Talk Like This...

Devoted, alert, and thankful

2006-12-14T20:30:00.000-07:00

Colossians 4:1 (NET) Be devoted to prayer, keeping alert in it with thanksgiving.

My prayer life has grown by leaps and bounds over the last 18 months (mostly due to my accountability with other men to make it a priority), but am I devoted to it yet? I value prayer now more than I ever have, but I often find myself thinking, "I don't want to 'pray', I want to 'do'!" But I forget that praying is doing, and doing without praying is really just spinning my wheels.

My attitudes about prayer will shape how I pray. The verse above speaks of "keeping alert in it." If I truly believe that God is there, that he is listening, and that he will act, then I will be alert to the needs around me. I will be careful to look for the things in my life, my family, and my friends that need prayer. Of course how and when God answers is His business, but He has asked that I pray, so I will. Sometimes I wonder if prayer is designed more for our sake than for God's. I am certainly honoring God, and recognizing who He is when I pray, but prayer also changes me. It makes me more sensitive to the needs of others, more aware of what God is doing around me, and (this is important) more dependent on Him and less dependent on myself.

Of course prayer can degenerate into a "wish list" filled with requests. This verse (like Philippians 4:6-7) addresses this by pointing out that all of my prayer should be filled with thanksgiving. I was recently struck by the thought that every breath I take in is a gift from God. We should never be short of things to thank God for, yet if you ask anyone for a list of 10 things they are thankful for, they will start to have difficulty coming up with something. I need to give up my sense of 'entitlement' and recognize how God has richly blessed me. This turns my prayer outward, away from myself and toward God and others.

Starting up (again)...

2006-12-14T20:24:00.000-07:00

In my on again, off again attempts at blogging, I am on again (at least for today). While I doubt there are many out there who are reading (hi Jeff!?), it still seems a worthwhile thing to sit down and write out some thoughts from time to time.

So here we go...

The Need for Leaders

2006-07-12T17:45:00.000-06:00

I was recently reading the qualifications for church leaders in 1 Timothy and Titus. Here are the passages:

1 Timothy 3:2-13 (NIV) Now the overseer must be above reproach, the husband of but one wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him with proper respect. (If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of GodÂs church?) He must not be a recent convert, or he may become conceited and fall under the same judgment as the devil. He must also have a good reputation with outsiders, so that he will not fall into disgrace and into the devilÂs trap. Deacons, likewise, are to be men worthy of respect, sincere, not indulging in much wine, and not pursuing dishonest gain. They must keep hold of the deep truths of the faith with a clear conscience. They must first be tested; and then if there is nothing against them, let them serve as deacons. In the same way, their wives are to be women worthy of respect, not malicious talkers but temperate and trustworthy in everything. A deacon must be the husband of but one wife and must manage his children and his household well. Those who have served well gain an excellent standing and great assurance in their faith in Christ Jesus.

Titus 1:6-9 (NIV) An elder must be blameless, the husband of but one wife, a man whose children believe and are not open to the charge of being wild and disobedient. Since an overseer is entrusted with GodÂs work, he must be blamelessÂnot overbearing, not quick-tempered, not given to drunkenness, not violent, not pursuing dishonest gain. Rather he must be hospitable, one who loves what is good, who is self-controlled, upright, holy and disciplined. He must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it.

What is interestingting about the lists is the focus on character, not special skills or gifts (with the possible exception of teaching). This leads me to wonder why this list was specifically called out for church leaders. Why does this list not apply to everyone?

The fact is that the list does apply to every Christian. These are standards to which all of us should aspire, including teaching (to some extent). The fact is, we should all be leaders. Perhaps not church leaders, but we should be leaders in our families, in our workplaces, and to an extent among our friends.

So why are these things listed for elders and deacons specifically? It is because a church leader should have achieved these goals of character and skill. No human is perfect, and we all must continually grow, but leaders are men and women who, by God's grace, have reached a point where they exemplify these characteristicstics. These things allow them to lead, both by example and by teaching. These things should stand out in a leader's life so that those who follow can be inspired and directed to achieve these things themselves!

And as we follow, as we grow in these things, we too should lead. We will quietly set an example in our lives that will glorify God and turn the hearts and minds of unbelievers towards Him. In our families, this will be (or should be), an active leadership. In our workplaces and relationships, it will be more passive, but it should occur none the less.

So as we read these passages, regardless of whether we are, or ever will be, church leaders, we should aspire to achieve these character qualities. God will use those who are willing and able to lead. He just needs to find those who are willing, those who can humbly accept his discipline and direction and can be servants.

Those who wish to lead out of pride or a sense of self-sufficiency will fail because God opposes the proud. But I think the bigger problem is not pride, but apathy. We suffer from a lack of vision for our lives, for our families, and for our churches. We are not "tuned in" to the reality of the world that God has created around us and the plan of salvation that God has laid out in his word and that he is carrying out right now in history. We don't fully comprehend the richness and power of God's grace. Because of this we let our lives slip away, we surrender our families to the deceptions of the world, and we let our churches become ineffective and irrelevant.

I am trying to step up to this call of leadership in whatever form God wants that to take in my life. It is difficult and it requires perseverance, but I am confident that God will be there for me. My prayer is that all Christians will step up to this challenge, that God get our attention some how, and that we, as His body, will respond.

Screwtape Letter XXII: "He's a hedonist at heart"

2006-05-27T12:53:00.000-06:00

This letter is (in my opinion) the funniest in the book and the pinnacle of the whole thing. Screwtape's utter revulsion at Wormwood's 'patient's' relationship with a woman, and the language it evokes is hilarious (especially when read by John Cleese in the audiobook). The whole chapter is classic, but the main point is this:

He's [God] a hedonist at heart. All those facts and vigils and stakes and crosses are only a facade. Or only like foam on the seashore. Out at sea, out in His sea, there is pleasure, and more pleasure. He makes no secret of it; at His right hand are "pleasures for evermore." Ugh! I don't think He has the least inkling of that high and austere to which we rise in the Miserific Vision. He's vulgar Wormwood. He has a bourgeois mind. He has filled His world full of pleasures. There are things for humans to do all day long without His minding in the least - sleeping, washing, eating, drinking, making love, playing, praying, working. Everything has to be twisted before it's any use to us. We fight under cruel disadvantages. Nothing is naturally on our side.

The freedom of understanding this about God is amazing! He wants our pleasure just as we want our children to be pleased and happy. The sadness in this is how easily we accept the twisted things that Screwtape mentions and we ourselves help in the twisting.

But despite the twisting, God is there and his untwisted pleasures remain. A walk on a cool spring morning, the companionship of a lover unburdened by guilt or secrets, the smile of a child, the beauty of a song with pure intentions. It is in the middle of those things that I want to exist. When that happens I see God as He really is and I see what he intends for me and my life. And in the meantime we leave the likes of Screwtape furious and frothing at the mouth, powerless to separate us from our God!

Screwtape Letter IV: Prayer

2006-05-20T16:43:00.000-06:00

C.S. Lewis has always been one of my favorite authors, and I enjoy everything of his that I've read, but as I re-read "The Screwtape Letters" again, I am reminded of how much I appreciate this particular book. A book like "Mere Christianity" is a classic, but I actually think the unique perspective of Screwtape is actually even more effective in communicating concepts about God, sin, the world, and how we percieve all of this. There is something about looking at things from the perspective of a demon (Screwtape) giving instruction to a subordinate demon (Wormwood) in how to tempt, distract, and otherwise turn a human from God that speaks more clearly to the real problems and perceptions of we humans.

As I was reading this morning, I decided sharing some of my favorite passages from Screwtape, starting with this one on prayer. As always, remember the perspective that this comes from (and the lies that such a perspective can bring).

The best thing, where it is possible, is to keep the patient from the serious intention of praying altogether. When the patient is an adult recently reconverted to the Enemy's party, like your man, this is best done by encouraging him to remember, or to think he remembers, the parrot-like nature of his prayers in childhood. In reaction against that, he may be persuaded to aim at something entirely spontaneous, inward, informal, and unregularised; and what this will actually mean to a beginner will be an effort to produce in himself a vaguley devotional mood in which real concentration of will and intelligence have no part. One of their poets, Coleridge, has recorded that he did not pray "with moving lips and bended knees" but merely "composed his spirit to love" and indulged "a sense of supplication." That is exactly the sort of prayer we want; and since it bears superficial resemblance to the prayer of silence as practised by those who are very far advanced in the Enemy's service, clever and lazy patients can be taken in by it for quite a long time. At the very least, they can be persuaded that the bodily position makes no difference to their prayers; for they constantly forget, what you must always remember, that they are animals and that whatever their bodies do affects their souls. It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out.

It is hard to believe that Lewis wrote these 'letters' during World War II. Half a century has passed, and things are very much the same. The concept that prayer might require actual kneeling, actual words, and even actual time set aside to do it continues to be met with high sounding arguments that such prayer is not 'spiritual' enough. As Lewis points out (both in this quote and elsewhere), that leaves us to make prayer into anything we want it to be at anytime we want it (of course, only when the Spirit moves). As we do with God Himself, we make prayer into what we want it to be to fit conveniently into our lives rather than finding the truth of what it is and making our lives conform to that. Unfortunately this often means we drift into doing nothing at all, and Screwtape and his kind have succeded by simply "keeping things out."

GTD, Anxiety, and Faith

2006-04-07T18:35:00.000-06:00

There was a time when I could stay on top of all the things I needed to do and I was generally pretty faithful at doing what I said I was going to do. But I've recently found that as my responsibilities increase (and diversify) and my mental capacity decreases (as you get older, your memory is the second thing to go, I can't remember the first), I tend to 'drop' things more often. I don't know how many times I have recently seen someone I know and I immediately remember something I was supposed to do for them.

This creates two problems. The first is that I am no longer being faithful with my responsibilities and I'm letting people down. The second is that I start to get anxious about all I have to do and what I'm forgetting to do.

A few months ago, in the process of Googling something completely unrelated, I came across some references to David Allen's Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity (commonly referred to on the web as GTD). When I came across it again (during another Google search), I decided to order the book and I am currently in the process of implementing these ideas in my life. It is very early in my 'experimentation', but I like what I see so far. The goal of GTD is to get all the things you need to do out of your head and into a 'system' (on paper or electronically), relieving that anxiety I have been experiencing.

As I have been thinking about this, it has dawned on me that there are two kinds of anxiety. The first type is anxiety about things you can control. This is the type of anxiety I'm trying to relieve by using this system, and I think that this is an appropriate response. That anxiety is created because I know that I am not doing things I should be. If I were not meeting my responsibilities and that fact was not creating anxiety in me, I'd just be irresponsible.

The other kind of anxiety is about the things you can't control. It's worrying about all the "what if's" in the world. What if I lose my job? What if my spouse gets very sick or even dies? What if bird flu really does become a pandemic?! ! To a certain extent, these things are good to think about. There are some things you can do to prepare for the "what if's" in your life. But at some point we know that we can't protect ourselves from all of the bad things that could happen. No matter how much money we save, how much insurance we take out, or how much food we stockpile (if you're into that kind of thing), there is some point at which potential future problems could be bigger than we can handle.

At some point, a believer has to trust that God it truly in control and that he is faithful in his promises. We've got to trust God in all that we do, however small it is. We have some responsibility in all of this to protect our families and prepare ourselves for various things, but that is done within the framework of entrusting our very lives to God, giving up our independence and self-reliance.

My "little picture" anxiety about my day to day responsibilities can probably be relieved with a system like GTD. My "big picture" anxiety can only be relieved by faith in my God.

Philippians 4:6-7 (NIV) ⁶Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. ⁷And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

drop-dead

2006-03-11T14:43:00.000-07:00

As I wrote the previous post I've had one of those rare times when I have a couple of hours at home on my own, allowing me the treat of being able to turn up my music as loud as I want!

I just listened to (twice) The Violet Burning's new CD drop-dead. It didn't grab me like I expected when I first got it, but it is rapidly growing on me, espescially when listened to at high volume! My two faovorite tracks are 'more' and 'one thousand years'. If you read my previous post and now think I'm a leagalistic Pharisee, read these lyrics and recognize that I too enjoy large doses of grace:

More
I never wanted more than the beauty of your kiss.
Somehow I get lost in the sound of this singing.
But, you're beautiful tonight, in your ultraviolet light.
Kiss me softly and sing to me. I'd give anything...
I never wanted more. Show me how to do it, help me find a way.
I've got nothing left to live for.
No one else is staying, but you, always you.
There is only you.

Michael Pritzl

One Thousand Years
I've gone down from the mountains looking for a cure.
I came across the desert, here to your front door.
Rolling with the punches, falling beneath the blows,
Fighting through most anything tearing up my soul. I wanna run.

I wanna run, I wanna fall into your arms.
So, lay my head down, I wanna wake, there in your arms.
I needed to forgive you. I needed to throw it down.
Into the depths of the sea that forgets these things,
beneath the walls of sound that sing for all us sinners, and sing for all our lives.
Wrap this song around our hearts, may it bind us tight.
Now, I can barely remember just what we started for.
But, I found some grace there in your arms,
I'm coming back for more, I’m gonna run.

I wanna run, I wanna fall into your arms.
So, lay my head down, I wanna wake, there in your arms.
I long to view forever through the twinkling of an eye.
I long to find a song of hope and lay down by your side.
A song for all the weeping, a song for all the tears.
I'll sing for you to carry me, I'll sing One Thousand Years, I wanna run.
I wanna run, I wanna fall into your arms.
So, lay my head down, I wanna wake there, in your arms.
Yeah, you're my heart, you're my home
Yeah, you're my heart, you're my home
Yeah, you're my heart, you're my home
Yeah, you're my heart, you're my home

Michael Pritzl

But the lyrics alone don't do the songs justice. Listen here.

The Freedom of Obedience

2006-03-11T13:47:00.000-07:00

In a previous post, I alluded to the fact that my relationship with God is finally starting to feel like what it should be for the first time in my Christian life. It seems like I should be telling every believer I know what it is that has turned things around for me, but I am reluctant to because I fear their reaction. It seems odd that I should fear this reaction, after all doesn't every believer seek a deeper relationship with our God? Let's find out...

The secret for me has been an accountability program.

"Accountability!? ... Program?! ... Leagalism!!" is the response I fear.

This is an understandable response, and one I probably would have shared prior to about 9 months ago. We tend to be geared more for leagalism than for grace. Leagalism is tangible, do A and expect B, cause and effect. Because of that when we finally 'get' (understand, comprehend) grace, we (rightfully) defend it for all it is worth, but in doing so we often lose hold of the fact that we are also called to obey as well. Jesus Himself said it:

Matthew 28:19-20 (NIV) ¹⁹"Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

In a recent conversation a friend pointed out this verse:

Romans 1:5 (NIV) ⁵Through him and for his name's sake, we received grace and apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith.

Which led me to this:

1 Peter 1:2 (NIV) ²who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by his blood:
Grace and peace be yours in abundance.

That last one is a good one, we are called to obedience to Jesus Christ and yet we can get there only through the grace of God! It is because of grace that we are able to obey!

So back to the accountability program. I have nodded my head in agreement to countless speakers who have shared with me our need to be in God's word and to be in prayer. I mean, it seems fairly obvious that all believers should not only pursue these 'habits', we should desperately desire them! But my flesh wants something else, so despite all my head nodding, my choices in this area lined up 99% of the time with my flesh and not with my soul's desire to know my God.

Last June at a conference I was listening to another speaker talk on this, and I was nodding my head again, but this time something was different (maybe my flesh was off at the resort's water park, having a good time) and it clicked. To me it came down to this, if I really, really believe (see the previous post on faith), I would be doing these things. How can I live this life without being in constant contact with the only One who knows what is best for me?

Since that time, with the help of three friends who wanted the same thing, I have begun to develop the type of conversation with God I have always desired.

Without a doubt, there are dangers. The danger of leagalism is there, the danger of pride is there, the danger of discouragement (if I fail to meet my commitments). But these are all dangers of the flesh, to be controlled and destroyed, not by my willpower but by the power of God's grace. There are times when I am simply "checking off boxes" but these times come less often than I thought, and since the sheer volume of my time with God has increased, the good times with Him have increased as well (it's like time with your kids, 'quality' time comes out of 'quantity' time).

So now I'm excited to see where God takes me, and where he takes our church as we have opened up a variation on this program to the entire congregation. The response so far has been better than I ever expected!

A pastor over at our sister church in Fort Collins, Mitch Majeski, puts this all much better than I can in his recent post on the subject. I'm in the a similar place, but without all the running!

What do I know?

2006-02-26T21:18:00.000-07:00

     There have been a number of things swirling around in my head lately that I’ve been trying to get a grasp on.  Every one of them has caused me to think “I should write a blog entry about that” but that hasn’t happened, because each of these ‘things’ has been a bit slippery and hard firmly grasp mentally, let alone write about.

     There has been a book about ‘spirituality’ that has at times left me thinking “Huh?” and at other times has given me the peaceful feeling you get when you come across Truth expressed in an understandable way.  There has been a book that speaks of a new revolution, a revolution where the author suggests that people will take hold of core values that would be radical and life-transforming (yes!), but also where the author suggest that these revolutionaries should leave the local church behind (no!).  There have been recent CD purchases filled with music that has challenged and inspired.  And there has been the usual mosaic of people in my life (directly or indirectly) whose experiences and choices have left me with an array of emotions ranging from joy to despair.

     In the middle of this swirl has also been a relationship with God that perhaps for the first time has really begun to flourish (the reasons behind that would probably be a good subject for another post).  There has been a slow transformation over the last few years in my life as God has drawn me closer to Himself, but the last half of a year has truly been a watershed (there’s a word I don’t use often) period in my life with Him.

     The swirl in my head still exists, and I am often a bit confused by it all.  But in the middle of the swirl is an anchor point that I hang onto for all I’m worth.  It is one word with a lot behind it: Faith.  I know that sounds a bit trite.  It’s like the default answer of “Jesus” in Sunday school.

     But Faith is a deep word, deeper than ‘belief’.  To me ‘belief’ implies something I might hold to given the facts I have now, but I am willing to let go of if necessary.  Faith implies belief to the level of complete trust, it is what I know.  What do I really, really know, deep down in the core of who I am?  What do I believe enough to allow it to direct my life?

     We Christians speak a lot of faith.  We have our statements of faith.  We are justified before God by faith alone.  Often though (very often), it seems that we mean the more ‘shallow’ word ‘believe’.  We ‘believe’ it at a surface level, but our choices betray our ‘true’ faith, what it is that we really trust in.

     So a book about spirituality touches me because it confirms from an ‘external’ source what I have been seeing happen as God works in my life through His Word and through prayer.  A book about a revolution that involves leaving the local church behind at first unsettles me, but then I find a peace about it because I have faith in God’s universal Church and in the local church as will even though it is very flawed and is often directed by man’s agenda rather than God’s.  Music lyrics that challenge me I see confirmed (in part) in God’s word, and those same lyrics are transformed into an inspiration.  And the lives of people around me continue to twist and turn on the unpredictable path that is life in this word, but I have confidence that God is at work in all of them (God sometimes calling me to be a part of that work, sometimes telling me, “why don’t you step back for a while and let me work this out”).

     In the middle of all of this God whispers, “Be still, and know I am God.”

     Faith.

Peterson on Communion

2006-02-23T20:21:00.000-07:00

I’ve been reading Eugene Peterson’s “Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places” recently. It has been a combination of good thoughts and some things I’m not quite sure about, but tonight I read his thoughts on Communion (or the Eucharist, as he prefers) and I think what he shares is really amazing. There is a whole section that discusses this (and even the importance of sharing meals in general), but the following passage sums up what he says, and I thought it would be worth sharing here.

The Eucharist is the definitive action practiced in the Christian community that keeps Jesus Christ before us as Savior of the world and our Savior, and ourselves as sinners in need of being saved. The Eucharist is the sacramental act that pulls us into actual material participation with Christ (eating and drinking bread and wine) as he gives his very life “for us and for our salvation” (Nicene Creed). Without the Eucharist as focal practice, it is very easy to drift off into imagining Jesus as our Great Example whom we will imitate, or our Great Teacher from whom we will learn, or our Great Hero by whom we will be inspired. And without the Eucharist it is very easy to drift into a spirituality that is dominated by ideas about Jesus instead of receiving life from Jesus. The Eucharist says a plain “no” to all of that. The Eucharist puts Jesus in his place: dying on the cross and giving us that sacrificed life. And it puts us in our place: opening our hands and receiving the remission of our sins, which is our salvation.
The Christian community is never going to give up teaching moral behavior, giving instruction in the commandments of Moses and the imperatives of Jesus and the exhortations of Paul, dealing with the ideas and truths given in the Scriptures, and training Christians to follow and obey Jesus in the many and varied conditions of history in which we find ourselves. But however important these things are, they cannot serve as the center. We cultivate our participation in the play of Christ in history by following him to the cross and receiving his life as he gives it to us under the forms of the Eucharist.

To the ends of the earth...

2006-02-20T12:30:00.000-07:00

It has crossed my mind from time to time that revival in America and Europe may not come from within, but without. While the west has been (in some regards) the ‘center’ of Christianity for a while articles like this are another indication that this is changing. As the article hints, it may not be long until the rest of the world is sending Christian missions to America instead of the reverse.

Treat that with proper respect!

2006-02-11T18:00:00.000-07:00

As I was getting my breakfast this past Monday morning I noticed my 10 year-old son's Bible sitting on the kitchen floor. I knew it had sat there for almost 24 hours (we were out of the house much of the preceding Sunday) and I briefly had the thought that "He should not treat his Bible that way, leaving it on the kitchen floor! He should treat his Bible with more respect!"

But as I sat eating my cereal, I began to think more about why it was there. He wakes up every morning and spends (typically) 20 minutes reading it. We keep our house at 60 degrees at night, so he likes to sit by the vent in the kitchen as the furnace warms up the house. I looked at the dog-eared pages that indicated its repeated and constant use and I realized that he was paying the utmost respect to God's word by reading it.

We will buy beautiful Bibles, leather-bound with gold edged pages, because we recognize that this is an important book. Some churches and homes will have a Bible on display, sitting on a stand, turned to some significant passage. But our beautiful Bibles sit on our bookshelf or on our display stand gathering dust. The pages are in immaculate condition and the book is preserved beautifully and in our backward way of thinking we think that this is honoring to God and His word.

I think God would rather see the pages worn, the cover smudged, the pages falling out as the binding disintegrates, even sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor. These are the signs that we care about what it says.

The other spiritual discipline

2005-11-16T18:26:00.000-07:00

When I think about spiritual disciplines there are a few specific things that come to mind: reading and meditating on God's Word, prayer, and (for some) fasting. It wasn't until just recently that I realized there is another apect of the Christian life that also qualifies as a spiritual discipline: serving.

What makes something a spiritual discipline? Off the top of my head, here are some things that qualify something as a spiritual discipline:

It has to have something to do with your relationship with God (duh).
It requires discipline (duh again).
It creates growth in your relationship with God and in your life as a Christian.
It requires sacrifice (this is closely related to discipline, but I'll list it anyway).

Serving easily fits these qualifications.

I'd have to say that serving was the first spiritual discipline in my life that I was able to practice consistently, but I would also say that I initially did so for all the wrong reasons. I think I started to serve in the church to meet what I perceived as the expectations of those around me. While there is nothing wrong with trying to please those around you, my attention should have been more on God and my motivation should have come from Him.

Over time, God in His graciousness took something I was doing for the wrong reasons and turned in into something I continued to do for the right reasons. All the challenges of serving worked (and continue to work) in my life to teach me to rely on God, to seek his guidance and strength, and to receive His grace and (to the best of my ability) pass it on to those I serve and those I serve with.

Only now, as I begin to really get serious about the other spiritual disciplines, do I begin to understand how important the discipline of serving has been in my life. It is part of the Chrsitian life that no believer should live without.

The Crutch

2005-11-03T18:50:00.000-07:00

"Christianity is just a crutch!"

That is a phrase that has always made me cringe. Then after the initial sting, every part of me wants to react with "No it's not!" I want to lash out and defend myself and my faith!

The problem, though, is that Christianity really is a crutch! It is an ironic fact that the part of us that wants to fight back and say "No it's not!" is the part of us that separates us from God.

A few years ago, a camping trip, a dark night, a need to go to the bathroom, and a roadside ditch all conspired to cause me to break my foot. I wanted to drive home, but I couldn't press the gas pedal, so I needed help getting home. When I got home, I wanted to walk to the door, but I couldn't put any weight on that foot, and I needed help to get to the door. Finally, in order to get around at all, I needed the help of a crutch (two, actually). I wanted to rely on myself, but everytime I put my foot down, I quickly realized I needed help.

When someone says "Christianity is just a crutch!" and I feel the need to defend myself, I am essentially saying, "Christianity is not a crutch, I can stand on my own without it!" But that is not at all true. I can desire to do the right thing and make good choices, to have a relationship with my Creator, to know that I will spend eternity in heaven, but I can't do it on my own. I need help. Jesus Christ came to help me, and the only way I will get those things I desire is to lean on him, to put my full weight on him!

A few weeks after breaking my foot, the bones healed and I could once again walk without the aid of crutches. I might be tempted to think the same thing happens in my relationship with God, that once I have accepted God's gift of salvation, I am healed and I can then stand on my own. But the fact is that the forgiveness of my sins is only part of the equation. Leaning on Christ will always be a part of my life. Being willing to be carried by Jesus is the key to both entering and living the Christian life.

Saying Jesus Christ is my 'crutch' is not a source of shame, in fact it is just the opposite:

1 Corinthians 1:26-:31 (NIV) Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: “Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.”

The ongoing U2 debate

2005-01-26T19:06:00.000-07:00

If you know me at all you know I am a big U2 fan (I came out of yesterday's U2 fan club ticket pre-sale fiasco with 2 very expensive but just OK tickets). As a Christian, many friends and family question my belief that the band (at least part of the band, and particularly Bono) are Christian. I'll save my arguments for another time, but today I came across an interesting article (via the "Get Up Off Your Knees" blog) today. While I'm perhaps not willing to go to the extent of the author in interpreting the appropriateness of Bono's behavior (it is an interesting discussion of 'bawdy'), the article is worth it for the Madilene L'Engle quote at the end of the article:

“God chooses his artists with as calm a disregard for surface moral qualifications as he chooses his saints”

New Way to Be Human: Chapter 11

2005-01-22T15:49:00.000-07:00

I'm continuing to read Charlie Peacock's "New Way To Be Human". I'm trying to limit myself to one chapter a day to "take it in" slowly. I'm entering a section discussing relationships. Based on what I've read in chapter 11, I wish I had read this before leading the "Two Become One" marriage Discovery Group a few months ago.

Peacock starts with a brief fictional tale of a woman named Easter Quigley and her response to the apparent infidelity of the man she is seeing. After that follows this section:

Followers of Jesus are tempted to think that the Easter Quigleys of the world are the saddest victims of misspent love. It's true that giving your body away to an untrustworthy human is the way of sin and pain. No question. But every relationship is touched by sin and pain, even those founded on True Love Waits and I Kissed Dating Goodbye.
No serious student-follower committed to loving the opposite sex in marriage or singleness can avoid the fact that sin has made a wreck of the way to be human. Now, after the pattern of the King of Twists, every good way has a twist in it.

...

Serious followers of the new way acknowledge and accept that everything is twisted up. They figure this into their thinking about relationships. I've met some hysterical optimists and some genuine lovers who take exception to this view. It's too pessimistic. I think it's realistic. I know that lovers believe their union will be the exception, but to a couple, all will be proved wrong. My boldness is not my own. It comes from the Story:

He then goes on to examine the Fall and the resulting consequenses. He asserts that the consequences of sin affect women relationally (primarily). One of his most interesting ideas from this chapter is the idea that when God informed Eve that a consequence of sin for her would be pain in childbith, this pain was not just the temporary physical pain of labor, but also an ongoing emotional pain. This leads into this section:

A mutual, one-flesh act may bring a child into the world, but history shows that it's the half-flesh of woman that nurtures and grows the child. What should be a wholly and mutually satisfying vocation isn't allowed to be. It's frustrated by absence when only presence will do. Where's man? He's busy dominating the creation under self-rule. Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen taps into part of this when she writes, "The woman is being warned [in Genesis] that she will experience an unreciprocated longing for intimacy with the man."] Unfortunately for the woman, neither the critical role of childbearing nor intimacy with man will provide the kind of satisfaction and completion she longs for. At its most basic, the consequence of sin for the woman is this: She will have an unsatisfied hunger and thirst that no human relationship can fill.

For men, Peacock asserts that the consequence is different. For men the problem is 'creational' rather than relational. Man has gone from dominion (stewardship and responsibility given by God) to domination (a desire for complete control).

Different from the woman's consequence, man moves from dominion to sinful male domination. He abuses the power and authority originally given to both man and woman. Now man dominates even the bone of his bones and the flesh of his flesh. He actively and passively dominateseverything to scratch fruit from the earth, to meet personal agendas of achievement, to make a name for himself, and to create wealth. Eventually, man will even try to use domination to bring the kingdom to pass. He selfishly dominates at the expense of the oneness and unity of purpose he is called to with God and woman. No matter how clever man is, how hard he works or doesn't work, or how much pleasure or wealth he accumulates, he is never satisfied. Perfection and satisfaction slip through his fingers like slippery pearls. As with woman, man continues to hunger and thirst. This is the direction that sin took man and woman.
God allowed sin its consequences, knowing that it would ensure humankind's dissatisfaction. Ultimate unity, intimacy, and purpose exist only with the Creator. Only God can save man and woman. Only God can fill their need, quench their thirst. Only God can deliver them from evil and the consequences of sin.
I've been writing about the first man and woman, Adam and Eve. But you know that I'm writing about you, about me, about every human being since the beginning. Something's wrong, and it's not right-and it's okay to talk about it and name it. There is a darkness over the land and in the hearts of people everywhere. Sin is real. Men and women stand in the shadows of the Dead Zone by the grace of God, or they remain in it awaiting rescue. We shouldn't lie about the human condition, fake it, or forget it. We can't pretend that nothing's wrong when something clearly is.

This seems to be a great context to start from to consider the pain that we experience as a result of sin, both as individuals and as couples. I have heard may great descriptions of what is different between men and women, what divides us and makes it difficult for us to communicate and relate. To me, these ideas boil the whole thing down to the basic problem, and as with every other problem that is rooted in sin, it is something we cannot deal with or solve on our own no matter how hard we try.

One of the things I tried to communicate in our Discovery Group was this very thing, the idea that all of our efforts to make our marriages better will fail unless we put ourselves and our marriage in the proper place in relation to God. Only when we are doing marriage His way can our marriages succeed.

New Way to Be Human: Chapter 5

2005-01-14T19:29:00.000-07:00

More good thoughts from Charlie Peacock's “New Way to Be Human”:

Student-followers of Jesus do base their lives on the new opportunity their relationship with their Teacher-Leader offers. They form their personal interests based on what the Teacher-Leader is interested in. (p 61)

Since sin is always about having some other agenda than God's, repentance is first about turning from my false understanding of reality to God's true reality. (p 68)

Student-followers pattern the shape of our responses after the new way to be human that Jesus shows us. But we are never alone in this. We are cooperating with what God has promised to do. Jesus fulfilled the Law, the righteousness of God for us, and is now fulfilling the Law in us, making us, step by step, this new way to be human. Every good word and work comes from God, “For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:10) (p 69)

common threads

2005-01-13T17:40:00.000-07:00

From Oswald Chambers’ “My Utmost for His Highest” (January 10^th reading):

In sanctification, the one who has been born again deliberately gives up his right to himself to Jesus Christ, and identifies himself entirely with God's ministry to others.

From Charlie Peacock’s “New Way to Be Human”:

The story of Noah and his family challenge the common misconception that the redemption Story is about God’s saving individuals out of the world. That idea reduces salvation to personal escape from the evil physical world to a blissful spiritual heaven. In reality, redemption history is about an ongoing story and process where people are saved in the world. The way they are saved out of the world is by God’s choosing them for himself, removing them out of the world’s ways, giving them his ways, and then leaving them in the world to continue the work he has assigned to them. (pp 48,49)

God’s words and actions are ways of being and doing, but imitation alone is not wholeness. Obedience is deeply connected to a response of gratitude. Loving gratitude is the sustaining, relational motive for obedient following. This idea will be fleshed out more as the biblical Story unfolds. In summation it is: What God has done for you, now done for others. Obeying God’s law is relational. Obedience to it sustains relationship with God, other humans, and the planet. Obedience is wholly practical. It’s love in practice.

From God’s Word:

Titus 3:3-8 (NIV) At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another. But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life. This is a trustworthy saying. And I want you to stress these things, so that those who have trusted in God may be careful to devote themselves to doing what is good. These things are excellent and profitable for everyone.

This thread has seemingly run through all of the things I have been reading lately, and even some of the music I have been listening to. The ideas from “New Way to Be Human” echo some of the things that Brian MacLaren was communicating in “A Generous Orthodoxy” (although, so far, I’m agreeing more with where Peacock is going, I’m still hoping I perhaps misunderstanding some of MacLaren’s points).

These ideas of what the Christian life should look like, and what properly motivated “good works” look like are fascinating to me (as you can probably tell by previous posts) and they seem to keep popping up, hmmm.

thorns

2005-01-06T20:46:00.000-07:00

Luke 8:5-15 (NIV) “A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path; it was trampled on, and the birds of the air ate it up. Some fell on rock, and when it came up, the plants withered because they had no moisture. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up with it and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up and yielded a crop, a hundred times more than was sown.”

When he said this, he called out, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

His disciples asked him what this parable meant. He said, “The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of God has been given to you, but to others I speak in parables, so that,
“‘though seeing, they may not see;
though hearing, they may not understand.’

“This is the meaning of the parable: The seed is the word of God. Those along the path are the ones who hear, and then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved. Those on the rock are the ones who receive the word with joy when they hear it, but they have no root. They believe for a while, but in the time of testing they fall away. The seed that fell among thorns stands for those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by life’s worries, riches and pleasures, and they do not mature. But the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop.

I Repent - Derek Webb (from "I See Things Upside Down")

i repent, i repent of my pursuit of america's dream
i repent, i repent of living like i deserve anything
of my house, my fence, my kids, my wife
in our suburb where we're safe and white
i am wrong and of these things i repent

i repent, i repent of parading my liberty
i repent. i repent of paying for what i get for free
and for the way i believe that i am living right
by trading sins for others that are easier to hide
i am wrong and of these things i repent

i repent judging by a law that even i can't keep
of wearing righteousness like a disguise
to see through the planks in my own eyes

i repent, i repent of trading truth for false unity
i repent, i repent of confusing peace and idolatry
by caring more of what they think than what i know of what we need
by domesticating you until you look just like me
i am wrong and of these things i repent

Bad, Good, Better

2005-01-03T16:56:00.000-07:00

Christians often seem to operate with the principle that as long as we don't do anything bad then we're doing the right thing. For example, I have often heard (including from myself) thoughts related to finances that follow this type of thinking:

"If I don't give to God, that is bad."
"If I give 10% to God, that is good, and I have 90% left that I am free to use as I want."

In a lot of ways this thinking is good (especially since most of us don't even give 10%), but I think beyond good, there is always better. To continue the finacial example, we certainly have the freedom to spend that other 90% however we choose, but given that most of us here in the US live very comfortably with that 90%, wouldn't it be better to give more than 10% back?

It was in terms of finances that these thoughts came to me, but it really applies to everything:

It is good to go to church every Sunday, it is better to serve at church very Sunday.
It is good to raise a child that is not a criminal and meets societal norms, it is better to raise a child that has a heart for God and whose character stands out as exemplary.
It is good to meet the requirements of your job, it is better to exceed them (better workmanship, more attention to detail, fixing a problem when you are the only one that knows it is a problem, etc.)

We seem content to meet the minimum requirements in everything, unable or (more likely) unwilling to excel at anything except perhaps comfort, entertainment, and prosperity.

When it comes to the Christian life, the kneejerk reaction to this kind of thinking is that it is 'legalistic' and 'works based', but this has nothing to do with salvation (well, justification at least). Sometimes we do have a tendancy to do things because we think we have to to win God's favor, and this is certainly a big problem. But when we do realize what God's grace is all about, and when we experience the freedom that brings, is the appropriate reaction to do nothing for God, or to do only what is easy or convenient?

It is in that very moment of realization, when we recognize how great a gift we've been given, that we should react with a desire to give all we can back to God! This would be an appropriate reaction, driven by love for God, by a desire to be all He wants us to be, and by a desire to enable others to receive the same gift.

So why don't we react that way? For me, the first problem is I often loose hold of that grace. Not in terms of falling from God's grace, but more my mental grasp of that everlasting grace. In those fleeting moments when I 'get it' and understand what I have been given, I am full ready to love God with all my heart, mind, soul, and strength. I need to learn how to make those moments less fleeting and make that understanding part of my everyday life.

The second problem is the same old simple selfishness that continues to be a part of me. I want to spend my time and money the way I see fit. Like all of us, I enjoy excelling only at comfort, entertainment, and prosperity.

The good news for me is that if I can conquer the first problem, the second will fade away as well.

A Generous Orthodoxy (Part II)

2004-12-17T17:11:00.000-07:00

I finished the book last week. It is defenitely a thought-provoking book, a book that causes you to reexamine your assumptions about things, which is a good thing. I've been away from it for about a week, and have had a bit of time to 'digest' what I've read. There is a lot of what MacLaren proposes in the book that tracks with where I'm at at the moment.

I really enjoyed his examination of various Christian denominations (or traditions, if you prefer) and his efforts to take the good from each one. He has a strong focus on eliminating the 'us vs. them' mentality that so often invades the Church.

I have been thinking a lot about his position that the evangelical focus on personal salvation contributes to the problem of Christian 'consumerism'. He argues that the focus on what we as individuals gain from salvation somtimes contributes to the "what can I get out of it" attitude that detracts from the the mission God has given us as a Church in this world. He has an illustration that shows a large circle labeled 'Me' beside a smaller circle labeled 'Church' which is in turn next to an even smaller circle labeled 'World', illustrating an idea of "me first, then my church, then my world." He proposes an alternative that shows three concentric circles, the inner (and therefore smallest) circle now represents 'Me', which is surrounded by a larger circle which represents 'Church', and that is finally contained within the largest circle labled 'World'. This view (at least for me) promotes the idea of putting 'Me' in it's (my?) proper place. In that place, my thoughts are hopefully less about "what can I get out of it" an more on "what is my role in the Church, and what is the Church's role in the world." That kind of thinking would lead, I hope, to thinking about 'Me' more in terms of "what do I need to do to be an effective part of my Church and my world."

Now, I said earlier that this book caused my to reexamine certain assumptions I make. It was important that I do reexamine and not just toss those assumptions (like I think we can sometimes be prone to do when exposed to new thoughts like this). This was especially true when the book turned to certain 'core' subjects like Hell and salvation. The discussion of these subjects in the book (and on the book's blog) led me to review sections of the Bible that discuss these subjects (particularly as Jesus addressed them). While MacLaren was intentionally vague on what he belives about these subjects (see the book's introduction to see why), the trend of where he was going did not fit with my understanding of these subjects.

While I really like his concentric circle model for taking the focus off the individual, I still think salvation is focused on the individual and is not the broader concept that I think he was driving at. Ultimately that is what is important, having every person come to that point of decision. What I'd like to see change is how we bring people to that point, and were we go with them after that point, and that is where I believe the 'concentric' view, the view that puts the Church and the world before the individual, becomes important.

All in all, "A Generous Orthodoxy" was a worhtwhile read. While I may not come to the same conclusions that MacLaren did, it was helpful to me because it provided new ideas and helped me refine my thinking in some areas.

The Religious Left

2004-12-08T15:54:00.000-07:00

For many years, there has been a lot of criticism of the "Religious Right". Criticisms have focused on both the message and the methods of the Religious Right, but while I agree with some of these criticisms what has always concerned me is the fact that this movement has (in my opinion) strayed from what our mission as Christians is supposed to be, specifically the spread of the Gospel. I think this movement has harmed this mission in two ways:

It has diverted a lot of resources (time, money, energy) away from the mission of the Gospel and toward politcal causes.
It has taken the focus off of the message of the Gospel and in some people's minds has made our faith synonymous with a very specific political ideology. Christianity is now often associated more with holding that ideology rather than being associated with being a follower of Jesus Christ. Many who might feel drawn to the message of Christ are pushed away because they feel they have to adopt this same way of thinking.

However, this post is about what I see happening (in part) as a reaction to the Religious Right. More and more, I sense the formation of what I'd call the "Religious Left". What I see as one of the primary tenents of this movement is the importance of social justice, which I wholeheartedly agree has been neglected by the church on many occasions (with, of course, many notable exceptions). But while I'm glad to see this issue addressed, it seems that what I'd call the Religious Left is falling into the same trap as the Religious Right, taking this cause and elevating it above the Gospel, making social justice the most important thing in Christianity.

Personally, I believe that both the Religious Right and the Religious Left are based on valid concerns and beliefs that are important aspects of our faith, I'm just afraid that we go too far (as we often do) and lose sight of what is really important.

By no means do I intend to lessen the importance of faith and politics. It is popular right now to say that these two things must be separate, but I think that is impossible. Our faith should affect how we view the world, and how we view the world will affect how we think our government should operate. I'd rather see the Church solving the world's problems, not the government, but that is the subject for a different post... :-)

Issues of morality (which drive the Right) and issues of justice (which drive the Left) should be important to everyone who is a follower of Christ, who calls Him Lord and Savior, but it is critical that we keep everything in the context of His teaching and the guiding of the Holy Spirit. We can't be following our own agendas, and we cannot overshadow the Gospel with our own good intentions.

Community

2004-11-29T16:52:00.000-07:00

Over the past few months, I seem to keep coming back to the importance of Christian 'community'. I had never thought about 'church' or 'fellowship' in terms of 'community' until a few months ago when a friend referred to our particular local group of believers with that term. That was a positive thing for him, and as I think about things in that light, I can see why.

Now 'community' is just a word, but it is a word of which we have lost the meaning. We drive home from our jobs in other towns, by ourselves in our cars, quickly and anonymously making a stop at our Super Wal-Mart, opening our garages automatically and closing them behind us without interacting with our neighbors, then we order in a pizza and plop down on the couch for an evening of mindless entertainment streamed into our brains. In the midst of that we have no sense of community, no sense of where we live or who lives around us. I think that we don't know what Christian community is in part because we no longer know what geographical community is anymore.

A quick check on www.webster.com shows me a few key definitions of the word 'community':

a unified body of individuals
an interacting population of various kinds of individuals
joint ownership or participation

Each of these is significant to me when I think about Christian community. The first definition is perhaps the most easy to understand, and yet the hardest to accomplish. We are unified by a common set of beliefs (at least at the core), and hopefully we are unified in mission.

“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me." - John 17:20-23 (NIV)

We constantly worry about our apologetics and evangelisim techniques while forgetting that Jesus here said that the world will know who He is when they see us (believers) united. United with Him and with each other.

But very often we don't accomplish this, and I think this has to do with our ignorance of definitions 2 and 3 above. Definition 2, "an interacting population of various kinds of individuals" has been on my mind a lot. We all tend to want everyone to act like us, to think like us, to hold the same opinions we do. But in a healthy community, there is diversity. Different types of people have different talents and skills that make the whole thing work. If a given physical community was full of people that could treat illness, but none that could build houses, that community would not survive, let alone flourish. The same is true of our Christian communities. We need different people with different talents and even different opinions to make our community complete. We need to (gasp) celebrate diversity!

It was he [Christ] who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. - Ephesians 4:7 (NIV)

God intended that we use our different talents (or gifts, if you prefer) so that His body (all of us) will be "built up." Now it would be great if we could all do everything (and to an extent, I think we should each be able to do a variety of things), but if you take any one type of talent, only some of us are going to be able to do that one thing well. And we need those people. All of them.

The best part is that God gave all of us something (or things) that we are good at, we just need to learn what that is. We need to exercise our talents and we need to give people room to express theirs. This leads us into definition 3, "joint ownership or participation." We all have a part in the community that we are in. I prefer the definition "joint ownership and participation" because effective participation in God's Christian community does not happen without ownership of that community's mission.

Finally, it has recently become more important to me to value diversity of opinion, or perhaps viewpoint is a better word. God's word, God's truth, is absolute and unchanging. As individuals, our understanding of that truth is not. We are on a lifelong journey of discovery, and we may not know the whole story until we see God face to face (if even then). Our ability as individuals to grasp that truth is limited by our limited intelligence and our limited experience. But as a group, we can learn about God from each other. We all see God's truth from a different angle, based on from which direction in life we approached Him. When we can listen to each other's stories, each others views of God (all the time taking those views and examining them with reference to scripture) we can see things and learn things we could not hope to learn on our own.

And all of this is what excites me about our community!

How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb

2004-11-29T16:47:00.000-07:00

The new U2 CD is out, and I (of course) love it. Much like their last CD, it took a couple of listens to grow on me, but it quickly did. I've listened to it at least once a day since I got it last Tuesday.

There are a number of lyrics on the CD that I really like, but my current favorite (from "Love and Peace or Else") is:

As you enter this life
I pray you depart
With a wrinkled face
And a brand new heart

A Generous Orhodoxy

2004-11-29T16:27:00.000-07:00

I have just started Brian McLaren's "A Generous Orthodoxy." So far I've just made it through the Foreward, Introduction, and Chapter 0 which is basically a big disclamer. It looks like McLaren is expecting to be attacked from all sides (which he may be), and is trying to state where he is coming from. From my perspective, he is very humbly simply trying to start a discussion, not making an absolute statement. Like what I read in "More Ready Than You Realize," much of what he writes in this part of the book 'resonates' with things I have been thinking about. Hopefully the rest of the book will continue to be, at the very least, thought provoking.

A quote from the Introduction gives an idea of what to expect:

A friend of mine tells me it is a mistake to challenge readers to think because most readers simply want to hear what they already know and agree with, expressed with minimum personality and maximum blandness. I would probably do this if I could because those books sell best, and I have kids in colleges with high tuitions. But another friend told me that learning is not the consequence of teaching or writing, but rather of thinking. So a playful, provocative, unclear, but stimulating book could actually be more worth your money than a serious, clear book that tells you what to think but doesn't make you think.

Which sounds much like my comments about music I like in a previous post... :-)

And that is a great segue to my next post...

One more thing...

2004-11-18T20:06:00.000-07:00

Bill Young of our Salt Lake City sister church(es) was part of the evangelical group that helped organize this historic occasion. See this article about Ravi Zacharias speaking in the Mormon Tabernacle.

Worship

2004-11-18T19:04:00.000-07:00

See my previous post for some thoughts on Brian McLaren. As I was looking for information about him, I came across this very interesting Open Letter to Worship Leaders. He says some things in it that I have been thinking about for a long time. In particular, someone once pointed out to me how 'self-centered' many of our worship songs are, and that has bothered me ever since. There seems to be a place for this type of song, but it there might be an over-emphasis on this type of song. This is one of the points he makes in this article.

But at a higher level, here is a paragraph that I think summarizes what McLaren says (BTW, before you bristle too much at the phrase "postmodern, Christian theology" read the previous post and some of what McLaren has written before you assume what that means):

In the modern world, theology was done by scholars, and was expressed in books and lectures. In the postmodern world, many of us believe that the theologians will have to leave the library more often and mix with the rest of us. And the best of them will join hands and hearts with the poets, musicians, filmmakers, actors, architects, interior and landscape designers, dancers, sculptors, painters, novelists, photographers, web designers, and every other artistic brother and sister possible … not only to communicate a postmodern, Christian theology … but also to discern it, discover it. Because one major shift of this transition is the shift from left-brain to whole-brain, from reductionistic, analytic rationalism to a broader theological holism – a theology that works in mind and heart, understanding and imagination, proposition and image, clarity and mystery, explanation and narrative, exposition and artistic expression.

For me, I think this may be why songs by bands like U2 and The Violet Burning tend to be more meaningful to me. Much like how a good book or a good movie requires us to dig past the surface to see the themes below, how these mediums can take spiritual themes and phrase them in terms of the world we live in, music by these bands (and many bands like them) causes me to think more deeply about subjects than I might otherwise, if I'm willing to dig.

But then, maybe that's just the postmodern in me... :-)

The Emergent movement (conversation?)

2004-11-18T18:33:00.000-07:00

As I searched the web for information about author Brian McLaren, I came across a number of interesting links. McLaren wrote the book "More Ready Than You Realize" that my small group went through a few months back. I'm awaiting the arrival of his new book "A Generous Orthodoxy" (that is the very short version of the title).

A good place to start is this Christianity Today article (the cover article from the most recent issue). In my mind, this is a lot like what we are trying to accomplish in my church (Summitview Community, see link on the side) and even more so in our student church O2, but perhaps with different terminology. One thing that I think might 'scare' many people in the 'circles' I'm in is the emphasis McLaren and the 'Emergents' put on 'postmodern' thinking. As the article says, this is often equated with a belief that there is no absolute truth, however McLaren is careful first point out that he thinks that is no longer true of a lot of postmoderns, and more importantly he is trying to reach people who think in postmodern terms with Christianity in an environment and with language they will understand, not deconstruct Christianity through postmodernism. From what I've read (so far) of his writing, I have not seen much I disagree with theologically (I may know more about that after reading his new book). See this discourse between McLaren and Charles Colson for an intersting discussion about this (note that the link is to the last letter in the discussion, you can 'backtrack' to the rest).

See McLaren's website and Emergent Village for more info.

Fall 2004 GCLI

2004-11-14T21:13:00.000-07:00

I spent the day yesterday at our Fall Great Commission Leadership Institute (GCLI) meeting for the Great Commission Northwest region in Fort Collins. There were a number of great talks, with a lot to think about, but I found myself often coming back to one of the points that Rick Whitney made in his talk "Choices we must make - while we still have the chance."

Point number 5. Will I choose to live frugaly and make careful debt choices? Do I appreciate the wisdom of austerity?
austerity, def.: "plainly simple and unadorned, morally strict, giving little or no room for pleasure."

While Rick's point applies mainly to finances, it certainly spills over to all other parts of life (espcially since how we use our money often defines what is important to us). It does seem to boil down to spending only on the necessary, on the needs and not the wants.

It also raises the interesting question of what role pleasure plays in our life. It seems like God intended created us to experience some level of pleasure. What is the right level? Some would say that once we meet our needs, give our tithe (and perhaps some offerings on top), we are free to use our money as we choose. But it seems easy to indulge ourselevs and spend more and more of that 'extra' money on things that definitely make our lives anything but "plainly simple and unadorned." I personally don't think the life of a monk is what most of us are called to, but I also don't think that the life of an 'average' American Christian is what we're called to either. Where's the right spot in between?

P.S.: By the way, some people like corndogs (not me, but...)

Why I am doing this

2004-11-12T18:02:00.000-07:00

To be honest, I really don't know.

Primarily I just want to see what blogging is all about. If I keep at it, it may become an electronic journal filled with random thoughts. Given my past success at keeping journals, we'll see if this lasts. Maybe having an electronic format and the 'threat' of having other people read it will keep it interesting. We'll see...

...and act like that.

2004-11-12T12:37:00.000-07:00

My blogging experience starts today...