Live Generously

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.

Once again I stumbled across a cool piece on the God’s Politics blog hosted by Sojourners, this time by the always provocative and oft prophetic Derek Webb of Caedmon’s Call. I suppose the article, entitled “Following Jesus vs. Social Activism” , doesn’t say anything that I haven’t heard or thought about before, but in it Webb does speak frankly about the ridiculousness of following Jesus. To quote the first sentence and a half of the article, “Claiming to follow Jesus is a ridiculous thing to try and do. He’s a really hard guy to follow…”

Agreed.

Webb goes on to talk about how we are to understand following Jesus when the things that he asks us to do (love the poor, love our enemies, etc.) scandalize the very core of who we naturally are, particularly given the fact that, in his words, we are violent to the core.

Fortunately, he writes, Jesus has given us the key to understanding who he is and what he wants us to do. It’s not obsessing over the finer points of private morality that Christians so often obsess over (although it bears mentioning that we, too often, see private morality and social activism as a zero sum game (wikipedia it if you don’t know what that means…yes, I did just put a parentheses inside of a parentheses), when in fact, biblically, they most certainly are not), but instead the key is that we learn to love God and love our neighbor. It’s that, um, simple. Thus, in Webb’s words, the work of following Jesus is loving and caring for those whom it is difficult. It is that love that ought to frame and contextualize all of the other commandments we keep.

One aspect of ministry that has grated on me since the beginning is the fact that, when you’re a pastor, you hear about everyone’s junk. Don’t get me wrong, I count it a joy and privilege to be able to counsel people through difficult circumstances and walk with them as they seek healing, but often what I’m referring to doesn’t happen in that context. Sometimes people get convicted about their own behavior and tell me themselves (which I much prefer), but more frequently I get members of our church that come to me out of concern for their friend that has recently started killing kittens or binge drinking or building a nuclear warhead or making not awesome relational decisions (ok, I made up a few of those). When people come to me themselves, that usually indicates some desire to change, and that is a lot easier to deal with. It’s hearing the stuff that people in my church do when they aren’t at church that gets difficult to deal with. Frankly, and this just me being honest, loving in those circumstances is a challenge, and yet I understand that is the love that Jesus is talking about, and that tragically people often don’t think they are going to get from pastors and other church folk. And let me be clear about one thing: it’s not because I think they’re bad people. In fact it’s precisely the opposite. I think they are really good people. I think they are people that God has gifted with tremendous potential, and at times I see that potential beautifully on display. So when I hear about them denying that potential, it breaks my heart. I know they know better , and often the disappointment is crushing. I love being able to care for people people on the soul level…people are never products, or employees, or tokens to fill a role in the church, they are people…but caring for people on the soul level can be extremely painful sometimes.

And it makes me wonder: Have we, as the church, lost the picture of what it means to follow Jesus? Have we lost the picture that Derek Webb (well, and Jesus before him) paints of simply loving God and loving our neighbor? It’s easy to point the finger and blame others, but are there systemic issues that are leading to these sorts of circumstances.

Is that why we, too often, fail to live up to our potential? Is it because we have sought to primarily find our identity is something else other than who God has made us to be? Have we found it in hollow spirituality that centers around a passive hour or two on Sundays? And if so, how do we go about changing the church from simply a community that gets together on Sundays to a community that gets together on Sundays and embraces community throughout the week that is bound by an unconditional love for God and a love for neighbor? The potential for good is that sort of model is mind blowing. Now I’ve deviated quite a ways away from the point of Webb’s article, but I’ll close with a paragraph from it that expresses what we, as Christians, are proclaiming in the world when we enact a love for God and a love for neighbor:

“How do we tell the whole story of the coming reign of God, a new way of being human and relating to God and God’s creation? We put our hands to it. We proclaim a day coming when there will be no more thirst by giving water to the thirsty. We proclaim a day coming where there will be no more disease and death by caring for the lives of those whose bodies are broken. We proclaim a day coming where there will be no more war by preemptively sowing the seeds of peace.”

Two weeks ago I started this post with the intent of finishing it up that evening…needless to say that didn’t happen, but now I’ve got a few minutes before I leave for class so I’m going to try to finish it up here.

I left off in 1:9, having just looked at the phrase, “…asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding…”, and I had talked about how the practice of community with God and the practice of spiritual disciplines fills us with a sort of “spiritual wisdom and understanding” that can then be applied outwardly in our daily lives.  Continuing on now with verse ten…

“…so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work…” wow, that’s a lot.  That being said, it nicely answers the question “what’s the point?”, or, more specifically what is the point of the things that we do in our lives to ‘grow in our relationship with God?’ The reality is that truths that we pick up from the Bible, from theology books, from sermons, etc., isn’t meant to just be brain candy, but instead is meant to inform the way that we live our lives (yes, I know, I’m the first person ever to come to that conclusion…that’s a profound insight ;-)). I mention that simply because I think the temptation exists to see our spiritual lives as a sort of lesson in obligations that don’t really mean anything.  When we fall into that trap, spirituality becomes stale and religious, and we deny ourselves the privilege of allowing  God’s Word to actually inform our lives in the real world.

Perhaps the word that most catches my attention in verse 10 is the word “worthy”.  That seems crazy to me that Paul is even implying that “walking in a manner worthy of the Lord,” is possible.  And yet that is his prayer for these people, that their lives would be something worthy of their Savior.  That is a high calling, to be sure. Paul goes on to say that evidence of a ‘worthy’ life is that it is  ‘bearing fruit in every good work’. We must remember that, as it says in Ephesians, “we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” Thus our commission is not to condemn the ‘works’ of others, nor is it to embrace a sort of hollow ethereal spirituality that makes us feel good but doesn’t really make any sort of difference in our lives.  Instead, our call is to simply do good works.  Failure to do so is failure to tap into the purpose of our lives.  This shouldn’t be something that causes us guilt, but instead it should be something that is at once empowering and liberating.

The verse ends with the phrase, “and increasing in the knowledge of God.” Part of the Christian life as well is actually increasing in what we know to be true about God.  I can say with absolute certainty that I think differently about God now than I did when I was a silly 18-year-old fundamentalist (and that is being generous).  I feel I have a better understanding of God’s heart for social justice, God’s heart for peace, and God’s heart for issues including but extending far beyond personal holiness. Furthermore, I understand God’s Word a lot better than I did then.  I’ve got a long way to go, but I’m making progress  I look forward to continuing to increase in the knowledge of God for as long as I have breath.  But, just as increasing in the knowledge of anything else takes some effort, it takes effort to increase in the knowledge of God.  it doesn’t just happen.

So then the final answer to the question of “what’s the point?” is that there is external value in cultivating an internal relationship with God.  Such a relationship is meant to inform practically the way that we live, and it is my strong conviction that when we fail to do that we fail to fully engage ourselves in participation in the Kingdom of God. That being said, it is pretty phenomenal to know that God does call us not only to be filled with the knowledge of his will, but also to put it into action in a way that both pleases God and blesses the world.

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

Over the past several months I have studied the New Testament letter to the Colossians fairly extensively. It has emerged as my favorite of Paul’s letters, and I find myself reading at least a passage of it (usually from the third chapter) nearly every day. I am preparing to produce an audio devotional series based on Colossians, and may even make a meager attempt at a devotional book some time down the line, but before I do that, I wanted to take some times to simply reflect on whatever the text of this jewel of a letter brings to mind. So then, periodically over the course of the next month or two, I will devote a post to my reflections on certain texts in Colossians. I won’t be using commentaries, Bible dictionaries, New Testament introductions, or anything of the sort (that will come later), I’m simply going to talk about my own reaction to the text itself, for better or for worse.

Colossians 1:3-4: “We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints.”

I have used those verses (or the several like them found in other NT letters) in countless devotionals, Bible studies, mentoring groups, and sermons over the course of the last several years, and yet I am still struck by them every time I read them. Paul is likely hundreds of miles away from the church is Colossae, and what has he heard about them? He has heard about their sweet sound system and their pastor who tells funny stories. He has heard about how pristine their lobby is and how well their $20 million building campaign is going. He has heard about how the church is a hip cool scene where people have, like, tattoos and piercings and stuff. Or he has heard none of those things. He has heard that the people in the church have faith in Jesus and they have love for one another. That was what most struck whoever brought the report to Paul.

Passages like this always make me ask myself, “what do you want to be known for?” The reality is that I want to be known for a lot of things. Many of which really don’t matter that much. On a corporate level, we can ask “what do we want our church to be known for?” And again, if we’re honest we admit that there are a lot of things that we want our church to be known for. One thing I appreciate about my church is our professed desire to be a church that is a good neighbor to its community. In a world where, more often than not, churches have become eye sores and inconveniences to the unbelieving world, I can’t help but wonder how the public reputation of the church was that it was a place where people had faith in Jesus and truly loved each other.

I’m reminded of a quote from Cardinal Avery Dulles in his brilliant little book (with an admittedly boring title), Models of the Church. In it he writes, “In the early centuries, the Church expanded not so much because of concerted missionary efforts as through its power of attraction as a contrast society. Seeing the mutual love and support of Christians, and the high moral standards they observed, the pagans sought entrance into the Church. If the same is not happening today, this is largely because the Church no longer appears conspicuously as the community of the disciples, transformed by its participation in the new creation.” (italics mine…it also bears mentioning that ‘pagan’ is not meant to be a derogatory term, it simply means non-Christian and non-Jew)

In other words, it was the reputation of the church, not its cool buildings, not its consumer products full of pictures of beautiful and trendy people, not even its amazing missions program, that gave the church its vitality in its early years.

I think about that and then I think about Seven24. The way we teach, the things we emphasize, the way our worship services are designed. And of course that causes me to wonder if people would speak of our community in the same way that whoever was informing Paul spoke of the church at Colossae. The answer is most certainly no.  That’s not to say that we don’t have faith in Christ (we do), and it’s certainly not to say there isn’t a deep sense of community (there is), but I do believe we still have room to grow in those areas.

I am challenged by texts like this to work towards making our community one with that sort of reputation. I should say that I don’t really like that last sentence, as it seems to imply that I consider this to be something entirely up to me, or entirely under my control, which I don’t. The real issue it seems is being willing to ask the question, “what kind of people are we becoming?”, because the reality is that our actions reflect our values and produce our reputation. What would it look like for the church, any church, to be laser focused on having faith- not just professed faith, not just the sing-worship-songs faith, but I’m-really-going-to- wholeheartedly-follow-the-radical-way-of-Jesus faith- and truly genuinely loving one another?

The reputation would be different. That much is sure.

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.

For the last several weeks the folks over at Sojourners have done a series of posts on their God’s Politics blog (which is nearly always well worth reading) in recognition of the five year anniversary of the Iraq war. I have perused a few of them, and have found them to be at least interesting and at most insightful. I particularly enjoyed the always snarky Shane Claiborne’s post about celebrating Good Friday by going through the stations of the cross on the base of weapons juggernaut Lockheed Martin. I would expect nothing less from him.

I also enjoyed a post written last week by N.T. Wright (whose book I am currently reading) entitled Easter’s Challenge to Empire. In it, Wright talks through, well, the challenge that the truth of Easter brings to the empires of the world. And while Wright, in this instance, applies this concept specifically to issues of war and peace, I believe it is vital that–especially in the Easter season–we who claim to follow Jesus remain connected to the reality that his death and resurrection ushered in an entirely new way of living and an entirely new way of understanding reality (and an entirely new way of writing run-on sentences with too many commas). The whole post is well worth reading, but here are a few notable excerpts:

“It is the task of the followers of Jesus to remind those called to authority that the God who made the world intends to put the world to rights at last, and to call those authorities to acts of justice and mercy which will anticipate, in the present time, the future, coming, final victory of God over all evil, all violence, all arrogant abuse of power.”

“Where then is God in the war on terror? Grieving and groaning within the pain and horror of his battered but still beautiful world. Stirring in the hearts of human beings the desire for a more credible structure of global justice and mercy. Burning into the imagination of human beings a hope that peace and reconciliation might eventually win out over suspicion and hatred, that the world may be put to rights and that we may anticipate that in the present time. The Christian gospel, revealing the mysterious God we discover in Jesus and the Spirit, offers a framework for discerning where God is at work in the midst of the dangers and opportunities that confront us. All of us in our different callings are summoned to this task; some of you, perhaps, to make it your life’s work. Jesus is Lord. The Spirit is powerful. God is doing a new thing. Let’s get out there and join in.”

Good stuff. Ok, now I need to review the assigned reading so that I don’t look like a moron in class tonight.

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.

One of my all-time favorite book is The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In it, Bonhoeffer draws a distinction between what he calls ‘cheap grace’ and ‘costly’ grace, and he essentially makes the argument that discipleship is something that cost us something, but that the cost is worth it. Recently I started reading The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus’s Essential Teachings on Discipleship by Dallas Willard. Willard’s premise is basically that we have made discipleship optional within in the church. In other words, we have made a great omission from the great commission (go and make disciples…). The result, Willard says, is that there are many who say they are Christians yet are doing very little, or even nothing, to continue to grow in Christlikeness. In the book he has a section entitled “The Cost of Nondiscipleship” in which he addresses the consequences of this. Willard writes,

“It was right and good of Bonhoeffer to point out that one cannot be a disciple of Christ without forfeiting things normally sought in human life, and that one who pays little in the world’s coinage to bear his name has reason to wonder wher ehe or she stands with God. But the cost of nondiscipleship is far greater- even when this life alone is considered- than the price paid to walk with Jesus, constantly learning from him.

Nondiscipleship costs abiding peace, a life penetrated throughout by love, faith that sees everything in the light of God’s overriding governance for good, hopefulness that stands firm in the most discouraging of circumstance,s power to do what is right and withstand the forces of evil. In short, nondiscipleship costs you exactly that abundance of life Jesus said he came to bring (John 10:10). The cross-shaped yoke of Christ is after all an instrument of liberation and power to those who live in it with him and learn the meekness and lowliness of heart that brings rest to the soul.”

I think it would be fair to say that we don’t spend much time in church considering the cost of nondiscipleship. I certainly don’t spend much time thinking about the cost of nondiscipleship in my own life, and perhaps that’s a bit of a problem. Last night at Seven24 I briefly mentioned that in our western culture today there are as many opportunities to worship false gods as there have been in any culture at any time in history. Many of us, myself included, are often drawn to worship these false gods (money, material success, work, social status, etc.), with the consequence being that we seek to find our identity in those things rather than finding it in Christ. This does indeed cost us the abiding peace that can only be known through following Christ.

Next week at Seven24 we’re going to talk about the passage in Mark where Jesus says, “If anyone would come after me let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” That is an intense statement to be sure, and while the way of Jesus most certainly does entail sacrifice-namely sacrifice of the self- it is also, as Willard says a means of liberation for those who will carry their cross with Christ and learn the meekness and lowliness of heart that brings rest to the soul.

One thing I also said last night is that our worship of false gods is very subtle in our culture today. In other words, we can be doing it without even realizing it. The logical extension of this is that it is then more difficult to recognize our need for the liberation that can come through this sort of self-denial that Jesus speaks of.

I don’t really have a particular conclusion that I’m drawing for all of this just yet. These are just some of the many issues that this book is inspiring me to try to work through in my own life. I’m trying to identify the false worship that takes place in my own life, and I’m similarly trying to identify the practices of my life that are interfering with my participation in the journey of discipleship with Christ.