DownshoreDrift

Church as Organic Collaboration vs. Hierarchical Institution

Gateway is starting a community garden this Spring. The purpose is to grow food for the people who participate in it and have enough left over to give to the poor through our food pantry and other venues. But, I have another reason for it. I hope that it will be living metaphor for how the church is to function and through participating in it, we will learn more about God, each other, the church, and our relationship to the world. God has called us to co-labor with Him and to help steward the earth. We see the original mandate in Genesis 1:26-28 and our experience here on this planet is to be lived in an ever growing relationship with God and others as we find ways to be creative, reflect His glory, and display His beauty. Of course, Sin introduced weeds and thistles and blight and pests into God's Creation, but Christ has come to relcaim the land and to establish His Kingdom through His life, death, and resurrection. Spring is the time of year that we think about resurrection and fruitfulness and sowing and reaping. So, we are planting a garden and I think that the garden is an apt metahpor for the church as we live as the people of God.

I have heard a lot about how the church is to operate like a Fortune 500 company with a CEO and business plans and organizational and leadership strategies. We go to the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit every year and that is pretty much the value system articulated there. I like a lot of this because I believe in planning and structure and goals and organization. We make a mistake when the think that "organic" means "nebulous."  Nature has structure - highly complex structure, actually. So, The Garden metaphor for church is not opposed to structure and organization and planning. It actually requires it. But, the mistake that a lot of people make is that they try to either drive the church like a herd of cattle or they fossilize the church like a statue to preserve it so stays the same and can withstand the changing nature of culture. The correct response, I think, is to position the church in a way that it can grow, adapt, transform, and reflect what God is doing both in the church and in the community and culture.

Last night, we had a small group leaders training meeting and I told them that THEY were the front lines of ministry for our church. They would be the ones who would be aware of what God was doing in people's lives, what the challenges were, and where the ministry opportunities were found. They could lead, initiate, and spontaneously reproduce. They are to collaborate together to engage in the Misson of God as they sacrificially love God and people everywhere they go. How they do that is basically up to them. Our church is healthy when we have branches growing in many different directions as the Spirit leads and produces fruit. But, when a branch doesn't bear fruit or ceases to produce life, it is probably time for us to put our energy elsewhere. Jesus is the Gardener and He prunes us where we need pruninng and He directs us where we need to go as He positions us to offer gifts to God and the world.

So, I like the Garden metaphor and I look forward to what we will learn together in this experience. I think that we will gain insight into Jesus' ways of living as we work together, sacrifice, stick our hands in the ground, and plant, water, wait, and harvest. I think that the church looks more like a Garden than an assembly line.

 Plus, I really like fresh tomatoes.   

Producing Spiritual Fruit in Spiritual Ways

Jesus said that he appointed us to bear fruit – fruit that will last (John 15:16).  The Christian is to produce the fruit of Christ and of the Holy Spirit in our lives.  We are to trust in Christ, be conformed to the image of Christ, and produce the Christ-life in our lives, our ministries, and our dealings with people.  This means that the ways and will of God are to converge in our lives and our churches as we proclaim and demonstrate the Gospel everywhere we go.  We want people to see Jesus and experience life with Him through us.

This is the goal, but it is easy to take shortcuts.  Perhaps you are dealing with a relational problem and you don’t know what to do.  So, you look to “experts” who have strategies for how you can get what you want out of your relationships. Or, perhaps you are dealing with wrong behavior and you want to change it – so you follow some moralistic principles that seek to manage your behavior so you can stay in line.  Or, perhaps you have some goals for your life that you want met, so you try to develop strategies to reach them by following life management techniques that you have learned. The issue could involve your marriage or family or your children, so you look for some tried and true way to fix the problem. Maybe you want to see success in your ministry, so you gravitate towards some methods that have worked in other ministries or churches and you think that they will solve the problems you face. Or, you see a moral decline in America and you think that the way to address it is through trying to grab hold of power and reclaim America for God.  The goal often involves fixing the problem so you can find peace. But, this is the wrong goal.  We are to find our peace in Christ as we trust Him.  Matthew 6:33 says, "Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added unto you as well."  It is not wrong to see solutions to problems, but we need to consider God's will and ways and not our own.

John 3:6 says, “Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.” We have to make sure that our approach to every challenge involves the way of Jesus and not just the doctrinal truth about Jesus.  You can only produce spiritual fruit in spiritual ways. We cannot produce the Christ life apart from the power of the Holy Spirit. We must embrace the Cross, humble ourselves, die to self, and be raised up in newness of life by the Spirit. We all face challenges in our lives and relationships. But, those challenges should drive us to Jesus. Real joy only comes from Christ and it does not come in the world’s way.  Maybe you will suffer or will have to wait or be ignored. Perhaps you will experience frustration as things don't work out the way you want them to.  But, God desires to produce spiritual fruit in you.  That only happens by the Holy Spirit. Trust God, wait upon the Lord, walk in the ways of Jesus, and live.

Review of Ed Stetzer's The Subversive Kingdom

Back in 2009, I read something by Eugene Peterson in his book, The Contemplative Pastor, that really changed my perspective on pastoring. He called for the pastor, and by extension, all Christians, to consider a subversive approach to their ministry as agents of God's Kingdom.  After explaining the frustration that he sometimes felt because his parishioners often did not understand the gravity of what he was promoting and that he wishes that he could just clearly get them all to fall in line with his spiritual authority, Peterson said,

Then I remember that I am a subversive. My long-term effectiveness depends on my not being recognized for who I really am. If he realized that I actually believe the American way of life is doomed to destruction, and that another kingdom is right now being formed in secret to take its place, he would be at all pleased. If he knew what I was really doing and the difference it was making, he would fire me.

Yes, I believe that. I believe that the kingdoms of this world, American and Venezuelan and Chinese, will become the kingdom of our God and Christ, and I believe this new kingdom is already among us. That is why I'm a pastor, to introduce people to the real world and train them to live in it. I learned early that the methods of my work must correspond to the realities of the kingdom. The methods that make the kingdom of America strong - economic, military, technological, informational - are not suited to making the kingdom of God strong. I have had to learn a new methodology: truth-telling and love-making, prayer and parable. These are not methods very well adapted to raising the standard of living in suburbia or massaging the ego into a fashionable shape.

But America and suburbia and the ego compose my parish. Most of the individuals in this amalgam suppose that the goals they have for themselves and the goals God has for them are the same. It is the oldest religious mistake: refusing to countenance any real difference between God and us, iimagining God to be a vague extrapolation of our own desires, and then hiring a priest to manage the affairs between self and the extrapolation. And I, one of the priests they hired, am having none of it.

But if I'm not willing to help them become what they want to be, what am I doing taking their pay? I am being subversive. I am undermining the kingdom of self and establishing the kingdom of God. I am helping them to become what God wants them to be, using the methods of subversion.

It is in this spirit and context that Ed Stetzer writes The Subversive Kingdom: Living as Agents of Gospel Transformation. This is an excellent book that I really enjoyed reading and it would make a great small group study for churches and groups of Christians contemplating how to faithfully live out the implications of Jesus' Gospel of the Kingdom in a hostile world.

Stetzer says that the world system is in rebellion against God's Kingdom, but he calls us to "rebel against the rebellion."

We live among a world system that, even though ultimately under the reign of a sovereign God, temporarily exerts a competing authority that seeks to enforce an unjust, unrighteous order on those it claims to rule . . . The world's illegal rebellion is illegitimate. It certainly feels real, of course - IS real - but it doesn't change the reality that God is still the ruler of everything. Though people may think they have rebelled, they have not - and cannot - ultimately escape the fact at King Jesus is still sovereign.

And though we feel outnumbered and highly unpopular at times by clinging to our Christian ideals, though we make ourselves subject to all kinds of criticism and misunderstanding by resisting the widely held opinions of our friends and neighbors, we can't help but recognize a tension that keeps us from followoing where the leader of this rebellion wants to take us. As much as we may feel obligated by our family histories, or as willing as we may be to at least consider the validity of these differing viewpoints, there's no common ground for us to stand on. Our aims are incompatible. As Christians, we don't join an illegitimate rebellion. Instead, we live for King Jesus in contrast to the world around us. We live in loyalty to the very One the world rebels against.

We're in rebellion against the rebellion.

Stetzer goes on to explain what the Kingdom of God is (the reign and rule of Christ in all of life in complete contrast to the ways of the world led by Satan) and our call to participate in it as a way of life. He says,

Being a Kingdom agent means becoming one who "loses his life" from a worldly point of view (Mark 8:35) in order to find true life for ourselves and to help rescue others who are chained in darkness, doubt, and cleverly disguised despair. It means representing God through his body on earth - the church - as he uses us to advance and expand his kingdom through Spirit-led, subversive ways.

Stetzer calls Christians to be "subversive" in the sense that we are not to grasp after power or control to force upon people the truth of God, but rather, we are to show up in people's lives and in the structures and assumptions of the world with truth, justice, mercy, and humility as we represent Christ by living out the gospel in all its precepts.

Stetzer calls us to 5 positions in a hostile world.

1. We live in rebellion against the rebellion. We rebel against the world system that is rebelling against God. We recognize that what the world is rejecting is actually the truth and we live in accordance with the truth by not accepting the world's assumptions.

2. We deconstruct our false view of the Kingdom. God has not called us to safety or to religion or to embrace the status quo of the ways of the world. We are not called to be consumers of religion but co-laborers with Christ in advancing His reign and rule in the world.

3. We live as agents and ambassadors of God's kingdom in small, subversive ways.  The Kingdom of God is not some big, shiny thing that takes over the world by force, but rather, it advances in small ways among small groups of believers that are living out the Christ life through daily acts of obedience and mercy as they tell God's Story through their lives.

4. We show and share the love of Christ. We are to both proclaim and demonstrate the Gospel of the Kingdom. Proclamation and Demonstration are not several things but they show that the Gospel is not a matter of word only, but also of deed. And, that when we do good works we do them because of the life and message of Jesus.  It is ONE thing, the Gospel of the Kingdom. To this, I say, "Amen."

5. We live our lives in a manner directed by (and empowered by) our King. All of life is to be lived in relationship to Christ with Jesus as Lord.

6. We wait for this lost, broken world to be completely fixed and reconciled to God. Things are not as they should be but Jesus is going to make the world right. We live with that hope and we bring that hope into our everyday lives by representing the ultimate reality of Christ's victory.

In this book, Stetzer has hit on most of the major themes of the ministry that I have engaged in for the past 15 years. This is not a scholarly book (though Stetzer is more than capable of that), but it is a treatment of how we should live out the Gospel of the Kingdom in common ways. Anyone could read this book and understand what Stetzer is saying and it is applicable to every Christian.

I don't want to necessarily pit one book/author against another, but if you read and enjoyed David Platt's excellent and incredibly popular Radical, you will find this book to touch on the same subject but in a more practical, doable way.  Stetzer here answers all of the questions that I had from reading Radical regarding the "What next?"  I liked this book much better.

Also, at different times in my blogging journey, I have reviewed books here and after reading Subversive Kingdom and writing this review, I am reminded of the benefit of that exercise. Hopefully, this will be the first book review of many in 2013 and it was a good way to start this feature up again.   

 

    

Stop Trying to Get Your Life Back to 'Normal'

Last night in our Wednesday Night Bible Study, we were talking about patience and were working through Mark 5 and the story of Jairus' daughter. We are using Tim Keller's King's Cross as a guide for our study. Toward the end, I started talking about reasons why we go to God and cry out to Him in prayer. Most of these reasons are usually related to some problem. Here is the scenario:

You are having a pretty good day. You have prayed, read Scripture, spent time with God, and are at peace with the world. You have plans for the day and you begin to carry out those plans. You rest when you want, do what you have planned, accomplish your goals one by one. Your kids cooperate, your marriage is good, you feel good about yourself, everyone around you is healthy and taken care of, and there is money in the bank. Work goes well. School goes well. Your other activities go well. You end the day relaxing with your family, then with a movie or book, and you thank God for a good day and lay your head down to rest. Shalom. I am not saying that this is your idea of a great day, but it is as "normal" as I can think of and it is the kind of day that does not really raise any major alarms for most. Things go according to plan and, perhaps, this is what we consider the "base line" for expectations.

Another day does not go well. Perhaps you are running late. You have a big project due. The kids are not cooperating. Someone is coming down hard on you at work. You get a flat tire. You are out of sorts with your spouse. You have a broken relationship with a friend. Traffic is terrible. You get an unexpected bill in the mail or the air condition breaks down. Or, perhaps things are even worse. You have a doctor's appointment and the doctor says they've found something. They think its cancer. You get sick. Or, your job goes away and you have to find work. Or, there is a death in the family or a divorce.  All of these things are the things we want to get away from. So, our normal Bible study/prayer time doesn't cut it. We cry out to God and ask Him for help. You want the pain to go away. You want Him to heal you. Our expectations far exceed our reality and the distance in between is the amount of frustration that we are experiencing. You want to get back to 'normal.'

But, what are you really asking for?  You want the traffic to move. You don't want to be late. You want the kids to cooperate. You want your spouse to love you. So, you ask God to help you and get things to work out for you. You pray more intensely. You want life to get back to your base line so that you can be at peace. But, you are saying that "peace" is found when things work the way you want them to. You think life is going well when it is going the way that you think it should go. This means that you are in charge and your relationship with God involves getting Him to help you because you know you can't manage your life all by yourself. But, the Bible says that "peace" is found in God alone. When God doesn't show up and help you in the relationship or on the job or with your finances or your health the way you want, you wonder what has happened? Why is God so far away from you?

The truth is, you don't want God the way you should. You want things to work out. You want God so He can bring things back to equilibrium with whatever you have decided the "good life" is. Maybe your "good life" is successful ministry or adventure or living dangerously. It could be anything. But, if we are only really crying out to God when we think we have problems - and if our prayers involve trying to get things back to 'normal' so we can be at peace, we are actually using God as a means to some other end and that is idolatry.

It is good to pray for healing and for relationships and finances and your kids and for the traffic to move. PLEASE pray for those things! But, in praying for them, seek first God's Kingdom - His will and reign and rule (Matt. 6:33).  Seek to be reconciled to God. Seek after Him.  Repent from trying to get your own way. Maybe the delay or the sickness or the difficult relationship is exactly the place that you meet with God. Maybe it isn't about you at all but it is about someone else. Maybe this is just the world we live in. Still, God is found when we trust in Him and not when we just want to use Him to fix our circumstance. There is a lot of superficial superstition masquerading as Christianity these days. True Christianity is about Jesus and us being reconciled to Him and Him being before all things and in whom all things hold together (Col. 1:17).  Religion is ultimately about us and how we get right or get what we want from God so that we can have the life we've always wanted. It is prosperity gospel, even if the goals are good. 

We don't need 'normal.' We need Jesus. And, he has a tendency to upset our understanding of 'normal' so we can meet with Him.  Patience is not something that we cultivate. It is the fruit of the Spirit - it comes from God alone and we only meet with God when we look to Him in faith. That means that we shouldn't be looking everywhere else to get the life we want. Jesus has the life we need.

*For more on this, read James 4:1-10. All that I am saying here can be found in that passage, at least in part.  

Marriage, Mission, and the Kingdom of God

I think that we often get Christian marriage all wrong and the result is devastating for both Christians and non-Christians. We hold up an ideal relationship of love and fulfillment and we give people strategies for how to go after it so they can be satisfied. Christians get married so they can share their life with their soul mate and when things are not what they hoped they would be (as they will never be), then disillusionment often sets in. But, what if the metric was different from what we thought? What if the goal was not some perfect union where there were no problems and God was invited in to create wedded bliss? What if, instead, we recognized that marriage, Christian marriage, is actually two sinners submitting themselves to God and sharing a life together on God's terms instead of their own? What if the problems faced when two sinners joined their lives together were actually allowed by God so that the couple would experience the Way of the Cross and learn dependence upon the Lord instead of themselves? What if Christian marriage was not about the couple getting the life they always wanted, but rather, was a journey into trust in God, forgiveness, grace, mercy, and self-sacrifice and the life that only God can provide? What if Christian marriage was radically different from what we have thought?

Paul David Tripp has an interesting take on it that is different from what I've heard from many ministers in the past.  He actually roots marriage in the Kingdom of God and explains what it looks like for the Kingdom to come in a marriage and how a marriage becomes a ministry and a place where God shows up.

 

As someone who likes to read more than watch videos, here is part of the transcript of what Tripp is saying:

When you think of the marriage between a man and a woman who are believers as being a forum for great commission ministry there are a couple things that come to mind. If you have these two sinners who by nature are self sovereigns who have little interest in doing anything in life, but building their own kingdom…And if they’re now living in a relationship of real unity, real love, willing self sacrifice, you’re seeing the Kingdom come. It has come in this marriage. There are few places where you can better invite people in to see the King at work and see how His Kingdom operates more than a marriage, because typically you don’t have unity, understanding and love.”

Tripp is saying here that when two Christians, who are by-nature sinners and are bent on getting their way, actually submit their lives to each other and serve one another and forgive one another and bless one another - instead of trying to get their own way - then, the Kingdom has come in that marriage. The Kingdom of God can come in a normal moment of service and love and sacrifice for the other that is not anything dramatic at all - but it is supernatural because it is not what the flesh produces. When one spouse decides not to try and get their way but instead seeks the good of the other, that is the reign and rule (the Kingdom) of God manifesting itself in that marriage and Christ is witnessed to. When the Christian life is simply lived out in the context of a marriage and real sacrificial love replaces real selfishness - that is missional ministry. Then, the world is invited to see something different - the relationship between Christ and His Church.

I do not always do this. I can be selfish and, well, selfish. That pretty much sums it up. But, as I learn to seek God and the good of my wife and my children over and above myself - then I am able to live out the Kingdom mission in my home. God help me. I am selfish way more often than I should be. But, like everything else, it all begins with my walk with the Lord and dying to myself and living to Christ daily. When I look to Jesus, everything else falls into place and makes sense - including my marriage and family. When I look to myself, everything falls apart. God help me.  

Bonhoeffer on the Kingdom of God and Self

Doing research tonight and I was reading about the German Confessing Church during the Nazi regime of the 1930's and 40's. Of course, I ran across Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Christian, Pastor, and philosopher who opposed the Nazi regime on the basis of Christian fidelity. Here are some quotes that challenged me deeply:

 “Jesus Christ lived in the midst of his enemies. At the end all his disciples deserted him. On the Cross he was utterly alone, surrounded by evildoers and mockers. For this cause he had come, to bring peace to the enemies of God. So the Christian, too, belongs not in the seclusion of a cloistered life but in the thick of foes. There is his commission, his work. 'The kingdom is to be in the midst of your enemies. And he who will not suffer this does not want to be of the Kingdom of Christ; he wants to be among friends, to sit among roses and lilies, not with the bad people but the devout people. O you blasphemers and betrayers of Christ! If Christ had done what you are doing who would ever have been spared' (Luther).” ― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Faith in Community

“The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children."

“We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.”

“Will not the very moment of great disillusionment with my brother or sister be incomparably wholesome for me becuase it so thoroughly teaches me that both of us can never live by our own words and deeds, but only by that one Word and deed that really binds us together, the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ? The bright day of Christian community dawns wherever the early morning mists of dreamy visions are lifting”

“Just as Christians should not be constantly feeling the pulse of their spiritual life, so too the Christian community has not been given to us by God for us to be continually taking its temperature. The more thankfully we daily receive what is given to us, the more assuredly and consistently will community increase and grow from day to day as God pleases” ― Life Together and Prayerbook of the Bible

“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.” "Those who love their dream of a Christian community more than the Christian community itself become destroyers of that Christian community even though their personal intentions may be ever so honest, earnest, and sacrificial.” ― Life Together

“But discipleship never consists in this or that specific action: it is always a decision, either for or against Jesus Christ...Christ speaks to us exactly as he spoke to them. It was not as though they first recognized him as the Christ and then received his command. They believed his word and command and recognized him as the Christ--in that order.” ― The Cost of Discipleship

“If any man would come after me, let him deny himself." The disciple must say to himself the same words Peter said of Christ when he denied him: "I know not this man." Self-denial is never just a series of isolated acts of mortification or asceticism. It is not suicide, for there is an element of self-will even in that. To deny oneself is to be aware only of Christ and no more of self, to see only him who goes before and no more the road which is too hard for us. Once more, all that self denial can say is: "He leads the way, keep close to him.” ― The Cost of Discipleship

“No sacrifice which a lover would make for his beloved is too great for us to make for our enemy.” ― The Cost of Discipleship

“The Christian must treat his enemy as a brother, and requite his hostility with love. His behavior must be determined not by the way others treat him, but by the treatment he himself receives from Jesus; it has only one source, and that is the will of Jesus.” ― The Cost of Discipleship

“Bless them that persecute you.' If our enemy cannot put up with us any longer and takes to cursing us, our immediate reaction must be to lift up our hands and bless him. Our enemies are the blessed of the Lord. Their curse can do us no harm. May their poverty be enriched with all the riches of God, with the blessing of Him whom they seek to oppose in vain. We are ready to endure their curses so long as they redound to their blessing.” ― The Cost of Discipleship

“The community of the saints is not an "ideal" community consisting of perfect and sinless men and women, where there is no need of further repentance. No, it is a community which proves that it is worthy of the gospel of forgiveness by constantly and sincerely proclaiming God's forgiveness...Sanctification means driving out the world from the Church as well as separating the Church from the world. But the purpose of such discipline is not to establish a community of the perfect, but a community consisting of men who really live under the forgiving mercy of God.” ― The Cost of Discipleship

“Luther had said that grace alone can save; his followers took up his doctrine and repeated it word for word. But they left out its invariable corollary, the obligation to discipleship...The justification of the sinner in the world degenerated into the justification of sin and the world. Costly grace was turned into cheap grace without discipleship.” ― The Cost of Discipleship

“To deal with the word of Jesus otherwise than by doing it is to give him the lie. It is to deny the Sermon on the Mount and to say No to his word...That is why as soon as the hurricane begins we lose the word, and find that we have never really believed it. The word we had was not Christ's, but a word we had wrested from him and made our own by reflecting on it instead of doing it.” ― The Cost of Discipleship

All quotes can be found here: http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/29333.Dietrich_Bonhoeffer

CS Lewis on What We Will One Day Be

I am working through the concept of "Loving People" for a series that we are starting in our church over the next few weeks as part 2 of our vision/mission movements through spiritual formation.  This week, I want to talk about Sacrificial Love and the Imago Dei.  We are the Beloved. We are greatly loved by God and we are loved sacrificially, without deserving it.  The love of God to us in Christ actually costs God something - it cost Him His Son.  True love - Agape Love - is love that costs.  We have been lavished with love from God and that love actually changes us. It restores us to who we were created to be.  It recognizes the Imago Dei - the "Image of God" upon each of us (Genesis 1:26-28).  Because we are made in God's image and because He has come after us to rescue us and restore us to Himself, we are freed from all that keeps us from living as creatures who bask in God's glory.  We are all far more than we think we are.

CS Lewis, when dealing with this concept in The Weight of Glory says this:

"It is a serious thing," says Lewis, "to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no 'ordinary' people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilisations -- these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whome we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit -- immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously -- no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner -- no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment."

This is exciting and sobering at the same time.  The waitress who frustrated me because she was slow on my order; the mechanic who didn't fix my car the way I wanted; my child's teacher who did not perform to my expectations; my children, my spouse, my co-workers and friends - all of these people are made in the Image of God and are dearly loved by Him.  To fail to see them as God sees them - with incredible worth, potential, and an eternal destiny awaiting them of great splendor or unspeakable horror - is to fail to rightly value them as I should and thus, to fail to love them at all.  Furthermore, to not value the creation as I should is also to not worship the Creator correctly as well.  How I value and treat others says everything about how I see and worship, and yes, love God.

1 John 2:9-11

⁹ Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness. ¹⁰ Whoever loves his brother lives in the light, and there is nothing in him to make him stumble. ¹¹ But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness; he does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded him.

May we walk in the light and see one another rightly.

The Five Books In My Bag This Week

Some pertinent quotes from the five books that are in my bag this week. This might become a regular feature on Downshoredrift. I read a lot and I tend to study in according to themes and movements. This is what I've been reading and working through this week, personally and for our church. Maybe you will find this helpful.  

Eugene Peterson on our need for diversity in the church in Practice Resurrection, pp. 35-36: "The Ephesian letter shapes our imaginations to an awareness not only of ourselves but of all the other pilgrims on the road in simultaneous diversity and unity. This company of called fellow-travelers, all different and all one, is the church. Paul's metaphor for it is a human body to which Christ is the head, "the body of Christ" (Eph. 4:12). Everybody different, everybody organically connected. Shimmering diversity and harmonic unity - "joined and knit together by every ligament" is Paul's vivid metaphor (4:16). "Christ and the church" (5:32) is the paradigmatic form for this multitudinous and yet improbably unified company . . . Maturity develops in worship as we develop in friendship with the friends of God, not just our preferred friends. Worship shapes us not only individually but as a community, a church. If we are going to grow up in Christ we have to do it in the company of everyone who is responding to the call of God. Whether we happen to like them or not has nothing to do with it." 

Dallas Willard on Our God Bathed World in The Divine Conspiracy, pp. 61-62: "Jesus' good news about the kingdom can be an effective guide for our lives only if we share his view of the world in which we live. To his eyes this is a God-bathed and God-permeated world. It is a world filled with a glorious reality, where every component is within the range of God's direct knowledge and control - though he obviously permits some of it, for good reasons, to be for a while otherwise than as he wishes. It is a world that is inconceivably beautiful and good because of God and because God is always in it. It is a world in which God is continually at play and over which he constantly rejoices. Until our thoughts of God have found every visible thing and event glorious with his presence, the word of Jesus has not yet fully seized us."

 

Michael Wells in Heavenly Discipleship, pp. 79-80: "The point is that the source of your anxiety and fear is that you trust a weak self. Do you see why you need Jesus? You were not created to carry all the concerns of life; you were created to be dependent. You cannot fly, and neither can you carry anxiety. The only One who can, Jesus, must carry the anxiety of every person. But how can He carry what He has not been given? Psalm 46:10 is clear: "Cease striving," or literally, get your hands off! Why do you keep your hands on? There is only one reason, and that is unbelief. You cling to belief in your own ability to do a better job than He would. Pride upholds trust in the slightest bit of self's strength. Humily lays aside all perceived strengths, embraces weakness, and abandons itself to God."

Kenneth Boa in Conformed to His Image, p. 280: “One of the great enemies of process spirituality is the craving to control our environment and the desire to determine the results of our endeavors. Many of us have a natural inclination to be manipulators, grabbers, owners, and controllers. The more we seek to rule our world, the more we will resist the rule of Christ; those who grasp are afraid of being grasped by God. But until we relinquish ownership of our lives, we will not experience the holy relief of surrender to God’s good and loving purposes . . . Our resistance to God’s rule extends to our prayerful attempts to persuade the Lord to bless our plans and to meet our needs in the ways we deem best.  Instead of seeking God’s will in prayer, we hope to induce him to accomplish our will. Thus even in our prayers we can adopt the mentality of a consumer rather than a servant.”

Kent Carlson and Mike Lueken in The Renovation of the Church, p. 79: "I am convinced that personal pastoral ambition, and a pastoral ethic centered around productivity and success, is brutal to our souls and destructive to the souls of the people we lead. We must become skilled at detecting the odor of personal ambition and then flee from it as if the church's future depends on it. I believe it does. . . . Personal ambition has a symbiotic relationship with consumerism. The two go hand in hand. They feed off each other. As a Christian leader who is motivated by personal ambition, I can appeal to the basic consumer tendencies of teh people I desire to be a part of my church or ministry. If I do this well, I will be rewarded by their attendance, their support and their allegiance, and my church or ministry will grow. Everybody is satisfied. Everybody gets what they want. The lighted match of my ambition ignites the dry timber of consumerism, and we have a raging fire that is very difficult to put out. While I suspect that there is not much that I can do about the cultural force of consumerism in our country, I believe I can do much abou the forces that drive me as a Christian leader."

 

 

Blaise Pascal on Accepting What God Sends Our Way

Tomorrow, I go in for surgery on my stomach to address an issue from two years ago as an infection has come back. Not fun. But, tonight, I was putting together the notes for the Wednesday Night Bible Study and I ran across these words that Blaise Pascal prayed in his Pensees:

With perfect consistency of mind, help me to receive all manner of events. For we know not what to ask, and we cannot ask for one event rather than another without presumption. We cannot desire a specific action without presuming to be a judge, and assuming responsibility for what in Your wisdom You may hide from me. O Lord, I know only one thing, and that is that it is good to follow You and wicked to offend you.  Beyond this, I do not know what is good for me, whether health or sickness, riches or poverty, or anything else in this world. This knowledge surpasses both the wisdom of men and of angels. It lies hidden in the secrets of Your providence, which I adore, and will not dare to pry open.

We really can see the events of each day as opportunities to experience God in fresh ways, to grow in Him, and for Him to prove Himself strong in our lives. Instead of shrinking back from difficulties and challenges, we can go through these things with God.  May it be.

The Apology of Aristides, Fasting, and the Lifestyles of Early Christians

At LIFE Group this past Friday night, we were sitting outside by the fire and talking about prayer and fasting and how the discipline of fasting has a two-fold objective, which is to put away distractions and dependencies to bring us to God and then to give ourselves away to others.  Gabe Posey, a member of our group, brought up The Apology of Aristides, which was a 2nd century writing by the Athenian philosopher, Aristides, that he delivered to Emperor Hadrian as a defense of Christianity.  I had never heard of this, so I asked him to send it to me, which he did.  This is really interesting:

But the Christians, O King, while they went about and made search, have found the truth; and as we learned from their writings, they have come nearer to truth and genuine knowledge than the rest of the nations. For they know and trust in God, the Creator of heaven and of earth, in whom and from whom are all things, to whom there is no other god as companion, from whom they received commandments which they engraved upon their minds and observe in hope and expectation of the world which is to come. Wherefore they do not commit adultery nor fornication, nor bear false witness, nor embezzle what is held in pledge, nor covet what is not theirs. They honour father and mother, and show kindness to those near to them; and whenever they are judges, they judge uprightly. They do not worship idols (made) in the image of man; and whatsoever they would not that others should do unto them, they do not to others; and of the food which is consecrated to idols they do not eat, for they are pure. And their oppressors they appease (lit: comfort) and make them their friends; they do good to their enemies; and their women, O King, are pure as virgins, and their daughters are modest; and their men keep themselves from every unlawful union and from all uncleanness, in the hope of a recompense to come in the other world. Further, if one or other of them have bondmen and bondwomen or children, through love towards them they persuade them to become Christians, and when they have done so, they call them brethren without distinction. They do not worship strange gods, and they go their way in all modesty and cheerfulness. Falsehood is not found among them; and they love one another, and from widows they do not turn away their esteem; and they deliver the orphan from him who treats him harshly. And he, who has, gives to him who has not, without boasting. And when they see a stranger, they take him in to their homes and rejoice over him as a very brother; for they do not call them brethren after the flesh, but brethren after the spirit and in God. And whenever one of their poor passes from the world, each one of them according to his ability gives heed to him and carefully sees to his burial. And if they hear that one of their number is imprisoned or afflicted on account of the name of their Messiah, all of them anxiously minister to his necessity, and if it is possible to redeem him they set him free.

And if there is among them any that is poor and needy, and if they have no spare food, they fast two or three days in order to supply to the needy their lack of food. They observe the precepts of their Messiah with much care, living justly and soberly as the Lord their God commanded them.

Every morning and every hour they give thanks and praise to God for His loving-kindnesses toward them; and for their food and their drink they offer thanksgiving to Him. And if any righteous man among them passes from the world, they rejoice and offer thanks to God; and they escort his body as if he were setting out from one place to another near. And when a child has been born to one of them, they give thanks to God; and if moreover it happen to die in childhood, they give thanks to God the more, as for one who has passed through the world without sins. And further if they see that any one of them dies in his ungodliness or in his sins, for him they grieve bitterly, and sorrow as for one who goes to meet his doom.

This gives us a great picture of the lifestyles of the early Christians. Apparently, they were dramatically different from the pagans around them. What I find of particular interest here is the statement above in bold that says that if there were any who were poor and needy among them who had no food, others would fast for two or three days to supply what was lacking in the poor in their midst.  Those who had food would sacrifice for those who did not.  This goes along with the injunctions about true, Biblical fasting in Isaiah 58:6-9.

⁶ “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
   and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
   and break every yoke?
⁷ Is it not to share your food with the hungry
   and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe him,
   and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
⁸ Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
   and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness will go before you,
   and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard.
⁹ Then you will call, and the LORD will answer;
   you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.

The perspective of the early Christians was that their life was not their own and that they were to sacrifice for one another. May we have the same perspective.

 

The Church We Need, Not the Church We Want

I was talking with a friend of mine about the church the other day and he mentioned how much he had grown to love the church. He said that there were certain people that he and his wife connected with that were really helping them grow and that they really enjoyed spending time with. He said that his experience of the church was great and he really enjoyed it. I was glad to hear it.

Then, a thought hit me. I told him that what he was experiencing was not the church.  Or, it was just a small part of it.  What he was experiencing was great – it was the love between brothers and sisters in Christ that we get to experience when we are in good relationships and when encouragement is flowing from one to the other in really positive ways. But, that wasn’t really the church – at least not all of it.

I told him that the “church” really happened when he spent time with someone that he didn’t really like, when he gave of himself to others, and when he was with someone who aggravated him, but yet he persevered in relationship because they were unified in Christ.  I’m not talking about tolerating sin here. I am talking about being in relationship with those that we don’t have much in common with – except for Jesus.

We experience the church when we forgive, when we overlook an offense, when we love sacrificially, when we give of ourselves. The church happens when we get outside of ourselves and we cross barriers, be they racial, social, economic, or just personality differences. The church really happens when people who are different and would not be together except for Jesus, begin to live life together because of Jesus.

Jew. Greek. Male. Female. Barbarian. Scythian. Slave. Free.  Rich. Poor.  Impressive.  Invisible. Brilliant. Common.  Broken pieces formed together to make something beautiful. Everyone and everybody.

Overcoming the "God as a Means to an End" Idolatry Through Prayer

This morning, I was reading Psalm 73 and it affected me greatly. It says that God is good, but the Psalmist lost his vision of that because he began to focus on the arrogant and wicked and how they seemed to prosper even though they didn't follow God. Why was this? Why did wicked, prideful people who had no use for God seem to do well in their lives, be healthy, and appeared to be free from burdens? I can hear Asaph, the Psalmist saying, "But, Lord, I have done everything right! I have followed you and trusted you and I am struggling and am not seeing success! And, these other people who don't do things your way, only exalt themselves, and have no desire to do right seem to have one success over another and don't seem to have nearly as many problems as I do. What's going on!"  He goes on to say that the wicked are "always carefree, they increase in wealth."  Then, Asaph says that he has kept his heart pure in vain - he followed God for nothing.

This is one thing that I love about Scripture. It is honest and it captures what we all think at times. In reality, we often follow God so that He will bless us and give us what we want. We want prosperity, health, and a good life.  We follow God so that He will give us those things and so that He will protect us from evil and harm.  We obey so that we will receive blessings and so that things will go well with us. When trouble comes we wonder what has happened. What did we do wrong? Then, we look and see people who do not follow God who are super successful and seem to be happy and we wonder if following God is really worth it. If they are going to be rich and healthy and happy without following God and we are going to follow God and still struggle and have problems, then what is this all for?

When the wicked prosper and the righteous struggle, it is actually a great blessing. It reveals our motives and what we really desire. It shows us how we see God as a means to an end and not the End Himself. It reveals to us how we are really just following God and obeying Him as a talisman to ward off evil and bring blessing. Our jealousy, envy, and bitterness over the blessings of those who we think do not deserve it shows that what we really want are those same blessings - our hearts have been captured by what the world has to offer - and we use God to get them. We use God to gain control and secure blessing and keep evil at bay. This is Christian witchcraft, plain and simple, and it is not just the prosperity preachers who are guilty. We are all guilty when we see God as the means to some understanding we have of blessing apart from just being in His presence.

9/11 Ten Years Later: Is Forgiveness Possible?

We all remember where we were, what we were doing, and how the vicious attacks on America ten years ago today affected us and changed us forever. Horrified, we watched, cried, prayed, and expressed anger, frustration, and desire for vengence. Ten years later, America is a different place. Many died that day. We have been at war with terrorists for the past decade in far away places like Iraq and Afghanistan and many more have died in the pursuit of justice and protection for our country.

All these years later, a question comes into my mind:  Is forgiveness possible?  Can we forgive those who attacked us?  Can we love our enemies?  As a Christian, I know that Jesus tells us to forgive. He tell us to love our enemies, to pray for them, and to bless those who persecute us (Matthew 5:38-48; Matthew 18:21-35). Jesus tells us that we are not to just love those who love us, but we are to love those who don't love us, who hate us even. If we don't, we will be tortured.  These are strong words, and while they might contain a certain sentimentality (love everyone, forgive everyone), in the face of unspeakable evil and violence, we find them to be impossible to actually carry out.

I do not love my enemies. I do not love those who try to hurt me or hurt people that I care about. I admit it. I want to take vengence and see those people suffer. This is an area where my Christianity becomes very hard and it all seems wrong. I have to confess that if I want to move forward.

But, the more that I look at Jesus, the more that I see that the only way to overcome evil is through forgiveness and love - the very acts that I have no power to engage in. I recognize that I cannot be a loving person with people that are unlovable. I cannot forgive people who hurt me. But, Jesus did. And, He does. He forgave me. Romans 5:8 says, "But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." When we were only rebels against God - sinners against Him, Jesus died for us. He died for His enemies, out of love.

Through prayer, I can confess that I can't love people who are my enemies. And, I can then experience God's love for me for I was once an enemy of God. His love and forgiveness has changed my heart and brought me to Him. In the same way, the only way that we can overcome evil is with good. The only way that we can stop the cycle of violence is to step out of it and replace violence with sacrificial love. This is where we need a miracle and where we have to see things through God's eyes - eyes of love.

This is not a position of weakness. We are actually entrusting ourselves to God and trusting that He will judge justly. And, He will. We forsake retribution because we know that God will enact vengence. We forgive because we have been forgiven.  We love our enemies because we are loved. And, in that exchange of anger for peace and hate for love, we find that we are triumphing over the cycle of evil that would seek to draw us in and consume us in violence and despair.

Please note, that I recognize that there is a role for government here to keep order and to execute justice on the earth. Romans 13 tells us that God has instituted government to wield the sword and bring punishment upon wrongdoers. So, when the American military went after Al Quaeda and the Taliban, they were doing the work of punishing evil and executing justice. It was the order of things that God established. So, forgiving your enemies and loving your enemies does not mean that justice is not done and that punishment is not applied appropriately. With sobriety, we recognize that these things must be done. But, we release our hearts to God and we still pray for mercy for those who have engaged in evil acts, in the hope that even they will turn to Christ and find the forgiveness, love, and peace for which every heart longs.

Is forgiveness possible for the terrorists of 9/11? Only through a miracle. We can only truly forgive if we have been truly forgiven. And, to forgive and to love our enemies is the only way that we can finally triumph over evil. Victory is not won when we exercise our own freedom to live as we choose. Victory is only won when we forgive and love in the face of evil because we live according to a new reality - the order of the Kingdom of God.

From MSNBC: The Day the 21st Century Began (HT: Denny Burk)

 

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The Argument From Desire (Matt Jordan)

On Wednesday at Gateway, Dr. Matt Jordan, philosophy professor at Auburn University - Montgomery and part of the fellowship at Gateway Baptist, will be teaching on a concept popularized by C.S. Lewis called The Argument from Desire. He sent me his notes today and I wanted to reproduce them here. I think that the intuitive argument for God and us being made for God here is very convincing, at least for me.

_____________________________

God and Desire (Matt Jordan)

1. Desiring the right things

People sometimes think that Christian faith is inherently opposed to desire. After all, Christians are called to be temperate and self-controlled, to restrain their appetites, to resist temptation, and so on. Indeed, James tells us that “each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death” (1:14-15). But it’s a mistake to think that desire itself is the problem here. The Christian view has always been that desire is evil only when it is aimed at the wrong things, or at the right things in the wrong ways. Consider this excerpt from James 4:

What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions…
“God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.

More simply, there’s Psalm 37:4: “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.”

There is nothing inherently wrong with desire. What we need to learn is to desire the right things in the right ways; to desire God above all else, and to receive his gifts as he would have us receive them. To be conformed to the image of Christ is, in large measure, to love the things that God loves. This is a big part of living in God’s “upside-down kingdom.” Compare the words of Jesus in Matthew 13:44-45 and Paul’s statements in Philippians 3:8-21 with the passage below from C. S. Lewis’s “The Weight of Glory”:

if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea. We are far too easily pleased.

2. Desire as evidence for God

In the spirit of 1 Peter 3:15, we should note that some of our desires—deep-seated longings for meaning, goodness, and “something more”—are evidence for the existence of God. Philosophers sometimes call this the argument from desire. Peter Kreeft of Boston College is one of its best-known proponents; here is how he explains the argument:[1]

 Claim #1: Every natural desire within us corresponds to some real object that can satisfy the desire.

• It’s important to notice the difference between natural desires (e.g., the desire for food or sex) and artificial desires (e.g., the desire for Cleveland to win a championship or to serve as captain of the starship Enterprise).
• Claim #1 does not say that every natural desire will be satisfied, but that natural desires demonstrate the existence of something that could satisfy them.
• Kreeft argues that Claim #1 is something we can know through pure reason (i.e., just through thinking about it) and through experience; for every uncontroversially natural desire, there is, in fact, something in reality which can satisfy it. 

Claim #2: There is a natural desire within human beings that cannot be satisfied by any finite thing.

• C. S. Lewis used the German word ‘sensucht’ to describe this feeling; there’s no good English equivalent. It’s a longing for goodness and beauty… A kind of ache which is itself better than most of the pleasures we can experience. The idea runs throughout Lewis’s writings; some of the imagery in the Narnia books seems intended to evoke this sense in the reader. Lewis himself defined sensucht this way: “That unnameable something, desire for which pierces us like a rapier at the smell of bonfire, the sound of wild ducks flying overhead, the title of The Well at the World's End, the opening lines of ‘Kubla Khan’, the morning cobwebs in late summer, or the noise of falling waves.”[2]
• Kreeft seems pretty confident that every human being has this experience; I think it’s worth noting that the argument still works even if only some people have a natural experience of sensucht.
• Evidence of such a desire can be found throughout the ages:

÷  Solomon (Israel, 10^th century BC): “God has set eternity in our hearts.”

÷  Augustine of Hippo (Algeria, 4^th century AD): “Thou hast made us for Thyself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee.”

÷  Pascal (France, 17^th century AD): “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus.”

÷  Aldous Huxley (England, 20^th century AD): “There comes a time when one asks even of Shakespeare, even of Beethoven, is this all?”

÷  Tom Brady (U.S.A., 21^st century AD):  “Why do I have three Superbowl rings, and still think there’s something greater out there for me?  I mean, maybe a lot of people would say, ‘Hey man, this is what it is.  I’ve reached my goal, my dream…  My life is…’  Me, I think, ‘God…  There’s got to be more than this.  I mean, this isn’t, this can’t be what it’s all cracked up to be.”

Claim #3: Therefore, there is some real object that can satisfy these deepest longings.

• This is the only completely uncontroversial part of the argument; it’s just a logical inference from Claim #1 and Claim #2. If the first two claims are true, then Claim #3 must be true as well.

Claim #4: That object is what we call “God” and “life with God forever.”

• Someone seeking to criticize this argument should point out that Claim #4 does not logically follow from the first three claims. This is true, but it should be of small comfort to the committed atheist. If we accept Claim #3, then we need to think seriously about what the “real object” to which it refers might be. It’s difficult to think of any plausible candidates other than God. 

3. Questions for discussion

• What are some examples (from your own life, in our culture, or elsewhere) of desiring “the right things in the wrong ways”?
• Jesus talks about the Kingdom of God as a pearl of great price. What kinds of things might we need to “sell” in order to acquire it? Do you find it difficult to trust Jesus that this would be a wise investment? Why or why not?
• What might it look like to actually apply Paul’s words in Philippians 3 (or, for that matter, Lewis’s words in “The Weight of Glory”) to real life in Montgomery, Alabama, in 2011?
• Does the “argument from desire” seem like the kind of thing Peter had in mind when he told us to be prepared to give a reason for the hope that is within us? Are there other kinds of considerations you might point to if a skeptic asked?
• Does Lewis’s idea of “sensucht” resonate with you? What kinds of things have caused you to experience sensucht?
• What keeps us from longing for God? What can do to cultivate this desire?

---

[1] Paraphrased from <http://www.peterkreeft.com/topics/desire.htm>.

[2] This is from the afterword to the third edition of The Pilgrim’s Regress, but I poached it from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sehnsucht>. In case you’re wondering, “Kubla Khan” is a 1797 poem by Samuel Coleridge. Its opening lines are “In Xanadu did Kubla Khan/A stately pleasure-dome decree:/Where Alph, the sacred river, ran/Through caverns measureless to man/Down to a sunless sea.” I got that from Wikipedia too.

Christian Vocation and God's Benevolent Care

When we think about our "calling," we often think of someone being "called" into full-time ministry. But, that is a very truncated view of what our calling is.  From the Latin word for "calling" we get the concept of Vocation. Everyone has a God-given Vocation, a role to play in their family, church, workplace, and the larger society. God has uniquely shaped, equipped, and placed each one of us to contribute to His overall plan and care for Creation.  We all have gifts, talents, and abilities that God uses as He sovereignly places us in spheres of influence to display His glory and influence. I often say that God is not a character in our story, but rather, we are characters in God's Story. He has a plan for each of us and He exercises His rule through us. It is remarkable, when you think about it.

With this as a backdrop, we are able to look at the concept of work differently from the rest of the world. "Work" is not a way to establish ourselves as independent from God or anyone else. Nor is it a way to accrue wealth so that we will have safety and security. Work is not primarily about money nor is it something to hate or to get away from whenever we can. Many want to be wealthy so that they will not have to work and so they can do what they want when they want to - in other words, independence from others, from society, and from any real sense of responsibility to anyone or anything. All of this is from the Fall where work/labor became associated with the Curse related to sin (see Genesis 3:17-19) and it became something that was often seen as tedious and life denying.

But, there is a different way to see work. We can go back before the Fall and see that God created mankind to work in relation to His will and to be a part of how God rules over and cares for His Creation (Genesis 1:28-2:3). And, we know that in Christ, God is restoring all things to His intention for us and that He is renewing Creation. So, if we are in Christ, we are free to work with meaning and purpose in God's economy as His representatives and co-laborers.  Christ has destroyed the curse of sin so we are free to be creative and to add value to all that we do as we reflect and give thanks for the glorious freedom that Christ has provided us. The concept of Work as been redeemed and retrieved from the effects of the Fall and has been restored to God's original purpose as the way that we live out our calling in this world.

Eugene Peterson on Why We Worship Together

For many in the church today, worship has become entertainment - just one other thing to consume (or not) as we live in the land of endless variety. We have forgotten how to enter the presence of God. We talk about how awesome the praise band was, how good the choir sounded - or, we complain that the band wasn't upbeat enough or the service just didn't do anything for you or the preacher was boring, or too long, or didn't use enough stories. I don't think that worship should be boring, but I also don't think that we should be entertained. There is a difference between significance, high drama, meaning and entertainment.

Eugene Peterson in Practice Resurrection talks about what happens when we worship together.

Common worship, that is, corporate worship (worship 'in common'), gives the basic form and provides the essential content for this aspect of 'growing up' to the 'full stature of Christ.' Private worship while alone in semi-paralysis before a TV screen is not mature worship. Certainly we can worship in solitary. Some of our richest moments of worship will come while strolling on a beach or wondering in a garden or perched on a mountain peak. What we must not do is deliberately exclude others from our worship or worship selectively with like-minded friends. These are not options on offer in Ephesians. Maturity develops in worship as we develop in friendship with the friends of God, not just our preferred friends. Worship shapes us not onlhy individually but as a community, a church. If we are going to grow up into Christ we have to do it in the company of everyone who is responding to the call of God. Whether we happen to like them or not has nothing to do with it.

We are to join in friendship with the friends of God - not just our friends or the people that we personally like. This is key. We often make our choices about church or worship based on who is going to be there or if we think ahead of time that we will get something out of it.  That is faithlessness. The real question is, "Will God be there? Will He meet with me?  Can He speak through His people, assembled together from the ranks of the riff-raff and the unimpressive and the ranks of the least and last?"  Do we believe that God can do something beyond what we can ask, think, or imagine even if we don't expect it? 

In worship, we come to meet with God and God can do anything. When we come together in faith, He shapes us and forms us. Entertainment cheapens this and actually can push us further away from God because we are distracted by things that ultimately do not feed our soul.

St. Augustine: That in Adam's sin an evil will preceded the evil act.

Pride comes before the fall.

St. Augustine basically says the same in The City of God. Ever wonder what led to Adam and Eve's sin? Augustine of Hippo (354-430) lays it out nicely and says that Adam and Eve were corrupt before they ate of the forbidden fruit. Their hearts had already begun to wonder from God, else they would not have been deceived and have looked for life outside of God.  It makes for an interesting perspective. Read and tell my your opinion.

Book XIV, Chap. 13

That in Adam's sin an evil will preceded the evil act.

Our first parents fell into open disobedience because already they were secretly corrupted; for the evil act had never been done had not an evil will preceded it. And what is the origin of our evil will but pride? For "pride is the beginning of sin." And what is pride but the craving for undue exaltation? And this is undue exaltation, when the soul abandons Him to whom it ought to cleave as its end, and becomes a kind of end to itself. This happens when it becomes its own satisfaction. And it does so when it falls away from that unchangeable good which ought to satisfy it more than itself. This falling away is spontaneous; for if the will had remained steadfast in the love of that higher and changeless good by which it was illumined to intelligence and kindled into love, it would not have turned away to find satisfaction in itself, and so become frigid and benighted; the woman would not have believed the serpent spoke the truth, nor would the man have preferred the request of his wife to the command of God, nor have supposed that it was a venial trangression to cleave to the partner of his life even in a partnership of sin. The wicked deed, then,--that is to say, the trangression of eating the forbidden fruit,--was committed by persons who were already wicked. That "evil fruit" could be brought forth only by "a corrupt tree." But that the tree was evil was not the result of nature; for certainly it could become so only by the vice of the will, and vice is contrary to nature. Now, nature could not have been depraved by vice had it not been made out of nothing. Consequently, that it is a nature, this is because it is made by God; but that it falls away from Him, this is because it is made out of nothing. But man did not so fall away as to become absolutely nothing; but being turned towards himself, his being became more contracted than it was when he clave to Him who supremely is. Accordingly, to exist in himself, that is, to be his own satisfaction after abandoning God, is not quite to become a nonentity, but to approximate to that. And therefore the holy Scriptures designate the proud by another name, "self-pleasers." For it is good to have the heart lifted up, yet not to one's self, for this is proud, but to the Lord, for this is obedient, and can be the act only of the humble.

There is, therefore, something in humility which, strangely enough, exalts the heart, and something in pride which debases it. This seems, indeed, to be contradictory, that loftiness should debase and lowliness exalt. But pious humility enables us to submit to what is above us; and nothing is more exalted above us than God; and therefore humility, by making us subject to God, exalts us. But pride, being a defect of nature, by the very act of refusing subjection and revolting from Him who is supreme, falls to a low condition; and then comes to pass what is written: "Thou castedst them down when they lifted up themselves." For he does not say, "when they had been lifted up," as if first they were exalted, and then afterwards cast down; but "when they lifted up themselves" even then they were cast down,--that is to say, the very lifting up was already a fall. And therefore it is that humility is specially recommended to the city of God as it sojourns in this world, and is specially exhibited in the city of God, and in the person of Christ its King; while the contrary vice of pride, according to the testimony of the sacred writings, specially rules his adversary the devil. And certainly this is the great difference which distinguishes the two cities of which we speak, the one being the society of the godly men, the other of the ungodly, each associated with the angels that adhere to their party, and the one guided and fashioned by love of self, the other by love of God.

The devil, then, would not have ensnared man in the open and manifest sin of doing what God had forbidden, had man not already begun to live for himself....

The Life of Christ in the Country of Death

Life is hard. That is no secret to anyone who has lived it. We tend to think that if we follow God, things will go exceptionally well for us. We will have "life abundant," and if we face disappointments, it is because we have done something wrong or we do not have God's favor upon us. So, in that, we fall into the clutches of the prosperity gospel even if we do not expect money or material possession. We just expect things to go well for us. But, when we find that life does not work that way (at least for us), then we go off looking for other solutions. Maybe our problem is our church or the teaching we have received. Maybe we need a better job or better relationships or even a better spouse or family. Maybe we need to go back to school or decrease our waistline or improve in some way. So, we look for ways to do that. We want LIFE (however we define that) and we want it now. There is always something right over the horizon that will make things better if we could just grasp at it.  As long as we think that is Jesus, we follow Him. But, whenver things don't work out for us the way we think they should, we adapt and change and grab hold of what we think will help us.

There is nothing so persistant in the human endeavor as the pursuit of happiness and pleasure.

But, we remain frustrated. Either we keep looking for solutions or we give in to despair and come to believe that there are no solutions. But, maybe God is up to something else.  Maybe the life of Christ shows up most clearly exactly where we are - in frustration and the death of so many things. 

Eugene Peterson, in Practice Resurrection says it like this regarding the church (the body of Christ and the people of God):

So, why church?  The short answer is because the Holy Spirit formed it to be a colony of heaven in the country of death… an appointed gathering of named people in particular places who practice a life of resurrection in a world in which death gets the biggest headlines: death of nations, death of civilization, death of marriage, death of careers, obituaries without end.  Death by war, death by murder, death by accident, death by starvation.  Death by electric chair, lethal injection, and hanging.  The practice of resurrection is an intentional, deliberate decision to believe and participate in resurrection life, life out of death, life that trumps death, life that is the last word, Jesus life. (HT: Rumblings)

The truth is, we live in the land of death. Everything around us is decaying. Why are we so surprised when that decay and struggle and frustration affects us?  We are not immune to our sin-plagued and decaying environment. Everything will not work out for us.  Death is doing its work all the time. But, (and this is significant), the Resurrection has occured. Life is breaking in. In the midst of loss, despair, and hopelessness, hope appears.  We have not yet experienced the end of our story. Even if our dreams are dying, resurrection is breaking in. 

This is what the church is all about.  As Peterson says, we are a colony of heaven in the country of death. We are a community of people who live under the power of the resurrection, where life breaks into death and defeats it completely. Even though the church is far from perfect because it is made up of people, it still exhibits this hopeful stance in a death-filled world.

As we continue to observe Lent, we feel the ache and loss around us. We recognize that we are not all we should be or all that we will be. But, we look forward to celebrating the Resurrection where we remember and experience afresh that Life has broken into death with the resurrection of Jesus. As people who know Him, we are changed by Him and the losses that we experience in this broken world only speak to what is passing away, not to what the heavenly reality actually is.

Life triumphs over death and the church is the place where we get to catch a glimpse of that, even if it is just for a moment.

Are Southern Baptists Capable of Being Missional? Part 2

See Part One here.   Please note that I am writing with broad generalizations about overall trends and perspectives. I have seen many exceptions to what I am writing here. But, they stand out in my mind because they are exceptions, not the rule.

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A couple of days ago, I asked if Southern Baptists were capable of being missional. Of course, the answer is a qualified "yes." Anyone is capable if they are in touch with the Spirit of God and are participants in God's Kingdom. But, is it likely? For all of our talk about evangelism, the Great Commission, and missions as a people, I am leaning toward the answer being "no."

Let's go back to how Southern Baptists started. We say that the Convention started over missions. The SBC was started in 1845 over the right of southern slaveholders to be appointed to serve on the mission field. Northern Baptists, dominated by abolitionists said no. Southern Baptists were offended by this and broke away from the northern baptists, starting their own convention in Augusta, Georgia in 1845. The peculiar institution of slavery had to be defended because that was where the South drew its economic lifeblood. The Southern "Way of Life" had to be protected. Eventually, a war would be fought and 600,000 people would be killed from both sides. Still, Southern Baptists didn't challenge the status quo and they became defenders of the "Lost Cause," a mythos that claimed that even though the South lost, she was in the right and was more pure and moral than the rest of the country.  Racial prejudices were recodified in the Jim Crow laws and segregation that emerged in the late 1800's and early 1900's and Southern Baptists went along, supporting the larger culture and the social economics of the day. The SBC became the state church of the South and helped to solidify the civil religion that emerged.

Observing Lent in a Baptist Church

Our church is observing Lent for the first time this year.  We are actually bringing in the liturgical calendar in a modified form into our church calendar, which is kind of strange for Baptists. Baptists are low church, non-liturgical, non-sacramental Christians. Except, that we aren't. We just end up replacing the church calendar for our own calendar that primarily revolves around the civic calendar. So, prominent Sundays (in addition ot Easter) include Mother's Day, Father's Day, the weekend of the 4th of July, Valentine's Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas celebrations, in addition to other events.  In thinking through all of this, we've decided that one way to more thoroughy embed the gospel story into our lives as a believing community is to reclaim the Christian tradition in a liturgical, but non-sacramental way.

Baptists are not sacramental. In other words, we do not believe that grace is conferred through the sacraments such as baptism, eucharist, or observation of the church calendar. We believe that the only sacrament is Christ and that we only receive grace through faith in Him.  I agree with this. But, we go too far, I think, in making what we call the ordinances of the church (baptism/Communion) into nothing. We say that these things are "just" symbols, mere reminders. It has been observed that for many Baptists, Jesus is everywhere but in our observance of Communion (what we call the Lord's Supper).  We basically fall all over ourselves explaining how He is not in the wafer or the thimble full of grape juice and that this is just a mere symbol.  We try really hard to not be confused with the Catholics on this and I think that we are worried about nothing. No one is going to confuse us with the Catholics.

Once I got over my Protestant imposed "Catholic-phobia" (as well as Anglican, Lutheran, Presbyterian, and every other denomination besides Baptists), I started to look more deeply at the richness of Christian tradition and what it really means, or rather, what it could mean if you didn't assert that grace was conferred through practiciing it. I began to discover that the current Baptist fascination with nothing meaning anything was really not very helpful when it came to rooting a church in the gospel story. The more that I thought through the plastic, transitory nature of our culture, the more that I began to long for something that we could ground our collective story in - something that was bigger than ourselves and that transcended the local school holiday schedule for families.  There had to be something more to our calendar than Christmas, Easter, and Super Bowl Sunday.

So, as I dug through Scripture and church history, I noticed that God instituted many holidays (holy-days) and festivals for His people, all as reminders of His saving work and as displays of His character. I had always been taught that those things were irrelevant. Now that we had Jesus, we didn't need all of that. Well, that is true from a salvific sense, but we don't go to church every Sunday to attain salvation. We go to meet with God and be reminded of His saving work in our lives. We go to declare the praises of Him who called us out of darkness into His wonderful light. We go to gather together and become attentive to God together. This perspective brings me to Lent and how a non-sacramental, Baptist church can practice it.

Lent is the traditional period of fasting and preparation for Easter, beginning on Ash Wednesday and lasting for 40 days. It will begin this Wednesday, March 9th. Instead of seeing it sacramentally, we are encouraging people to observe Lent by taking extra time to focus on God. Are there any attachments in our lives that we might benefit from laying down? What can we put aside for a time to help us focus on God more clearly? It might be food, a meal, technology, television, or some other form of entertainment. Is there anything in your life that you have become dependent on, that if you laid it down, you would have more time to spend with God to be more attentive to Him and His ways?  Then, according to the principles of fasting in Isaiah 58, how might you use what you have freed up to bless those in need and reflect the character of God into the lives of others?  Instead of seeing Lent as sacramentally, we are seeing it positionally - how can observing Lent over the next 40 days position us to better love God and love other people?

Those are all questions that we are exploring as a believing community.  I am praying that we will see personal and corporate breakthroughs as we enter into this time of fasting, prayer, and changing of priorities. I am praying that we see this as a means of aligning our lives more closely with Jesus' story.  Last night, we spent some time in prayer and preparation before the Lord, repenting, asking for healing and deliverance, and aligning ourselves with His purposes.  We prayed for the team of 23 headed to Guatemala this Saturday. Mostly, we prayed for God to change our lives.   

Now, we believe God for transformation.