Live Generously

So, the expression is “Monday morning quarterback”, but I’m running a few days behind schedule.  I want to make a semi-regular habit out of blogging about whatever I talk about at Seven24, more for the purpose of reflecting further on the topic than anything else.

This last Sunday we finally got our “10 Big Questions” series off the ground.  Truth be told there is a big part of me that is relieved to have it finally started.  The weeks leading up to the series were a somewhat tenuous time of uncertainty, as it was unclear for a while whether or not the series was even going to go on. Thankfully, people turned in some good questions, we were able to select ten (or so), and will be spending the rest of the summer answering said questions.  The name of the series is a bit of a misnomer, as “10 Weeks of Big Questions” would be more accurate.  There are two topics that will be given two weeks each, while some weeks will tackle multiple questions within the same topic.

We started off the series with the question, “How do I connect with God?”

I like that question because it is practical.  We were made for intimacy with our creator, yet said intimacy is some what of a learned skill. It doesn’t just happen.  It’s not the natural by-product of church attendance, nor does it result from clapping along to worship songs. We must learn the tools to connect ourselves to God, and then use these tools to develop that connection.

I also don’t like this question.  It’s not that it’s a bad question (it most certainly isn’t) nor is it a terribly difficult question to answer (fairly easy, in fact).  I don’t like this question because it tempts me to employ virtually every tired church cliche in the book in my efforts to answer it.  It tempts me to present connecting with God as something as simple as turning on the TV or poking a facebook friend.  It tempts me to present connecting with God as something entirely divorced from character formation.

It is, of course, none of those things.

That being said, one could easily make the argument that the gospel of suburban American  individualistic Christianity has led us to believe that it is all of those things.  I’ll spare you the unnecessary rant, but suffice to say that the more I considered this question last week the more taken aback by it I was.

We are, after all, talking about God here. A God who is at once infinitely greater than we are and incalculably humble. A God who holds our breath in his hands and yet desires that we would use that breath to develop a relationship with him. The fact that we can even ask questions about connecting with God is truly remarkable, if we stop for long enough to think about it.

So this last Sunday night I spoke primarily about what “connecting with God” really is, and what it isn’t.  I talked about the ways that Jesus defies our efforts to reduce spirituality to reading our Bible and attending church.  I talked about how such practices are never the point, but are a means to an end.  The end is the imitation of Christ.  If we lose sight of the end, the means lose their significance.

I played a lot of sports as a kid, and for the most part, I enjoyed going to practice.  However, on those rare weeks when, for one reason or another, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to play in that weekend’s game, the practice lost much of its significance.  It is its relevance for the game that makes practice make sense.  When such relevance is lost, the practices become bland, boring, and frustrating.

That is the problem with practice-based Christianity.  A version of Christianity that says the definition of a healthy spiritual life is consistent Bible reading and church attendance.  Or, said differently, the ends of Christianity are practices of that sort.  I myself have bought into that lie, having characterized my spiritual life by how many “quiet times” I’ve had in a given week one too many times.

Having said all that, let me seemingly contradict myself (”seemingly” being the operative word), by saying that “practices”, or “spiritual disciplines” are still hugely important to connecting with God.  Spiritual disciplines are of immeasurable benefit in helping us to further our relationship with the God of the Bible (rather than some vague notion of god that is simply a glorified version of ourselves). It is, however, their usefulness in the game that gives these practices their vitality.

That was essentially the message I tried to get across on Sunday, and it is one I believe in deeply. Without spiritual disciplines–study, prayer, meditation, worship, accountability, confession, etc.–our faith can easily descend into Prozac for the soul. However, the practice of spiritual disciplines that do not transform us and tangibly effect our lives can lead to tired religion.  Both of these not-so-good alternatives distract of from imitating Christ, and leave us looking just like the world.

I sincerely hope that this Sunday night was a hopeful time for our group.  The reality that God wants to connect with us is very good news, as is the fact that there are concrete practices that can aid us in establishing that connection.  Perhaps the best news of all is that these practices are not to be done for their own sake, but rather they are to be done because they have the capacity to form us into the image of our Creator.

Even though it happened more than seven years ago, it remains tattooed on my brain.

It was my senior year in high school, and I was a member of my high school’s student newspaper staff. At the time, I was still in my they-will-know-we-are-Christians-by-all-of-the-Christian-junk-we-show-off stage, so I took pleasure in advertising my Christian faith through t-shirts, jewelry, as well as stickers and drawings on notebooks, backpacks, and other personal items (even though, lets be honest, adherence to the radical way of Jesus was the furthest thing from my mind). To a lesser degree, I advertised it on my journalism computer’s desktop background as well.

For most of my senior year I was seated in my journalism class next to a gentleman who was somewhat hostile towards Christianity. I certainly don’t mean to say he was a bad guy, I only mean to say that he often spoke pejoratively about Christians, church, etc. He was very intelligent, and was, as I remember, an excellent writer. He and I had actually been good friends when we were kids, but had long since had a falling out, and by this point we had no relationships to speak of, excepting the proximity of our journalism computers.

At the time I was a big fan of the now disbanded (moment of silence) Christian ska band Five Iron Frenzy. I had found a cool collage of various Five Iron photos, fliers, cd covers and what not, and had set said collage as my desktop background. One of the concert fliers in the collage advertised Five Iron Frenzy as one of the bands performing at an event (or maybe it was a tour) called “Ska Against Racism”.

This deeply troubled the guy sitting next to me. He refused to believe, and in fact vehemently denied, that Five Iron Frenzy was a part of “Ska Against Racism”, something he was somewhat familiar with given his affinity for punk/ska etc. music (out of shear curiosity I googled “Ska Against Racism”, and the tour happened in 1998 and yes, Five Iron Frenzy was in fact a part of it). Now, the next couple of sentences are speculation, but I’m fairly certain my speculation is correct. This guy refused to believe that a Christian band would be involved with a project seeking to combat racism. That simply did not fit with the picture of Christianity he had been given. Christians are socially conservative, white bigots, who do nothing but sit on their ivory tower of superstition and look down upon others who don’t share their views while saying absurd things like “the reason God allowed 9/11 to happen was because there were homosexuals in the building”. They dress alike, they talk alike, and they have no tolerance for anyone who is different from them.

In other words, Christians don’t fight racism. Christians don’t stand up for the marginalized. Christians are self-righteous. Christians are closed-minded and anti-intellectual. Christians are homophobic. I could go on, but you get the idea.

On one level, this guy’s comments reflect obvious ignorance of Christianity, something that was expressed through a number of comments he made throughout the year (including saying that he wanted to go to the mega-church I attended dressed in all black goth-ish clothing and “see what people would do”….”I’m guessing nothing”, was what I wanted to tell him…not sure why I didn’t). His understanding of Christianity was shaped largely by the Jerry Falwells and Pat Robertsons of the world, and as such his understanding was sorely misguided.

That being said, he clearly had seen nothing, or at least little, in his lived experience to conclude that the oft judgmental, oft hateful, oft intolerant version of Christianity that he had seen presented by folks like those listed above was inaccurate. I remember the Five Iron Frenzy conversation (and many others), and I think about movies like Saved! (which every Christian should see), and always think, “that is what the world thinks we are.” And this is to our shame. In other words, I don’t hold this guy completely responsible for believing what he did about Christians. The indiscretions of Christians had instilled this understanding of Christianity in him, and that is an indictment against all of us who claim the name of Christ. There are many people in the world like the guy from my journalism class…I meet them every once in a while. It is up to us to demonstrate a Christianity that is different than what they have come to understand, and more important a Jesus who is different than what they have come to understand. I often wonder, what if people in the world, Christian or not, had such a radically different experience of what Christians were like that all of the caricatures that find their way into pop culture simply wouldn’t work anymore because they were so obviously inaccurate?

Jim Wallis likes to talk about changing the wind. He says that politicians are licking their fingers and putting their fingers up to determine which direction the ‘wind’ is blowing so that they can act accordingly. He uses this to encourage people, particularly people of faith, to organize to promote truly biblical values like the eradication of poverty, peacemaking, fair wages for working people, environmentalism, a consistent ethic of life, and a more socially conscious national budget. Not exactly your typical fair of issues that are important to conservatives, but then again, Wallis isn’t exactly a conservative (incidentally, neither is Jesus).

I often wonder what it would take for Christians to change the wind. What would need to happen so that future generations of people in journalism classes would expect that Christian bands would be involved in a concert tour promoting racial equality? What would need to happen to come to a place where people in the world may disagree with our spiritual beliefs but they respect and affirm our contributions to society?

Our task is to change the wind. In our work lives, in our families, in the seemingly meaningless interactions we have throughout the day. In our finances, in our time management, in the way that we show love to our friend and our enemy. In the way that we rise above theological squabbling and agree on the reality of Christ’s body broken and blood shed for the healing of the world.

May we be a people who change the wind.

Rob Bell’s newest NOOMA video, Shells, is being streamed on the NOOMA facebook page until Wednesday at 12 p.m. EST. I watched it last night, and it’s great.

In this one, Rob tackles the idea of “busyness”, calling it a drug that many in our culture are hooked on. I think he’s right. Think about it, what’s the first thing we all say when people ask about ‘how things are going’? They’re busy. Things are crazy. Oh man, I’ve got so much going on. I’ve thought about this quite a bit, and have become frustrated with our cultural obsession with the appearance of busyness (one that, despite my disdain for it, I share). Hearing people talk about how busy they are is a lot like hearing people talk about when they had their wisdom teeth pulled. Everyone’s got a story, and everyone’s story is more gruesome than the previous one. And none of us really care about anyone’s story but our own.

What Rob suggests is that we are too ‘busy’ not because we don’t know how to say ‘no’ to things in our lives, but rather we don’t know how to say ‘yes’. He’s right. Really, he is. The problem isn’t that we’ve all got too much on our plate. Our problem is that we all too often lack the singular vision and focus necessary to pursue things of great meaning. For that reason we end up distracting ourselves with things that will ultimately leave us hallow. He tells a great story to illustrate that point. So then the solution to our busyness isn’t disengagement, but is rather a vision and a focus that compels us to focus on things that matter. Good stuff.

Sitting at Pier View on a Monday afternoon (man, if I keep doing this so often I’m going to be like Ron Gollner and his St. Arbucks….only with smaller biceps).

I’m reading Stanley Hauerwas for my political theology class, and at the moment I’m reading a chapter out of his book The Peaceable Kingdom. It’s terrific, which is more than I can say for most of the other reading I’ve done this quarter.

As most of you know, a big part of my job is teaching at the college and young adult service at my church on Sunday nights. Teaching the Bible is a funny thing, because no matter how much study or practice I put in, it always seems like I actually have to give the sermon before I’m ever able to really understand what a particular passage said or what I really wanted to say about it. I’ve joked with some friends that I would be a much better teacher if I taught on Mondays. Teaching is also funny in the way that it tends to, quite literally, consume me. My wife knows that from about Saturday evening on I am rarely fully present in conversations I am having. My mind is constantly drifting to the next night’s message. This was true even this last week, as I was standing in a bar in Oceanside sipping a Red Trolley and waiting for Mike’s band to play. By Saturday night I can practically see the manuscript in my head, I can see the faces who will be there, I can even construct imaginary dialogs that I anticipate taking place when I open things up for discussion. Then Sunday night comes and goes, and I end up reflecting on the things that I said or didn’t say for the next day or so. I am a Monday morning (and afternoon) quarterback. I replay the whole thing in my head, scolding myself for mistakes and taking joy in the times when it really seemed like God spoke. More than that, though, I think through the implications of what I talked about.

Mark 11:12-25…Jesus cleanses the temple. It’s an interesting passage. Last night after I got home from church I was listening to a sermon (don’t worry, I don’t normally listen to sermons on Sunday night after attending two church services that day), and the speaker referred to that passage as Jesus’ “temple tantrum”. Say that out loud. Really, do it. It’s funny.

The passage does what so many other passages in the gospel of Mark do. It confronts us with the radical nature of Jesus’ message. And, to be honest, it does a lot to explain the temptation that a lot of Bible teachers (myself included) often feel to water down the message of Jesus to make it more sensitive to our post-modern, pluralistic, meta-narrative rejecting ears. Jesus categorically denounces the ‘appearance’ of authentic spirituality. That is offensive on a number of levels. Our society, sacred or secular, worships at the altar of appearance. Even those who claim they don’t care what people think all seem to rebel in the same ways. And yet here is Jesus, categorically cursing spirituality that is concerned only with outward appearance. Worse yet, he is suggesting that those who think they have it all together are in fact the ones most guilty of engaging in a sort of spirituality for show. That’s scary.

After leaving the temple Jesus begins speaking of things like faith in God, confidence in prayer, and mutual forgiveness. My goodness. If only we could truly learn those things. If only I myself could learn to exercise faith in God that transcends intellectual belief. If only I could manifest a faith in God that would summon in me radical obedience. Obedience beyond Bible reading, prayer, and the avoidance of the more noticeable personal sins. If only that could manifest in me a bigger heart for justice. If only that could manifest in me radical generosity. If only that could manifest in me real love for my neighbor (I realize even the tax collectors do that, but if I’m honest I realize that I need to work on loving my enemies and my neighbors). That is what real faith is. That is the sort of faith that Jesus desires to awaken in his disciples in that day and this. The faith to say mountains can be moved. The faith to say we don’t need to buy into this system of Wal Mart, American imperialism, and systemic economic injustice. Heck, faith to believe that the church need not simply be a place that provides spiritual entertainment for an hour and a half a week, but instead can be a true community of the risen that lives by radical faith and radical obedience.

As I reflect on this passage, and on the things that God has been doing in my own heart of late, those are the things that come to mind. The last thing I mean to do is blog about it as a sort of cathartic release that excuses me from action (imagine Derek Zoolander talking about volunteering to help under privileged children learn how to read), but I suppose all I’m doing is getting my thoughts on (virtual) paper to clarify my own thinking and perhaps see if anyone else is struggling through these sorts of issues.

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

This is the second entry in an occasional series of reflections that I am doing on the book of Colossians.  The first entry, along with a brief explanation for why I am doing this, can be found here.

I will admit that I often find myself asking the question “what’s the point?”, when it comes to church.  Not in the why-do-we-even-bother sense, but more in the what-sort-of-a-difference-is-all-of-the-stuff- that-we-say-and-do-and-talk-about sense.  I suppose that comes from my desire to do more than just play church, and to instead really do work necessary to think through what sort of a difference church activity, spiritual disciplines, and other such activities are supposed to make.  Whether or not those sorts of questions that were on his mind when he was writing Colossians, Paul addresses them nicely in chapter 1, verses 9-10.

“And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.”

What an amazing prayer that is.  Allow me to take one part of it at a time.

“…asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will…” The idea of ‘the will of God’ gets a lot of play in church, as it should.  On some level, all of us want to know the will of God.  Obeying the will of God may be a whole different story (too often it is for me), but I believe it would be fair to say that all of us who believe in the God of the Bible are at least marginally curious as to what his will is, particularly for our lives.  While I certainly have not cracked the code on how to determine the will of God (and would be slightly suspicious of anyone who claimed that they have), I would suggest that the choices we make, and the way in which we control our influences effects how accurately we can know and understand God’s will.  That, in my view, is a major reason why spiritual disciples such as Bible study, prayer, meditation, and church fellowship are important.  It is in those contexts that our curiosity regarding God’s will is transformed into a revelatory searching for God’s will. From those disciplines comes a sort of “spiritual wisdom and understanding” that I believe can hardly be found outside of such communion with God.  It is in our willingness to devote ourselves to these disciplines that the rubber meets the road, so to speak.  In other words, they are an indicator of our desire to know, understand, be transformed by, and apply God’s will.

Furthermore, I would suggest that this “spiritual wisdom and understanding” is something that can be applied in virtually every arena of life.  It can aid us as family members, as employees, as employers, as students, and in virtually any other situation.  I am realizing more and more that as a college pastor it is my desire not to get the students in our ministry to do more things, but instead to engage in determining what it looks like to be Christian in the contexts that they already find themselves in.  In other words, I want them to work through (as I try to do myself) how being Christian effects the way you go to school, or manage a grocery store, or work in a city parks and recreation office, or manage a golf course, or perform any of the other vocations that are represented in our community on Sunday nights.

And now I’ve got to go to class, so I’ll have to finish this post later…hopefully later on tonight…

I am quickly becoming a big fan of Relevant magazine. It is a refreshing change from the status quo of the Christian media culture, and publishes interesting articles about, as their cover advertises, God, life, and progressive culture.  I appreciate the magazine’s ability to talk about matters of faith in a real way while remaining very much, well, culturally relevant.  Their cover stories are always great, but this issue’s was particularly good.

The story was called 7 Burning Issues, and it featured questions related to injustice, war, consumerism, faith, culture, politics, and gay rights.  You know, standard fare, nothing too difficult or controverisal ;-). To make it even better, the panel answering the questions included Brian McLaren, Shane Caliborne, N.T. Wright, and Jim Wallis, four of my favorite authors/thinkers/cool guys whose books you should all read. Their answers were all really fantastic…here are a few excerpts that really stuck out to me, with my comments in italics (hopefully this isn’t illegal!).

Wallis on social justice: “The message to Christians today is very clear.  Any gospel that isnt good news to poor people simply isn’t the Gospel of Jesus Christ; any evangelism that doesn’t include social justice ignores the perfectly integrated life and message of Jesus.

The false dichotomy of evangelism and social justice simply has to be overcome if either are going to have any sort of significant impact.  I’m reminding of a professor I had at Fuller last quarter who said that Christians must learn to “lead” with social justice, honesty, integrity, humility, and values of that sort, because if we simply “lead” with the four spiritual laws in a culture that doesn’t really much care we aren’t going to get anywhere.  That also kinda sounds like something Hal said yesterday morning in church…good works lead to good will that leads to the hearing of the good news.  There’s a lot of truth to that, and there is also a lot of truth to the idea that to be Christian is to be a person of good works.

McLaren on how we should respond to homosexuality: “When the issue of homosexuality comes up, people quickly say, “What about Romans 1? What about Leviticus?  What about 1 Corinthians 6?” I want to say, “Well, what about 1 Corinthians 13? What about James 3?”

McLaren is right on here.  Passages like 1 Corinthians 13 and James 3 must be our criterion for interpreting passages like Romans 1 and 1 Corinthians 6.  Does that mean we ignore what Romans 1 and 1 Cor. 6 say?  Certainly not.  It does simply mean that we seek to show love first.  Period.

Claiborne of interacting with culture: “part of what I think we have to do is not just figure out how we interact with the culture,  but create a new culture where we bring one another to life and call each other to the best of who God wants us to be.  So it’s not “How much secularism can I get away with?” but “How can I be set apart is a way that celebrates the distinctiveness of who we are as people in this world who are resident aliens?”

That point is absolutely huge.  At the end of the day it’s really about us as Christians changing the questions we are asking.  He is right to point out that many of us, myself included, are often seeking how much ’secularism’ or ‘worldliness’ we can ‘get away with’, which in my few reflects a major problem with our hearts.  It’s as if our goal is to resemble the world most closely, rather than setting ourselves about from the world for the purpose of living as the people of God.  I guess the question then becomes, are we willing to hold ourselves to the high standard that a new way of thinking would require of us?

And finally, N.T. Wright on money: “Money becomes a god very, very easily.  So giving it away cheerfully and wisely is a step towards really saying money is not the ruling force in our lives.”

I’m currently listening to an amazing series of messages by Andy Stanley at North Point Church where he is talking all about the heart.  One of the messages was on greed. He hammered home the point that prioritized, percentage giving is probably the most effective means of countering greed in our lives.  He added weight and credibility to the point by adding that if people are skeptical of him then they can give somewhere else.  He and Wright and correct is saying that the only way any of us can hope to get a handle on our greed is to make giving a priority.

So those are just a few small excerpts.  I highly encourage you all to pick up this issue and read the full article.  That’s all from me for now…I’m going on a mini technology fast now, so I won’t be back online until tomorrow afternoon.

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.

I came across this interesting post today written by a college acquaintance of mine named Brad Greenberg (who has an excellent blog). The post is called, “The president need not be Christian”, and it talks about the role of religion in the presidential race and the plethora of articles written about the place religion has taken in the campaign It then focuses on a new series of articles by Christianity Today, that have explored how Christians ought to behave in a secular society. While I agree with the groaning of the Lutheran gentlemen that Brad quotes at length in his post (Did not Christ tell Pilate: “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36)? Which of these seven words is so hard to understand?), there is something to be said for developing a somewhat nuanced approach to engaging in politics ‘Christianly’ I say ‘nuanced’ only because, as Brad says, we ought to focus more on a candidate’s values than his or her professed faith. This is especially true given the Carter and W. Bush administrations, two of the poorest in recent memory (and in the second case most immoral), which led my men whose public discourse was steeped in religious rhetoric.

At any rate, I wrote this article a few months ago on helium.com answering the question “should one’s faith influence a citizen’s vote?”, and I thought I’d post it here as well.

One’s religious faith, rightly understood, certainly ought to effect one’s behavior in the public square, particularly one’s voting behavior. That being said, religious faith is only rightly understood when it leads to personal conviction about what makes for just and moral private and public behavior. Conviction of this sort must be much more nuanced than merely establishing views on abortion and gay marriage. In reality, religious faith (or a lack there of) is a large part of constructing a world view, which in turn very logically effects voting decisions. A religious faith that is only based on professed belief is hardly faith at all, thus common professed religious faith most certainly ought not to motivate a voter to vote for a particular candidate.

This is a sticky issue given the mass partisan politicization of spirituality that has taken place in this country. It simply must be understood that faith is not partisan, thus while faith ought to inform my voting decisions, it most certainly ought not to make be a Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, or anything else for that matter. Furthermore, one ought to evaluate candidates on the basis of their actions, not on the basis of their words. It is a well known fact that in this country one cannot get elected president without espousing belief in the Christian God. For this reason, I ought not be impressed with a presidential candidate speaks, whether generically or candidly, about their belief in such a God. That, in my view, is where faith-informed voting gets confused. Faith-informed voting is taken to mean “voting for someone who says they have the same religious beliefs that I do, and vocally opposing someone who does not.” As a person of deep spiritual belief and conviction, and as a person weary of the less than flattering caricatures of Christians in the public square (which Christians, sadly, have earned), I find such a shallow understanding of faith-informed voting to be massively troubling. Such an understanding fails to acknowledge the obvious truth that politicians will say whatever will help them get elected.

Last night at Seven24 we talked about the passage from Mark 9 where Jesus talks about sin.  You know, that whole “if your hand causes you to sin cut it off” passage.  Frankly, it’s a passage that’s pretty difficult to  tone down or otherwise marginalize. Jesus is saying in very stark terms that as his followers we must be willing to do whatever it takes to eliminate sin in our lives (though as I mentioned last night, the whole “cut it off” statement is certainly a metaphor).

As I prepared for the message over the course of the last week, the question that kept popping into my head was, “how do you talk about sin in a postmodern world?”  To talk about sin is to assert that a) it exists, and b) there is some objective criteria for determining that an act/thought/etc. is sinful. The reality is , however, whether this is the result of a cultural construct or the result of some sort of reaction to hyper-judgmental Christianity of the religious right/moral majority era, it is very difficult to talk about sin in a tactful, biblically faithful manner.  That is what I attempted to do last night, and I guess those who were present will have to evaluate how effectively that was done.

My primary thesis, that I stated last night in different words, was essentially that as Christians we have the resources to deal with sin that are unavailable to the rest of the world.  In other words, we can engage in critical self-reflection in a healthy way, knowing that our God is a God of grace who seeks to forgive us and empower us when we repent of sin rather than judge or condemn us. My hope was that all of us in the room last night, myself included, could then be honest with ourselves when it came to acknowledging our own sin knowing that we can do so without fearing judgment.  Even still, I believe engaging in that sort of reflection is difficult because it is so easy to justify and ignore our own junk while focusing on the struggles of others.  Furthermore, the whole idea of confession and repentance (especially when we involve other people in the process) is one that is both highly awkward and rarely found in our culture. I believe that, more than anything, is a reflection on the declining value we place on interpersonal relationships in our culture, but that is another story.

One verse I didn’t mention last night comes from 1 Corinthians 5. In verse 11 Paul lists a handful of vices that he insists should not be present in the church, and then proceeds to say in verse 12, “For what have I to do with judging outsiders?  Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge?” In other words, Paul is urging the Corinthian church to not project their morality outward, but instead focus on maintaining the purity of the church.  When the church is pure, it is able to instead project the grace and peace and Christ towards the unbelieving world.  This, I believe, is the key to talking about sin in a postmodern world.  In the church we can talk about our own sin in a way that might seem awkward (or overly self-disclosing) because we are able to do so in a way that merits corrective, grace-filled judgment (no, I don’t think that is an oxymoron), as opposed to condemnatory judgment.  The grace of Christ, when fully understood, allows us to do that.

The alternative is to ignore our own sin, ignore our own holiness, and continue to condemn an “immoral” world that we somehow expect to be “moral” without knowing the grace and peace that comes from Christ. It is my hope that all of us who carry the name of Christ can begin to further recognize the freedom that Christs gives us to be honest about our sin, to confess our sin, and take seriously the call to Christlike living that the New Testament so often espouses.