behind confessions of faith and creeds and the like is to attempt to answer questions being asked by people of the current culture and society as relates to matters of faith and the practice thereof. So, in these posts I make about the articles of the Mennonite Confession of Faith I'm going to attempt to address them in how well they answer the questions of our current society and culture. And, honestly, I do so with great humility. I am by no means an expert in sociology or culture, nor am I a pillar when it comes to theological discussion. But I am someone who struggles at times with belief and faith and what it means. Perhaps we need more people like that talking about theology than people who study in the ivory towers.

So, with great trepidation, here I go.

The first article of the Confession of faith is simply titled "God". I think this is an important factor. Any religion you pick has some sort of concept of a supreme deity or deities. Even those that are devout atheists (those who adamantly deny the possibility of any existence of such a being) have something to say about supreme beings, albeit in the negative. And yes, I consider atheism to be a religion in the purest sense of the word. So, it is important for a confession of faith to start with a defining statement about that ultimate question: Is there a God?

Note that the article in the confession answers that question in the positive. The Mennonite Church part of the body of Christ definitely believes that there IS a God. We must establish that first. There is a God and He has made Himself known. Now, note that I am using the male pronoun. Considering some words from one of my sisters in the church (Hi, KrisAnne!), I use this pronoun, not out of saying that men are superior or that God Himself has a gender. However, the traditional form of addressing one aspect of God is as "Father" or "Son", both being male indicators. Rather than muddy the waters with some sort of strange way of addressing God, making up pronouns or words (like "godself"), I'll bow to tradition simply because the English language is insufficient to truly describe God in those sort of terms. However, as I said, God has no specific gender and even is described in very feminine ways in various scriptural passages. Humans, male and female, were made in the image of God in that both human genders display the characteristics of God. So, we can not say God is male or female, but is God.

This article of the confession makes some great effort to describe who God is, what He does, and so on. He is the creator. He loves His creation. He reaches out to people. He has called specific peoples to be His witness to the purpose for creation. He calls people to love as He has loved. He is glorious, compassionate, sovereign, powerful, merciful, full of love. He knows all and abounds in wisdom. He is both full of perfect grace that gives to no end. But he is also righteous in His wrath and the ensuing campaign against sin and rebellion against His purposes. God is just but He is patient. He is a redeemer. He gives great freedom and gives selflessly of His love. There is so much about God that characterizes God that a few paragraphs seems hardly to begin to do justice.

And that is something that I think needs extra emphasis in today's US culture and society. This confession makes a point of saying "We humbly recognize that God far surpasses human comprehension and understanding." This is very important to remember. Many of those characteristics that the article uses to describe God, in our limited humanity, we perceive as being paradoxical. How can someone be both merciful and wrathful? How can justice be done but mercy also be done? How can there be a sense of grace but a demand for righteousness? This all seems to contradict itself.

The commentary seems to try to make sense of this but I think it still falls short. Using a phrase like "righteous love" helps, but it does not satisfy the questions that these contradictions raise. Again, the commentary says that there is a tension in knowing the unknowable. God has revealed Himself but our human understanding sometimes cannot make sense of it.

In our post-Christian world, we cannot depend upon people understanding God in the same way that we do who have been brought up in the church. In our post-modern age, we cannot rely on human reason to describe it either as, in the reaction to modern age of reason, the post-modernist is skeptical of the ability for human reason to answer all questions. What is truth? We can answer that God is the source of all truth. And that is a characteristic of God. What that implies, though, is that God, being beyond our understanding, "owns" a level of truth that we cannot grasp as humans. We can only see parts of that truth and comprehend it in our finitude. We will even make mistakes in this comprehension in our falleness. And that is where the revelation of God's grace comes to play. Through his grace, mercy and compassion, he allows us to make those mistakes in the journey of coming to grips with the truth that He alone can contain. And, through His grace, he has reached out to us in a way that we can get a glimpse of that light. Calvinists use the term "condescend". This is not a bad term. It is the same fashion in which parents and teachers take a complex idea (like the refraction of light waves) and explain it to a child who cannot comprehend of quantum particle theory. Things are explained in a context and in a fashion suitable to the person receiving the information. It is not false. There is nothing wrong in saying "The rain drops break up the light into all the colors". That is true. And it is understandable for a younger mind. It is not a lie.

So, God has revealed himself in such a way that we can understand him. Jesus is the ultimate means of that revelation where God, Himself, came down to our level, experienced what we experienced, and taught us about Him in terms even we can understand. Does this answer all the questions? It doesn't even start. But we can trust God (that is what faith is, anyways) to not lead us wrong. After all, he went through all that effort to reach us, he must care deeply for us.

But I get ahead of myself. Tomorrow, I look at Jesus Christ. God bless!

Here we go...

2010-04-29T13:53:00.000-04:00

Remember this post?

http://ballymennoniteblogger.blogspot.com/2008/09/post-anabaptism.html

And this one?

http://ballymennoniteblogger.blogspot.com/2009/01/daunting-challeng.html

It's been a little over a year since I set that challenge before myself. Well, guess what. I'm starting this now.

See, I'm working on my MLI for the Mennonite Church Leadership Database and one of the questions in that database is my reactions and responses to the Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective. Since I'm going to be spending the time looking at that in detail for that purpose, I thought I would blog about my reactions as well.

If I can swing it, tomorrow I'll be hitting Article 1 on God. If y'all wanna follow along with me, you can read the articles as I go. I'll be sticking to the order in the document.

Before that, though, you might want to review the Introduction. There's a lot of information there about the importance of Confessions but also points out that the commentary published along with the Articles are important in understanding the articles as they were written. Instead of looking at the commentary as "opinion" commentary (as some commentaries on Scripture are), these commentaries should be viewed the same way the book of Romans would be if Paul had written it as a blog article and interacted with commentary. The commentary on these articles were written by the people who constructed the articles so they are a window into the mindset and thought processes of those men and women. They should not be discounted but instead used as a tool to gain understanding for those parts of the articles that may be less clear because we are not part of the context in which they were written.

So, come with me. This is a journey for me. I invite you to join in.

Here we go... and may God go with us.

Bathed in Reminder of His Love

2010-04-22T13:53:00.002-04:00

I can't get this song out of my head. I know that I've probably said this WAY too many times today already on Twitter and Facebook.

But sitting here outside of my thoughts, is this necessarily a bad thing, to be constantly reminded of how MUCH He loves us? The refrain repeats over and over in my head and the longer it is there, the more I want to just drop to my knees and worship Him. He loves us so much, enough to take on our own finite fleshly form and experience what we experience so that we can truly know that He loves us. Wow. Just takes my breath away.

Low self-esteem? He loves you.
Depressed? He loves you.
Alone? He loves you.
In pain? He loves you.
In suffering? He loves you.
Struggling with worldly cares? He loves you.
Facing loss? He loves you.

He loves you.

He loves you.

What more needs to be said. Watch and listen (and try not to be distracted by the hair).

David Crowder Band - How He Loves (Official Music Video)

Pondering Life

2010-04-21T16:17:00.001-04:00

Many of you who know me personally know that I don't really fall down on one side or the other of 7-day creation versus the million, billion year evolution. Both sides of the argument have certain questions that remain, for me, unanswered by human knowledge. For me, with God, who am I to question what He does and how He does it? I'll leave that to be one of the questions that will get answered when He and I finally get to walk "in the cool of the day".

But, in this season of Spring, in the Northern Hemisphere at least, I look at the bursting out of life around me. There's all these flowers, trees, birds returning, all this new life. It's no wonder that for centuries, even outside of the Judeo-Christian faith, people have celebrated this season of new life as something profoundly spiritual.

I consider something simple as a crocus coming up through the snow. And I ask myself, "Why?" I mean, let's take God out of the picture. Assume there is no underlying intelligence in the universe. This thing somehow evolved through random chance that it mutated in such a way in it's chemical codes to have this mass of pulpy, root like nodules that grow underground, fed by these succulent, water-filled, grass-like stems, that convert light, water, and other elements into sugars that perform no other purpose than to add more mass to that bulb under ground. The flower has no real purpose. It looks pretty and it seems to have the right equipment to create seeds. But they grow, they bloom, they die, with no other purpose than to create this bulb so that next year it can do the same thing all over again.

And, in the wild, plants like this, no one ever really sees them. They just grow, bloom, and "die", leaving nothing left but that bulb. And what purpose does that bulb really do? We can talk about feeding animals or revitalizing certain soil nutrients but then you would have to assume that having the bulb consumed would be somehow beneficial to the flower. And, if the bulb is revitalizing nutrients, are these nutrients the flower needs? Doubtful. Probably it benefits some other plan that somehow returns the favor. And that happened by chance? How did the right thing happen at the right time? It just seems a waste of bio-matter to just put out this useless little purple or white flower for no other purpose than to make a flower.

But see, that's where the scriptures tell us what's happening. If we don't praise God, then the creation around us, even the rocks, will cry out in praise. Actually, I don't read that as necessarily a consequence of not praising God. I read it more as "Hey, the rocks and trees are already doing it. If you don't, they'll keep on doing it. So, why not join in?"

That bulb in the ground, in fact many plants that bloom and grow in the woods and the fields with no humans around, do so with no seeming benefit to themselves or anyone else. And in those cases where they do benefit, the synergy and symbiotic relationships between the different creatures like birds, bats, bees, butterflies, bugs, mice, squirrels, wolves, bears, lions, deer, etc... the web just grows and grows and grows into this infinitely complex, almost global organism in which all these pieces just work and move together. The sheer enormity of how all this works together and even extends beyond the bounds of this little ball of rock and water to the sun which gives that energy and the gravity waves that keep us in orbit and the structure of our galaxy that allows our sun to be on the fringes where we don't risk those cosmic collisions... it all works just so PERFECTLY.

All this, from contemplating one little crocus. I don't know how God did it. I'm not entirely sure I completely understand WHY God did it. But, how and why aside, it is obvious to me, that with as complex as this universe is and how it all works together so completely, so perfectly, even the destructive forces of volcanoes and tsunamis and floods (which create new soil, new land, new fertility for new plants, etc)...to me, it's obvious that there IS a God. You may disagree. You may argue that given enough time, chance could make all this. Occam's razor comes to play, this time on the side of God. "The simplest solution is usually the correct one." I don't know about you. But those infinite complexities of all those random chances and improbably events that just HAD to happen in JUST such a way... that seems a lot less simple than an intelligence who created a universe so that He could relate to it. A Creator who wants His Creation to actually know him and give him praise and honor. In return, He provides that love and acceptance that can only come from a master craftsman towards His masterpiece.

Praise God!

Tears for a Child

2010-04-16T08:24:00.000-04:00

Note: I wrote this story a few years back. I had it published in our little church newsletter but, for some reason, it has come back into my mind. I hope you enjoy it.

    Jordan wept. Wrapping his broad wings around his body, he crouched on the ground on the other side of the hill and sobbed quietly. To be so able but yet not allowed to do anything was the worst sort of torture. All he needed was the word, and he would have leapt into action. But the word never came.
   Jordan was not alone, of course. The hillside was covered with white, glowing forms, some crying out to heaven, golden faces wet with tears as they scream “Why?!” over and over. Others were like Jordan - too wracked with grief to do anything more than huddle and sob. The images that they saw throughout the day, starting the night before, were just too much to bear.
   Jordan remembered the bright light, that unique shine from a special soul. In celebration, he personally lit the fire in the sky to announce the arrival of the pinnacle of all creation. So long ago, but yet not long enough, he remembered singing for joy with his brothers and sisters, filling the night sky with their ethereal voices as they could just not hold back their rapture at the momentous event that had just occurred.
   As he cried, full of grief, Jordan remembered when that light started to move. The image in his mind of this spark, this intense flame, traveling throughout the physical plane could not be purged. What an amazing example of power! Not only did that spark burn through the world, but as it burned it set other sparks aflame. Some burned in passion, some in love, some in that unique way that only the great learned can burn.
    Last night, all those fires were in one room, one quiet little corner of the world, where in their seclusion they fed each other’s heat and fanned themselves to greater heights as the Great Light showed them what it really meant to burn. Those fires moved to another hill, not far from the one on which the angels wept now. It was there that it had begun.
   The Light, as great and beautiful as it was, was caught up in darkness. Over the next several hours, it was tormented, tortured and thrown down. But it never went out. Then the mortal pain began. And again, the darkness swirled around the light, trying in desperation to snuff it out, to conquer it for the darkness. Like moths with huge black wings, the darkness beat upon the light.
   And the Light endured…

   …until just now.
   It was as if the darkness celebrated while the angels grieved. The sky itself reflected the darkness that even now was dancing all around taunting, angry, maliciously gleeful as they had finally quenched the Spark. With a last gasp, it had gone out.
   “Let me go!” Jordan had screamed. He had struggled against the arms of the Strong One. His brother held him back, pinned him down as the grief stricken angel had tried so much to fly to the Fire and re-ignite it, to drag it out of the darkness and protect it. This lovely flame that had lit the world for a brief three years and he was not allowed to save it. All he could do was watch as the spark faded, slowly, until, with a final breathe, it gave up its last.
   And now all he could do was weep. It had been so long, he had lost track of how long he had been on the hillside. He couldn’t bear to leave that place where he last saw the Eternal Flame. They had carried the shell away sometime ago. He knew it was behind a stone, gone to corruption, never to return. And there was still nothing he could do.
   As he sobbed quietly, Jordan felt a gentle hand on his shoulder. Unfurling his wings, Jordan turned to see the Bright One, Gabriel, standing beside him.
   “Jordan, it is time to stop grieving. The time has come,” smiled the Messenger.
   “Time? What time? There is no more time for me, only time to grieve.”
   Gabriel chuckled. “Oh, really? Turn and look, across the hills, turn to gaze towards the garden.”
   Jordan wiped his tears and turned in the direction indicated just in time to see…

   LIGHT!!!

   Blazing glorious Light!

   Even brighter than it had been before, there was no mistaking the Flame. As he watched, he saw it begin to move again. This time, there was no sign of any darkness. In fact, as he looked around, now the Dark Ones were no longer dancing with glee, they were gibbering with terror as they fled.
   “How can this be?”
   And Gabriel explained it to him. And finally it all became clear. Joy filled the formerly grief-crippled being, wiping out all signs of sadness and replacing it with jubilation. Finally! And he could see already that the 11 sparks left showed the potential to create a raging furnace of glory that would sweep across the physical and spiritual planes, leaving no room any more for the dark, lighting all the corners. How Glorious!
   Gabriel chuckled again at the rapture on Jordan’s face. “You have one more task, Jordan. You who were present at the first, announcing in song, you have the honor of making one more announcement.”
   Jordan nodded, understanding as he saw a few bright glimmers work their way towards the garden. Opening his wings to their fullest, he flew to the place where the Fire had just been and stood in the opening.

   After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb.
There was a violent earthquake, for Jordan flew down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men.
The angel said to the women, "Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said…”

Christianity is Socialism..... Or is it?

2010-04-08T20:26:00.002-04:00

I think it has come time to end this series. It is my hope that my readers have gained some insight to a very particular point. Perhaps I was successful, perhaps note.

The point? I'll quote the last paragraph in my most recent post in this series, a paragraph whose contents have been repeated several times.

The gospel message has as an integral part a societal and communal concept of mutual care in the areas of health, welfare, education, etc., and it is the role of the church to take the primary and leadership role in living that social conscious and just way. We should welcome other groups (government, non-Christian religions, etc) to participate in our mission where their goals coincide with ours. But the church, for the church's mission, since the church is the one and only organization that recognizes completely and fully God in the person of Jesus Christ as the head (and no other), should take the primary role in living out that Kingdom in this world.

Probably more important this point is one other point: while Christianity is definitely socialism, at the same time it is not. The socialistic systems of this world have no room in them for the blessings of God. If you are blessed by God with wealth, socialistic systems of this world assume that you are not worthy of that wealth and it must be redistributed, by force if necessary. This is not the gospel.

Also, socialistic systems of this world imply that anyone who doesn't have the same as someone else must be able to get that something simply by right of "justice", regardless of personal responsibility, effort, or merit. Again, this is not the gospel.

Socialistic systems of this world assume that everyone must be treated exactly the same regardless of gifting, talent, or ability. Again, this is not the gospel.

You see, Christianity is socialism... but it is also capitalism... it is communism... and it is democracy... it is meritocracy as well as it it fairness and justice. It is punishment for the wrong doers... but it is mercy for the repentant. You see, all these various systems of the world have some grain of truth in them. Again, I re-quote another friend of mine, "All truth is God's truth." If God is the source of truth, than anything that is true, regardless of its earthly source, must therefore be of God. And the Scriptures bear that out in that they support aspects of ALL these systems.

So, what do we do? Well, here it is: Live the Kingdom. Regardless of what worldly, human system you live in or what system surrounds you, live the Kingdom. All those human systems will pass away. They are not eternal. The only eternal system is God's system, lived out in the Kingdom, and headed up by Christ.

That is what we are called to do. If we end up doing something within one of those worldly systems, that's fine. Nothing wrong with that. So long as the Kingdom has primacy and that your entire being is focused on the Kingdom, nothing else really matters. "Seek first the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness. And all these other things will be given unto you." "Where your heart is, there your treasure will be." "What good does it a man if He gains the world and forfeits his soul?" I can go on, but there it is.

So, beginning now, politics are no longer welcome on this blog. While I encourage debate and discussion, politics can no longer be part of that. I am about the Kingdom. My goal is to comment about the Kingdom, what we are to do in that Kingdom, and how we interact with the world THROUGH the Kingdom. But specific political polity is no longer welcome. Why? Because my primary allegience is not to the political systems of this world, but to my Holy, Righteous, and Eternal King, Jesus Christ, May he Reign Forever and Ever and Ever. Amen.

A worthwhile post on Gossip

2010-04-07T08:59:00.003-04:00

Just had to share this one. Read it, and think carefully next time you talk about someone without their knowledge...

Dealing with Gossip: A Parable

Christianity is Socialism: The conversation continues

2010-04-05T15:26:00.002-04:00

This is a post in response to a comment made by one of my friends, Shari. I welcome discussion, disagreement, and discourse on my blog and I feel it brings to light a lot of things that a single thread cannot reveal. Shari brings up some good points. 1) That societies to remain societies need communal welfare of some sort. 2) That our nation is a nation of plurality and not just Christianity. 3) That our nations finances can be put to better, more just uses than what they are today. Below is my response to her. It ended up being rather long and, instead of burying it in a comment thread somewhere, I thought I'd put it up front.

Shari, let me elaborate on several points that have been brought up.

First: You ask about whether societies exist that function without some form of communal welfare. The answer to that is easy: no. At least, not and remain a coherent society. However, the nature of those structures vary from society to society, culture to culture. In most nations today, with some few exceptions, the secular, political powers in charge are those structures. In fact, even in Roman society in the years of the early church those structures existed. But the existence of secular, political structures does not mean that those are the proper structures. So, what are Christians supposed to do? Read the first 5 chapters of Acts. There was no government involvement, there was no political institution, there was simply the community of believers, looking out for each other and the common good and even, in some later chapters in the book of acts, looking at the good OUTSIDE of their specific community, feeding the poor, healing the lame, freeing prisoners, all without government involvement. So, yes, structures of some sort are necessary. But the church is counter-cultural and has been since day one in that it is a structure founded on the love of Christ, on the Holy Spirit, and on the transformed lives of the people within the community. What we have in the US government is a structure founded on obligation, law, punishment, fines, mandates, and consequences. That is not the Christian way, at least not the way Christ lived and not the way the church was founded.

Second: Yes, we live in a nation of plurality. But that means our answer to the situation should not be to mandate a uniformity. Christendom is dead. By that, I mean that the concept and ideal of a nation that is founded on, ruled by, and that contains a common understanding of Christian values NO LONGER EXISTS. Our society is plural. To mandate everyone to act and be like us (and, by mandate, again I mean passing secular laws to enforce our Christian ideals) is to deny that plurality. Instead, we need to trust that the Christian church TRANSCENDS the plurality present in human societies. Our lives, lived out in our every day, day-to-day actions, should reflect that transcendence. Yes, God can work through governments. But God's kingdom transcends governments. How else could the church thrive in such an oppressive society as communist China? By forcing people (and yes, majority vote is just another form of force) to act and live a certain way against their will is just as oppressive. Christians are giving themselves a bad reputation by saying, "Your way is wrong, our way is right." We are seen as judgmental, close-minded, bigoted, holier-than-thou... just fill in the blank. Instead of forcing people, we should preach it and live it. And, if we are preaching it right and living it right, the people around us will recognize, by its own merits, that The Way of Christ is THE best way. 1 Peter 2:19-20 speaks to this when it says : "For it is commendable if a man bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because he is conscious of God. But how is it to your credit if you receive a beating for doing wrong and endure it? But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God." Live faultless lives before God and the world will notice and, even if we endure persecution in the short term, our examples and words will speak louder than any lobby or vote. Mourn the loss of Christendom. It had its time and it did good things in its time. But Christendom is gone in the US and Europe. We need to stop living like it is still the norm and instead live our lives in a way that is no longer dependent upon it.

Third: Yes, our taxes go to build weapons. Guess what. That's what secular governments do. Read Romans 13:1-7. Secular governments have the sword to maintain order. And guess what. That was God's plan. I don't like the fact that the sword must be used and I look forward to the day that it is not necessary, but can you truly stand by and let a suicide bomber blow up a pre-school of kids? Our government, by the use of military force, is preventing innocent loss of life in a way that is sometimes necessary. Its unpalatable and DEFINITELY to be held as a last resort, but it is necessary. I agree, though, that the excessive spending of for our military leaves something to be desired. But that aside, consider the concept of stewardship. Our nation is $13 trillion dollars in debt and that debt is increasing by the moment. Any taxes gathered right now, the majority of them are going to pay that debt. Almost none of it is going for the military OR the social programs. Is spending more money really a good stewardship of the money we have? I saw something the other day on the whole environmental thing, concerning the idea of Cap and Trade. Proponents for Cap and Trade are saying, "You can't fix a problem by using the same thing that caused the problem." Our government has caused the problem of bankrupt social programs (Medicare, Social Security, and Welfare are all going under within the next year or two and no amount of taxes can fix that with the debt load we have). Government bureaucracy caused that problem. Is it really being wise and good stewards of our resources to take the thing that CAUSED the problem (excessive government) and try and use it (by making even MORE government programs) to try and fix it? I agree, a better way of spending the money for the government is for more humanitarian things. But right now, even if we stop spending on military entirely and turn all our attention towards humanitarian things, with that load of debt, our problem is just going to get worse.

My point: Again, the answer is not to lean on the government to do the job for us. The government CAN help us. I am not denying that at all. But it is ultimately OUR job, as the church, to go and do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God. As I mentioned in Sunday School yesterday, our attitude should be one where the church is leading the way in this. We should be out in front, doing these things, acting justly. If the government wants to come along for the ride, GREAT! Fabulous! That is DEFINITELY a GREAT thing. But, if the government doesn't want to come along, their loss. We can continue to call over our shoulder and tell our local, state, and national government that they need to straighten up and fly right. But we should be doing so in such a way that we don't stop and wait for them to catch up. We are the Kingdom. We should be living the Kingdom IN SPITE OF our government.

All my "Christianity is Socialism" posts have this as the underlying theme: The gospel message has as an integral part a societal and communal concept of mutual care in the areas of health, welfare, education, etc., and it is the role of the church to take the primary and leadership role in living that social conscious and just way. We should welcome other groups (government, non-Christian religions, etc) to participate in our mission where their goals coincide with ours. But the church, for the church's mission, since the church is the one and only organization that recognizes completely and fully God in the person of Jesus Christ as the head (and no other), should take the primary role in living out that Kingdom in this world.

Chrisitanity is Socialism...the saga continues... "Glenn Beck"

2010-03-25T22:27:00.002-04:00

Note: The March 23rd program by Glenn Beck in which he talks about Jim Wallis has come under heavy fire from Sojourners and people who subscribe to Sojourners. As I mentioned in my previous blog, these criticisms seem to come from little blurbs and bits, taken out of context, rather than listening to Glenn's words fully. I watched the episode just tonight and, while doing so, documented the following commentary. It's disjointed, it's stream of consciousness, but I think it brings Glenn's criticism of Wallis into full context. Here goes.

I'm watching the episode right now. Glenn says the following (quotes taken directly from the show):

"As long as Jesus, your church...that as long as it is God you are serving, and not some government bloated program...if your church is preaching social justice through education and your church is doing it themselves and saying 'Hey, let's go teach people how to read' GREAT! Do it! That is EXACTLY what your church should be doing."

Glenn is FOR social justice... he's against government doing it because government (as our COF points out) is not rooted in Kingdom values but in worldly values. The big difference that Glenn is pointing out in this program is the difference between charitable giving and "forced redistribution of wealth". Effectively, what the government is doing is taking away the idea of voluntarily, out of love and transformed life, giving and forcing it. The Christian transformed life is what teaches us how to truly show love to people in giving, entering into relationships with them instead of forcing people to give. You force them to give, they'll resent giving... is that the Christian way?

"God teaches us to be moral" Yes, this is Glenn again. He recognizes that religion and faith is the root of morality, not the mandate of law.

"God creates rights." Political social justice teaches "Governments create writes" (again, Glenn quotes).

"Our foundation is God which makes us a moral people which makes us charitable which makes us care about health-care and the government is the smallest part of that". He has a picture of a pyramid. The root
of our social justice should be God and we build on that, bringing in government for the smallest part, administering what we can't.

political social justice: "Government is the biggest thing into social justice and use health-care and your morals and God is the littlest part". Again, Glenn's words. The trap that we end up with in our political environment is that God takes a back seat to having Government do things.

"Giving to another is charity."

Jim Wallis says "Voluntary charity does not go far enough." That is true, if God is out of the picture. But we believe in a big God driving things. I disagree with Jim Wallis on this. I believe that if the Church truly acts like the Church was meant to (read Acts 2-5) then we can do immeasurably more than ANYTHING created by man.

"You never heard Jesus say 'Take from the rich and give it to someone else.'" Again, Glenn's words. Yes, advise the rich to sell and give to the poor. But you don't TAKE from someone and give it to another.
That's theft. Teach people to love, teach people what it means to live graciously, and encourage voluntary giving... but taking?   That's not justice.

"I believe wholeheartedly in taking care of the poor." Glenn'swords.... he even mentions that he sets aside money for it.
Jim Wallis words: "The redistribution of wealth is what the gospel is all about." Really? Yeah, justice is in there... but making everyone economically equal? "The poor will always by with you."

Glenn's words: "We know that Jesus' message was about choice. And if you're going to a church that has social justice and that means that I choose to go out with my church and make a difference, that's a different thing than what [Jim Wallis is] preaching. You have a responsibility, if you have extra, you have a responsibility to choose to help the poor. Remember what he said about the rich people [camel
and eye of needle]. He [Jesus] is the arbiter of justice." See? Glenn is not preaching AGAINST Jesus, he's looking at what Jesus teaches... that we are to be just..

"If we are forced, is that giving?"   Glenn's words. A VERY good question. Is forced charity truly charity?

"When did Christ ever preach about taking away our free will?" Another very good question from Glenn. Do we as a church FORCE people to give tithes? Or do we tell them give as they feel led? Glenn putssomething on the line (worth considering) "Forcing people to do something: that's the Devil's way"... maybe not quite that harsh, but it's certainly not the gospel of justice that I've read.

"But what if he is right?" Glenn wants us to ask that question. Yeah, Glenn could be wrong and, in the past, when he's been wrong, he has freely admitted, apologized and recanted. "If I'm wrong, I will
admit it." But what if he is right? "Does it matter?" If Glenn is right, and I pray he isn't, then yes, I do believe it does matter because it becomes the opposite of what is intended. Instead of social justice, we end up with oppression.

"The Widow's Mite" was an act of GIVING all. If Jesus had TAKEN it from her, that would have been wrong. Would it have been any less wrong to take it from the rich Pharisee? Note, TAKE it from the
Pharisee...

"I'll take his [Jim Wallis] word that there are 2500 references to the poor, in fact I'm surprised there are that few." Again, Glenn recognizes that the gospel and God's word do have an IMMENSE concern for the poor. Glenn makes an interesting claim, one worth researching... That there are zero references to the government's
responsibility to take care of them. I'll have to look that up but, thinking about the law code, yeah, he might be right. The law code was about people and how they were to "love their neighbor", not about the priesthood and the system of leaders making social provision for the neighbor.

"Jesus was crucified because they thought he was a King.... he was a King of ANOTHER world... His kingdom is inside of us, that is what he was worried about not [this world]. How many references were there [to the government] taking money from the wealthy and giving it to the poor in Galilee?" I know the answer to that... none... "If you think Jesus was preaching that, he would be more clear." Yeah, Jesus was about PEOPLE taking care of PEOPLE... not institutions taking care of people.

Consider this... interesting fact... Obama does not go to church... That bothers me... Where is Obama's basis for morality?

I found this disturbing article... I'll have to fact check it... but Wallis not claiming to be a Marxis? http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1833

A quote from that article" In 1979, Time magazine hailed Wallis as one of the "50 Faces for America's Future." That same year, the journal Mission Tracks published an interview with Wallis, in which the activist evangelical expressed his hope that "more Christians will come to view the world through Marxist eyes." "

I find this highly disturbing since Marxism says 1) religion/faith is unnecessary and 2) ends justify the mans. I'd want to know Wallis response to his own words here.

I hope and pray that Wallis is truly a man of faith, preaching the gospel of grace, love, and mercy. But when I hear these kinds of words coming from him, it disturbs me, knowing what Marxism and socialism has done to oppress people in the last 150 years.

Social justice, as I point out in my blog, is DEFINITELY a Christian ideal and a goal for the Church. But it is not a social justice of taking from one and giving to another, but of voluntarily, out of love for your neighbor, giving of your plenty. Politically motivated social justice is NOT of the Kingdom. However,social justice motivated by LOVE is definitely of the Kingdom. Is it fostering a spirit of love to DEMAND that you give? VeggieTales has a FABULOUS quote in "The Snoodle's Tale" - "A gift demanded is no gift at all." God can MAKE us love him... but then would it be love? But if we give our love out of our free will and choice, now THAT is love.

"Violence is the wrong way to go." Glenn's words. He does NOT want violence, war, revolt.   That is not the way we should do things. That is becoming what we are against.

There... my commentary on Glenn Beck's March 23rd TV broadcast... It's been misquoted, he's been misquoted and misrepresented. He's been cast as a violent man, a man denying faith, a man denying Jesus. That's not the Glenn Beck that I heard tonight. Glenn seems to be supporting faith based initiatives, charity motivated by God, morality, and Kingdom virtues.   The only thing he is against is a forced mandate, dictated by law, to be "charitable". Forced charity... that's an oxymoron. Charity is defined as

"In general, an attitude of kindness and understanding towards others, now especially suggesting generosity."

How does a mandate bring about an attitude? Transformation of the Spirit is what makes Christians love each other, the law that is "written on our hearts." A law written on paper by man does not bring about love.

That's all for now. The shows over. Hope we can continue to dialogue.