DownshoreDrift

"Worshiping an Imaginary God" ~ C.S. Lewis on Pride, Part 2

"God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble." James 4:6

Pride asserts itself in independence from God. In pride, we find self-focus and selfishness. Basically, everything that has to do with self and that is opposed to and opposed by God finds its roots in pride. Pride finds a peculiar home in the religious, because we sometimes think that we have arrived, that we are special, and that we have a right to look down on everyone else. We don't see that in our pride, we are actually shutting ourself off from others and from God and are exalting ourselves.

C.S. Lewis, from Mere Christianity, has more to say about this.

How is it that people who are quite obviously eaten up with Pride can say they believe in God and appear to themselves very religious? I am afraid it means they are worshipping an imaginary God. They theoretically admit themselves to be nothing in the presence of this phantom God, but are really all the time imagining how He approves of them and thinks them far better than ordinary people: that is, they pay a pennyworth of imaginary humility to Him and get out of it a pound's worth of Pride towards their fellow-men. I suppose it was of those people Christ was thinking when He said that some would preach about Him and cast out devils in His name, only to be told at the end of the world that He had never known them. And any of us may at any moment be in this death-trap. Luckily, we have a test. Whenever we find that our religious life is making us feel that we are good - above all, that we are better than someone else - I think we may be sure that we are being acted on, not by God, but by the devil. The real test of being in the presence of God is, that you either forget about yourself altogether or see yourself as a small, dirty object. It is better to forget about yourself altogether.

As for me, the way that pride can often come up is through an almost overwhelming self-focus. Am I measuring up? Am I good enough? Am I doing enough? Do people like me? It is exhausting. Modern psychology would say that it is a self-esteem issue, but in reality, it is a pride issue. I am exalting myself and my opinion of myself above anything that is appropriate.  Even though I am being hard on myself, in reality, my focus is on myself and not God. It might look good on the outside, but really, it is pure self-centeredness. A proper view of myself comes only from worship of God. As Francis Schaeffer says, we are not nothing. But, we're not the focus of the universe either. God is not a character in my story; I am a character in His. My pride, and your pride, no matter how it manifests, can only be dealt with at the Cross. It is only when we gaze upon Christ and bow the knee before Jesus that our pride, whatever it looks like, can be dealt the fatal blow, causing true humility, which consists of a God-and-others-orientation, to flow from within.

At least that is how I see it at this point. I am sure that I will learn more later.  

Blessed Are the Mourners - Seeing Something Of Jesus I Have Never Seen Before

I have been gripped by the Beatitudes over the past week or so and last Sunday, while I was preaching, God showed me something of Himself that I have talked about but never really grasped the way that I have since then. Words won't be able to express this and when I have tried to explain it, I stumble and bumble all over myself. It can only be summed by saying that Jesus is enough.

I was working through the Beatitudes and I hit Matthew 5:4 that says, "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted." I realized that when I mourn, I am blessed, not because mourning is a good thing in and of itself. Who wants to mourn? Who wants to be sad? But, I realized that in the perspective of what Jesus was saying, when I did mourn, I would be blessed because Jesus would show up and comfort me. It is better to mourn and be comforted by Jesus than it is to be happy and healed and whole without Jesus. Pain + Jesus is better than Pleasure without Jesus. He is all I need. He is my satisfaction. I am not to just hope that He makes everything better. HE is better. I am not to just hope that He heals me and gives me a good life. HE is healing. HE is the good life. I am not to continually hope that Jesus will give me good things apart from Him - there are no good things apart from Christ.

I have been saying that Jesus is not a means to an end. What I mean by that is that Jesus is not the way to have a good marriage, good kids, material comfort, or a happy life. That would be idolatry and would put a good marriage, good kids, material comfort, or a happy life as the goal or god of our life with Jesus as the way to secure it. Bible believing Evangelicals have their own prosperity gospel. We might not say, "Sow your seed of $100 and you'll get $1000," but we do say, "Follow Jesus and you will have a good life. You marriage will be awesome and your kids will be awesome and YOU will be awesome."  So, we have these expecations that if we follow Christ, everything will work out and we will be supremely happy all the time. But, what if things don't work this way? Jesus said that in this life we will have trouble. So, you can't make deals with God to get your way. I get all of this. Our goals should not focus on ourselves, but rather, we should seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added to us. God gives us these things because He is good and because He loves us and because He has a way for us to live. But, they are gifts from a loving Father. We don't earn them and we definitely don't use God to get them. He will not be manipulated and if He chooses to not answer all our prayers the way we want, He is still good and He is still God. God is not a character in our story. We are a character in His story.

But, this past weekend, I realized this truth on a deeper level. While I have laid down my bargains with God on the follow-Jesus-and-get-the-happy-life thing, I have still believed that He was the way to everything I wanted in the Christian life. I wanted power in ministry. I wanted things to be right. I wanted spiritual and relational healing. I wanted a strong, growing church. I wanted to make an impact in the world. I wanted people to love me and for all wounds to be healed. I wanted to be whole and complete and free of pain of any sort . . . all good things, no doubt, but if those things are my goals, then where does Jesus fit in? You got it. He is the way to get those desires met. In that, Jesus becomes subservient in my heart to the things that are related to Him. If I find my identity and worth and significance in things connected to Christ - His gifts - and not in Christ Himself, then what have I become?

Then, in a flash, I was faced with the proposition - would I take pain and struggle and hardship and rejection - mourning, sadness, and many tears? Would I take all of this if it meant that Jesus would be there to comfort me? Would I stop seeking after healing and wholeness and rejoice in my sufferings because through them I meet Christ? Would I give up seeing Jesus as a means to spiritual attainment and instead find myself in Him? Would I give up even good, spiritual, religious things as my main goal and instead find my life hidden with Christ in God? Do I really think that He is better? Do I really want to know Him or just His blessings?  I am not trying to create a false dichotomy here between The Giver and His gifts. However, the presence of suffering and loss and sin and grieving and mourning in the world causes us to recognize that things just do not always work out the way that we desire. What do we do with that? Will we attempt to use God to alleviate the pain and therefore make the freedom from pain the main thing? Or, will we keep our eyes on Jesus even through the pain, knowing, being totally confident, that He is greater than even our freedom from pain and also knowing that He will comfort and heal with His presence?  As accurately as I try to explain this, I am still failing I fear.

"Blessed are those who mourn."  When I find myself mourning, hurting, saddened, brokenhearted, I need not despair. Those are real emotions and they come from loss in this world and I don't need to shut them off. I need not look to my pain and wonder why a loving God would allow me to hurt or go through this. I don't need to wonder why God won't show up and relieve my suffering. He is greater than the pain. I can lift my eager eyes to Heaven and know that there is a Savior who lives to intercede for me and He has sent the Comforter to comfort me in all my troubles and that He is near to the brokenhearted and the nearness of God is my good. I need not look for healing and wholeness and spiritual, emotional, and relational health and success. Instead, I only need look to Christ. He is my satisfaction and my hope and if I meet Him more clearly in the midst of mourning and suffering and pain, then I praise God for the mourning and the tears and the suffering and the pain and the rejection and the hurt - because those things have brought me to my Blessed Savior in Whom all the treasures of the universe beyond my comprehension reside. It is in that state that He shows up and comforts me and I see Him. For when I have Christ, I have all things and there is nothing good that exists outside of Him. When I have Jesus, I have healing because He is my healing. So, if when I mourn I am comforted by Christ, then I am truly blessed above all men who do not mourn but also do not have Christ.

Jesus flips everything upside down. He is not the way to be saved. He is salvation. Jesus is not the way to the spiritual life. He is life. Jesus is not the way to heaven. He is Heaven. If anything, even heartache and pain, allows me to see Jesus more clearly, then I am blessed - not because the heartache or pain was a good thing. It is not. It stinks and it hurts and it causes me to mourn. God understands that. But, Christ will show up and bring comfort to my heart and He is better than anything - even not going through the mourning in the first place.  Realizing this changes everything.

That is what I am starting to see at a whole new level and I pray that this truth would completely permeate my life. Seeing this is really the only way that we can consider it pure joy when we face trials of many kinds because we know that the testing of our faith develops perseverance (James 1:2-3). Seeing this is the only way that we can rejoice in the Lord always (Phil. 4:4). As with many things that you learn about God, you see it for a moment and then often lose it. The things of this world or our hardened hearts choke it out. I pray that I am good soil and that Christ is always before me and that this seed of truth would produce a harvest in my heart a hundred times over. I appreciate your prayers for me along those lines as well.  I still feel as though I have explained this poorly and grasp it barely. Perhaps it will grow and I will see this more clearly. I hope so, because just a taste of seeing Jesus in this way has been one of the most beautiful, awe-inspiring experiences of my life. It is a taste of Christ that fills me with more hope and joy and courage and love than words can explain.  

Are Multi-Site, Video-Venue Churches a Good Idea?

I have thinking about this quite a bit over the past few months and have decided to weigh in with some thoughts. I'd appreciate any other opinions on this as well. The new trend in church growth is for successful churches with popular pastors to start new congregations in other places by broadcasting their preaching via video to the new site. These sites usually have a campus pastor and small groups. Sometimes, they have live worship and sometimes it is simulcast in as well. Multi-site churches are springing up all over and I have to admit that I don't get the appeal.

I understand the desire for good preaching and to be connected to a successful, well-resourced church model. Americans love to be around and hear from "winners" and successful people. But, getting up on Sunday morning week after week to watch a guy in another city preach on a video screen? You cannot possibly know him and he cannot possibly know you. His message is not contextualized to your context, your community, or the gathering at the satellite site. Sure, you have a campus pastor, but why can't he preach? If he did preach the message and person of Jesus Christ, would people not come because he wasn't the celebrity preacher? If that is true, then why are they coming? I am not against a hub church doing this for conferences or on occasion to disseminate information or vision, but every week?

If we are appealing to America's desire for celebrity now in the local church, that is a problem. Why can't we raise up leaders who can preach and lead? What does it do to the faith of people who are a part of a video-venue multi-site church? Would it reinforce passivity and spectator Christianity? How are the dynamics of biblical community affected by this approach? I agree that it might seem appealing in the 3-5 year span, but how can this be sustainable in the long run?

My wife says that she doesn't see much difference between the video venue church and the megachurch. Good point. If people like megachurches they will probably like video venue churches. But, what does that say about our view of church? At least in the megachurch the man preaching is around. He is a real person, not a TV character. But, if the average person can't know the pastor of the megachurch either, then that is also a problem.

Anyway, I obviously have a lot of questions about this and my opinion of the multisite video venue church is not good.

What do you think? What are the implications of this? Why would people want this? What affect will this have in 10-20 years? Interested to see what others think.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

:Update: I wrote this post this morning and after engaging in discussion with readers in the comment stream, I am learning a lot. I pecked the post out on my phone and just intended to present my initial impressions on the growing surge of multi-site, video-venue churches and some questions that I had about it. Going back and reading it now, those questions presented in machine-gun-fire-staccato makes it look like my opinion against this is much harsher than it actually is. I tend to start from a strong position on something, which is what inspires me to learn more about it while trying to keep an open mind. I'm weird that way. Thanks to all those so far who are attempting to answer my questions and help me see a broader view on why this is working well for many people. No doubt, the way that we have done church in the past has problems and I definitely do not want to shut down creativity. I just wonder where this will lead long-term.  

A Beautiful Life Pointing Godward: Evelyn Lee Cross, 1917-2009

My Mamaw died last night. There won't be any plaques or awards given her. There will be no crowds mourning at sports arenas for her memorial service. It will not make the 24 hour news cycle. But, a better person I have never known and I praise God that I got to witness a life that stocked up mounds of rewards in heaven. If there is a way that a person is supposed to live, she lived it, and all who knew her were affected by her.

She was born in 1917 and lived on a farm in Lee Town, Mississippi, a farming community outside of Picayune, MS in south Pearl River County. She was one of 7 brothers and sisters. In 1934 she married my grandfather, James Carl Cross whom she met at a Civil Conservation Corps dance (one of FDR's New Deal measures).  They moved up to his family farm in Ellisville, Mississippi. In 1939, they moved to New Orleans where he got work as a shipbuilder in the shipyards.  He worked as a pipefitter and shipbuilder during WWII and my aunt and father were born during that time as well. My Mamaw worked as well in different jobs from a coffee packing plant to domestic help. She lived out her Christian faith in deed and not just in word and was known to take people in who needed homes and always spread the love and knowledge of Christ wherever she went.  Her husband didn't go to church, but she did and she always made sure that my father and aunt were in church every time possible. They didn't have a car so they would take the bus to get to Sunday School on Sunday morning and Training Union on Sunday night. Then, on Monday, it was up early and work all day.

I was born in 1974. By then, my Mamaw was 57 years old and she and my Papaw lived in the back end of a duplex with us on Venus Street in the Gentilly Terrace area of New Orleans, up by Lake Ponchatrain off Franklin Avenue.  I was at her house as much as I was at my own, it seemed. She was a great cook who combined the best of Mississippi country cooking with Louisiana Creole dishes. The smells from her kitchen were amazing. She was always laughing, smiling, and giving us encouragement. I loved being with her.  When I was 5, my family moved up the road to Picayune, Mississippi and a year later my Mamaw and Papaw followed us up there. I was glad. They didn't have anything in the way of retirement, so at the age of 70 and 63, they got jobs working as managers for The Pines Apartments, which was a retirement home. There were over a hundred people living at The Pines and my Mamaw ministered Jesus to all of them just like she did everyone else.

What struck me most about my Mamaw's life is how much she loved God. She always had an open Bible marked up and underlined sitting next to her chair. She read it daily and its words permeated her life. She quoted Scripture to us and applied it in all of life's situations. It just rolled off her tongue. She was fun and real and enjoyed life and you enjoyed being around her. She never condemned you when you were being ridiculous but would just smile and say, "Honey, if there is one thing that I have learned, it is to always look to the Lord." She just constantly encouraged me to look to Jesus.  When I was a teenager, I was full of ambition and couldn't wait to get out of my small town. I wanted to see the world. She would look at me and smile and quote Scripture that would pour across my unsettled soul. Philippians 4:4-13 was constantly being quoted by her in different ways and pieces. It has become my favorite passage of Scripture because I saw her live it out each and every day.

Philippians 4:11-13 says (in the King James that my Mamaw read)

 ¹¹Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content.

 ¹²I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need.

 ¹³I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.

That was her testimony. She was content in whatever circumstance she found herself in because she was in the Lord and He was enough for her. He lived through her and molded her character to His. Even though she had lots of difficult experiences, I can honestly say that I never heard her complain about anything ever. I never heard her say anything bad about anyone or run them down. Neither did my father or my aunt. She would just give praise to God.  But, she was not naive. She was as solid as a rock but her stability was rooted in joy, hope, and peace found in Christ. She would always tell me, "Honey, stay in there with the Lord and you will never go wrong." She was right. So often, I didn't understand what she was saying, but now I do.

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In August, 2005, Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast and my family was in the middle of it. My Mamaw was in a nursing home in Slidell, Louisiana, which was hit especially hard. I didn't know what had happened to her or to my family and it took me several days to get to them. Her nursing home was in the middle of a disaster area mere miles from Katrina's ground zero. Helicopters, National Guard Humvees, and troops were everywhere. People were rushing around in a panic trying to evacuate the nursing home because they could no longer care for the residents and fortunately, I made it there a mere two hours before they were to leave to parts unknown. I wrote about what happened when I found her a few years ago here and this story shows well what kind of woman she was:

I walked down the hall and saw her in the cafeteria, sitting in a wheel chair looking out the window. She saw me and her face lit up, she smiled, and said, "Hey you sweet thing, how are you doing?" She beamed and tears came to my eyes. It was so good to see her. She has dementia, but she always remembers me. I told her that we were going to take a little trip because of the storm. She got confused and did not remember the storm. She didn't understand why she was leaving, but she maintained her usual high spirits. I told her to trust me and everything would be alright. It was hard not to think back on all the years that she took care of me, taught me about Jesus, made me chocolate and coconut cakes, and was just the best grandmother a little boy could have. It was a privilege to be taking care of her now. She was going to be alright. God truly is good.

We packed everything and helped her into my truck. I realized that I was taking her away and sending her to Arkansas, where I might never see her again. I was really starting to deal with sadness, as I thought about the horror of this storm and all that was lost. As we drove north toward Picayune on I-59, she kept saying, "Would you look at that!" and "What happened?" Trees were snapped and sheared everywhere. It was truly a mess. Then, she said something that stopped me in my tracks. All week long, I had been taken aback by the horror of what had taken place. I only thought about what had happened in the negative. "How horrible, how terrible," I had said. I had entertained and tried to answer questions like, "Why did God allow this to happen," and "How could a God of love let people suffer so?" I knew the theological answers, but I was only seeing the negative. Then, my 88 year old Mamaw with dementia taught me the greatest theolgical lesson of my life, driving in that truck, north to Picayune. Instead of complaining or saying how terrible it was, she said,

"Will you look at what God did? Look at His power! He just snapped these trees in half with His mighty hand! We serve an awesome God, son. He can do anything. We have to praise Him! The rocks and trees will cry out if we don't praise Him! Look at what God did! Isn't He powerful? I just don't understand how people don't praise the Lord. Look at His power!"

I was stunned. I sat in my seat and looked at this lady who had served the Lord all her life. She never stopped praising God and believing that He was at work in everything. She knew that even the wind and waves obeyed Him. I knew I was in the presence of a precious saint of the Lord. All my life, I never heard her complain - not once about anything. She was not to break her record now. She was giving God praise! I was reminded of Philippians 4:4, "Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again rejoice. Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near."  God was speaking through her to me. She had prayed for me all my life and I always felt such a connection with her. But, now, God was speaking through her to me, straight from heaven. At that moment I knew that God was in control. Truly, in control. 

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I was able to see her one last time a few weeks ago at her nursing home in Little Rock, Arkansas, the day after Thanksgiving. She did not look like herself. She was bent over and drawn and her teeth were gone. She was ready to go home and be with the Lord. But still, her eyes twinkled and her smile was comforting. She gave her life to God and He never left her nor forsook her. He always took care of her. She quoted Scripture, even though she didn't know who I was anymore. "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added unto you."  "Be content in whatever state of mind you are therein." She held my hand and my mind went back to days in her kitchen, smelling the wonderful food that she made and watching her work with complete joy. I can hear her voice and her laugh and remember what it was like to lay my head on her shoulder. I remember how at Christmas time, she would always buy my sister and me a present and give it to us right after Thanksgiving because she couldn't wait to see us play with it and enjoy it. Then, she'd have to go buy another present to give us for Christmas. She couldn't wait to see us happy.  I remember her flower garden that I'd help her plant and her fig preserves and coconut cakes and her hands lifted high praising God and the people that she loved and served. I remember her praying for me.

That day in the nursing home there was another lady there who was a resident. She kept interrupting our family as we tried to talk with Mamaw. We ignored her and eventually she stopped and sat silently in her wheelchair. She stuttered when she spoke and didn't make much sense. After spending about an hour with Mamaw, it was time for her to be wheeled back to her room. On the way, she stopped right next to that lady that we were all ignoring and she reached out and took her hand.  One hand on top of the lady's hand, one hand underneath - the way I had seen her do hundreds of times with people when she would meet with them and encourage them and pray for them. She stopped for that lady and looked at her with love in her eyes and said that she loved her. The lady said that she loved her too. I watched in awe.  Mamaw didn't really know where she was and she didn't know who her family was but she never forgot how to love others and to find the one who was forgotten and remember them. What she had sown into her life continued to come out day after day. She just drew people to herself and that was Jesus in her doing that.  In that moment, I saw the love of God like I had so many times before.

The world doesn't know who died last night but I do and from her I know what is valuable and important and eternal. She pointed me to Jesus and to Jesus she has gone. And I stand here on this side of eternity remembering her and hoping and rejoicing in the One to whom her life has fled.

 

3, er, 5, no, 7 or Whatever, Steps that Guarantee Successful Missional Church Leadership!

The other day, Andrew, a friend of mine, called me and asked me a question about strategies for missional church leadership (being missional simply means that you live as a "sent" representative of God in the world - a missional church is a church that does not depend on attractional programs to reach people, but rather, it sees its people live dynamic, "sent" lives for Christ in the world as His ambassadors). He is a student in seminary doing a paper on this for a class, and he had to interview a pastor that was seeing his church step out missionally and engage their community and their world. He asked me about strategies and vision and plans. He reads this blog, so let me first of all say that his questions were very fair and I completely understood his assignment. This isn't about the questions. It is about my answers.

My answers were pretty pathetic if you were looking for coherent strategies in the way that most "church" experts talk about strategy.  But, I think that God is showing us some things and while my answers may seem kind of Sunday School-ish, I think that that they are right. Maybe we need some simplicity in this type of discussion.

Putting Away the Sunday School Jesus

Russel Moore has a good review of the movie Where the Wild Things Are. He says that the problem with it is not that it is too wild or dark, but that it is not wild enough and is not as good as the book because it does not properly deal with the existence of evil. He says that Christians are upset by the movie and are saying that it is not appropriate for kids because it is too scary, but Moore says that it is not scary enough. Evil is real and kids know it and they want something done about it. I haven't read the book or seen the movie, so I can't really comment on that, but there is something that he said that I think is important that we can all reflect upon. He compares what was done with the book to what we do with the Bible for children by saying:

Too many of our Bible study curricula for children declaw the Bible, excising all the snakes and dragons and wildness. We reduce the Bible to a set of ethical guidelines and a text on how gentle and kind Jesus is. The problem is, our kids know there are monsters out there. God put that awareness in them. They’re looking for a sheep-herding dragon-slayer, the One who can put all the wild things under His feet.

A couple of months ago a few of us went to hear Alan Hirsch in Mobile, Alabama and he said the same thing. He was talking about our different false images of Jesus and how they keep us from encountering the true Jesus. One of the images that he took on was the Sunday School Jesus. This Jesus is sugary sweet and is not a threat to anyone. He calls all the little children to come to him and he is just an overall nice guy. He was crucified for being a nice guy and if we believe in him, we can be really nice people too. The church is nice and everyone is nice. I think that it is wonderful to be nice, but that is a very incomplete version of who Jesus is. Yet, we do this with many of our Bible stories that we adapt for children.

A lady (who works with children) spoke up and opposed what Hirsch was saying. She said that it was important to have Bible stories for children and that many of them, like Daniel and the Lion's Den, were appropriate for children. Hirsch was not against telling children Bible stories, but he said that we needed to be careful to not sanitize everything so that the real story is lost. I agree.

Let's look at what REALLY happened in some of the Bible stories that we reserve for children:

• Adam and Eve? No, we don't tell that story too often. They are naked.
• Noah's Ark:  Usually a nice story about animals going two by two onto a big boat. It even has a rainbow! But, we often leave out the fact that the entire human race (save one family) along with every other animal drowned and died a horrible death. I'm not saying that you have to go into great detail here, but you can't leave out God's judgment on sin and stay true to the story.
• Joseph's Coat of Many Colors: Joseph was betrayed by his brothers and sold into slavery. Kind of scary.
• The Parting of the Red Sea (Exodus): The first born in Egypt died and the whole Egyptian army drowned.
• Giving of the Ten Commandments: 3,000 people were killed by Levites wielding swords after the Golden Calf incident (more than died in 9/11).
• David and Goliath: David cut off Goliath's head and held it up for everyone to see. Kind of gory.
• Daniel and the Lion's Den: Daniel was saved because he trusted God, but his false accusers were thrown into the Lion's Den along with their wives and children and they were dead before they hit the floor. The Lions were hungry.

It goes on and on. Even the birth of Jesus was attended to by filthy shepherds and pagan astrologers and was accompanied by the slaughter of all of boys under two years old in and around Bethlehem. The Bible is not exactly a book for kids, at least the way that we think about what a proper book for kids is. It is filled with violence, death, and human struggle. Sin is real, as is suffering, disappointment, rejection, and loss. When we sanitize it, we strip judgment, pain, and death out of Scripture and we learn to not fear God. We see God as the one who makes everything better all the time. It is wonderful that we provide comfort and safety for children, but should we do so by creating a false understanding? Does the fact that we have done this with children for the past couple of generations have anything to do with lack of fear of God that we currently have as adults? Or, the unbiblical views of God that affect us so deeply? Perhaps.

Hear me: I am not saying that we should fill our Bible stories for children with blood, gore, and horror. But, I am saying that we need to find ways to tell the stories as realistically as possible so that our children can see that evil is real, that God judges sin, and that Jesus' coming meant something more than he was nice and kind. We do not do our children or ourselves favors when we sanitize everything to the point that we make a baby nursery out of scenes from the almost total extermination of life on the planet because of judgment over vile sin (Noah's Ark) and we fail to consider what we are doing and the story that we are telling.  Without understanding, at least on some level, judgment for sin, it is impossible to understand and appreciate the redemption that we have in Jesus. 

As best we can, we need to read and tell the stories of the Bible rightly. Do our children need to hear everything when they are 4 years old? No. But, they need to hear that God is good and holy and that sin has consequences and that there is evil in the world, but God delivers us and protects us when cry out to Him. These were the stories that the Hebrew people told their children and these stories inspired courage and confidence in their God. May we do the same.

 

What Pain Can Teach Us

I originally wrote this the night of September 3. I was very discouraged and I started to write and my writing turned to worship and in worship, God made Himself known to me. I was not attempting to be overly dramatic or melancholy, but I often feel things that I can't articulate until I begin to write and that night submerged feelings and memories turned to words and words described pain and pain was brought to God. And, God heals. Tonight, I sit in my room instead of on a plane to India with the team that left this morning from our church to continue our work there. I am home because of the same continuing abdominal wound I wrote about here. I am continuing to struggle with it. Since I wrote this, I have been going to a wound care specialist and I am getting no better. This morning when I went to the doctor, It bled so much I had to go home and change my pants after blood poured all over them at the waist. I am in pain and I am tired. But tonight, I thought of this post that I saved and never published and I read it and God showed up again reminding me that no matter what situation I am in, I can rejoice in Him because He is all that matters. We rejoice not in what we do or in who we are, but in who He is. If you have ever suffered through a trial that you don't understand, I hope that this will encourage you to fix your eyes on Jesus. Even though I am 6 weeks further along in this and things are only getting worse, I can honestly say that I am encouraged because of Christ, not because of the circumstances. He is enough.

Since the end of June, I have been going through quite a physical ordeal. Over two months ago I had out-patient surgery to correct an umbilicial hernia that had occurred a couple of months before. I don't know how it happened, but it just did. So, I was supposed to have a fairly simple procedure and would heal up in about 10 days or so. First of all, the pain from the surgery was unreal. I actually have a pretty high pain tolerance, but this was pretty bad. When I would lean forward, it felt like my stomach was ripping apart. So, this went on for a few days until I began to heal and recover. All went according to plan until the end of July when my body began to push the stitches out and "overheal." That's what the doctor called it. I began to produce a great deal of granulated tissue and it got in the way of my stomach actually healing. Basically, it became a mess. The worst part was the intense muscle pain that I've been going through as my stomach involuntarily contracts all day long trying to hold the wound back from any contact.

We Aren't Supposed to Invite Jesus Into Our Life

Yesterday, I was talking with our Sunday School class about the big picture Redemption Story that God has initiated and how, by His grace, we are called up into that. We were looking at the narratives in Genesis and how God was the main character and how Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph only gain significance because God called them to be a part of His story. Then we talked about how we often get that backwards. What I mean is, we say things like, "I invited Jesus into my life," and "I'm making God a part of MY life." I don't dispute that God is interested in our lives and that he knows how many hairs we have on our head and that the Holy Spirit comes to live within us and all that, but I really don't think that it is accurate to say that we invite Jesus into OUR life as though he becomes a part of our life, like he is a decoration that we hang on the wall or something. I know that people mean something biblical by what they are saying but it's like we're saying that we invited Jesus into our house and we ask him to sit over there in a special chair just for guests and we'll get him something to eat in a minute, but we kind of hope that he doesn't stay too long so that we can get back to watching our favorite TV show that he probably wouldn't like much anyway.  I don't think it works that way and I'm not saying that we mean things exactly that way when we say that we invited Jesus into our life, but that is how it sounds, and how something sounds is more important than we like to think it is.

In reality, God has invited us into His life, which is a much better proposition, I think. We are partakers of the Divine Nature and we are adopted into His family. Yes, He comes to live within us, but I really don't think that He would be very much at home in my life as it is. My life tends to be a mess. If God moved into my life, He would start rearranging the furniture and telling me to put away my clothes and get more organized. Well, I guess that God does do that, but at whatever level that He does come into our life, He completely changes things. He doesn't just hang out and help us accomplish our own goals so that we have high self esteem. Rather, He completely takes over. Still, I think that it is better to look at it another way as though we are being brought into God's life so that there is no confusion as to who is in charge. 

God is gracious enough to call me into His life and He sent His Son Jesus so that I might be reconciled to God. God is not reconciling Himself to me as I am. God isn't going to become like me. He has made a way for me to become like Him, which is much better by far. I'm not talking about the Incarnation here. Yes, Jesus put on flesh and became sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God, but Christ isn't dying for sins again and He certainly isn't becoming sin again so that He can enter into my life. He has already done all of that. Now, He brings me into His life. Colossians 3 tells us that Christ is my life and that my life is now hidden with Christ in God. I know that Colossians 1:27 says, "Christ in you," but I think that that means something a bit different than the effect of saying that I have invited Jesus into my life.  Are we meaning that we invite Jesus into our life and we are completely transformed? If so, we are not far from the truth. But, if we see Jesus as an add-on to our lives or as a means to a happy life, then we have problems.

And, that really is the biggest problem I have with saying that I invited Jesus into my life (other than the fact that it isn't really a biblical concept - where do we see people "inviting Jesus into their life" in the Bible?). It is far better, I think, that we have been called to participate in God's life and that we have become characters in God's story than it is that He becomes a character in our story. It is better to be God-centered than me-centered and that is really what I am getting at. I don't know about you, but my story when I live in my own strength is not that interesting. It involves me being tired a lot, running around like crazy, being selfish, feeling pretty insecure most of the time, and wondering if I am making a difference in the world while I contemplate how to best procrastinate and waste time. But, when I see myself as a character in God's story and I follow God's direction, everything changes. I have purpose. I am not nearly as introspective. I live for God and for others. I spend more time praying about what God's will is than trying to get my own requests answered. My struggles and insecurities take their proper place and bow the knee to Jesus. I learn what it means to say that Jesus is Lord and I get to see what life looks like inside God's Kingdom. It is beautiful.

So, it really is silly for me to say that I am inviting Jesus into my life. Don't get me wrong. I am not denying the Christ lives within me. I am not denying that the Holy Spirit has taken up residency within me. But, at that point, it isn't really my life anymore, is it? I belong to Him. "I am crucificed with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me" Gal. 2:20. It is better for me to understand that He has extended great mercy to me by adopting me into His family and bringing me from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of the Son He loves, in whom I have redemption, the forgiveness of sins (Col. 1:13-14). I have significance because His story is much better than mine (He is God, after all), yet He calls me to participate in His story with Him. What mercy.  What amazing grace.

At the end of the day, if I am the one in charge, then it is my life. If God is in charge, then it is God's life. I don't invite Jesus in to my kingdom, but instead, I enter into His kingdom by faith. That's the essence of what I am saying and even though it might appear to be semantics, I think that it is an important distinction to make, even if we are just trying to clarify things.

The Audacity of Leadership by Jay Lorenzen

Jay Lorenzen blogs at onmovements.com and he is brilliant. If you don't read his blog, you should. Here is a post from a couple of weeks ago that I ran across on leadership. He highlights Edwin Friedman's, The Failure of Nerve, and Harper Lee's To Kill a Mocking Bird. I'm going to have to take a look at this book. Here's Jay's post:

The Audacity of Leadership »

By Jay Lorenzen on Aug 20, 2009

Since my last post, I’ve been underlining every other line in Edwin Friedman’s The Failure of Nerve. I’ve read a lot of books about leadership–most are about the techniques of leadership (vision-casting, team-building, communication skills) or the character of leadership (integrity, trustworthiness, servant-like, loving).

Friedman’s book, however, has the ability to completely reshape one’s perspective about leadership. It goes to the very nature of leadership and how it works.

When I wasn’t reading Friedman, I was listening to Sissy Spacek’s reading of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. Atticus Finch, the lawyer in this Pulitzer Prize winning novel, kept reminding me of Friedman’s description of the “well-differentiated leader.”

If you don’t remember the novel, Atticus Finch is a lawyer in Maycomb, Alabama in 1932. He puts himself and his children at risk by defending a black man accused of raping a white woman in Alabama. Atticus Finch sets a standard of morality that no other character in the book comes close to matching. His “self-differentiation” from the rest of the people of Maycomb gives him the ability to cope with the unreasonable and highly emotional elements of the town. Taking a stand against the injustice of racism, he serves as an “immune system” resisting the invasive and destructive viruses infecting the community.

For Friedman, a true leader (like Atticus Finch) resists the “chronic anxiety” around him or her. By his or her presence, the self-differentiated leader possesses a modifying, non-anxious, and often challenging presence. The crucial issue of leadership, Friedman argues, may not be how much power leaders exercise but how well their presence has been able to preserve that society’s integrity. By the integrity and audacity of their own self-possession, they keep societies (institutions, churches, movements) from “dis-integ-rating.”

Unfortunately, Friedman argues, most leaders lack nerve, becoming co-opted by the highly reactive, often regressive atmosphere of chronically anxious, dysfunctional societies. He defines chronically anxious societies as:

Reactive–the vicious cycle of intense emotional reactions of each member to events and to one another
Herders–a process thru which the forces for togetherness triumph over the forces for individuality and move everyone to adapt to the least mature members
Blame displacers–an emotional state in which members focus on forces that have victimized them rather than taking responsibility for their own being and destiny
Quick-fixers–members have a low-threshold for pain and thus constantly seek symptom relief rather than fundamental change.
Lacking well-differentiated leaders–a failure of nerve in leaders that both stems from and contributes to the first four characteristics.

Maycomb, Alabama in 1932 was one of those chronically anxious Southern towns trying to emerge from the racism of its past.

In Friedman’s terms, no one but Atticus Finch has the capacity to separate himself from the surrounding emotional processes. No one else has the courage to be clear about his or her principles and vision. Only Atticus is willing to be exposed and to be vulnerable, is able to persist in the face of inertial resistance and able to regulate his emotions in the face of reactive sabotage. Atticus represents a kind of non-anxious, well-principled presence that is at the heart of true leadership.

According to Friedman, such “self-differentiation” in leadership is the key to the kingdom.

Here’s a couple quotes from the book that illustrate Atticus’ well-defined self:

Atticus to his son, Jem:

I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.

An exchange between Atticus and his daughter, Scout:

“This case, Tom Robinson’s case, is something that goes to the essence of a man’s conscience — Scout, I couldn’t go to church and worship God if I didn’t try to help that man.”

“Atticus, you must be wrong . . . “

“How’s that?”

“Well, most folks seem to think they’re right and you’re wrong . . . “

“They’re certainly entitled to think that, and they’re entitled to full respect for their opinions,” said Atticus, “but before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.”

In another exchange with Scout:

“There are some things that you’re not old enough to understand just yet. There’s been some high talk around town to the effect that I shouldn’t do much about defending this man.”

“If you shouldn’t be defending him, then why are you doing it?”

“For a number of reasons. The main one is that if I didn’t, I couldn’t hold my head up in town. I couldn’t even tell you or Jem not to do somethin’ again.”

Miss Maude Atkinson about Atticus:

“What I meant was, if Atticus Finch drank until he was drunk he wouldn’t be as hard as some men are at their best. There are just some kind of men who-who’re so busy worrying about the next world they’ve never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.”

‘Whether Maycomb knows it or not, we’re paying the highest tribute we can pay a man. We trust him to do right. It’s that simple.’

Bob Ewell (the antagonist) to Atticus Finch:

“What kinda man are you?”

Rejoice In the Lord Anyway

I preached through Philippians 4:4-9 last Sunday and I have to say that it is one of my favorite passages of Scripture. By nature, I am an analyzer. I am pretty good at picking out what is going wrong with something and in giving recommendations for how to fix it. I might not always be right, but I am always thinking about how to improve things and address problems. Sometimes people think that I am being negative, but I really am able to engage in this most of the time with a light spirit and joy in my life. In other words, I can focus on what is going wrong without being obsessed by it.

Most of the time.

But, sometimes, I can drift into just being critical. I can become negative. I can be overwhelmed by problems and not see a way out. I know this about myself and when that happens I find that I have taken my focus off of Christ and I am staring straight at the problem. I can go blind with it, just about. So, this is why a continual reminder to rejoice in the Lord is exactly what I need. We are not told to rejoice in our circumstances. Sometimes our circumstances stink. Sometimes things are not working out the way that we want them to at all. But, God never changes. He never stops working. We can rejoice in Him even when everything else around us is falling apart. He is above all of it and faith helps us see that.

Rejoicing in the Lord does not mean that you put on a smiley face that covers the twitch you have developed because your nerves are shot. Rather, it means that you can stare massive problems in the face and praise God anyway because you recognize that He is bigger than your problems and He is more than able to handle whatever you are going through. You actually begin to look past your problems and look to the God who is more than able to deliver you. And, even if things don't work out, God is not surprised and He is still working, still redeeming, and still holding you close to Himself. We are going to have trouble in this life. Jesus told us that. But, he also said that he would overcome the world.

Since I started this blog it has been my desire to chronicle where I see God working in the world around me. Sometimes, I focus on problems. God works through problems. Other times, I focus on really good things. God works in that too.  God works for the good in all things for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. The Bible says that. So, we can know that no matter what we are going through, God is still worthy of our praise. Knowing that and actually believing it changes things.

Rejoice in the Lord all the time. No matter what. Always. Easier said than done sometimes, but just a moment in real worship of God changes everything and you see that He is more than able to carry your burdens.

Scot McKnight: Self in a Castle

Scot McKnight: Self in a Castle

How modernity and postmodernity have conspired to warp the current generation.

by Scot McKnight

Leszek Kolakowski, a Polish philosopher who weakened Marxism’s grip on Eastern Europe, recently died. Few, I suspect, knew who he was. I consider myself fortunate to have read some of Kolakowski, one book being his scintillating sketch of the history of ideas by probing the central idea of twenty-three thinkers. That book is called Why is there Something Rather than Nothing? My own reading of it impressed me again with the connection of philosophers with their world. From Socrates to Kierkegaard, philosophers are products of their day.

So are we. Which raises the profound problem of blinders when it comes to perceiving what is influencing us, and which raises the other profound problem of needing to understand our cultural blinders in order to break through them with the light of the gospel. Kolakowski’s chapters are short, and everything short when it comes to the history of ideas risks simplicities that mask nuance. I risk the same in what I am about to suggest: the current generation emerges out of a toxic combination of modernity and postmodernity.

In another context (the summer issue of Leadership Journal) I called the toxicity of the current generation a “self in a castle.” Modernity’s singular contribution to the history of ideas is individualism. David Bentley Hart gets this exactly right in his new rant against the flimsy ideas in new atheism when he writes:

“We live in an age whose chief value has been determined, by overwhelming consensus, to be the inviolable liberty of personal volition, the right to decide for ourselves what we shall believe, want, need, own, or serve” (Atheist Delusions, 21-22).

That is, “it is choice itself, and not what we choose, that is the first good.” Personal freedom, which both Kolakowski and Hart understand far more profoundly than most, has become getting to do whatever I want, when I want, and how I want – and government’s job is to make sure it happens now. That’s, of course, an exaggeration, but it’s the exaggeration that is causing our problem in gospel work today.

Perhaps the most important words in Hart’s lines above are “by overwhelming consensus.” The consensus is so overwhelming that the emerging generation – each of us – believes we can form our own religion. A religion of our own making, however, never leads to transcendence or worship of God or anything like the ancient Hebrews’ “fear of God.” Instead, we tinker on the edge of holiness with the notion of experiencing The Beyond.

How feeble of a god is that? When “The Beyond” evokes mystery or suggests to our minds that we are on the edge of something important, then we need to look into abyss of where we are headed.

If modernity gave our culture a sense of individualism that has been ratcheted up beyond what either Bible or philosophers would ever recognize, postmodernity tells us that individual choice itself is relative. I don’t believe we should dismiss postmodernity with the derisive, and far too often unthinking, label of “moral relativism,” but there is within postmodernity’s deepest impulses the belief that universal truth and all-encompassing metanarratives can’t be had. We are too finite and when folks believe they’ve found the magical metanarrative for all, they abuse power and turn violent.

Well, yes, there’s some truth to that, but that’s the whole problem with postmodernity. Genuine insights become, paradoxically enough, all-encompassing metanarratives against all metanarratives. This tendency is one of postmodernity’s addictions.

So, here we are. Staring at a unique cultural product: humans turned inward investing sanctity in the Self. We have constructed a postmodern castle wall around that Self believing it is so sacred that no one may violate your choice – you determine what to believe and what is right and wrong. The Self is protected by the Wall of Individual Relative Choice.

The tragedy of the “self in a castle” is that we are blind to it – blind to see it in ourselves every time we choose to think we are the most progressive and wisest of all generations, every time we fool ourselves into thinking we have achieved levels of love that we call tolerance, which is a vapid imitation of what genuine love is, and every time we think our moral struggles rival the profound struggles of an Athanasius or an Augustine, a Luther or a Calvin, a Bonhoeffer or a Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Self is so large because our walls are so high, blinding us from seeing the Morning Light. That Light is the Light of All Light.

Scot McKnight is the Karl A. Olsson Professor in Religious Studies at North Park University, and a regular contributor to Out of Ur.

What the Health Care Debate Says About Post-Christian America

This is a spiritual conversation that everyone is having without the Church.

Death panels. Town hall meetings. Grandma dying because she can't get the hip replacement. Socialized medicine. Communism. Nancy Pelosi's swastika meltdown. Chuck Grassley's whatever that was. So-called mobs protesting the whole thing and wanting to keep their privatized insurance. The public option now being removed. Obama's presidency sinking. Life, death, choice, autonomy, personal freedom, and the role of government all rolled into one big yelling match. Taxes, deficits, the slumping economy, and fear for the future. The media going nuts over all of it.

Look Not Only To Your Own Interests . . .

Philippians 2:4 says that. We are to look not only to our own interests, but also to the interests of others. Do Christians take that seriously? I mean, I know that we are often kind and generous and we help people, but do we really go around looking after the interests of others?

What would happen if we did that?

What would happen if when we went to church, we didn't think about ourselves, but instead, we thought about how we could look after the interests of others?

What if we saw our neighborhoods and cities that way?

What if we saw those different from us that way? How can we look after the interests of those who are not just like us and don't make us feel comfortable?

Is Jesus serious about the whole sacrificial love thing? I mean, surely he just meant that He would love us that way and we would just get to be happy, right? No, He actually does call us to love extravagantly, not getting anything in return, laying our very lives down.

How does this view of looking after the interests of others apply to the public school kids in your community? The poor? Those without fathers? Those who cannot find work? Those who have quit trying? The rejected? The sinners? The cast-out?  What does it mean to look not only to our own interests, but also to the interests of others when we decide to move to a "better" neighborhood because our old neighborhood is "transitioning?"

I could keep going, I guess.

I am just coming to the point where I am amazed at how much of the Bible's teaching I just never thought much about or took that seriously. I mean, I see words on a page and I believe them, but I often fail to think about their implications for all of life. These words in Phil. 2:4 have massive implications for ALL of life if we will believe them and obey them.

How would the world be changed if Christians just started obeying Phil. 2:4? 

Encouragement, Comfort, Fellowship

"If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from His love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion . . . " Philippians 2:1

This past week, I returned to my Bible study of Philippians and have been meditating on this verse. It has really spoken to me and has caused me to ask some serious questions.

What encouragement do I have from being united with Christ? Do I think about that? Colossians 2:9-10 says, "For in Christ all the fulness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority." I have fullness in Christ. I am in Christ and Christ is in me (John 14:20; Colossians 1:27). How does that encourage me? How does being united with Christ summon and exhort me to live for Jesus?  I often forget that I am united with Christ. I feel like I am alone and assume that I have to face the trials of life in my own strength. I often get overwhelmed. But, I am called to remember and be encouraged by my union with Christ. Christ and I are one - how can I be discouraged? How can I lose heart?  Of course, the result that is a result of the "If" in verse one is that we would be like-minded and one in spirit and purpose with other believers. If we are united with Christ, then the result is that we will live as one with other believers. We will live like Jesus and not out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. In humility we will consider others better than ourselves and look out for their interests.  That is the result of being united with Christ - we will be united with others in Christ. John 17 speaks to this directly.  The sad thing is, a lot of people will read this (even pastors) and think that it applies to someone else. It doesn't. It applies to each of us and we should be encouraged by our unity with Christ.

Sunday Worship: Busyness as Spiritual Idolatry

"How are you doing?"

"Good. Busy, but good . . . Actually, I am soooo busy."

"I know. Me too. I'm really busy."

This is a normal exchange between two Americans in 2009. Whether they are in high school, college, single and working, newly married, have children, or are retired, the constant refrain from most people is . . .

I'm busy.

I said it myself in a tweet earlier today without even thinking about it. It just rolls off the tongue (or the fingers on the keyboard) so easily. I'm busy. It is the explanation for everything. Saying that today reminded me that that is not how I want to see life.  When I say, "I'm busy," I'm saying that I'm doing stuff that I don't want to be doing and I'm running around like crazy trying to get stuff done because I have to. I am describing a state of physical, emotional, and spiritual unrest that leaves me worn out and depleted.  It is not healthy and it is usually unnecessary, for the most part.  So, I'm speaking to myself here.

Consumer Christianity and Its Discontents

Over the past year or so, I have become convinced that the greatest enemy to the Christian faith and biblical Christianity in the West, and especially America, is the philosophy of consumerism, which basically states that personal happiness can be attained through the acquisition of goods, experiences, or a particular lifestyle.  Bombarded by goods, services, brands, commercials, and incessant advertising, we believe ignorance like "you are what you wear," "clothes make the man," that there is a "right" side of the tracks, and that our identity can be purchased by acquiring items of status based on a particular brand name or celebrity endorsement. This philosophy has crept into every area of life as we have succumbed to the idea of commodification of relationships and even religious experiences in that we use people and even God to satisfy our personal desires. When we no longer find immediate gratification, we move on to something else that promises to satisfy. Everything in our life (even God) becomes a means to an end of our own personal pursuit of happiness and self-fulfillment). Of course, these views have always been present in the human condition (i.e., selfishness and sin), but only recently have we built an entire economy and way of life on the proliferation of consumption. Only recently have Evangelical churches grown based on the whims of the consumer class and their preference and choice for religious goods and services that meet their "felt needs."

Scot McKnight on the Gospel of the Kingdom

I am working on a new believer's study for our church that starts with the Kingdom of God. Instead of starting with us, I am trying to start with God and show where we fit into God's overall plan. I have been studying the Kingdom of God for a couple of years now and cannot believe that I've missed what Jesus was saying. Instead of seeing everything through the lense of systematic theology, I've begun to deal directly with Jesus' words and the rest of the words of Scripture and let them shape me and my understanding of theology. It has been more than refreshing. I am seeing things differently as the Bible comes alive.

At any rate, Scot McKnight is nailing it on the Kingdom of God, God's will in the world, and the role of the church in carrying out God's will. He says this:

What I am is someone who has, by reading the Bible, learned more and more that the church is the center of God's work and that the church ought to live out the grand vision God has for oneness, holiness, justice, grace, peace and love.

What would happen if we took that seriously?

Check out McKnight's posts on this. At the very least, He gets you thinking. I would say, though, that while McKnight starts first with the community that God is forming in Christ, I still think that the individual and the salvation of the individual is integral to the establishment of the community. McKnight believes this as well, but for the sake of deconstructing Individualism as a barrier to our understanding of Church, he starts with the community.

The excerpts below are direct quotes from McKnight.

Kingdom Gospel 1

Encountering Jesus' kingdom gospel not only makes us think, but it makes us think we just might have gotten lots of things wrong. It makes us rethink how we are reading the Bible. It makes us think about what the gospel itself is. It also makes us back up to the elements of the Story - creation, cracked Eikons, covenant community, Christ, and consummation - and see which of these elements are the focus of Jesus' own preaching.

Kingdom Gospel 2

Luke's Gospel, like the rest of the Bible, focuses on the covenant community of faith instead of on an individual's relationship with God. If you read Luke together with Acts you see that what Luke wants to tell us is that the transition from Israel to the Church is now complete and the work of God in the covenant community is alive and well.  The community - and here is how Luke defines the "problem" that flows out of the Story of Genesis 3--11 - is out of sorts. The community that confronts Jesus in Luke's Gospel is blanketed with social injustice, Israel's bondage to Rome, economic injustice and the like. Into this world Luke writes his wiki-story and says that Jesus formed a community, which we call the church, where those things are to end - right now.

Kingdom Gospel 3

[F]rom 1996 until now, as a result of teaching college students and listening to both their sharp critique of the church and, at the same time, listening to their lack of interest in attending local churches, I learned something else: the gospel we are preaching is so individualistic, so tied into getting the individual into heaven, that the church has become an afterthought for many Christians today. The current generation of young Christians is now living out, so I believe, the gospel my generation preached to them - the individualistic gospel. This gospel is deconstructing the church, making the church little more than a Sunday morning option for those who want to follow Jesus. Do you realize how far this church-as-option is from what we see in Luke's wiki-story of the Story? For Luke, the church isn't an option; it's the main stage.

Kingdom Gospel 4

What was the problem according to John? If Kingdom is the answer, what is the problem?  Here it is again: the solution is a spiritual and social resolution to a spiritual and social problem. Israelites had turned at one another's throats and John calls them to care for one another, to live in a community the way God wants them to live. Repentance is more than feeling bad about your sins, though it involves that. For John, repentance looks real: sharing extra possessions to take care of those in need, collecting a just tax, and ending the abusive use of power. When we talk about repentance today - the kind of repentance that leads to baptisms - the kind of repentance that leads to salvation, do we say "share your possessions, don't extort, be satisfied with your pay?" or do we have other things in mind? I think we will nearly all admit that we have other things in mind.

Kingdom Gospel 5

If this solution Luke tells us sounds strange to you, I ask you to read this passage (Luke 4:18-19) again. It's in your Bible and in mine. Mary's and Zechariah's and John's stories differ from Jesus' but only slightly. Jesus carries on their vision to announce that the kingdom he is setting in motion is a kingdom that will undo injustices, establish justices, and create a society where God's will is done. The gospel is about church formation before it is about personal formation.

Kingdom Gospel 6

So far so good: kingdom means community formation through commitment to Jesus. That community brings justice and it ends every form of oppression. Jesus' kingdom vision will mean a total spiritual and social make-over for Israel. With everything now in place, Jesus takes an about turn, faces his disciples, tells them they've got a blurred vision of what God is actually doing, and creates an entirely new vision for what kingdom means. Kingdom, formerly connected with triumph, will now be connected to cross.

Kingdom Gospel 7

When Pentecost happens, a cross-shaped kingdom community emerges. If we treat Luke-Acts as the wiki-story that it is, then we will read the first few chapters of Acts as the continuation of the story that began in Luke 1 and 2 with Mary and Zechariah and John the Baptist. And we will read it as a continuation of Jesus' first sermon, his Beatitudes, his answer to John, and his anticipation of the cross. So, now here are the words of Luke and I hope you read them slowly enough to pick up on all of Luke's resonances with the previous passages because Luke lets it all converge right here: the community Mary wanted and Jesus announced arrived with Pentecost.

Scot McKnight and iMonk on the Individualized Gospel

I saw this the other day on Scot McKnight's blog. Really good stuff on how the individualized gospel is killing us. Michael Spencer (iMonk) summarized it today and gives his own thoughts. I reprint his post here in its totality. Read this. Seriously.

From Scot Mcknight’s Kingdom Gospel series at Jesus Creed. I did a bit of creative editing.

I wonder what John would think of the gospel I sketched at the beginning of this chapter:

God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.
But you have a sin problem that separates you from God.
The good news is that Jesus came to die for your sins.
If you accept Jesus’ death, you can be reconnected to God.
Those who are reconnected to God will live in heaven with God.

Every line of that statement is more or less true. It is the sequencing of those lines, the “story” of that gospel if you will, that concerns me and that turns Jesus’ message of the kingdom into a blue parakeet. And it is not only the sequencing, it is the omitting of major themes in the Bible that concerns me. What most shocks the one who reads the Bible as Story, where the focus is overwhelmingly on God forming a covenant community, is that this outline of the gospel above does two things: it eliminates community and it turns the entire gospel into a “me and God” or “God and me” gospel. Who needs a church if this is the gospel? (Answer: no one.) What becomes of the church for this gospel? (Answer: an organization for those who want to do that sort of thing.) While every line in this gospel is more or less true, what concerns many of us today is that this gospel makes the church unimportant.

I believe this gospel can deconstruct, is deconstructing, and will deconstruct the church if we don’t change it now. Our churches are filled with Christians who don’t give a rip about church life and we have a young generation who, in some cases, care so much about the Church they can’t attend a local church because too many local churches are shaped too much by the gospel I outlined above.

Scot Mcknight has increasingly become a lightning rod in evangelicalism as he does his work as a New Testament scholar teaching the church to understand and apply the Bible. The “lightning” is the reaction of many conservatives to Mcknight’s views on Biblical interpretation, women in ministry and the Gospel of the Kingdom.

In the past few days, Mcknight has been asking some pointed questions and making powerfully honest applications regarding the “gospel” that has developed in recent evangelicalism. That Gospel, which he summarizes in the quote above, is the familiar Four Spiritual Laws/Billy Graham/Evangelism training version of bringing a person to have a relationship with God through affirming certain beliefs in a prayer or other. He points out that this “Gospel” is so individualistic that it not only makes the purpose of the church largely irrelevant, it also creates believers who have little or no concept of the entire Biblical story’s focus on the “people of God.”

It is a “gospel” that deconstructs the church and, in my opinion, largely deconstructs discipleship down to the components of individualism as interpreted through society, personality and personal experience.

It is a “gospel” that needs a minimum of “spiritual formation” or “Jesus shaped community” because its primary pattern is that God wants YOU to be YOU and YOU are the primary interpreter of Jesus for YOU.

At some time we are going to have to get around to talking about this, and Mcknight has opened the door.

Since I do a lot of evangelistic work and evangelistic counseling with new believers, I can give you a report from the lab.

Here’s what happens: right at the moment the student “gets it,” the whole movie needs to stop, and right there the student needs to look at me and say….

“OK. If that’s it, I want you to honestly know something. I can say I believe this because I do. I can pray the prayer. I can get baptized. I can call myself a Christian. But this little moment we are having here…this moment where I cross the line? It’s not going to change my life. It’s not going to change me. It’s going to take more than saying yes to a set of belief statements. I need some help. A lot of help from God and people. I’m only barely getting started and I know I can’t make it on my own.”

But I won’t hear that. What I’ll hear and what most of us will say is something along the line of how the “gospel” above is life-changing, and now that person has a life-changing relationship with God.

They should now, we’ll say, read their Bible on their own every day, pray on their own every day, witness on their own, find a good church on their own, and go there at least an hour a week.

And give their money.

And listen to Christian music. And buy Christian products.

And live up to the following 48 page, small print list of behavior rules, most of which wouldn’t make sense to the aliens ruling this galaxy, much less a new Christian.

Left with the “gospel” Scot has outlined, that new believer stands a better than average chance of getting nowhere permanent in a church. They will become convinced that their own views on things like sexuality and money are totally normal and can’t be changed. They will see their faith as highly individual, personal and private.

If they make it into some form of Christian community, it will likely be one that affirms them in this individual path by teaching them that Jesus is a life coach who wants them to experience lots of personal fulfillment and have a great dating experience.

Whatever steps they take in the Christian life will come down to “I got so much out of that.” The primary flaw with Christianity will be that it’s boring. The great quest will be relevance and good feelings. The church will either facilitate the authority and fulfillment of the individual and his/her version of the “gospel” or it will become optional.

Over time, expect most churches to fail the test. Chances are that this new Christian will be a church drop-out pursuing their own “walk with the Lord” outside of church before too long.

Welcome to the evangelical wilderness. Anyone else recognize that individualized gospel Scot is describing and what it has done to you, your church community and your family?

Anyone else sick of it?

Thank you, Scot. I love you for writing this because it inspires me to see how it has all worked its way into the heart and soul of lifelong evangelicals like me.

We need to talk about this some more. (Clue: Churches that surrender to this are destroying themselves. Your own message will deconstruct the purpose for which you exist. HA!)

_________________________________________________________________________

ME:  These guys are stumbling onto something here. I have been writing about this for a while now. We have salvation without discipleship or community and we call it good. Bonhoeffer calls it cheap grace. There must be a way that we can talk about grace and faith without adding works while still being faithful to the very words of Jesus when He gave the Gospel of the Kingdom. It seems that some people are wrestling with that and I am glad. We will all be much better off for it.

UPDATE:  My friend Joe Kennedy says the same thing in this post right here. Interesting thoughts. What do you think?

When Following Jesus Became Optional . . .

When following Jesus became optional . . .

We began to study Scripture for information instead of transformation.

We made ourselves, our happiness, and our comfort the focus of our lives.

We depended on elaborate church structures, staffs, and organization to make up for what the disciple of Christ used to do.

We justified rebellion and sin and called it dysfunction.

We focused on our past hurts and struggles instead of focusing on the Cross and Resurrection of Christ.

When following Jesus became optional . . .

We cared more about filling our churches with empty people instead of filling empty people with the Holy Spirit.

We lived for this world and our own kingdoms instead of the Kingdom of God.

We convinced ourselves that we needed to want to obey God before we obeyed and it was the job of the "church leadership" to get us to desire obedience.

We were changed by the world instead of living to change the world.

We became comfortable with saying "No" to God.

We began using grace as a cover for rebellion.

We became legalistic and defined righteousness as actions that had little to do with following Jesus.

We stopped praying about anything but ourselves.

We stopped praying even for ourselves.

When following Jesus became optional . . .

We thought we were spiritual if we went to church and knew stuff.

It became easy to overlook people different from us and ignore them.

It became easy to forget about the poor, the needy, the sinners, and the outcast.

We judged others for all of their failures and stopped looking at our own lives.

We compared ourselves to others instead of comparing ourselves to Christ.

We were overwhelmed by the desires and troubles of this world.

We were full of fear and anxiety and depression.

We stopped sharing the gospel with anyone and started making excuses about how we were too busy to do so.

We lost our spiritual passion and we filled our lives with other things (idols).

Encouragement Needed

How often do we see things that need to change in the lives of people we know or in the churches we attend? Judging by what is written on most blogs and spoken about in common conversation, pretty often, I would say. It is so easy to criticize others and tear them down.  As Christians, we point out the flaws of others easily because we are aware of the standard that God has for us and we notice when others fall short. We also do it to make us feel better about ourselves. We rarely judge others in areas that we are also struggling. If we point out the struggles of others, we invariably feel superior to them. I even see this in people who claim to be tolerant and full of grace. They criticize others mercilessly for being intolerant and legalistic. Our hypocrisy knows no bounds.

I am often guilty of this. I have a prophetic edge to my thinking so it is very easy for me to go from prophetic to critical. If I am not careful, I quickly move to cynicism and bitterness over the things that I see that are not right. Then, the devil gets a foothold in my life and I push God out. It is a pattern that I have seen repeated in my life and it is something that I try to be aware of. But, still, I struggle. So, I say all of what I am about to say as someone who knows the pitfalls of having a critical spirit and as someone who conversely knows the power of encouragement because people have encouraged me.

Hebrews 3:13 and 10:25 tells us to encourage one another. The King James uses the word "exhort." This word is parakleo in the Greek and it means to invite, invoke, beseech, call for, comfort, desire, and entreat.  The context for these verses is that when we encourage one another, we will keep our hearts from being hardened by sin (3:13) and that we will spur one another on to love and good deeds (10:25). When we encourage one another, we are not just slapping each other on the back and saying that everything we do is good. This is not self-esteem therapy that I am talking about. We are exhorting one another to be what God has created us to be. We are calling out of one another what God has placed within us. We are calling each other up into God's purpose for our lives.  We are building up instead of tearing down.

Ephesians 4:29-30 says, "Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption." Unwholesome talk would be talk laced with bitterness and anger. It would be speech that tore others down in criticism. There might even be truth to what is being said, but the truth is being used in a way to tear down and destroy. This grieves the Holy Spirit. How many of us do this in our relationships? How many marriages are being destroyed because husbands and wives cannot stop pointing out what is wrong with the other? How many ministries are being destroyed because people cannot stop criticizing one another? How many dreams have been dashed because people exalt themselves by pushing other people down and trampling on what God is doing in their lives? We do all of this because we are insecure and we do not know the power of God.

When we encourage one another, we are engaging in the ministry of the Holy Spirit. A name for the Holy Spirit in the Greek is Parakletos, which means Comforter. This is similar to parakleo, the word for encourage or exhort. In the same way that the Holy Spirit takes from what belongs to Jesus and makes it known to us (John 16:14), so also when we encourage one another, we are calling out what God has placed within us in Christ. Even if we do not see great things in one another, when we encourage one another in the power of the Holy Spirit, we are believing in "the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were" (Romans 4:17). We see things through God's eyes and not our own.

This is the way that Paul ministered. 1 Thessalonians 1:10-12 says, "You are witnesses, and so is God, of how holy, righteous and blameless we were among you who believed. For you know that we dealt with each of you as a father deals with his own children, encouraging, comforting, and urging you to live lives worthy of God, who calls you into His Kingdom and Glory."  Paul did not deal with the Thessalonians on the basis of their problems, but he encouraged them on the basis of God's call on their lives. With the Philippians he was confident that God, who began a good work in them, would be faithful to carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus (Phil. 1:6). Paul saw them through the lense of who Christ was, not through the lense of who the world said that they were. He consistently called them up into what God had for them. We should do the same.

When we encourage/exhort, we engage in the ministry of the Holy Spirit. When we accuse and tear down through our constant criticisms and judgments, we engage in the ministry of Satan, for he is the accuser of the brethren (Revelation 12:10). Satan often accuses us with the truth of the things that we have done wrong, but he leaves out the truth about what Christ has done for us. We overcome him by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony (Rev. 12:11). I think that a lot of Satan's work is being done today by Christians who are trying to speak "truth" to others. The truth should always be present, but it should involve love so that people are built up.

Sacrificial love is what makes the difference. Jesus showed us how we are to love one another when He laid down His life for us. We are to imitate Him (Ephesians 5:1-2). When you truly love one another, you will seek the good of the other person. You see them as God sees them in Christ and you will call out the good that Christ has placed within them. You will call them up into what God has for them as they look to Christ. You will encourage them to walk with Jesus and you will believe that God has good things in store for them. You will build up instead of tear down. May we love more radically than ever before and build one another up.

God knows we need this kind of encouragement.