Regurgitated Perspective

2:00 AM. From the peace, darkness, and silence of a wonderful night's sleep, she cries. My eyes slowly open. My brain tries to interpret what my ears are hearing. My wife, much more attune than I, is already out of the bed and walking down the hall. My daughter is clearly distressed. I sit up in the bed. My wife walks back in the room. "She threw up in the bed." I walked into my daughter's dark room, turned on the light, dimmed it, and sat down beside her to assess the situation. Were we going to need to change her clothes? Were we going to need to change the sheets? The comforter? Her pillow? What about her blankie? Her doll Kiki? I saw a little on the sheets, so I picked her up, still crying, and carried her to our bedroom. I laid her in our bed, and wouldn't you know it? She rolled over in our bed. I hoped she didn't have any vomit on her. I quickly walked back to the room and met my wife there. We both saw vomit on the sheets only. My wife changed the sheets while I sat with my daughter. It's amazing how fast she can change sheets on a bed. By the time I got back in our room, sat down with our daughter, and started consoling her, my wife was already joining me to assess our daughter's clothes. Yep. Vomit. But only on the shirt! Off the shirt came, and the new one went on just as quickly. "Let's go get back in bed, sweetie," I said to my daughter. She started crying louder. My wife noticed a clump of vomit in our daughter's hair. I asked, "Would you like us to wash your hair before you go back to bed?" She shook her head and cried out a clear "Yes." Over the next ten minutes, we washed her hair, dried her off, and dressed her in clean pajamas. She was back in the bed - sheets changed, pillow changed, hair washed, pajamas changed, everything cleaned up - in thirty-five minutes. I was amazed at our timely prowess in such moments of regurgitation!

As we crawled back into our own bed, I was moved to prayer, not for our won daughter, but for other children. It suddenly struck me that there are millions of children in the world who, when they wake up in vomit, have no running water to wash their hair, have no pajamas (much less a second or third pair), have no bed sheets (much less a second set). And there are millions of children, orphaned or not, that have no parents to wash their hair, change their pajamas, and change their sheets at 2:00 in the morning when they throw up in the bed. There are millions of children who, when they throw up in the middle of the night, are faced with three choices: stay awake, clean it up, or sleep in it. It struck me that many children that same night were sleeping in their own vomit. It broke my heart. And what breaks my heart more is that to a child sleeping in their own vomit, a clean night's sleep is the least of their worries.

Celebration of Negativity

"I've been having some pain in my lungs."

"My mom just found out she has cancer."

"I have a friend in ICU because of a car accident."

"My job is really stressing me out."

"My sister is back on the brownstone again."

"We're behind on our mortgage."

Get in a group of people, ask them if they have anything you can pray for, and these are the kinds of answers you will hear. There are two things I have noticed when it comes to these queries for prayer. First, when you ask someone to tell you their prayer needs, you will be surprised by how bad their lives suck. Someone can have a beautiful family, a great job, good health, and a truly blessed life; but ask them about their prayer needs and all of it goes away. There's nothing quite like times of sharing prayer requests to turn a joyful person to the most pessimistic person you have ever met. For some reason we can only see the negativity surrounding us. The second thing I have noticed is how contagious this negativity is. Ask for the prayer requests, and it may get quiet. Look around the room and watch the wheels of negativity start to turn. After a while, someone will speak up. Wait a few seconds and someone else will speak up. Wait a few more seconds and a couple more people will speak up. The next thing you know the room will erupt is prayer petitions of hopeless negativity. And if you pay very close attention, you may notice that there is a competition going on. You may notice that people begin to one-up each other: My dad is having a stint placed in an artery following his heart-attack last week. A pause and then: Well my dad just had a quadruple bypass after three heart attacks.

Why are we not taking note of what God is doing and bringing our prayer life into cooperation with what God is already doing? Why are we not offering praise for the blessings in our lives? Do we take that much for granted, or is it something more? Could it be that our values have changed?

It seems there is something in our culture that thrives on the negativity in our lives. It's almost like we think it's wrong to be blessed or wrong to be joyful. The norm is pain. Contentment is abnormal. I don't know why American culture has slipped into this expectation of negativity, but I think there must be something wrong when we make our painful circumstances into a competition of who is worse off.

Any thoughts on figuring this one out?

Prescriptions for Spirituality?

We live in a medicated culture. Daydream? ADHD. Cry? Depression. Bad memories? Post-traumatic stress syndrome. Nervous? Anxiety disorder. Moody? Bipolar. Granted, I believe all of these conditions are real. Both children and adults have Attention deficit Hyperactive disorder. I know people who experience the loneliness, suicidal thoughts, and physical torment of clinical depression. I have known war veterans who live the reality of real Post-Traumatic Stress disorder. I know people who have become incapacitated by suffering the panic attacks of an Anxiety disorder. And I have witnessed the drastic mood swings of severe mania and hopeless depression caused by Bipolar Disorder. I don't have to be a doctor to know that the conditions are real. But I also don't have to be a sociologist to know that we live in a culture eager to label people and medicate them.

An article in Relevant Magazine ("Wonder Drug, September/October 2006) raises the question of the power of drugs in knowing God. I know it sounds ludicrous. But who hasn't heard of the drug-induced encounter with God? One of my friends describes an encounter with God after smoking too much weed. He heard God say, "It's over. You're done." It scared him so bad he hasn't smoked since. In college I knew a guy who found faith in Christ because of a really strange acid trip during which he met both Jesus and Satan. He made his choice while he was still on the trip. But not every drug-empowered encounters with God are so dramatic. As the Relevant article explored, people with ADHD find a new ability to concentrate in prayer through drugs like Adderall. They find a connection with God that they never knew was possible. People suffering from depression often live their lives in isolation, never knowing the God-mandated notion of community. For many of them, Wellbutrin or Cymbalta make community possible. And that doesn't say anything about a depressed person's capacity for hope!

Maybe some people really do experience a new spiritual freedom from psychiatric medicines. Maybe SOME people really do need this kind of help to know the abundant and eternal life Jesus teaches. But there's something about that kind of thinking that seems dangerous. Are we replacing the power of God with the power of the prescription? Are the real spiritual guides the doctors? Are the real servants the insurance companies? Are the real spiritual leaders the prescription drug companies? I know it might sound a little melodramatic, but how far away from this kind of thinking are we? How big of a jump is it to move from taking Adderall to work longer hours or Wellbutrin to have better self-esteem or Zoloft to like people more... How big of a jump is it to go from that kind of medicated self-help to taking Adderall for a more fulfilling prayer life or Cymbalta to have more fun at Bible study?

It seems we have already begun sinking deep into the pit by renaming "sin" as "sickness." Where will it end?

Only in Boone

This has nothing to do with my normal stuff. But only in Boone will you see a guy with cerebral palsy wearing a tie-dyed Grateful Dead t-shirt, black Chuck Taylors, and khaki cargos rolled up mid-calf, carrying a cup of espresso through the traffic of a major intersection with a guitar strapped across his back by a piece of yarn.

The Flea Market Jesus

I spent my honeymoon in Cancun. It's a nice place, but we're not sure we would choose Cancun again knowing what we do now. The resort we stayed in was pretty, and it was new. (At least it was new eight years ago when we were there.) One of the most memorable experiences for me, however, was an exercise in Western consumerism in its highest form. If you've ever been to a country like Mexico where tourism feeds so many hungry mouths then you will immediately understand what I am about to write about here. My wife and I were walking down the street among a plethora of merchants. They were selling silver, flags, dresses, sunglasses, baskets, hats, knives, ceramic elephants, shot glasses, picture frames, and other crap that most people traveling to Cancun already have and don't need to buy. Walking through the market among the merchants is entertaining in and of itself. They call out to you, tantalize you with their wares, and promise you the best price. And this is why you are there - to buy crap you don't need at the best possible price.

My wife spots a watch she thinks looks pretty. I ask the guy how much it costs.

"One eighty-five."

"How about fifteen?"

"No. I can make you a deal at One twenty-five."

"Twenty bucks."

"Ninety. That's the best I can do."

"That's all? No thanks. Have a nice day."

I turned and walked away. I made it four steps before he tapped me on the shoulder.

"Fifty."

"Thirty-five."

"Okay."

I opened my wallet,handed him two twenties, and asked for my change. He gave me a five and the watch. My wife put the watch on; I stuffed the five into my pocket wondering if I could have gotten it for less. I'm sure he wondered if he could have gotten forty out of me.

Some people like this bartering game. I don't. It makes me feel cheap. Not frugal. Cheap.

I had this same feeling last week. Here at Appalachian State University they have a thing for incoming freshmen called "Religious Convocation." The name is a little deceiving. It's not a convocation in the traditional sense of the word. It's more like a "Ministry Fair," which is to say "Ministry Flea Market." Each religious organization was allowed two minutes at a podium at the front of a large room to present what they offered the students. Campus Crusade for Christ. Campus Christian Fellowship. Hillel. Catholic Student Association. Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. Innervarsity. Pagan Student Association. Hindu Student Association. Wesley Foundation. Baptist Student Union. And there were churches too. All selling their wares. All trying to convince students why they needed to connect with them. Spouting off what they had to offer. It struck me that I was witnessing a perfect manifestation of consumerist religion.

"We have free food."

"We meet in the night club."

"We have cheap food."

"We have Bible studies."

"We do retreats.'

"We have lots of socials."

"We have fun."

Did I mention, "We have food."

It felt like I was in a sanctified-under-the-guise-of-spirituality skin market - religious organizations selling themselves. It felt dirty. Students came to consume religious goods. They came to buy at the least possible price. Business was good. And once again I felt like I was buying a watch in Cancun. I felt cheap.

What happened to the call of Christ? What happened to giving to the mission of the Kingdom? What happened to high stakes? What happened to giving all you have? What happened to taking up the cross? What happened to the Jesus who transforms lives?

We checked that Jesus at the door for a much cheaper version - the flea market version.

Scaring the Hell Out of 'Em

One...Two...
Freddy's coming for you.
Three...Four...
Better lock the door.
Five...Six...
Get your crucifix.
Seven...Eight...
Stay up late.
Nine...Ten...
Never sleep again.
Eleven...Twelve...
See you in Hell.

Fear is a powerful thing. When I was a baby, it made me cling to my mother. When I was a young child, it kept me from running into the street. As a teenager, it kept me from looking in the bathroom mirror in the dark. It has made me say no to drugs, sex, and skydiving. There are fears of real things like bombs, killer bees, and root canals. There are fears of not-so-real things like Freddy Kruger, bad luck, and evil leprechauns. I used to have shirts that I refused to wear because I feared the disaster that accompanied my donning of the shirt last week. I used to run from yellow dune buggies because of a recurring nightmare with a fiendish yellow dune buggy. I used to believe in Jesus because I feared Hell.

And there we have it - the great motivator of the Church: fear. I have come to see that fear is one of the largest and most widely used weapons in the Church's arsenal. Granted, the Church does not represent the only weapon-ization of fear. Batman does it. Terrorists do it. The pharmaceutical industry does it. And certainly, the Church does it. Fear of excommunication keeps people from questioning the status quo. Fear of missing a blessing keeps people tithing. Fear of burning in Hell motivates conversion. In their song, "Selling the Drama," Live sings:

and to love: a god

and to fear: a flame

and to burn a crowd that has a name

Live perceptively picks up on how the Church has gone about the work of evangelism: coercion. People choose to love God because they fear the alternative - a flame.

The traditional order of worship for a wedding involves some sort of question regarding the intent of the couple. The question is asked at the very beginning of the ceremony. It is designed to be sure that neither the bride nor the groom are being coerced. It is designed to eliminate things like shotgun weddings because love cannot exist without a will. Love is not the end of coercion. Yes, a shotgun wedding could conceivably last and even thrive in love, but for that to happen, the person being coerced must choose to love. The person coercing must give freedom. Coercion must cease for love to begin.

Why do we think a relationship with God is different? Why do we think fear is the appropriate starting place for love? Why do we think a fear of Hell necessitates a love for God?

Yes, the Bible calls for a healthy fear of God: "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom..." and "But I'll tell you whom to fear. Fear God, who has the power to kill people and then throw them into hell." But this is a fear of God - a healthy fear, a reverent fear. The kind of fear we have sold (as Live would say) is a fear of Hell, loneliness, torment. We have idolized a dogma of Hell and placed it on the throne of God: "Fear Hell, not God."

I used to believe in Jesus because I was scared of Hell. Now I not only believe in Jesus, but I love Jesus. I even try to live like Him. I believe in Jesus, love Jesus, try to live like Jesus, because I think he had/has it right. I believe his way - the Kingdom of God - will bring about the restoration of the world...the way God created it to be. I don't know if Heaven and Hell are literal places or spiritual planes of existence or whatever you want to call it. And to me, it doesn't matter. I think following Jesus is the answer even if there is no heaven...or Hell.

Tyranny of Buildings

When I walked into a pastor-friend's office yesterday, I noticed his "credentials" on the wall. There was the ordination certificate. It looked very much like mine. But his diploma certifiying his Master of Divinity was quite different than mine. It had a picture above the name of the school. A picture of a building right there on the piece of paper. Not just any building either. It was a picture of a church building. It had that typical 1950's Baptist look to it: red brick, big concrete stairs, huge columns, and large white doors. I looked at my pastor-friend and said, "That's interesting. I wonder why they put a church building on there." He said that it was the chapel on the campus of the school. He added that it was the centerpoint of the campus. I gave some sort of grunt that indicated I understood. I had, after all, never visited his alma mater's campus, and the church building looked pretty generic to me...at least in the 1950's Baptist tradition of architecture. I personally didn't think it was anything worth putting at the top of a diploma, but then again, I can't really say anything about what choices schools make on these types of things. My alma mater has a camel for a mascot!

It was my pastor-friend's next remark that really got me thinking though: "There are a lot of schools that put their most important building on their diplomas." I hadn't thought of it before, but I guess it's true. I looked at his diploma one more time, looked over at him, and said, "We sure are a building-centered faith, aren't we?"

When people find out I lead a church, the first question they ask is, "Where is it?"

When a church enters a building project, they are "building a church."

When people wake up on Sunday mornings, they announce to the kids, "Get up. We're going to church."

Reminders for meetings come in the mail and announce, "We're meeting at the church."

And people like me (called church-planters) who start churches haven't really arrived until we have some sort of building.

Church bulletins often feature pictures of the building. Church directories often present an image of the building on the cover. And monuments are placed on the walls of church buildings celebrating who gave the money to erect portions of the building. It is no wonder that the life of my friend's school centered around the chapel. Much of the faith of Christ-followers is centered around church buildings. His school boasts that by centering their campus' life around the chapel, they are centering their school on worship. Funny. I thought Christian worship was centered on Jesus.

The tyranny of the church building in the Christian faith is, I think, related to the institutionalizing of our faith. We have moved from a decentralized narrative faith to a centralized faith of "place." The uncontainable, wild story of God has been tamed and controlled by erecting buildings. It has moved from organism to organization. We have traded the Kingdom of God for a building. I don't know if the buildings are at the root of the problem or if the buildings are the symptoms of an even larger problem. All I know is the two - institution and building - are closely related. As for how incestuous they are (i.e. kissing cousins, brother and sister, or worse) I don't know. But something is definitely wrong.

Divine Priorities

Confession: I have been secretly envious of other people's priorities for years. My friend Glen holds his work-outs as a high priority. So high that he recently paid $15 for a 24 hour membership to a gym when he was out of town. I wish I could be like that. A pastor I know named David puts a high priority on writing sermons. He spends a minimum of 20 hours each week preparing his sermon. I don't. Another friend of mine named Jonathan puts a high priority on his food intake. He refuses to eat fast food. Period. I wish I had that kind of fortitude.

But I must be fair to myself and state that I have made a radical shift in my priorities over the last year. For years, my top three priorities went like this: 1) My Work in the Church, 2) My Self, and 3) My Family. A little over a year ago I started to shift those priorities. I was talking with a friend about this change a couple of weeks ago. She asked me how my priorities are ordered now. (I think the conversation was initiated by my recent post on Hear the Yawp called "Keeping Busy.") At any rate, I answered her with an atypical straightforward order: 1) My Family, 2) My Self, and 3) My Work in the Church. The answer felt good. Something seemed right about it. For years I have wanted that order, but for the first time, it was true. Then my friend asked me this question: "Where is God in that order?"

Her question got me thinking. According to what we've been taught in churches, it is a great question. The Church teaches that our priorities are supposed to be "1) God, 2) Family, and 3) Church." I answered her with a question, "What does it mean to put God first?" She replied, "You make it a point to spend time with God everyday." No shock there! After all, it's what we've been taught. "If your relationship with God is your top priority, you spend time with him everyday."

But that doesn't make sense to me. Really "good Christians" will spend about 15 minutes either at the beginning of the day or at the end of the day reading their Bible or praying. The "Super-Christians" might spend 30 minutes per day, and the truly sanctified might actually spend one hour per day praying or reading the Bible. That just doesn't make sense to me. Reading Lamentations for 30 minutes out of my 24 hour day makes God my #1 priority? How is that possible? I spend three times that each day eating! I sometimes spend four times that amount of time returning e-mails! And I spend fourteen to sixteen times that amount of time each day sleeping! If priorities are measured in time, I'm not sure my relationship with God would even register.

I'm not so sure our "time with God" or our "relationship with God" needs to be charted on our timed scale of priorities. What would it look like if God wasn't one of the things on my to-do list? A place-holder on my list of priorities? What would happen if God was not the most important among many priorities? What would happen if my relationship with God, instead of being compartmentalized on my priority graph, began to influence and infiltrate every other thing that is on my priority list - family, work, exercise, nutrition, friends, etc? Would that change the way I live? Would that change the way we live?

Taught Wrong

"But I thought..."

"Well, you thought wrong."

It's fun to say, rough to hear. But what if it goes something like this?

"But I was taught..."

"Well, you were taught wrong."

It's amazing how you can be taught something for so many years and then find out that you were taught wrong. This recently happened to me with two simple words: the world. Now if you are like me and you've grown up at all around the Church, hearing or reading the world makes you remember phrases like, "Be in the world but not of the world" or "Don't be like the world." And images of the world involve people like whores, drug dealers, thiefs, thugs, gays, pedophiles, and people like that. You know...religious outsiders. The people that aren't in the Church.

It's what I was taught; it's what I assumed to be true. The world consisted of the people outside the church. Then I discovered something. Jesus talks about the world in a different light entirely. For me, it all came about when I was doing my reading in preparation for our church's Bible study. I was reading John 15:18-27. The whole passage is about this concept of the world hating Jesus' disciples because of him.

Okay. No real problem so far. Everything's lining up. The religious outsiders are going to hate us because of Jesus. Then I got to this little statement in verse 25:

But this is to fulfill what is written in their Law: 'They hated me without reason.

Did you catch that like I did? Their law? Whose law was it? It sure wasn't the whores and thiefs and the other religious outsiders. It was the Jews. It was the religious insiders, the most spiritual people of the culture. And then it "clicked." The outsiders never hated Jesus. It was the insiders who hated Jesus. It made sense. I've never been hated by the outsiders for living like Jesus. But there have been many times when I have been hated by the insiders for living like Jesus. (I should clarify here that there have been plently of times when I have been hated by the outsiders...but never bacause of living like Jesus. Outsiders hate me only when I act like I'm one of the insiders.)

This raises some pretty serious questions for the follower of Jesus, the person trying to live like Jesus. Like the familiar statement, "If the world (i.e. outsiders has a problem with you then you must be doing something right." According to how Jesus defines the world, that statement is wrong. Should it be more like, "If the Church has a problem with you then you must be doing something right?"

I think we have to be careful as we rethink this. Jesus doesn't say, "When the world hates you..." He says, "If the world hates you..." I think the goal is not angering churches. The goal is living like Jesus. Then we let the chips fall where they may.

But this idea of the world being the relgious insiders rather than the religious outsiders really has the potential to change things - the way we think and the way we live. I think the world has more to do with opposition to the Kingdom of God than it does a people group.

But that's not what I was taught!

Well, I was taught wrong...

Redirection

If you are just checking to see what I have written lately and only skimming through this page, you are missing some good stuff. Click here or click on the comment link below to take you to the great things others have been saying on the "God Bless" post.

Also, you no longer have to be a registered blogger user to comment. I invite you to post comments and join the conversation. If you have never commented, please note that I will approve your comment before I publish it. It's not that I'm into censorship; I just don't want someone placing hateful comments that degrade other contributors to the conversation. To date that has not happened one time, and I have never had to reject a comment. So please go deeper. You are invited to contribute to the conversation.

And thanks, Chris, for suggesting I put something about this on the main site.

God Bless...

I started thinking about something that I guess, in the grand scheme of things, is pretty trivial. But since triviality is something I have never been able to eschew, I thought I'd share it here on Hear the Yawp. What is the deal with "God bless?" I see it written on notes. I hear it on answering machine greetings. I hear folks say it on TV. It's one of those phrases that I see and hear all the time, but I have no idea what it's saying.

What does it mean?

Is it a prayer? As in God bless this house or God bless our family? If so, it's unfinished. God bless what?

Is it one of those things you're just supposed to complete yourself? Like I say to you, "God bless...," and you finish with whatever you need blessed - "my job" or "my country" or "my brakes" or "my kidneys."

Maybe it's not that we need someone to finish it for us; maybe naming the thing in need of God's blessing would just be uncouth. ...as in "God bless your fungus-infested toes or inflamed hemorrhoids or green-headed acne or abundance of fat cells or insect-repelling body odor?" It becomes a statement like, "We both know you are in need of God's blessing, but there's no way I am going to be so degrading as to name your problem out in the open for all to hear."

Or maybe it's just because our culture has become so isolated, self-centered, and individualized that we are sure other people need God's blessing...but we have no idea why. "God bless (you go ahead and fill in the blank because frankly I am too concerned with myself to be concerned with anything you are facing.)

I don't know; maybe it's something else. But I can say this: It strikes me as a trite, disconnected, meaningless waste of breath and phonetics.

It's just my opinion; your's could be different...

Keeping Busy?

Busy-ness. That's real power. It gives status. It rationalizes an infinite number of wrongs. It makes us feel useful. It dictates our meaning.

I'm not talking about business. One can ascend to the most elite level of busy-ness without ever going into business. No, I'm talking about the thing that gives Americans meaning...the thing that seems to make our otherwise pointless lives worthy of the four hours of sleep we get per night.

Busy-ness has become the heart of American culture. It is now the universal descriptor of our lives. As John Wesley's Methodist movement spread across America, leaders inquired of each other's lives with the question, "How is it with your soul?" Just a few decades ago, neighbors asked each other, "How's your family?" Then it moved to employment: "How's it going with work?" And now, when we really want to know how someone is doing, we ask, "Keeping busy?" And by chance if someone happens to ask, "How's everything going?" we make sure they know: "Busy."

But think about the answers: Soul? Fine. Family? Fine. Work? Fine. They didn't reveal much, but they at least indicated that there were no real catastrophes. "Keeping busy?" on the other hand, assumes catastrophe. Busy-ness is the ideal. It assumes, "Are you too busy to think?" "Are you too busy to spend time with your family?" "Are you too busy to get less than seven hours of sleep?" "Are you too busy to take a break?" "And please tell me you're too busy to take a vacation?" Yes, catastrophe is desirable, even admirable...even worthy of envy.

It's true. There have been numerous times I have found myself competing with my wife's stories of busy-ness at the end of the day. We have sat around in the living room or in the car "one-up-ing" each other. It's disgusting.

But she's my spouse. What about colleagues? Friends? Other family members? We have become slaves to busy-ness. It defines us. You are nobody until you are busy.

The great equalizer, it rationalizes (even pardons) a plethora of sins:

You forgot your son's baseball game? "I was just too busy."

You forgot your anniversary? "I was just too busy."

You didn't stop to help that stranded lady and her baby? "I was just too busy."

You didn't vote? "I was just too busy."

It's amazing how much is justified by busy-ness.

We were meant for more than busy-ness. We were meant for love, recreation, peace, worship, rest, work, discipline, creativity, reflection, and so many other wonderful things that busy-ness steals from us. Yet it is a thief to whom we gladly yield and submit.

The great god of busy-ness is a tyrant, oppressing his subjects with a trite pseudo-uselessness. The Creator-God weeps as we submit our lives to the imposter. Isn't it time we start living for more than busy-ness?

Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb...

You have to be careful with the word community. In many ways it falls prey to the over-clarification we discussed in the "label posts" a couple of weeks ago. What does one mean by community? When we talk about community that is specific to the Church or community that is specific to the way of Jesus, there are some definitions of community we must abandon. We are not talking about a neighborhood as in “This is a great community with a low crime rate." We are not referring to a distinct segment of the population as in the “gay community” or the “Asian community.” We are not even referring to a group of people with similar interests like “the scientific community,” the “art community,” or the “racquetball community.” Community in the way of Jesus is not a social club such as a country club or fraternity that offers benefits to its “members.” Rather, I am advocating a community of sharing, participation, and fellowship. I love the image of the Body the Apostle Paul uses so often in his letters (Romans 12:4-5, 1 Corinthians 10:17 and 12:12-27, Ephesians 4:1-25, Colossians 1:18 and 3:15). The body functions because of the intricate workings of each part. The sinuses, the toes, the bowels, the eyes, the ribs, the spleen, the knees, the shoulders, the veins, the fingernails, the heels. All do what they are supposed to do, and the body thrives. Take out a lung, throw it in a bucket, and the lung becomes useless - a mass of rotting tissue. Take out the stomach, throw it in a bucket, and the body has some serious problems. The body exists for its members; the members for the body. It is an interdependent relationship. Some parts of the body (like the liver) are quiet and unassuming. They don't say a whole lot. Some parts (like the brain) give direction and speak out quite a bit. Some parts (like the kidneys) quietly cleanse the body. And some parts (like the heart) give the life blood to the rest of the body. Each plays its own part. Even blogs become bodies (or communities) in this sense. There is me. I write the posts and get the conversation started. There are the folks like Shantell, Puck, Word 80, Doc, Bonnie, and edubbs who eagerly comment, pumping the life blood of the body and keeping the conversation moving. There are the folks (many of them named above) who post disagreements and often cleanse the impurities from the conversation. There are the ladies in SC who read frequently but never comment, contributing in unassuming ways. And there are other folks like TJ, Tony, and leoskeo who chime in on occassion; you don't really know they are there until they "speak up."

The body is also powerful. It keeps the individual members from moving in an unwanted or wrong direction. If the knee wants to go swimming, but the calf muscles refuse to lift the heels off the pavement and the shoulders and arms refuse to create the momentum, there is no way that body is jumping into a swimming pool. If the head would really like to run a 5K but the legs, heart, lungs, and sweat glands aren't conditioned for it, the body just won't reach the 5K mark. (In this regard, the Hear the Yawp community spoke loudly through her silence last week on the "Inerrancy" post! We will not go there again.)

Whether you read and applaud on your own, read and comment regularly, read and quietly become irritated, read and comment irregularly, read and become motivated to start other conversations, or read and bash me with your friends, you are welcome here...as long as you read. If you aren't reading... What am I saying? I can't address someone who is not reading!

The point is, community shapes us. By reading this, you are being shaped in some way. By commenting, you are shaping me and all who read. This is community.

Ridiculous Excrement

There are things that, in some circles, you just don't talk about. When I am with my mother-in-law, I don'’t talk about animals that have been hurt. When I am with my wife's grandfather, I don't talk about America's faults or how wrong war is. When I am with my father, I don't talk about racism. When I am with my wife, I don't talk about snakes. And when I am with most of the religious world, I don't talk about the doctrine of inerrancy. It's one of those things that everyone has an opinion on, but most aren't sure what the doctrine actually means. Inerrancy is one of those elephants in the room that everyone knows is there but no one wants to talk about. It's potentially volatile, but if we can just keep from talking about it, maybe it will go away. We at least won't have to become divided over it. Let'’s not talk about error, scribal inaccuracies, or historical contextualization. The Bible is good; leave it at that.

Or not. Let's jump in.

It seems to me that the whole battle over inerrancy is irrelevant to the Kingdom of God. The emphasis we have put on inerrancy and the raging war associated with it is like getting all worked up over Y2K. It just doesn'’t matter! Count it down - :05, :04, :03, :02, :01, Happy New Millennium! Look around. We're all still here. The power grid is still on-line. Bank accounts are in tact. And 10,000 children across the globe are still starving to death tonight.

The religious world has scrambled to try to assert their opinions on the battle of inerrancy. One side trying to change the other's mind and vice versa. Some are caught in the middle and are trying to figure out what side to join. Some are trying to ride the fence and play both sides; and some are just trying to stay out of it. But what if it's all in vain? What if, at the end of the day, after the "other side" wins, everything still goes on? What if the win or loss of the doctrine of inerrancy ends with no cataclysmic events whatsoever? What if, after the smoke, scholarship, blood, and original manuscripts clear, we are all still trying to make sense of the mysterious message of Jesus? And God's relentless pursuit of humanity? And what our role as the church really is? I think we will. I think the battle of inerrancy is an enormous snare that sidetracks the real Missio Dei.

I am reminded of this great scene in Dead Poets Society. Robin Williams plays a poetry-loving, marrow-out-of-life-sucking, English teacher named John Keating in an Ivy League Preparatory School. As a student reads aloud from the preface of his poetry textbook by J. Evans Pritchard, Keating begins to chart Pritchard's assertions on the blackboard: a vertical line graphs the poem's importance, and an horizontal line graphs its perfection. Shading in the charted area will determine a poem's greatness. As all of the students scramble to copy Keating'’s graph in their notebooks, he turns to them and says:

"Excrement. That's what I think of J. Evans Pritchard. Now I want you to rip out that page."

After the boys in the class finally begin tearing, he continues: "Be gone J. Evans Prichard... This is a battle, a war, and casualties could be your hearts and souls. Armies of academicians going on measuring poetry... No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world. We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race; and the human race is filled with passion. Poetry, beauty, romance, love, those are what we stay alive for."

In the same way that J. Evans Pritchard and his "Understanding Poetry" essay confine the true greatness of poetry by asserting some rediculous measuring device over it, the doctrine of inerrancy asserts some rediculous assumptions about the Bible. The doctrine of inerrancy sujects the Bible to a human measuring stick - a post-Enlightenment ethic of factual truth based on reason and emperical data. Inerrantists claim that the Bible is true without any mixture of error. The other camp (I guess we could call them "Errantists") claim that errors, though undeniably present, do not nullify the "truth" of scripture.

(I must stop here and state that the above descriptions, to people who are in the heat of the inerrancy battle, are a grave over-simplification. I do not refute that; in fact, I agree. And if you are in the heat of that battle, are reading this, and are offended by my over-simplification of your position, I apologize. I make no claim to be a professional theologian. But I am also not in that battle and have no plans of entering it. My desire here is to raise questions of a different sort.)

Now back to the issue, Dead Poets Society, J. Evans Pritchard, and rediculous graphing and assumptions. The battle of the doctrine of inerrancy has resulted in three unfortunate things:

1) The Bible has been reduced to a book of facts and propositions. The living Word, when funneled through the doctrine of inerrancy, dies a sad death. Facts are not free to speak into the lives of God's people. They are true, or they are false. Facts are, at best, two-dimensional; the living Word is, at least, four-dimensional. Facts are black-and-white; the living Word is psychedelic. The living Word is organic, evolving, speaking to the needs of individuals and communities...calling us into the great Missio Dei. In the words of Doug Pagitt, the living Word does not provide application; it creates implication. When the Israelites were fighting, the Bible says that the "sun stood still" so that the day would linger and the Israelites would have opportunity to win the battle. Here's the thing: the sun doesn't move. We all know that from seventh grade science. The author of the passage didn't take seventh grade science. It was a pre-Copernican writing. They believed the sun revolved around the earth. The day was made longer by keeping the sun at a stand-still. So the debate/war continues: Did the sun really stand still? Or did the earth stand still? Does the scientific inaccuracy nullify the truth of the Bible? Hmm... Honestly, I don't care. The "greatness" of the Bible doesn't depend on how factual it is, Mr. Pritchard. The greatness of the Bible rests in the Logos, the timeless message of God. It is timeless because it is "living." It is timeless because it transcends fact. It transcends proposition. True, the Bible contains propositional truth, but it also contains narrative, parable, poetry, apocalyptic literature, and letters. It is alive, and it transcends any kind of human assumptions we can place upon it.

2) The Bible becomes a "special book." Errantists make statements like, "The Bible is not the Word of God; Jesus is the Word of God." They look at the Bible as a special book that contains the message of God. They claim that message is true. There may be factual errors in the details; Jonah's fish may be mythical; but the message is true. The Red Sea may have been the Sea of Reeds, but the message is true. The earth may have been created in an allegorical six days, but the message is true. The sun may not have, in fact, stopped, but the message is true. The demon-possessions Jesus encountered may have been epilepsy, but the message is true. You get the point. But here's the thing: there is still the human-ized measuring stick: true or false. The only thing that has changed is what is being measured.

3) The Bible has become the devinized appendix to the Trinity. The inerrancy battle, where one is an errantist or an inerrantist, is guilty of committing idolatry on the altar of "truth." Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Holy Bible. "Holy, Holy, Holy...God in four persons, blessed Trinity...plus one more." We have spent so much time making the Bible "right" that we have either elevated the Bible itself or bridled the work of God. Either way we are guilty. Blasphemy or Idolatry. Doesn't matter. By asserting post-Enlightenment, westernized ideal of factual, propositional, proven truth, we have crowned the scriptures as a god in herself. Doug Pagitt and his church Solomon's Porch refer to the Bible as a "living, authoritative member of [their] community." It is alive. It interacts with them. It sits on no lofty throne. She speaks to our sitz im leben out of her own sitz im leben.

So when we get down to it, why would we want a book that is merely factually correct and loftily perfect (inerrancy)...
Or why would we want to have a special book whose message is merely "true" (errancy)...

...when we can interact with what it is: alive, implicating, and true?

Once again, the Church is giving answers to the wrong questions. The answers are thought out well, and a great deal of scholarship (even good scholarship) has gone into constructing the answers. But the answers are only good if they address questions people are actually asking. Otherwise, the answers are irrelevant. And that brings us back full circle: The battle of inerrancy is irrelevant to the Kingdom of God. With all the rediculous talk of different kinds of truth (absolute, real, full, undeniable, moral, etc.), the Church has felt the need to defend the Bible based on what I refered to above as "Post-Enlightenment, Westernized, proven-by-empirical data" truth. We have assumed that a "modern" determinant of truth was the same as a "post-modern" determinant of truth. It's just not the case.

The Bible, when we let is listen and speak as it is - without holding it to this human measuring stick - remains as it is: in community, in relationship with the people of God. It's not that it speaks for itself. Rather, it speaks for God. It speaks for us. It speaks for you. But then again, it speaks to God; it speaks to us; and it speaks to you. And yet, as part of the community, it listens to God; it listens to us; it listens to you. It is mysterious. It is alive.

Still Obsessed

I was sitting at lunch yesterday enjoying the best Chicago-style pizza in town with this guy. We were talking about labels. The usual stuff - conservative, liberal, Baptist, Methodist, whatever. He said that he didn't like the labels either and said, "I like to just tell people 'I'm a Christian'." I sat back in the booth and put my feet up. Thinking... I continued, "I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that one either." He gave me one of those looks that seem to say, "That's a little much, man, but I'm not going to let you know I'm thinking that it's a little much." The look is a betraying look. The tension in the mouth gives it away. And you can't hide the surprise in the eyes. I was onto him. Then came the question: "Why?"

"Because there's so much baggage that comes with the term," I said.

What is a Christian? I guess it depends on who you ask.

To someone who has grown up in Sunday school: A Christian is a person who knows Jesus as his Lord and Savior.

To an atheist: A Christian is someone who uses faith as a crutch.

To a homosexual: A Christian is someone who hates me.

To a non-believing woman: A Christian is someone who oppresses me.

Yeah, I know, I just used a bunch of labels and stereotypes, but you get the point. Different people, based on their own context, define Christians differently. Some people think being a Christian is about rules. Some people think being a Christian is about going to a worship service on Sunday mornings, or reading a Bible, or praying before meals. Some people think being a Christian is about repeating a "sinner's prayer." Some people think being a Christian is about what you are against. Some people think being a Christian is about being an American. Some people think being a Christian is about converting the world to Christianity. Some people think being a Christian is a private thing. Some people think being a Christian is about giving money to a church. Some people think being a Christian is about a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. And some people think being a Christian is something I can't even begin to presume.

"I am a Christian." It could be interpreted so many ways. "I am a Christian." Many of those interpretations would not describe me at all. Why would I want to lead others to believe something nonsensical about me?

Last week I asked a gal in our church if she resonated with mysticism. She had a great answer: "I don't know; what is a mystic?"

Months ago I was talking with a spiritual guide in a metaphysical bookstore (whatever that is) about some classes. She told me about a Mother Mary Christ Consciousness class. She said the only requirement was that I had to believe I could create my own reality. Then she asked me how I felt about that. My answer: "I don't know how I feel about it; I don't know anything about it, and I'd hate to make an uneducated judgment."

My mom once asked me if I had become a liberal in college. "I don't know, Mom. I guess it depends on your definition of liberal."

Is the gal in our church a mystic? Don't know. I guess it depends on your definition of mystic.

Am I a Christian? I don't know. I guess it depends on your definition of Christian.

Label Obsession

Labels can be important. My brother-in-law is a Chevy man. He wouldn't dare buy a Ford truck. Some of the girls in my church will only buy certain jeans - Seven for All Mankind, Paper Denim, True Religion. They claim they can't wear Gap, Old Navy, or Levis. There are folks who will only drink Starbucks; there are some who refuse Satrbucks. I grew up only liking Campbell's pork-n-beans, but my wife has converted me to Bush's. From cars, orange juice, and footballs to handguns, beer, and carburators, we like our labels.

And then there are styles: We have punks and preps, goths and guidos. Emo. Geek. Hippie. Gangsta. Cowboy.

And then there are Christians: Conservative. Liberal. Evangelical. Mainline. Orthodox. Calvinist. Pro-life. Pro-choice. Pre-millenial. Post-millenial. Pan-millenial (it all pans out in the end).

And then there are denominations: Methodist, United Methodist, African Methodist Episcopal, Episcopal, Evegelical Free, Evangelical Covenant, Presbyterian Church-USA, Presbyterian Church of America, Pentecostal, Pentecostal Holiness, Church of God, United Church of Christ, Assemblies of God, Southern Baptist, American Baptist, Independent Baptist, Missionary Baptist, Free Will Baptist, Non-denominational, Mennonite, Brethren, Lutheran, Wesleyan, and the list goes on and on.

And as if the denominations were not enough, we have now created more labels for our churches: Purpose-Driven, Willow Creek Association, and now, the really hot one...Emergent.

I, for one, am tired of the labels. It seems to me that the labels do two primary things: 1) They show everyone how we misalign ourselves, or 2) They try to announce that we are somehow better than everyone else. I was sitting with a group of pastors doing what pastors do best - talking about churches. We started talking about a guy that had started a network of churches in tattoo shops.

"What kind of church is that?" one of the pastors asked.

"It was a postmo...an emer..." He turned to me and continued, "What would you call it, Jonathan?"

"I'd call it a church."

I can remember being part of groups that longed to be in a "purpose-driven church." I can remember talking about my church as an "emergent church." But now it all seems so...well...stupid. What is an emerging church? It depends on who you ask. Ask Tony Jones and you'll hear about a theological conversation. Ask John O'Keefe and you'll get a nice rule of pinky. Ask D.A. Carson and you'll hear it's insensible. Ask some megachurch pastors and you'll hear it's about the lighting, candles, and music.

For me, the label became pointless when I realized how many people were trying to fit into the packaging of the label. Rob Bell's book "Velvet Elvis" hit the shelves and sold faster than paparazzi photos of Paris Hilton. These coorporate church pastors are reading the book. And they are getting their churches to read the book too. Rob's church is considered by folks to be an emerging church. Rob's church is huge. These pastors want huge churches. They want to tap the younger crowd and do the cool thing. Rob can show the way. Rick Bell. Rob Hybels. The purpose-driven velvet Elvis going fishing in the Willow Creek! I recently talked to a pastor who told me about a new worship service they were starting. He said that it was going to be "darker and use a more Emergent kind of music, like Chris Tomlin or David Crowder." A few months back I was talking with a group of church-planters who identified their churches as "emergent." Most were trying to fit the Bush label on the Campbell's can. The "Emergent" label, after all, is cooler. Forget the theological deconstruction/reconstruction/conversation. Let's kill the lights so we can be labeled "emergent."

I suppose if I wanted to, I could call myself "green." I hike. I enjoy being among creation. I recycle. I eat hormone-free meats, and I occassionaly buy some organic snacks. Sure, I am green. I am green-er than many other folks who don't recycle, stay indoors all the time, and only eat precessed foods. But then again, I'm not as green as many others who march for environmental causes, grow their own organic crops, and always choose paper instead of plastic. Then there are even the folks who will not wash their cars because of the run-off and the folks who choose neither plastic nor paper - they bring their own. I state all of this only to show one thing: most anyone can claim the label if they want to.

The reality is that most folks would consider my church to be "emergent." We are certainly part of the theological conversation Tony talks about. We fit every descriptor in John's "rule of pinky." (Rule of thumb, he says, is too modern!) And I'm sure D.A. would say we are, at times, insinsible. But still, I'm just not sure I am comfortable with the "emergent" label. After all, what does it mean? When a label fails to say anything, what good is a label in the first place. And when the label does say something that is, for all intensive purposes, an elitist assertion (i.e. "We are more progressive than you." "We exegete culture better than you." We have grappled with our theology more than you." "We are closer to the real church than you are." "We are more authentic than you are." "We know more of what it means to live in community than you do."), what good is it to the Kingdom of God?

God is not pleased with the deviciveness of the Church. God is not pleased with our misaligning labels whether they are old ones (conservative, liberal, contemporary, traditional) or our new ones (purpose-driven, Willow-back, or Emergent). Why can't we just leave all the labels behind? Why can't we just be the church? Why can't we just love Jesus and love people?

And why can't we all just love Macs more than PC's?

Usurped by Children

I am called lots of things. Some of them refer to my relationships: husband, father, brother, son, friend. Some of them refer to my vocation: cultural architect, minister, facilitator, evangelist, teacher, pastor, church planter. Some of them refer to my inadequacies: ...well, I better not quote those; they might be a little inappropriate. Much of our roles, in modernity, have been compartmentalized. I am a pastor while I am talking with people in our church. I am an evangelist when I meet new people. I am a husband when I am at home. I am incompetent when I sit the bench on a church softball team. I am a (insert expletive) when I sit too long at a green light.

But alas, the days of compartmentalizing are approaching their demise. Some instances require a blending of my roles. Like when I am leading a spiritual conversation in our church around a biblical text and someone is really struggling with something in her personal life. I see the tears. I see the anguish. Yet I assume the depth of the passage is moving her, despite the fact that she has shared the difficulty moments ago...before the tears began. I focus more on the passage, get excited, and anticipate the spiritual renewal of this poor girl. Blended roles: pastor and moron.

Or when I go to an extended family gathering, like Thanksgiving Dinner...or a Memorial Day cook-out...or my niece's birthday party (as I did this past weekend). At that moment, I am the uncle, brother, son, husband, father, and D.R.P. - the Designated Religious Person. The DRP is the person in the family deemed more spiritual than the others. Somehow we DRP's are assumed to be more spiritual because we have been to school, get paid to be that way, and spend quite a bit of time blogging about things like being the DRP. At any rate, the role of every family DRP, at every family gathering, is to pray before the meal. Sure, we are the brunt of the occasional "take up the collection" joke. And there is the rare occasion when we are consulted as the family authority on some moral issue. But mostly, we pray before meals. It's my blended role: Uncle DRP...Brother DRP...Father DRP.

It is, quite honestly, a hat I wear like a load of gravel. It is heavy. It weighs upon me. The role brings such unattainable expectations with it - at least for me. See, I don't pray well. I am not articulate in my praying. I do not pray for long. I run out of things to say. I have taken those spiritual gift inventories before. Prayer scores consistently last for me. So the inevitable question always makes me uneasy. It is always asked in private, usually in a low voice: "Jonathan, will you ask the blessing for us today?" My response, as the DRP, is always "Yes." And then the worrying ensues. "What am I going to pray about other than the food?" "Am I going to live up to the expectations of the super-spiritual DRP?" "Are there any family celebrations that have yet gone unnamed that I need to include in the prayer?" On Veteran's Day, I was asked by my wife's grandfather to "ask the blessing." It was a big deal because he is a veteran; Veteran's Day is emotional for him. I had to ask my wife what Veteran's Day celebrated. Blended: DRP, Husband, Moron.

As I stated above, the inevitable happened this past weekend at my niece's birthday party. While I was standing outside on the patio, my sister approached me and carefully, quietly, almost in a whisper, asked me, Brother DRP, "will you ask the blessing in a few minutes for us?" My reply? Same as usual: "Yes." I started thinking, - well, worrying really - about what I was going to pray. Do I thank God for all six years of my niece's life? Ask God to give her six more? Or do I try to get all elaborate and articulate about God guiding her steps as she comes to know him more? Or do I just stick to asking God to bless the pizza? I went inside, sat on the sofa and thought about it. Moments later, my sister came in, announced to the children and their parents that we were now going to say the blessing, and gave me the nod. I responsively moved forward in my seat, getting into the more assertive prayer posture. I quickly collected my thoughts, hoping that it would all come to me as I got started, and then the unusual happened. My two nieces announced that they wanted to say the prayer! What? Not the DRP? I know...it almost sounds blasphemous! My sister looked at me; I nodded, and sat back in my seat feeling much more passive. They sang the prayer, and when they started, the rest of the children joined in. I had heard them sing it many times before, but never so many. The simplicity and innocence struck me as they sang these words to the tune of "Are You Sleeping Brother John?":

Thank you God, thank you God
For our food, for our food
Thank you very much, thank you very much
Amen. Amen.

Imagine fifteen children singing that together. It's simple; it's honest; it's to the point; and to this DRP, it was poignant. Can you believe it? Upstaged by children. The supreme spirituality of the DRP with all of his theological degrees, experience in teaching others about the ways of God, and theological conversations...deflated by the melodious-but-often-off-pitch voices of children.

I think maybe we, as adults, have placed too many expectations on the eloquence of our prayers. I think maybe we need to learn from the simplicity of fifteen children singing "Thank you, God" to the tune of "Are You Sleeping." I think maybe we need to make the kids the DRP's.

Enemy Inside the Gate?

Religion departments at universities can be strange places. They aren't like biology departments, math departments or exercise science departments. They can be brutal places full of politics and subsequent debates. I double majored in English and Religion in college, and I can honestly say that the the halls of the English department just weren't filled with debates over Sylvia Plath's use of alliteration. But walk through the halls of the religion department and you'd think you were in the political science department - Calvinists arguing with Armenians, Baptists arguing with everyone else (and often themselves). This is the environment in which my roommate and I spent much of our time. This is the environment that I often forget. This is the environment that I remembered upon a recent visit from my college roommate.

TJ now lives about 500 miles away from me, and we had not seen each other in several years. It was a real surprise when he told me he was on his way to Boone...but a surprise I welcomed. As we talked about the good ole days, the memories came rushing back. And as we talked about our old friends, we shared with each other what we knew of our old friends' current lives they are leading. We talked about a couple friends who have died; we talked about our friends who have been successful in their businesses; and we talked about the ones who have done nothing after school. And we speculated about the ones neither of us had kept up with. Then TJ told me about an experience he had while he was in seminary with a couple of the guys from the "good ole days." These guys had invited him to speak at an apologetics conference for students. He said that he was stunned by their introduction of him to the students: "TJ is a guy that has come a long way; he used to be my enemy."

Maybe I need to go back a little...

TJ and I often found ourselves in the middle of those religion hall debates. We looked up to a professor there in the religion department that many of the other students saw as a little "unorthodox." I guess some would even have called him a heretic. Needless to say, as disciples of this prof, some of the other students took issue with some of our assertions and ideas. We didn't really associate with their group, and neither did they with ours. Our only real interaction was in the halls between classes as we exchanged and debated ideas. College changes people, and TJ and I are no different. I changed; TJ changed. But we did not change together. TJ went to a Seminary that focused on classical apologetics. Mine focused on spiritual formation and leadership.

That's what the guy meant when he said TJ had "come a long way." He meant TJ had moved closer to their camp. He was saying that TJ was no longer his enemy.

TJ said he was stunned, and when he told me about it, I was disturbed. I told him that I would have said, "He may have thought of me as his enemy, but I didn't think of him as mine." It's hard for me to understand that. I just don't get how another follower of Jesus Christ can be my enemy. If this thing we are living is indeed a war, then my guess is that we are supposed to all be on the same side. But so many of us want to make it into a Civil War. We lose sight of the real enemy.

Why is it that Religion Department Halls sound like Political Science Departments? Why are we so focused on our disagreements? Why do we lose sight of the important things we do agree on? Why do we search out the things that misalign us? And why do we label people (ourselves included) by the things that divide us?

"I am a liberal."

"I am a Calvinist."

"I am a Pre-millennialist."

"I am a Lutheran."

"I am an Evangelical."

"I am a Postmodern."

"I am a Traditionalist."

And so it goes as we misalign ourselves. Why can't I just be a follower of Jesus who doesn't have everything figured out? Why do I have to be someone's enemy?

Resurrection of the Will

"Are you nervous?" he asked. I was preaching my first sermon, and it was in front of a bunch of people in Lexington, NC that I didn't know. I answered with an understated yet truthful, "Yes." This seasoned pastor's reply was one that would shape much of the way I think about preaching: "Good. Preaching is such a serious task that you ought to be nervous. You are being the mouthpiece of God. The day you stop being nervous is the day you need to stop preaching." Interestingly, I still get nervous; but that's not the point. I'm sure we could argue such a definitive statement, but the spirit behind the statement is what haunts me. I want to preach the Truth. I would hate to stand in front of people and preach a fallacy. Now I'm sure I have, at some point, unknowingly said some things that were untrue. And to be perfectly honest with you, I have at times been tempted to knowingly "contextualize" some passages incorrectly. If you've ever taught a Bible study or preached a sermon, you know what I'm talking about: you know your idea is right but you can't find any scripture to support it. Then you find this verse that really has nothing to do with what you're trying to say, but, out of context, it seems to work. Yea...I've been tempted to do that. I've always withstood that temptation, but it's been a temptation none the less.

Then there are the times when I, out of ignorance, preach something that is false. Deep down I don't even want to know about those things because it plays with my mind. Deep down I hope never to come face to face with those fallacies. Deep down I wish they would just float off into oblivion never to raise their ugly heads again. But that's not always the case. And this is one of those times.

One of my favorite things to talk about has been the "death of the will." I like talking about "dying to ourselves." I like talking about this "death" as a metaphor for an abandonment of our own personal will. I like talking about giving up our own desires in order to yield to God's desires or the desires of others. I like talking about the assassination of our own will in favor of yielding to the will of God. Like I said, it's been one of my favorite things to preach. That's the way I've interpreted John 21:18 -

"I tell you the truth, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go." (NIV)

Then I had to go out and buy Tony Jones' book The Sacred Way. Tony is great for people like me who have grown up in a Protestant tradition but find the Protestant practice of spirituality to be a little shallow. The book covers all these spiritual disciplines found primarily in Catholic and Orthodox traditions. My plan was to read about all of them and pick out a couple that really jumped out at me to give a try. I read about Silence & Solitude, Lectio Devina, and the Jesus Prayer. Then I got to the chapter on Centering Prayer. The following section jarred me:

"In the seventeenth century, some in France took the writings of St. Theresa of Avila, who promoted a "prayer of quiet" to extremes. Quietists taught the pray-er to become utterly passive, to the point of annihilating the will. Any thought, even of Christ or the cross or one's own salvation, was rejected. This led to great moral laxity, since outward behaviors had no influence on the inner quiet of the person. For good reason, Quietism was condemned in 1687 and died out shortly thereafter." (page 72)

Did you catch that? Annihilating the will? Have I been teaching heresy? Maybe the annihilation/assassination of the will really isn't what "dying to the self" is all about. As a matter of fact, I can see the problem. To remove one's will is to remain open to all sorts of influence. Embracing the will of others is not the answer. Come to think of it...to live life with no will is to live life with no purpose. Life is meaningless. What if, however, we could resurrect the will. Rather what if God could resurrect our will? What if our resurrected will was healed in the same way that my relationship with God is healed? What if it is restored to what God created it to be much like the Kingdom of God restores humanity and the earth to what God intended? What if, in the salvific process, my will is re-embraced. And what if my resurrected will is completely in sync with the will of God?

Maybe going where I don't want to go is really "going where my old, dead, empty will doesn't want to go." Maybe going where I don't want to go is really "going where God wants me to go." And maybe "going where God wants me to go" is precisely where my resurrected will wants me to go.

I'm human, and left to human rationale, preaching will be flawed. I'm sure it won't be the last time I find out I've preached some form of heresy. Thank God for a worldwide faith community full of people like Tony Jones and St. Theresa of Avila who help us keep things straight. Thank God that, eventually, he will resurrect my intellect much like he resurrects my will.

The H.N.I.C.

Sometimes you just know you're right. Sometimes you just know the others are wrong. Sometimes they are so wrong and you are so right that it makes you angry. One of my favorite movies is "Lean on Me." Morgan Freeman plays a tough principal in the turbulent 80's called in to straighten out Eastside High School in New Jersey so that the state doesn't take over the school. Eastside was once a great school, but it has become a haven for gangs, drugs, and violence. The teachers have absolutely no control, and only 30% of the students could pass the minimum basic skills test. "That means," in the words of Joe Clark (Morgan Freeman), "they can hardly read." He comes to the school and immediately confronts the faculty. He reassigns them to different tasks. The tells them they are incompetent. He tells them that it is their fault the students are failing. He tells them that they are not allowed to talk in his meetings, and just before storming out of the room he announces, "And contrary to popular opinion, I am the H.N.I.C." After he walks out, one of the teachers questions the assistant principal, "The H.N.I.C?" She answers, "The Head Nigger In Charge." He's right; they're wrong. Enter anger.

Now in a way, I like Joe Clark. I like his boldness. I like his zeal. I like his vigilance. But on the other hand, he's offensive. What if I had been one of those teachers? I'm guessing my perspective would be different. And that gets me thinking about the role of the prophet. Amos was like that. "I am right; you are wrong; it's time to step up." Speaking for God, he says, "I hate..." Wow. "I hate." Amos. The H.N.I.C. He's right; they're wrong. Enter anger.

Joe Clark's situation was dire; it was urgent. It must be dealt with immediately. One school year to turn everything around. Amos' situation was dire; it was urgent. It must be dealt with immediately. God's wrath and fury was coming soon.

Most people don't change their minds because of a H.N.I.C. Most people change because of a conversation (or a series of conversaions). And conversation requires listening. Joe Clark was not a listener. Amos was not a listener. Listening takes time, and time is something they just didn't have. What about the normal world? What about disagreements with church people? What is the role of the prophet today? When does the prophet need to speak with the voice of the H.N.I.C? When does the prophet need to take the time for listening and conversation? Can a real prophet speak with speak with anything but the voice of the H.N.I.C? When it comes down to it, conversation is more effective than confrontation. But are there some things that are so urgent that they require confrontation? Are there some things that necessitate the voice of Joe Clark or Amos? The voice of the H.N.I.C?

Reality Check

Okay...I'm usually pretty hard on the whole "seeker-streamlined-plastic-programmed-contemporary church" thing, but this weekend I had a reality check. We were visiting some of my family for Easter, and we thought it would be great to worship together as a family. As a pastor, I can actually count on one hand the times that I have worshipped with my entire family over the last 12 years. Needless to say I was looking forward to it. My sister had just started visiting a new church, and so we all decided to join her. Easter came, and we all filed in to the sanctuary. We sat in the middle, and I started looking through the bulletin. I saw that we were getting ready to sing some hymns, have some kind of prayer about a list of people, and hear a message from someone who was not the pastor. I thought to myself, "Cool...it's Easter, and this pastor is secure enough to share the pulpit with someone else." This was going to be great! The guy (I think he was a deacon) got up to welcome everyone. He went on for about five minutes about how many people they had at the sunrise service. Then he made some comments about one side being full while the other side needed some more people. Then he said that they had some land they could build on if they got enough people. I felt like throwing my hand up and waving, "Here I am...I'm here...aren't you at least as happy that I am here as you are upset that some people aren't here?" But I just sat there. They eventaully took up an offering. When they passed the plate down my row, they also sent this metal bucket full of cards. I didn't know what they were, and since I was the first person on the row and couldn't follow someone else's lead, I took a card. Turns out it was an information card for visitors. I started filling it out. My mom asked me why I was filling it out, and I told her that I like to see how churches contacted visitors. But since I received one at the offering, I didn't know what to do with it after I filled it out. I just left it on the seat. They never communicated to me what to do with it. Come to think of it, they never even communicated with me what it was. When the preacher stood up (it was a struggle, I think, because he weighed about 400 pounds), he started making all these jokes (jokes that weren't funny) about how he had more time to preach. He started in on how people ought to bring their Bible (He called it "Your Word") to church. He said that it was okay for visitors not to bring their Bibles because "they don't know any different." He said that everyone needed to bring their Bibles so that they could underline things and see if he was preaching the right things. I was one of those visitors who "didn't know any different," so I grabbed the KJV from under the pew in front of me. It's funny; as I checked him, I noticed that he took many exerpts from scripture out of context. He said quite a few times that he wasn't going to be finished preaching by the assumed 11:30. I wondered about all the people who, like ourselves, had made plans after worship based on the advertised 10:30-11:30 timeframe. I thought about the guy who was meeting us for lunch who had to leave by 12:15 for work. And when we passed him on our way back to the house and I realized that he was going to work with no lunch, I didn't think the preacher's jokes about his long sermon were very funny at all. By the time he stopped preaching at noon, he had said numerous offensive things to unchurched people including, as he asked us to turn to some passage in Psalms, "If you don't know where it is, it can't do you any good." I thought about how people who might have come on Easter searching for the meaning of the holiday. I thought about people who may have entered a church building for the first time, all because they were searching for something true. I started thinking about how that church would affect someone like that. I imagined them feeling insulted. I imagined them leaving and never wanting to visit another church again. I felt dirty after I left. I felt like I had been part of something wrong. I know, we're not supposed to leave worship asking what it did for us. I know we are instead supposed to leave asking what God thought of it. And I also know that this is a very strong, judgmental thing to write here, but I think God was not pleased. I think God loves lost people so much that He was offended.

When I look at this church, like I said, I get a reality check. Maybe the consumer-driven contemporary church is better than I let on. It's certainly better than this. At least it's trying to be relevant! At least it's not trying to insult people who don't know Jesus or belong to their church. Maybe I just needed some perspective.

DaVinci and The Kingdom of God

Most people, it seems, like movies. Some more than others; some less than others. But as a whole, I'm guessing most people like movies. Some like light comedies; some like dark dramas; some like science fiction; some like documentaries; some like anime; some like sports flicks; and some, I guess like movies with lots of killing. Christians, I suppose are no different. Most Christians like movies too. Yet at the same time, I think some Christians feel the need to give up their own likes and dislikes when it comes to movies. There are just some movies Christians are supposed to like and some movies Christians are supposed to hate. Remember "Pay it Forward" a few years ago? Yeah. Definitely loved by Christians. What about "The Last Temptation of Christ?" That was a movie about Jesus, right? Sorry. Definitely hated by Christians. And now here we are, once again, caught up in a bunch of hype. "The DaVinci Code" comes out next month, and American Christianity is in an uproar. We are seeing books refuting the "message" of the novel. We are seeing churches plan entire series on the topic. We are seeing conferences and seminars on how to talk to someone about "The DaVinci Code." The Church has launched a full-force panic campaign to tackle the questions the book and soon-to-be-movie propose. Definitely. Christians are supposed to hate this one.

The last movie to get Christians all hyped up? "Narnia." It was marketed to Christians, and the Church showed up. We bought Bible covers, toys, teaching curriculum, and all kinds of marketing tools associated with the film. Christians definitely liked this one. After all, it was going to be a great evangelistic opportunity. What happened?

That reminds me of the "greatest evangelistic opportunity in 2,000 years." The movie that made lots of unexpected money. The movie that was supposed to be professional suicide for it's creator. Churches built entire programs around "The Passion of the Christ." We bought out entire showings of the film. I even heard someone from Outreach Marketing say, "Some of you are wondering why this movie has an R rating. Let me just say that R is for 'Real'." What?

I think Hollywood has figured out how to do big grossing films in fresh, new ways. Hollywood Execs are sitting back in their plush chairs loving Christians. Let's face it; we create incredible publicity...often for free! All Hollywood has to do with "The DaVinci Code" is let Christians respond, and voila...free marketing!

The Church has moved away from advancing God's Kingdom in favor of defending it. We are on the defense. Somehow we have been deceived into thinking that the Kingdom of God can be undermined by Hollywood...or Ron Howard...or Dan Brown. I was curious about it, so I decided to ask some questions. After Dan's book sat on the bestseller list for so long, and after Christians started reacting to it, I decided I needed to ask some questions. So I walked into a local metaphysical bookstore and asked this question: "Did you see an increase in the interest in goddess worship or gnosticism after "The Davinci Code" came out?" Their answer? A definitive "No."

I'm just wondering. Why are we making such a big deal about this? Why are we fueling the fire? Why are we so scared? Do we really think that this could be the "single greatest threat to the Kingdom of God in 2,000 years?" Maybe we have so programmed what the Kingdom is supposed to be that we have forgotten that we are not the kings. Maybe we have forgotten that we serve a sovereign King. Is God really bigger than Dan Brown? Is God really bigger than Ron Howard or Tom Hanks? Is God bigger than all of Hollywood? I sure hope so. If not, we're taking the right approach. In fact, maybe we better buy some more anti-Davinci Code curriculum.

Reject Worship

I was in another city in NC this weekend when I saw a church advertising a new worship service. The banner was huge. It proclaimed the name of the worship service followed by the definitive subtitle: "an alternative worship service." I have seen this kind of thing many times before; I have even heard the phrase quite a few times. But it never hit me quite like this. The church probably thinks they are being progressive, maybe even a little "edgy." Church people like to think of themselves as "a little edgy." It's cool to be edgy. I was even in a Sunday School class in a very traditional, conservative church once that referred to themselves as the remedial class. Why? They didn't use the Sunday School curriculum; they used the Bible alone! In the whole worship dynamic that thrives in churches, people talk about modern worship, contemporary worship, and alternative worship. Some are even calling it postmodern worship. Most of them do this in an attempt to get unreached people to come to their churches.

I have been hanging out with quite a few of these "unreached people," and here's what I've found out: they don't speak that language. They don't know what "contemporary worship" means. They don't know what "modern worship" means. Unless they are philosophers, they have no idea what "postmodern worship" means, and if they are philosophers, they are wrong in their assumptions about what "postmodern worship" is. And "altenative worship?" That doesn't sound very appealing. It might make them think of an "alternative school" for behaviorally challenged kids. It might make them think of an alternative to Christian worship - like some kind of rose-selling, Cool-Aid-drinking, comet-catching, compound-burning cult. Translation: STAY AWAY!!

It strikes me how most Christians have spent so much time with other Christians that they have lost touch with people who aren't Christians. We forget how they think. We forget how they talk. We forget how things sounded to us before we loved Jesus. People who haven't spent their lives in churches know nothing of the worship shift that has swept America. They have no idea that guitars were brought into churches in the 70's. They have no idea that full bands were brought into churches in the 80's. They have no idea that decks and electonics found their way into churches in the 90's. And they sure have no idea that many churches in the Bible belt think it's cool that, here in the 21st century, churches are adopting the church music of the 70's or 80's. They have no idea that "contemporary worship means "contemporary music." They have no idea that "alternative worship" means "alternative to boring."

Maybe it communicates something we don't intend. Maybe it even communicates something terrible. Maybe it communicates that this new worship service isn't the real worship. Maybe it communicates that the real worship happens at 11:00 where it is labeled "traditional" and the reject worship happens at the "alternative worship" on Sunday nights. What if it communicates that this new worship service is a half-way house of sorts? A half-way house for non-worshipping types. A half-way house designed to move cultural oddities into mainstream cultural normalcy. What if we are insulting the people we are trying to reach?

What if we stopped doing that? What if we just worshipped authentically? What if we stopped trying to get them to come to us? What if we started hanging out with them? What if we talked to them? What if we just told them about our worship?

Wow. That would be an alternative.

Daughters, Pony Tails, and Forks

Have you ever tried to sit through a meal with a screaming child at the table next to you? Imagine this: You are sitting in a booth at a fantastic Mexican restaurant enjoying your chimichanga when suddenly a toddler in the booth beside you flings a spoon across the dividing wall and into your eye. That is exactly what happened to us tonight, but sadly to say I wasn't the one who pulled the spoon out of my eye. It was my daughter who threw the spoon! I apologized to the man profusely, but he seemed to be rather irritated. I think it really hurt his eye. He rolled his injured eye at me, and his date was quick to inform me that the spoon had indeed hit his eye. She was not happy either.

Now I wish I could say that it was the first time my daughter had misbehaved at dinner. As a matter of fact, before she was born, sitting at a table beside a screaming child, I remember telling my wife, "My child will only do that once," implying that my heavy disciplinary hand would bring any such outbursts to a quick halt. It turns out my disciplinary hand is about as heavy as Mary Kate Olson (that was inappropriate, wasn't it?).

A few months ago we were sitting in another booth at Outback. The three of us were sitting across from my sister-in-law and her husband. We were sitting back-to-back with a solitary man who was, in turn, sitting across from his wife. The man had a pony tail. While we were all concentrating on our meals, my daugher turned to find a tantalizing pony tail. Apparently she could not resist. Yep. She gave it a nice, hard yank. My wife and I did not see it; her brother-in-law did. We knew something was wrong by the look on his face. Then we turned around to look at the man. He was pretending nothing happened. When we finished our meal, I went to the man and apologized for daughter's zeal for pony tails. His response: "Don't you scold her for that. It's perfectly okay."

I must admit that I am much more like the guy with the spoon than I am the guy with the pony tail. I don't want to be inconvenienced; I surely don't want to take an assault from a flying spoon; and if I had one, I know I wouldn't want someone milking my pony tail at dinner.

Which one would Jesus have been? I think when Jesus said, "Let the children come to me," he meant, "Let them throw their spoons at me; let them pull my pony tail; let them be children." I think Jesus understood the innocence of children. I think Jesus knew that children were in the process of learning appropriate boundaries. I can't help but think it was inappropriate for children to be climbing all over a Rabbi. I can't help but think that the Disciples were just trying to maintain some level of appropriate boundaries between their teacher and the onslought of curious, inappropriate, snotty-nosed children. I can hear Peter saying, "If that were my kid, she'd only throw that spoon once." I can hear Thomas saying, "I doubt if those parents have any idea what they are doing." I can hear Judas saying, "Keep those kids away from the money." And then I hear Jesus: "Let the children come to me."

How can I be more like Jesus when it comes to children? I guess I need a pony tail.

Bewilderment

I sent an article to Leadership Journal about six months ago. I figured they had either lost the article or lost interest in it. Then I received an email from a friend that writes for them frequently. She told me that they had my article and were going to post it on their blog (www.outofur.com) to see what kind of response it got. If it gets a good one, they will put it in print. I went to the site, and voila...there it was (edited, of course). It was exciting to me, and then the comments started rolling in. People were reading it! I'm bewildered because it feels different than I thought it would. Some of the folks read, don't like it, and say horribly judgmental things. Apparently, I'm an embarrassment to Christianity. Oh well...that's better than being an embarrassment to Jesus. Just trying to get a handle on this...

Taking the Condom Off of Jesus

"No, Jonathan," he protested, "you can't put a condom on the cross." I thought it was a great idea. What a powerful image! A condom can be a strong metaphor for the obvious - a method of protection, a barrier, a binding. But it can also be a more complex metaphor for such oxymorons as "safe intimacy" or "risk-free love." And who says that it's inappropriate for a worship context? Come on. Trojan adds are on prime time! But alas, I was in a church that thought such things were inappropriate, and I had to compromise and wrap the cross in cellophane (like that's free of sexual inuendos!). The point? We were talking about how Christians get together, form a sub-culture, and claim exclusive rights to Jesus. We were talking about how we try to protect Jesus (and ourselves) from the voracious influence of "the world." We were talking about how Jesus can't fit inside our confining...cellophane? (see how the condom image works much better?) That was two years ago, and I was reminded of the metaphor a couple of days ago when a friend of mine told me of a recent experience he had.

We'll call him Matthias (because Mathias never really did anything noteworthy in the Bible and it's about time something is attributed to his name!). Matthias is an eighth year senior at a state university, not because he is a bad student but because he changes his major more often than his underwear. He exudes the eccentricity of Pauly Shore's character "Crawl" in SON IN LAW, but balances it with the seemingly random wisdom of Mr. Miyagi in THE KARATE KID. Matthias is genuinely spiritual as evidenced in his resonance with Zen while simultaneously pursuing Jesus. He is himself to the core. He questions and thrives in neo-Enlightenment conversations. Matthias reminds me of the Apostle Paul when he asks, "Why would God waste his time on a loser like me?" How can you not like Matthias?

The experience Matthias had? There is a group of Christians on Matthias' university campus, and because of Matthias' bent toward spiritual conversations, he decided it would be a great place to belong, question, and dialogue. He went to their meeting, and in a matter of a few months had matter-of-factly told them he didn't like their meetings, started a mosh pit in worship, and openly admitted that he has made out with some of his friends. But along the way, he asked some questions about faith. He genuinely wanted to hear others' perspectives. Matthias believes that other perspectives help shape his own. He is a guy that has come from experiences with pseudo-Christian cults and Buddhism that are narcisistic at best and hedonistic at worst. He is a guy that has come from a sometimes-amoral lifestyle and often immoral lifestyle. He is a guy that has journeyed quite a distance toward Christ-likeness, maybe much further than most of the people he met at the Christian gathering on his university campus. But Matthias didn't care how different they were from him. He was seeking authentic Christian community. And what did he find? They asked him not to come back. Yep, they said he made them feel "uncomfortable." The leadership of the group was followed up by an emailed vote of acclamation from angry and hateful group members. Matthias asked them what he did to make them feel "uncomfortable." He wanted to know what he could correct in his behavior. Their answer? "We don't know. You just do."

The real issue? They were scared the condom was going to break. Someone was going to get "knocked up" by his questions and sincere struggle.

Matthias loves Jesus. Matthias tries his hardest to follow Jesus. Imagine what would happen if someone who didn't have an affinity for Jesus walked into their group and started asking questions.

Come on. Let's risk a little. Take it off. It's better that way.