church

Here's a scenario:

Bob and Mike meet.

They soon discover a mutual interest in following Christ.

They decide that they should partner up and do this together.

So they meet regularly, bringing their wives and their kids all together to talk about Jesus.

They read their Bible. They praise God, often in song or poetry.

Over time, their gatherings grow and a few other friends and families begin to attend as well.

They don't write up a statement of faith or anything, but they never get into any weird, unorthodox stuff.

They begin a few traditions, a few standards (think: meeting every other Saturday afternoon, favoring discussion over a sermon, using recliners instead of pews, singing a capella because no one's a musician, no age division, laser lights, arm-wrestling, an occasional post-church stein-hoist). They've got a culture of sorts.

Maybe some of their customs and traditions and methods are unique, or even a little strange. So much so that it might not feel like church to a church-going outsider.

So what is this gathering? Is it a church? Is it the church?

What does it mean if we call Bob and Mike's as-yet-unnamed gatherings "church?"

We're past the point of assuming a church is a building, right? Lots of churches start and meet in people's basements. We'll call their gatherings a church.

So if it's just a couple of dudes and some friends gathering weekly to follow Christ, unusual traditions and all... does this thing, suddenly a "church," immediately get lumped in with the rest of the church (or churches) as a sacred institution? Are they part of the Holy Priesthood, entrusted with the Great Commission, held accountable for all of its blessed finances and how they spend every penny? Holders of the talents while The King is away?

Is every church subject to scrutiny as a sacred institution, or can a church simply be a community of people seeking Christ with their own customs, much like any other earthly, human community - chamber of commerce, moose lodge, Boy Scouts, sewing circle, carving club - except focused on following Christ? Are there sacred churches and non-sacred ones? Where do you draw that line, and what separates them? Rigidly structured organization?

I ask these questions because I have often, in the past, been a bit of a church cynic. "Can't believe they spent money on that." "Why aren't they doing (insert thing I suddenly started thinking was deathly important while in college)?" "What's a "liturgy?" "Why is there no liturgy?" "They should really talk more about (insert thing they didn't talk about the week I was there.)"

I am beginning to think that maybe it's no big deal for a church to have some customs that I don't really identify with, or to lack some that I really do, or to use their money in ways that I wouldn't immediately think to, and simply trust that they probably know what they're doing and don't need me to get all teenage-angsty about it.

I suppose I pose those questions in defense of weird churches.

In the end, there are far more important things to consider about a church than how much money they put into their multimedia, or what the worship team is wearing. For example, what its members are doing the other six days of the week.

"me" as a four-letter word

A good Christian book should give you a nice, solid gut-punch. If it doesn't, go find something else to read.

I just read The Freedom of Self Forgetfulness by Tim Keller (Dude, that's 99 cents on Amazon for the Kindle edition.) It's a short book - only 30-40 minutes to read it, but well worth it if you've got an e-reader. (Go buy it, go now.)

Keller argues, in a more eloquent and exhaustive way than can be blogged, that we shouldn't think too highly or lowly of ourselves, but rather we ought to just... not think of ourselves. Self-forgetfulness and all that. Humility, it's said, isn't thinking less of ourselves, it's thinking of ourselves less. Dwelling on self-esteem is fruitless. There's no need to compare yourself to others. There's no sense in considering how you're going to prove yourself.

For whatever reason, "self" has become a big, horrible word for me lately. I was convicted this summer as I processed our activities and reflected on them that there was way way waaaay too much me in there.

How did I do?
Was I ready for this?
What does this say about me?
How does this reflect me?
...What's next for me?

That last one, especially.

Do we all do this, or is it just me?

(See, there I go thinking about myself again.)

It's a natural tendency to view the thing that you're responsible for as yours. You're running the show. You're (sort of) controlling things. If you're not there, it might not happen. Consequently, you slap your forehead when you forget and pat yourself on the back when you succeed.

And then... It's kind of horrifying to stop yourself and realize that you're thinking about the ministry you're in as yours, and that you're aligning its impact and efficiency with your own, and gauging its success primarily on your own perceptions and feelings. The pressure and back-patting are healthy and relevant to some degree, but the problem comes when its the first thing you go to when you plan, respond, and reflect.

I am guilty of thinking of myself first, and it goes deeper than this ministry. It digs deep into my entire spiritual life.

Deep down, I realize that I am obsessed with my spiritual sufficiency and my spiritual progress, and that I view the world as my story starring me.

Man, all I think about is me sometimes.

"Am I growing closer to God?"

I no longer view that as an innocent, relevant, or even positive question. To approach it grammatically, I am supposed to be the object, not the subject. No matter how badly I want to build myself and prove myself, I am little more than a forgiven recipient of the love of Christ. I have no ground to stand on. There is nothing I can do, no progress that I can make, that can change the way God loves me. Even at my worst - especially at my worst - he would still send Jesus to die for me.

As such, if I have to accept that as true for myself, I have to accept it as true for everyone.

So I've got nothing on you.

And there's no sense in framing everything around myself. And there's no one in the world I've got any right to compare myself to or look down on, or despise, or withhold any of the entire breadth of the love that Christ has shown me. So I better get busy simply imitating the love of Christ, and get my eyes off myself.

I believe that this is a long-standing work-in-progress in me, to let go of myself. This will take some time, I know, and Keller's book was a well-timed read. I'm beginning to see this self-obsession manifested in a number of ways, not least of which is my writing.

I'm considering abandoning my mundane, daily journal, and significantly altering my approach to this blog. I don't want to write about me anymore. Maybe not for a while, maybe not ever.

Life can suck

Following Christ is hard.

It really is, and sometimes life can suck when you follow him.

Please don't misunderstand that - it's undeniably worth it to follow Him, the joy of doing so easily makes up for any displaced temporary happiness that would come from living for yourself, and the eternal reward is unquestionably awesome, but...

sometimes it sucks.

sometimes it's hard.

sometimes it's overwhelming.

I've been chewing on this thought for a couple weeks. I started to write about it a few times, but nothing took because, well, writing a post called "Why Life Sucks" is hard and kinda sucky in and of itself. But over the weekend, we had an event here and one of the speakers helped fuel some thoughts about the suckyness of life.

He preached the prosperity gospel.

I had heard lots about it, thought about it, heard John Piper rail on it, seen it from a distance on the internet, held it as an abstract, seen it on television, but never encountered it in person.

Have you heard it? It's the teaching that it's God's will for you to be wealthy...

and healthy...
and rich...
and living in luxury...
and extravagance...
here on this sucky, broken, sinful planet.

It says you have the dominion and the power that whatever you proclaim, it will come back to you. But only if you've got the faith.

The problem is that most of the heroes of faith were incredibly poor.

And that Christ makes it abundantly clear that if that's the kingdom you live for, you'll have no place in His.

And that it fuels a pessimism and despair amongst those who are dealt terrible circumstances, a perspective that God is not in this, whatever this circumstance is, instead of a hope that God has something better ahead.

...Something that didn't roll off an assembly line in Germany, something that wasn't printed by the U.S. Bureau of Engraving in Fort Worth or Washington, D.C.  The abundant life Jesus promises in John 10:10, and the glorious riches from Philippians 4:19 have nothing to do with a BMW or a stack of cash.

There should be nothing more appalling than the idea that coming to Christ will lead you to riches, to circumstances which, in Christ's own words, make it more difficult for you to enter his kingdom than for a camel to squeeze through the eye of a needle. Christ doesn't need to come with a bonus offer.

On the contrary, being a disciple of Christ comes with a heavy load. It makes life harder.

Look at every hero of the Bible. We overlook the fact that essentially every one of them endured a desert of some kind. Moses' desert was literal. Joseph was a slave. Jeremiah cried all the time. Others were thrown into lions dens or furnaces, spent years on the run. Jesus himself went through a literal desert too, 40 days facing any temptation that man could experience.

I'm sure their struggles didn't come for lack of faith.

We shouldn't overlook this.

Come to Christ and you'll inevitably find yourself in a desert.

Life can suck. Life is allowed to suck.

----

"God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in Him in the midst of loss."
- John Piper, in the video I not-so-sneakily linked to above. Not sure he's the original, but we'll run with him for now.

What I'm Reading

Currently reading: Ordering Your Private World, by Gordon MacDonald

Funny how you can only embrace a book when the time is right. My friend Kim loaned me this book years ago. It's been on my shelf for years. I even tried to give it back once. He asked me "Did you read it?" and I think I politely told him - "I er um uh... no." And so he insisted that I keep it. Welp, I thought, if you insist it's that good, and you don't need it back, maybe I'll hang onto it until I finally decide I need to read it. Or more likely, the day comes that I have a shortage of books and nothing else seems right.

That title, Ordering Your Private World... that is not an attention-getter. That wasn't going to drag me into the book. Even now, I recoil at it a little bit. Order my world? Like a pizza? It doesn't even sound Christian, and if it is, it's probably that Joel Osteen brand or something. It sounds like it should be sold at self-help seminars, like a book for executives or office people, for pastors who give people sound advice, for... for grown-ups. I place myself firmly outside of all of those categories.

And yet... And yet...

I find myself recoiling at the title of the book a little less these days. Maybe I'm creeping toward genuinely needing to get my private world in order.

Ugh. And so here I am, reading this practical book with all of it's practical advice. And there's not a whole lot of that deep, abstract, mind-blowing mystical mysterious Jesus stuff I've gravitated towards, the kind of stuff I thought Kim might recommend. Nope. Common sense. Like how not to suck at budgeting your time. And how to keep your brain in shape.

And It's kinda refreshing. I don't like that it's refreshing, but it is.

This is not a new book, it's an old book. It's not high on the best-seller list, it's not hip (sorry, Gord, but you knew that). But it's a good read, for sure.

I've always wondered how to keep track of all the stuff I'm supposed to know. So I added a little notebook to my life so I didn't have to hold it all in my brain, and I started to write things in it. It's small and I carry it everywhere and I'd be destroyed if anyone ever found it and leafed through all the half-truths and unfinished thoughts and terrible story ideas in it. I write stuff like "buy bananas," and "always tell the truth because it's easier to remember" and "Swearing a lot in my head is probably a violation of Ephesians 4:29... or is it?"

All that to say: there's too much in life to balance and remember on your own. We forget stuff. Little things. Big things. Deep things. Spiritual things. Practical things. So sometimes we need other people to teach us new practical ideas and remind us of some of the ones we're obviously supposed to remember. Every now and then you need to read a book like this.

Maybe you don't need it. I do. I'm disorganized. (Pleeease do not read my little notebook.) And so this book is written for me. And Kim probably saw that I needed all those years ago, and it's a good thing I finally took his word for it. Some of us have a messy private world, which I think is a very concise way of saying we've got a big tangle of stuff we have to privately remember and think about and decide in our heads, hearts, souls. And if that inner world is messy, the outer one will be too.

MacDonald argues early on - and I would agree - that a private world can never really be in order without Christ. He writes in such a way that it's not preachy or overbearing. Even though I'm reading an edition that's as old as I am, it still fits today. For what it's worth, MacDonald has written an updated version that mentions Twitter and stuff.

I won't bother to write much more about it, because MacDonald has covered it fairly well in the book. Which you might want to read.

Someday.

When you realize you need to.

I am still a man in need of a Savior

(I hear the hot new thing is titling blog posts after lyrics from overplayed DC Talk songs. I can still hear Michael Tait singing it...)

Last night, I read an essay by C.S. Lewis called "A Slip of the Tongue," and it resonated deeply with me. He tells how he once said the wrong thing while praying. I do that all the time, and I thank God that He understands my heart over how much I bumble through the words coming out of my mental mouth. But as Lewis says, what he actually said in his prayer may have been a sort of Freudian slip, like he accidentally said the thing he really meant. He meant to ask God - in far more sophisticated words than I'll use here - to help him get past the temporal, earthly stuff and finally focus on the eternal. At least I think that's what he was trying to say, the words were pretty sophisticated. But what he accidentally asked was that God get him through the eternal stuff so he could finally focus on the temporal. He suspects he might be a little more attached to the temporal kingdom than the eternal one.

Lewis, even as the apparent spiritual giant I think he is, admits to always having this sense of caution in his prayer and his devotions, almost to the point of cutting them short, for fear of committing to something that might be tough to carry out in his "ordinary" life. Once he's done praying, is he really gonna follow through on what He promised God in the moment?

He compares it to going down to the sea (Metaphor time: God is the sea) and not diving in, floating, splashing, and fully enjoying it, but instead staying at the edge to dip his toe in. We're afraid to get too far out there and lose our lifeline to everyday life.

Okay, enough C.S. Lewis paraphrasing.

Even that guy, the great theologian, that smart dude who figured a lot of stuff out, who wrote brilliant books and used sophisticated words... he struggled at times to fully grab onto the eternal kingdom.

It gives me some relief. Because as a missionary, as someone who lives in ministry, you're supposed to have a handful of stuff figured out. You are, aren't you? Surely, if you're going to leave life behind and move somewhere else to help people learn about Jesus, you must at least be following Christ. And yet, I'm pretty sure I'm the one learning about Jesus in all of this.

I know I'm not done with growth and epiphanies. I've had enough of them, sometimes over and over again, and I've seen enough people well beyond my years, older heroes of the faith, confess to discovering things about God, that I know this takes some time.

I'm still working out what it means to truly follow Christ. I see C.S. Lewis talking about lifelines to the shore, to normal everyday life, and I'm convicted because I know that I have them, even when I thought I'd left them. I read him talking about approaching prayer, devotions, time in God's presence with caution, and I'm convicted because I know I'm afraid of where he might ask me to go, or what he might ask me to do or give up or sell, or what higher standard he might have me pursue, if I were fully submissive to him.

I think all of these things, and I'm out here serving him. Not that it makes me feel inadequate but... it kind of does.

After all, we're all inadequate. We all fall short. We're never complete, no matter how old we get, no matter how wise we get... no matter how far we move away to serve Him.

I think the thing is this: Pursuing Christ, following him, is not a one-and-done decision, it is a continual one. Your salvation experience is not the end of your testimony, it's the beginning. We do not make one decision to follow him, we make them all the time. We embrace the nature of following him. We don't abandon our lives once, we do it everyday.

Obligatory link to song with lyrics from title of post, harkening back to 1996: 

Book of James

The barber finishes one man, and the chair opens. Another man, young, too young to be here, too young to have hit bottom, has been sitting impatiently, bouncing his knees, tapping his feet, and elbows another man out of the way to get into the chair first. The barber shrugs and dutifully, carefully buzzes away while The Dentist on the microphone welcomes them, announces birthdays, thanks volunteers, shares prayer requests. When the barber finishes, the young man gets up and pulls a women's compact from his pocket while another guy sits down in the barber chair. He looks at himself in the tiny mirror, turning his head back and forth, checking the fade in front of his ears, furrowing his brow, noticing something isn't quite right. He still has his vanity. There's pride, intensity, don't-mess-with-me in his eyes.

The Dentist prays, and the barber has his head bowed, but the young man starts to elbow him. He looks at the barber, tries to get his attention, then looks at his fresh do in the tiny mirror, then at the man trying to get him to shut up while The Dentist prays, then back at the barber, then back at the man trying to get him to shut up. The Dentist finishes and the barber silently makes an imperceptible fix on the young man's sideburns. He whips out the compact again, and nods approvingly.

Volunteers hand out meals to all the men and women at the tables. The rule is, you don't get clothes until you've eaten. No more clothes at seven. But the young man with the fresh haircut comes, stakes a claim on a pair of shoes before he's had his meal.

Don't give it to him, Jose. Because soon, they'll all be up here.

Jose hands him the shoes he wants.

Crap.

Soon, there's a crowd. Clothes start flying, in all shapes, shades, sizes, just like the addicts here.

Big ones, with beer on their breath. Size 38 waist please.

No tenemos 38.

I shuffle through the pile of pants.  

Aqui, 40. Pero no hay 38.

The words I'm most comfortable with come out in that lispy, cut-off Puerto Rican accent that I'm trying not to pick up. He rejects the pants for now, but comes back for them later.

Another one, with no voice, no teeth, lips curling over his gums, holds up nine fingers and points to his feet. This is a language I can understand. I dig for size nines in a shopping cart. They're already gone.  

Lo siento, señor, no hay nueves.

Another one, so very skinny, asks for size 30 pants, makes his request with gravel in his voice, it's rough and jagged like volcanic rock, the roughest I've ever heard. It's a wonder he can still use it. I fish him out some 29s.  

Size 29 jeans?

There are women, too. One was up front, for her birthday, they sang her at least three variations of the birthday song, as Puerto Ricans like to do. Big bandages on her arms in three places, three places where there was pain, and then escape, and now healing. Someone told me the puncture wounds get infected and they often leave them untreated and the skin rots away, down to the muscle, to the bone.

For some of the people here the symptoms are obvious. You can smell them on their breath, hear them in their voice, see them in the wounds on their arms, on their face, so clearly struggling, sitting on the bottom of society, providing examples of "At least I'm not..."

For some of them, the symptoms are not clear. They're clean, they're getting by with clean clothes and fresh haircuts, you wouldn't know it by looking at them.

Here, they're fed, they're clothed. Their wounds are treated, they're bandaged, welcomed back whenever they want.

Christ is followed here.

The other side of service

Last night I had garbage duty in the dining hall. It's a pretty simple set up, really. You stand behind a table, people come up and drop off their plates, napkins, utensils, cups, and extra food. You sort all of that out so it fits into one garbage bag. Feeding 200 World Changers can lead to lots of bags of garbage if you're not careful.

I'm careful. I'm also good at Tetris, so I'm a pretty good at dropping stuff in place as it comes in. And I was a dishwasher a bunch of years ago, so I'm pretty good at arranging food waste and getting covered in filth. I have a system, and I stick to it. It's more refined than I care to admit.

So garbage duty isn't a big deal to me. I actually like doing it, it's a chance to serve other people and bless them. All they have to do is set their stuff down on the table. I handle everything else. And blessing others blesses me. So I get to stand there with a smile on my face and talk to people as they come up, and I make their life just a tiny bit easier.

Sometimes, though, people ignore the system. Even though I am standing there wearing my gloves and handling everyone else's garbage, they still choose to come up and take care of it themselves. Usually, it's the adults.

They mean well. I know what they're thinking:

"I don't want to be a bother."

"I can do this myself."

"Don't worry, I got this."

They'd hate for some poor missionary guy to have to handle their garbage for them. So they come back behind the table and place their stuff in the wrong bins and get in my way and - come to think of it, steal my blessing.

I am there to serve, but they don't want to be served. They take my service away.

Sometimes people would just rather not be served.

Take footwashing, for example. It's far more awkward and uncomfortable for the person allowing their feet to be washed than for the person doing the washing. Your feet stink, and they sweat, and that's terribly inconvenient for anyone getting close to them. But Jesus did it. Imagine Jesus washing your smelly, nasty feet. Now there's an image for you.

It's uncomfortable to let somebody serve you. It can be uncomfortable to need to be served. "I don't want to be a bother" and "I don't want to be served" are not all that different.

Are you good at letting people serve you?

I'm not. Some people - Christians in particular - are very eager to give, but would rather not receive. After all, we're told 'tis better to give than to receive.

But receiving service is different. After all, becoming a Christian has an awful lot to do with recognizing that you need help.

Sometimes, people genuinely want to serve you.

And there's nothing wrong with allowing someone to serve you. So let them do it. Don't take away their service.

So the next time you see me in the garbage line at CDC, with my hand out...

Don't worry, I got this.

Points of View

I've been reading Rob Bell's book, Love Wins.

Where was I two months ago, right?

I often attended Mars Hill and typically appreciated Bell's teaching style, as well as the laid back atmosphere of his church, and the band's unique infusions of popular Rock/Indie/Disco/Funk tunes with modern worship songs. Also, the services started at 11. That goes a long way when you're delivering pizzas until 2 am.

I had a Love Wins bumper sticker on my last car, and still have one on a music book. I also have a Jesus Wins bumper sticker put out by another West Michigan church to contrast it.

Maybe love wins, but publicity definitely does. I heard buzz from plenty of Puerto Ricans (and Americans, and news outlets, and blogs, and relatives, and... yeah) about some unorthodox ideas from a pastor I knew fairly well, through many church services over many years.

They were saying all kinds of things
about what he was saying,
and what he was saying
didn't seem to be in line with
what
others
had
always
been
saying.

Questioning Gandhi's eternal resting place?

Universalism?

Must investigate.

I visited a Universalist church once. Didn't care for it. Their congregation was surprisingly aged, but the building was beautiful. I really couldn't see how embracing every religion and worldview gave them any kind of framework to make sense of God, the world, sin, death, anything. Their syllabus was far too open, kinda like taking a class on "Stuff." What are we going to learn about today? "Stuff." How do you study for that? How do you leave and go home and ponder that and come back the next week seeking something deeper, something concrete, something to stand on? How does that change your life? They had pagan verses in their hymn books. The sermon was self-helpish. It was Oprah church. I could have stayed home and watched Oprah.

A Christian church, on the other hand, has a framework. There's a Bible, there's tradition, there's a refined approach with a limited swath. You can gauge the Pastor's teaching against the Bible. Is he right or wrong? Why? It's in the Word. Go read it for yourself. At a Universalist church, you just kinda have to decide if the pastor is smart and take his word for it.

All that to say: Rob Bell isn't that kind of Universalist. I don't know what he is. He still uses the Bible as a framework, he still says Jesus is The Way. He just says it with a twist, one that I can't really refute, support, or explain. I'm not convinced he's a heretic or anything, though I do think there are some questions a laymen like myself can ask that a Christian pastor with a wide following probably can't, at least without complications and blowback. It's one thing for me to be at home, watching TV, wondering - What am I going to eat for dinner? What if God lets everyone into heaven anyway? Where are my socks? It's another for a pastor to write a book about it.

His book is okay, as far as readability goes. I'm about 80% of the way through it and mustering motivation to finish it. Some of what he says, I like. Some of what he says, I don't really have an opinion on. Some of what he says, I don't agree with. But for covering such a controversial topic, the book is pretty boring. Maybe that's because I often read it when my eyelids are already heavy (*Not a good state in which to read your Bible, btw.) He devotes a lot of it to asking questions, many of which he doesn't answer. And I think that's what he set out to do - ask a lot of questions. I'm cool with that. I'm all about getting to the bottom of why we believe what we believe.

We were riding up to church in San Juan on Sunday and I had the book in my lap. A friend was riding shotgun and asked me about it. He's pretty opinionated. He'd admit this. So he asked me about the book...

I articulated Bell's point of view as well as I could and diplomatically said there were some things about it I like and some that I don't. He went on to aptly debunk most of what I said, at least as he understood it, quoting scripture along the way.

I found myself defending Rob Bell's point of view. Which is interesting because it's not one I particularly agree with. I do this a lot, it turns out. In this instance, my inclination was to back up Rob Bell's book because the person debunking it by their own admission hadn't read it.

I don't consider myself very argumentative, and I don't really care about winning an argument or being especially convincing. I just like discussion. I often take a centrist viewpoint. Maybe that makes me wishy-washy. I've been accused of that before.

Or maybe it's just more fun to argue with someone you agree with. That way, they defend my point of view, and they typically do it better than I could.

No Conviction, by Peter Rollins

I came across this today and thought it was worth sharing.

No Conviction, by Peter Rollins

A parable about you and your potential future...

In a world where following Christ is decreed to be a subversive and illegal activity, you have been accused of being a believer, arrested, and dragged before a court.

You have been under clandestine surveillance for some time now, and the prosecution has been able to build up quite a case against you. They begin the trial by offering the judge dozens of photographs that show you attending church meetings, speaking at religious events, and participating in various prayer and worship services. After this, they present a selection of items that have been confiscated from your home: religious books that you own, worship CDs, and other Christian artifacts. Then they step up the pace by displaying many of the poems, pieces of prose, and journal entries that you had lovingly written concerning your faith.

Finally, in closing, the prosecution offers your Bible to the judge. This is a well-worn book with scribbles, notes, drawings, and underlings throughout, evidence, if it were needed, that you had read and re-read this sacred text many times.

Throughout the case you have been sitting silently in fear and trembling. You know deep in your heart that with the large body of evidence that has been amassed by the prosecution you face the possibility of a long imprisonment or even execution. At various times throughout the proceedings you have lost all confidence and have been on the verge of standing up and denying Christ. But while this thought has plagued your mind throughout the trial, you resist the temptation and remain focused.

Once the prosecution has finished presenting their case the judge proceeds to ask if you have anything to add, but you remain silent and resolute, terrified that if you open your mouth, even for a moment, you might deny the charges made against you. Like Christ, you remain silent before your accusers. In response you are led outside to wait as the judge ponders your case.

The hours pass slowly as you sit under guard in the foyer waiting to be summoned back. Eventually a young man in uniform appears and leads you into the courtroom so that you may hear the verdict and receive word of your punishment. Once you have been seated in the dock the judge, a harsh and unyielding man, enters the room, stands before you, looks deep into your eyes and begins to speak,

"Of the charges that have been brought forward I find the accused not guilty."

"Not guilty?" Your heart freezes. Then, in a split second, the fear and terror that had moments before threatened to strip your resolve are swallowed up by confusion and rage.

Despite the surroundings, you stand defiantly before the judge and demand that he give an account concerning why you are innocent of the charges in light of the evidence.

"What evidence?" he replies in shock.

"What about the poems and prose that I wrote?" you reply.

"They simply show that you think of yourself as a poet, nothing more."

"But what about the services I spoke at, the times I wept in church and the long, sleepless nights of prayer?"

"Evidence that you are a good speaker and actor, nothing more" replied the judge. "It is obvious that you deluded those around you, even deluded yourself, but this foolishness is not enough to convict you in a court of law."

"But this is madness!" you shout. "It would seem that no evidence would convince you!"

"Not so," replies the judge as if informing you of a great, long-forgotten secret.

"The court is indifferent toward your Bible reading and church attendance; it has no concern for worship with words and a pen. Continue to develop your theology, and use it to paint pictures of love. We have no interest in such armchair artists who spend their time creating images of a better world. We exist only for those who would lay down that brush, and their life, in a Christ-like endeavor to create a better world. So, until you live as Christ and his followers did, until you challenge this system and become a thorn in our side, until you die to yourself and offer your body to the flames, until then, my friend, you are no enemy of ours."

Trees and Choices

I ran into this question the other day, about the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil:

"Why would God keep Adam and Eve from consuming knowledge?"

It came in a dialogue with an atheist. It's a fair question, one I hadn't thought about before. And having already been convicted to know The Word better - a lot better - I saw it as a perfect opportunity to probe Scripture a little more deeply.

Before this question came up, there was another - how many people did Satan kill in the Bible? This often gets paired with "...and how many people did God kill in the Bible?" It's a question I think is usually intended to bait us into realizing that God did some disagreeable, some would say nasty, things in the Bible. Satan didn't outright kill anyone. God was smiting all the time, 24-sev, it would seem. But Satan helped ensure long before we were born that we would all die a very real death.

Long and short of it: God gives Adam a beautiful garden chock-full of tasty fruits.

"Go, children, run amok! Except... That tree over there in the middle, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, it's got special fruit. If you eat it, you're gonna die."

All things considered, it was a reasonable request. I think I could have lived with it.

Satan comes and helps Eve out a bit with some crafty wording. "Pshhaw," he says, "God knows if you eat it, you'll be like him. You'll know the difference between good and evil."

And what could possibly be wrong with that?

Eve bites it. Shares it with Adam. Just like that, models number 000000000001 and 000000000002 have blown it fairly quickly. Fast forward a few thousand years, and the world is a really messed up place. Clearly, eating the fruit had some consequences.

But - death? For knowing good and bad? Aren't we supposed to know that anyway? To a skeptic, it's all pretty harsh, Bro.

I like talking to atheists because they ask "Why?" where I never thought to. And then I need to go read the Bible. Which I clearly need to do a lot more. So I read Genesis 1-3. Again. umpteenth time.

God gave Adam everything. Nice spread, tasty fruits like I mentioned. He was sufficient. Adam was one happy, naked dude. Blissfully ignorant too, I think. And yet - there was another tree there, a choice.

"Eat whatever you want. But there's a tree right over there, and if you eat its fruit," - here, I think, God issues a warning, not a threat - "It will kill you."

The death comes not so much from God's smiting, with Him being bent on destroying his woefully curious and skeptical underlings, but from the choice of separation from Him. You can trust Him and enjoy Him, be satisfied by Him and find yourself whole in Him. You could eat the fruit forever. But to eat fruit from the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was to want to be like Him, to call Him insufficient. It was arrogant, it was prideful, it was rejection. And that rejection bringeth death.

Pursue God, and things fall into place. (...He will make your paths straight.)
Reject Him, and everything falls apart.

Israel did it over and over again. Adam and Eve did it, too. God kicked them out. Their garden and its tasty fruit were gone forever. But - lest you doubt that God is good - he hooked them up with some clothes before they left. I love that.

You can't come back. But you're gonna need these...

There is no God like You, part one

I made the drive back to camp tonight with the radio on. Sometimes, music is perfect for the drive; other times, I need some dialogue, another human voice in the car. Tonight it was the latter. I love radio preachers. So at first, it was Dr. David Jeremiah, telling me about mercy - mercy is God withholding what I deserve. And grace - Grace is God giving me what I don't deserve. I like that summary. I'm a big fan of grace.

His sermon ended, they teased me with a Chuck Swindoll promo. I love that guy. But the next show wasn't his, and they moved onto something else less preachy. So I moved onto another station: NPR.

Sunday nights, they broadcast Speaking of Faith, "a conversation about belief, meaning, ethics, and ideas." I'm a fan of this conversation. So I listened. The show is about to change its name, so I guess it makes now a good time to play some snippets from its last epoch before the big change. Over the years, they've spoken to lots of people about lots of things. Buddhists, Yoga Instructors, Desmond Tutu, all part of the conversation searching for some deeper meaning to life. I'm sufficiently convinced that the meaning of life comes from Jesus Christ, God's son. All of these opposing viewpoints point out just how strikingly intolerant my worldview is. But then they played a clip of a Kenyan woman singing a Swahili song with some lyrics I recognized. "Hakuna Mungu kama wewe," was the line - they would sing this while they were planting trees, the woman on the radio said. It was a refreshingly beautiful, enlightening moment, hearing how someone raised from a different culture would worship. She sang it again and again, unwavering, confident. I'll break it down for you:

Hakuna - If you've seen the Lion King, you've know from Pumbaa and Timon that "Hakuna Matata" means no worries. Hakuna means "No," as in, "There is/are no"
Mungu - God
Kama - like
Wewe - You.

There is no God like You.

As in, You're the only one.

What a strikingly intolerant worldview.

(to be continued. Soon, I swear.)

Chasing God

I was browsing the science section at Barnes and Noble yesterday, looking for books about brains. Deep down, I'm a nerd who happens to be no good at science. I got bad grades in all of my science classes, from jr. high through college. To hell with science. But the brain - it's cool. It's fascinating. There’s this wrinkly thing inside your head and it makes you think and feel, gives you real smiles and fake ones for photographs, remembers names and places and directions, keeps your heart beating, helps you swerve to avoid accidents on Tuesday nights when the roads are slippery and people run red lights. The brain gives you wonder, wonder about life and people and how your brain works and – and God.

As I was looking for brainy-related enlightenment on the shelves at Barnes and Noble, one book caught my attention because I saw the letters G-O-D. And since I happen to know Him, it piqued my interest and I picked it up.

The crossroads of God and science are fascinating. I don’t travel them very often, but it’s an interesting place. This book, however, was called “God: The Failed Hypothesis. How Science Shows that God Does Not Exist.” Imagine my elation at finding a book about my creator, and the ensuing dismay at learning it was about how he isn’t. Doesn’t exist. Period. How you write a whole book about something that doesn’t exist, I don’t know, but this guy – Victor J. Stenger – seems to have done it.

I guess I always thought that if and when someone finally proved that there’s no God, there would be a lot of media coverage and lots of red-faced Christians. And Jews. And Muslims. And some very satisfied atheists and some relieved agnostics. I guess – if his proof is real - we just haven’t heard about it yet.

To make a good evaluation of the book, I would have to read all of it. But like I said above, I'm no good with science. And I'm not exactly sure how nature can be used to prove that something above nature (in other words, super-natural) doesn't exist. That's why I said, "to hell with science," because science, if it's used to deny God, is probably headed exactly there.

On the back there was a quote from Richard Dawkins about how great the book was. Part of it said, “Stenger drives a pack of energetic ferrets down the last major bolt hole and God is running out of refuges in which to hide.” It struck me how much effort people put into proving there’s no God, and how important it is to them to do so. They have to chase Him out of His hiding places. I guess they think they’ve got Him on the run or something.

Dawkins wrote one of many God-debunking books that has come out recently, his called “The God Delusion,” which I didn’t read (yet). And I didn’t read much of Stengers book. If I ever took either one of them on in a debate, I’m sure I would get schooled. And then I would go home and read my Bible and pray and go to bed.

Atheism isn’t new. People have always found reasons to object to God, and I understand that. There’s injustice in the world and God, it seems, remains invisible. History and the present are full of examples of hypocritical Christians and a church that did some nasty things. (Though, to be fair, Maybe God’s not invisible because there are lots of Christians fighting poverty and hunger in His name, and it never made sense to me to judge the merit of something based on those who do it wrong - its most off-base and hypocritical practitioners.) So I don’t blame people for objecting to God. I don’t agree with them, but I don’t blame them.

What I can’t understand is the vehement opposition to God from people who have decided He doesn’t exist.

I am an evangelical Christian. I believe God created the world, sin wrecked it, and that we’re reconciled only by Christ’s perfect life, death, and resurrection. I believe that when we accept that reconciliation, we spend eternity with God. If we reject it, we spend eternity without Him, the experience ranging from things still being broken to things being absolutely horrifyingly awful. You won’t blame me for trying to spare people from that.

But if God isn’t there, as they believe, then there probably isn’t much purpose in the universe. Unless you make some up for yourself. So I can’t understand the concern atheists have for Christians believing what we believe. Why the crusade to convert me? To help me out of my ignorance? Sounds like evangelism to me.

The Hardest Thing in the World...

...is probably iron. Or titanium. Or calculus.

Or maybe not.

From our earliest Sunday School lessons, we're taught that to get to heaven, you have to ask Jesus into your heart. Finding chapter & verse for that is a little tough to do ("...confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that Jesus is Lord," Romans 10:9, comes close. I guess.), but it's something generally accepted, something no Christian is really going to dispute. You won't hear anyone advise a toddler that he's woefully misguided in believing it. We can pretty much all agree that asking Jesus into your heart, in other words asking him to be your boss, is where salvation begins.

The simplicity of it is astonishing: The key to immortality is simply to believe. We're dead and doomed until we do it. And while I'm not a fan of oversimplified Christianity-as-a-ticket-through-the-pearly-gates theology, belief in Christ is essential to Real Life. To be frank, the simplicity is necessary in dealing with kids, but becomes a big problem when dealing with adults. It's a big hangup. It is the hangup of all hangups. It's the sultan of snags, the colossus of clogs, the - okay, no more Babe Ruth analogies in my theological discourse.

"You mean to tell me that to live forever, all I have to do is believe Jesus was who he said he was?" It's all too simple. There's no way that's all there is to it. There are lots and lots of excuses for people to reject Christianity, and this is a big one. I've had to stop at this point countless times when trying to straighten this whole thing out in my head. It just can't be this easy. There has to be something I can do. There has to be some amount of money I have to donate, some number of souls I have to save, some vast and confusing code of conduct for me to follow. Right? There's no way all I have to do is just believe something.

Except.

Except, it isn't simple. It's the hardest thing in the world to do. Ever since Adam took a bite of a watermelon (I like to picture it as a very large watermelon and I think I'm allowed to) it's always been all about us. That's what sin is: It's putting ourselves in front of others. Ingrained from birth is the desire to serve ourselves. It's all about personal achievement and self-serving opportunity. We have to compare ourselves to others, and find some way to elevate us over them. This is where the simple-sounding confession becomes the hardest thing in the world: Inherent in believing that Jesus is who he said he is is the confession that we are not who he said he is. Following Christ begins when we stop following ourselves. That's the point at which God says, "Okay, it's not about you anymore. Now we're cool." It goes against countless generations of believing it is all about us.

It always comes back to pride and humility. This is why we find it so hard to apologize, to fess up for wrongdoing, to admit our own shortcoming. We simply cannot allow the flaws and chinks in our armor to show. The myth is, sadly, perpetuated even in the church. And the church and Christianity and all of this are simply not engines that can run on self.

(Don't get me wrong, Christianity isn't completely void of achievement. God built us to want to achieve things, I think. Otherwise, nothing would ever get done and none of use would ever move out of our parents' basements.)

The world finds Christianity so hard to buy because they think something is simple when it is anything but simple. It's actually really, really hard.

The Golden Compass Boycott

The notice showed up in my facebook inbox a few days ago. A friend had invited me to join the group “Do NOT Support The Golden Compass.” I noticed that several of my friends had already joined. Now, I am very particular about the groups I join on facebook. I have to be absolutely sold on a particular ideology before I align myself with it (See: Pudding is Awesome, It’s Funny When Old Ladies Swear, Backpacks on Wheels are NOT COOL, etc.) Now, I had no intention of seeing the movie, more out of disinterest than religious zeal. I had seen the previews and the posters, and it appeared to me to be another big-budget ($180 million) rehash of a children’s novel (one I’ve never read), a convenient way for a movie studio to cash in at Christmas time.

So I decided not to join. But I did look into why people were upset about it.

Turns out, The Golden Compass is the first book of religious skeptic Philip Pullman’s trilogy His Dark Materials. (If the compass is, in fact, golden, Mr. Pullman, is it not shiny? How, then, can it also be dark? What do you think of that? Unless it’s tarnished gold. Or “dark” as in evil. Hmm. Touche, Mr. Pullman.) From what I’ve read, the book portrays religion and clergy as evil or in the very least, nasty, and his idea of the afterlife doesn’t line up with Christianity’s vision of heaven. In the final book, so I hear, the god-figure is unveiled as a fraud, and gets killed by children. But, like I said, I haven’t read any of these so I don’t know a whole lot about it.

So, there you see, why some people are getting all hot-and-bothered by yet another controversial kids book/movie with unchristian religious themes. Their problem is with the soft sell: Kids will watch the movies, which may or may not be watered down and “safe” versions of the books. Then, they’ll want to read the books and will hate the church and the whole generation will go to crap and all the kids will become atheists. After all, children are fragile little things, always teetering right on the edge of pursuing devil-worship. And, as we all know, ever since Harry Potter came out, there’s been an epidemic of pre-teen sorcery. I guess we’ll have to start over with the next batch of Sunday-schoolers.

Really, that’s what it amounts to: Allowing kids to see this movie will doom an entire generation to the fires of Hades. Better to not let them see it at all than to subject them to it and have to talk to them about it. Sometimes we Christians aren’t big fans of dialog. Are we afraid? Is that what it is? Since when did a movie threaten our eternal securities? Since when did we not like conversation, and questions, and doubt, anyway? I thought God was bigger than that stuff. I thought God was bigger than my doubts (and the boogeyman, Godzilla, or the Monsters on TV), that He was bigger than some story by an atheist. This is just one more thing to tell kids not to touch, and by doing so to make them curious about it.

In the last few days, the anti-Golden Compass movement has gotten ample press. (See: CNN.com) What, exactly, is the message we want to send with a boycott? That we, as Christians, have the buying power to squash movies we disagree with? Or is it that we have an endless supply of things to get uptight about? Or is it that we're afraid?