Live Generously

Here are a few thoughts from the weekend…

* I got back yesterday afternoon from a quick weekend in Vegas. I was there for a friend from high school’s bachelor party, and it was the first time I’d been to Vegas since I was 12 years old. It was great getting to hang out with a bunch of old friends that I hadn’t seen in far too long. Las Vegas is a very odd place. On the one hand, it’s pretty spectacular. While there I had the opportunity to stuff my face with crab legs, sing at the top of my lungs in a piano bar surrounded by as many people as the place could hold, take in an amazing Cirque du Soleil show, play War (yes, War) for money at the Monte Carlo, and otherwise enjoy the many sites and sounds of the Las Vegas strip. In that respect, being in Vegas was a lot of fun. On the other hand, the Las Vegas strip was a stark reminder to me of the extreme level of brokenness that exists in our world. As I looked around at all of the glitz, glamor, and excess I was reminded of the banner that Shane Claiborne once displayed in front of the New York Stock Exchange: “There is Enough for Everyone’s Need, but not Enough for Everyone’s Greed”. That’s not the exact quote, but you get the idea. In Vegas there is so much excess, while at the same time half the world is starving to death. On the other hand, there are signs everywhere of a different, but still very real, form of poverty that exists in that city. Whether it was inebriated people stumbling down the street yelling at each other, or middle-aged Hispanic men and women wearing ill-fitting t-shirts that advertised prostitutes, the signs were everyone. From a relational standpoint, it seemed that those few city blocks were deeply, deeply impoverished. Kinda funny to say that about a place that is literally worth billions of dollars. All things considered, it was a great trip and I’m really glad I had the opportunity to be there and celebrate Lou as he prepares to enter married life. On a different level, as you can probably tell, being in Vegas raised all sorts of other thoughts that I am still processing.

One thing I did want to point out, however, is that it is really easy for me to sit here in my apartment at my computer and pass judgment on all of the wealth and excess that exists in Las Vegas. There are people and companies in that city that have more money then I can even comprehend. The danger is doing that, however, is that it can become a means of excusing myself from action. If I can point the finger at someone else (even the very vague entity of “Las Vegas”) I can ignore the fact that I myself am among the richest people in the world, and as such I myself have a deep responsibility to care for the least of these. On that level, being in Vegas got me thinking a lot about Christie and I’s finances and how we allocate our money. The reality is, we all lead lives of excess, rather than pointing the finger at those who are more excessive than we, our call is to use the resources we have to be a blessing to others. That is a reminder that I need frequently.

* On a different note, during my drive to Vegas and back I listened to the book Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. I’d heard all sorts of good things about this book at had been meaning to read it for a long time. To put it mildly, I was disappointed. The book was very well researched and well written, and it is clear that the other is a brilliant thinker. With that being said, I just did not find the subject matter to be all that interesting. He certainly made some provocative claims and backed them up with research, but for each claim he made there was (it seemed) a half hour’s worth of dry, superfluous information. The book is still in the top 200 on Amazon, and has received a ton of favorable reviews, so maybe the problem is with me and not with the book.

*We had another good night at church last night. There were a bunch of angles I could have taken on the passage we were studying (Mark 11:27-12:12), but I decided to focus in on fear and how it impacted the actions of the Pharisees and how it can control our lives. I think a basic reality of life is that we all live in fear on some level, and too often that fear can be absolutely paralyzing. We fear failure so we do nothing. To illustrate this point I was able to share the amusing, yet pathetic, story of the night that Christie and I officially started dating (and how I almost blew it because of, of courses, fear). What I tried to do last night was distinguish between unhealthy fear of things in the world and healthy, reverent fear of God and the hope that comes with that. I know that I need to be reminded not to fear on a fairly regular basis, so it is my hope and prayer that last night was helpful to our group.  The reality is that we worship the things that we fear (think about it, it’s true), and that makes it all the more important that we have a healthy fear of our God who loves us rather than an unhealthy fear of worldly things. It was weird being at Seven24 without being at Overdrive earlier in the day (I was driving back from Vegas). I’m fairly certain that was the first time that had happened, and the result was that when Seven24 started I didn’t even feel like it was evening yet. All and all it was a good night though…during the closing worship set I was thinking about how I really love being at New Song and how it is such a blessing getting to be a part of Seven24. Christie and I are really lucky to be here for this season of our lives.

Ok, that’s all for now…gotta get to work, finals are looming

Recently I was given a copy of the book Do Hard Things: A Teenage Rebellion Against Low Expectations by Alex and Brett Harris. I read it in a couple of days, and can confidently say it should be read by anyone who works with teenagers, and then given to teenagers to read. I don’t have time for a comprehensive book review, but I did want to talk briefly about the book and its message. I, as a 25 year old, was inspired reading it (so much so that I bought a copy for my 18 year old brother), and I believe this book has the potential to make a tremendous impact on youth culture.

The basic thesis that Alex and Brett Harris, founders of the website www.therebelution.com, is that teenagers today are largely conditioned to accept mediocrity, and because of that they rarely live up to their fullest potential. Teens, particularly gifted teens, are rarely fully challenged, and thus can quite easily skate through their adolescence doing just enough to get by. Rarely are they ever truly asked to “do hard things”. This, according to the authors, is a tragic waste of the gifts that God has given young people.

Throughout the book Alex and Brett, both 19 year olds, share stories of some of the “hard things” they have been able to do in their lives (organize a grassroots political campaign, start up a phenomenally popular blog, write a book, etc.), and they share a bunch of other stories of teens who refused to settle for merely getting good grades, doing their chores, and holding down a part time job. The stories of teenagers who accomplished incredible things were simply mind blowing (and made me question how effectively I’ve used the gifts God has given me!).

They focus on five particular types of “hard things”. 1) Things that are outside your comfort zone. 2) Things that go beyond what is expected or required. 3) Things that are too big to accomplish alone. 4) Things that don’t earn an immediate payoff. 5) Things that challenge the cultural norm. Those are all certainly ‘hard things’, and they are things that are unattractive to many of us, particularly teenagers, in our microwave, myspace, instant download, I-want-it-now culture, but ultimately tasks that challenge us in one of the above ways are the ones that are most fulfilling. The Harrises walk through how it is that teenagers, and really all of us, can go about pursuing those hard things while avoiding the more menial tasks of life that often distract many of us from being effective for the kingdom of God.

It is true that we live in a culture of low expectations, and it is also true that gifted students can easily ‘get by’ without fully engaging themselves in their education, their spiritual life, or their other extra-curricular activities. I’ve found that to be true even in my own life, as I’ve often relied on my own intelligence to save me from having to fully apply myself to various tasks. I found this book to be a much needed wake up call for a generation that is slowly being lulled to sleep by our culture of apathy and low expectations.

I highly recommend this book to virtually anyone under the age of 25, and I particularly recommend it to those of you who are involved in youth ministry as either a staff member of a volunteer. It is a very quick read, and time reading it will be time well spent.

To both of you that regularly read my blog, I apologize for the lack of substantive posts recently. I’ve got a lot on my mind that I’d like to write about, but unfortunately this is a particularly busy school week for me, so blogging has taken a back seat for the time being. That being said, I did want to make a few brief comments about some different things that have caught my eye.

1) One of the books I’m reading for my political theology class this week is called, The Beloved Community: How Faith Shapes Social Justice, from the Civil Rights Movement to Today, by Charles Marsh, a religion professor at the University of Virginia. In it there is an amazing quote from a book called A Theology for the Social Gospel by Walter Rauschenbusch. Rauschenbusch writes:

“A Kingdom theology involves the redemption of social life from the cramping influence of religious bigotry, from the repression of self-assertion in the relation of upper and lower classes, and from forms of slavery which human beings are treated as mere means to serve the ends of others…the redemption of society from political autocracies and economic oligarchies; the substitution of redemptive for vindictive penology; the abolition of constraint through hunger as part of the industrial system; and the abolition of war as the supreme expression of hate and the completest cessation of freedom.”

Amen.

It’s always refreshing to hear voices (that are thankfully becoming more and more prevalent) that advocate a theology that includes but goes far beyond personal piety.

2) A document was released yesterday entitled An Evangelical Manifesto. The following is from the document’s website:

“An Evangelical Manifesto is an open declaration of who Evangelicals are and what they stand for. It has been drafted and published by a representative group of Evangelical leaders who do not claim to speak for all Evangelicals, but who invite all other Evangelicals to stand with them and help clarify what Evangelical means in light of “confusions within and the consternation without” the movement. As the Manifesto states, the signers are not out to attack or exclude anyone, but to rally and to call for reform.”

The document is signed by a remarkably diverse group of 80 well known evangelicals including Dallas Willard, Jim Wallis, John Ortberg, and Fuller’s president Richard Mouw, and is supposedly meant to be a bit of a self-critique. It is currently sitting on my desk, but I haven’t had a chance to read it yet (although I very much look forward to it).

The evangelical community is most definitely needs to do some soul searching, so hopefully this document will be a good start. I myself often hesitate to call myself an “Evangelical” simply because of the well-earned litany of negative connotations the word has. Right-wing evangelicalism, I fear, has alienated many young people who love Jesus but are frustrated at the disconnect between the teachings of Jesus and the public issues that tend to attract the most attention from the evangelical community. Sadly, in many cases, this leads to disengagement, rather than a creative and theological search for a more holistic, Jesus-centered spirituality. The shame that many young people feel even at what the word “Evangelical” or the word “Christian” connotes can be seen in something as simple as what Christians tend to put on the “Religious Views” field on their facebook profiles. Responses range from “I love Jesus” to “JESUS!” to “grace” to “disciple” to “the cross”, nothing listed. There is nothing wrong with that (I myself have the religious views field empty), but it does reflect, I believe, the sense of alienation that many young people feel.

The entire 17-page manifesto can be found my following the link above.

3) My wife has been studying the gospel of Luke on her own recently, and wrote a great post last night discussing some of the things that she has learned. I have enjoyed talking with her about some of her insights, and her post is well worth reading.

5) I’ve been thinking about pacifism lately. Partially because I’m reading The Politics of Jesus by noted pacifist theologian John Howard Yoder, partially because of some of the ideas from Augustine’s City of God that I just came across which expand the definition of peace far beyond the absence of armed conflict, and partially just because it seems like something Jesus is a fan of (though I’ve thought that last part for a long time). More on this later…

5) And finally…the Padres suck. They really, really suck.

The end

So it turns out Rob is coming out with a new book.

Jesus Wants To Save Christians: A Manifesto for the Church in Exile, by Rob Bell and Don Golden

Here is the synopsis of the book found on the Zondervan website:

“There is a church not too far from us that recently added a $25 million addition to their building.

Our local newspaper ran a front-page story not too long ago about a study revealing that one in five people in our city lives in poverty.

This is a book about those two numbers.

It’s a book about faith and fear,

wealth and war,

poverty, power, safety, terror,

Bibles, bombs, and homeland insecurity,

It’s about empty empires and the truth that everybody’s a priest, it’s about oppression, occupation, and what happens when Christians support, animate and participate in the very things Jesus came to set people free from.

It’s about what it means to be a part of the church of Jesus in a world where some people fly planes into buildings while others pick up groceries in Hummers.”

Yikes.

If there is one thing I appreciate about guys like Rob Bell and Shane Claiborne it’s that they tell it like it is.  As I read that synopsis for the first time a few days ago I remember thinking that I can’t wait to read the book.  But then I thought something else, and I didn’t particularly like it.  I thought about how they are the problem.  You know, them. The ones who build $25 million church buildings, the ones who pick up their groceries in hummers, the ones who justify war, and use fear to get people to behave in a certain way.  You know, them.

Reading that synopsis made me want to blame someone else, anybody else.  Because there is a problem and it’s someone else’s fault.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t fault Rob for saying what he said…from what I can tell he practices what he preaches and his voice is often nothing short of prophetic. The points he raises are points that desperately need to be addressed.  The problem is with me and my need to find someone else to blame.  As long as there is a them then I don’t have to worry about we, and I certainly don’t have to worry about I, and how i might need to change, how I might need to look inside myself, and how I might be a part of the very problems I so despise in church, society, and the world.

This is something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately, our need to project problems outwards.  Consider the following: We all know people that we consider to be difficult to deal with, yet few of us consider ourselves to be “difficult”.  We can all point out problems in our churches, but few of us consider ourselves to be actively contributing to said problems.  Many of us agree that we live in a culture of excess, and yet few of us are really willing to admit that we live in excess, and even fewer of us are willing to sacrifice our excess.  Many of us complain about the lack of community that exists in our culture (me being one of them), and yet few of us are willing to do the work to establish real community (I know the names of exactly zero of our neighbors). Many of us complain that large church gatherings of college students and young adults turn into nothing more than “scenes”, yet few of us are willing to do the work necessary to change that culture.

This drives me crazy. And I’m as much a part of the problem than anyone.

The bottom line is as long as we seek to project problems outward without taking responsibility for ourselves, nothing will ever get better.  That’s why I appreciate guys like Rob Bell, who are willing to name problems in society, while at the same time doing the work to be the sort of change that they believe Jesus came to make in the world. I suppose the real issue becomes, how can I live less excessively?  How can I better promote real community? How can I help the church become a real ‘community in exile’, rather than simply a ’scene’?  Progress is found in the I statements and questions rather than the they statements, because it’s really easy to throw rocks, but it’s a lot more difficult to turn the mirror inwards.

So I know it’s been quite awhile since I last posted. There has been a lot going on and I have a lot I’d like to talk about. There isn’t a particular reason why I haven’t been posting…other than the fact that I’m lazy. It has been a good last couple of weeks, and here are a few things that have caught my attention:

1) We had a truly fantastic Easter last weekend at New Song. I certainly was not at my best, but I was very proud of our church. I thought everyone did a great job with Sunday morning, and we had a wonderful time of worship together on Sunday night. It was really a great day of celebrating the resurrected Christ.

2) During my spring break I read the book The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief by Francis Collins, the head of the Human Genome Project. My dad, who is not a Christian, recently read the book and he seemed to like it, so I decided it was worth getting a copy of the book and giving it a read. I felt that Collins did a great job of showing how what he knows to be true from his scientific training and what he knows to be true as a Christian need not be seen as contradictory. It particularly recommend the book to those who are Christians and find theories such as young earth creationism and intelligent design to be intellectually unsatisfying. What I most appreciated about the book was Collins’ fair-mindedness. I felt he was very even-handed in his analysis of the various issues that he was considering, and he was cordial towards those with whom he disagreed. I never sensed that he was overly dogmatic, nor did I sense that he sought to belittle those with different persepctives. We need more people who can present their perspectives in the way that Collins does, particularly in the church.

3 ) The Bruins somehow made it to the Final Four. There were some tense moments along the way, but they made it. That is a good thing. The tournament has been a lot of fun this year and has produced several great games. Speaking of March Madness, while my bracket has totally stunk this year, my wife is currently in the 99.9 percentile on espn.com with her bracket. I am humbled and amazed.

4) I just started reading N.T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope the other day. N.T. Wright is a terrific scholar and I am always challenged by reading his writing. So far this book has been about the resurrection, and it appears so far to be a helpful theological corrective. He acknowledges that perhaps the biggest problem when it comes to understanding the resurrection and other issues of life-after-death and eschatology (end times stuff) is simply that many Christians don’t understand what the Bible actually says.

5) Last night at Seven24 we had a woman from Elam Ministries come and share. Elam works to distribute Bibles and otherwise equip the underground church in Iran. It was remarkable to hear stories of what God is doing in Iran. I was both inspired and challenged as I heard about the hunger that the Iranian people have for the Word of God. We have it so easy over here. Towards the end of her talk I asked the woman what we as American Christians in Southern California could learn from our brothers and sisters in Iran. She suggested that perhaps the church in America needs a little bit of persecution in order to wake us up spiritually (not her exact words, but that was the basic gist). I often wonder if she is right. I encourage you to click to their website above and read about some of the terrific work that Elam does.
6) School starts tomorrow. I’m very excited to have another class with Dr. Craig Hovey. He is by far the best professor I have had in my year and a half at Fuller. This class is on political theology and it promises to be a good one.

7) I recently subscribed to Relevant magazine and I have greatly enjoyed the magazine so far. They are speaking the language of twentysomethings at Relevant, and I’ve been impressed with several of the articles I have read. I particularly enjoyed a short essay from the most recent issue that I also just discovered is posted in its entirety here. The piece is called Will We Obey? and it’s written by a guy named Winn Collier. He begins by admitting his distaste for Christian cliches that over simplify faith (a distaste that I fully share), but he then turns the mirror inward and confesses that his frustration with oft cheesy Christian culture has led him to a place of spiritual passivity. In his words:

“I’m noticing the uncomfortable fact that I have used my distaste for Christian cliche as well as my desire for authentic faith illicitly, as a cover for my spiritual passivity. If I imagine everything must be so hard, so complex, so confusing all the time…If I believe honesty requires me to constantly rehash, rethink and circle round and round and round…then I excuse myself from the responsibility of trusting what I do know and from obeying God wherever ) and whenever) He has spoken clearly.”

Collier raises an important point. I believe we are right to acknowledge that faith is more complicated than perhaps we make it out to be, but we are in big trouble if we turn this acknowledgment into a tacit excuse for spiritual passivity. He goes on to quote the great Eugene Peterson, who once said that the most important question we can ask of a passage of Scripture, “What can I obey?” I was deeply convicted by the entire article, as I see in myself and others like me a desire to question and otherwise commiserate about various spiritual issues under the facade of seeking authentic spiritual maturity that is instead hiding a desire to avoid obedience (I’m not sure if that sentence made sense, but oh well). I wholeheartedly believe that questions are good, especially when it comes to faith. But I (we) must not use our questions as a sort of implicit excuse for obedience. Give the essay a read, it will take all of two minutes.

8 ) I got to hang out with my buddy James on Saturday morning. We had a great time talking about our lives and working through various theological issues we have been struggling with. He just returned from Uganda, and is working on starting a great socially pro-active business called Acholi Beads.

9) And finally, I’m teaching on a particularly important passage of Scripture from Mark 9 this weekend. I spent a couple of hours at a coffee shop today studying for the message, and I’m really looking forward to writing the rest of it. It is my hope and prayer that we will have an honest, convicting, and encouraging discussion together this week at Seven24.

That’s it for now…I probably could have written a whole post about all of the above items, but I wanted to at least make a brief mention of all of them. I’ll try to post a little bit more regularly this week…

A few years ago I was told that I absolutely must read this book called The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical written by a guy named Shane Claiborne, who at the time I’d never heard of. To be honest, I am frequently told that I absolutely must read such and such book, so I didn’t really think much of it. Eventually, after being given the aforementioned mandate by several people, I went ahead and ordered the book. And it absolutely blew me away. Shane’s ideas are nothing short of radical, and its voices like his that the church desperately needs. Since reading The Irresistible Revolution I’ve tried to read everything by him that I can, I’ve been to see him speak, and I even bought a little button when I saw him speak that said “God Bless Everyone” and had an American and Iraqi flag on it (I attached it to my computer bag, but sadly it eventually fell off). Needless to say when I heard about his new book, Jesus for President I was pretty excited. It just recently came out, and I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but these quotes (taken from a review of the book posted on Amazon), are certainly intriguing:

“Too often the patriotic values of pride and strength triumph over the spiritual values of humility, gentleness, and sacrificial love.”

“We in the church are schizophrenic: we want to be good Christians, but deep down we trust that only the power of the state and its militaries and markets can really make a difference in the world.”

“Rather than placing our hope in a transitional church that embodies God’s kingdom, we assume America is God’s hope for the world, even when it doesn’t look like Christ.”

I look forward to hopefully sitting down with this book and having it kick my butt in a couple of weeks once finals are over. Publisher’s Weekly has already called the book “the must-read election-year book for Christian Americans.” They’ve got a pretty nifty website for the book that’s worth checking out. If Shane can avoid getting tagged as an ultra-liberal (which some would argue he already has), I believe he has tremendous potential to do a lot of good for the Kingdom of God in a generation that is growing weary of the tired old ways of doing church.