October, 2009

faith / reset — 3 Comments
31
Oct 09

church?

I’ve been done with church for some time in the sense that most of the gatherings of people that I’ve met with on a Sunday morning have been more interested, from my perspective, in enjoying the event that we’ve mistaken called worship (this will be the next post!).  We literally say things like “worship was great today” or “I really didn’t get much out of that” as if the goal of what we’re doing is to be altogether pleased at the end of the day by what was done for us.

If you have read any of the other posts in this “reset series” you’ll know that this is not to say that I consider myself unchristian or non-christian, I just don’t align myself with what seems to be the mainstream philosophies about church.

Let’s start here.  If I had to sum up my thoughts on church in one sentence it would be this:

Church tends to be the ultimate Rube Goldberg machine, whose design complicates the simple matters of living like Jesus and loving on others with extraneous, counter-productive, wasteful, and often damaging processes.

:: me ::

The churches of my past have been about staying faithful to a set of added “rules” – Brian McLaren in “A Generous Orthodoxy” calls these doctrinal directives – things that people have added on to the core message of Jesus because we think it’s better for us.  You’ve often heard jokes and references to certain denominations not being allowed to dance – THAT’S a doctrinal directive.  Churches today tend to be more about show and self-interest – either pushing high-tech boundaries making screens and projectors and video the center of attention or about building larger better-equipped buildings in nice parts of town with more services and higher-paid and presumably better staff, or about telling its visitors about how they can game God like Madoff gamed wall street to get the most of what God has to give.

I’m not interested in those things.

I’m not interesting in building or expanding an empire that I then have some obligation to protect.

I’m not interested in building a machine that turns a wheel and kicks a ball and bursts a balloon and pulls a llamas tail whose spit hits a target that turns a crank and sets off a firecracker and rings a bell and shoots a ping pong ball to swing a hockey stick that strikes me in the back of my knees so I can kneel down to pray.

The church, I continue to contend, is people and nothing more.  Church as we understand it is a doctrinal directive: something we’ve added on to be a tangible representation of the body of Christ.  But in doing so it seems that as we lose touch with Jesus, we tend to think of him more as a superhero with superpowers than a living, breathing, human version of God whose compassion, simplicity, rationality, love,  and justice changed the world forever.  And because we think of Him in this way, we feel like the treatment of a superhero should include spotlights and smoke machines and big screens.

Perhaps instead of pastor, “hype man” would be a more fitting title.

Of course I see the value in these things and I understand that 2009 is different than 9.  I’m not saying that we should give up meeting together, because that’s not what God intended either.  I should also point out that I get in my car nearly every sunday and drive across town to meet with others who are on this journey.

An aside: Watershed for me represents a church that gets that what they’re trying to do isn’t about them and that worship is more than about what happens on a Sunday morning.  If Watershed did not exist, I would likely not go to church unless I was able to find a similar community. Yes, every one has a different idea of how the band should be mixed and at what volume the video should be played.  And eliminating distractions are important – if the goal is a clearer view of the compassion and grace that Jesus is.  I can take being asked to change the volume on the board if I recognize that it’s not an insult to my mix.  At the core of my Watershed experience has been a focus on living a compassionate, grace-filled life that’s full of rich, rewarding, symbiotic and purposeful relationships.  If any church becomes more about THE SHOW than SHOWING GRACE, I couldn’t be a part of that.

Part of this discussion relates to the question “what is worshp?” as well which I’ll deal with in my next “reset” post.

Perhaps it would best be said this way…

For some reason, we’ve put church attendance, performance, teaching, development in the center of what it means to be a Christian.  We have a concept that big, bright, bold, beautiful churches are successful churches; that these places are obviously doing something right.  There is a concept that a church’s relevance to today’s target audience is in direct proportion to the number of projectors in use on Sunday morning.  Then, from this “church at the center” approach, in concentric circles radiating outwards fall the other responsibilities of being a Chrisitian . . . things like studying the Bible, praying regularly, helping people, etc, etc.

In this model, going to church helps you do these other things better – pray better, live better, worship better, find more opportunities to help people, etc.

How did the church become the center?  Why did church become the center?

Isn’t Christ the center of Christianity?

Didn’t he say (and I mostly paraphrase here) to hell with religion?

Perhaps this is just conceptual and maybe is only of benefit to me.  Maybe it’s even cliché.

Church shouldn’t be the central focus of Christianity.  Trying to figure out Jesus, living with the same compassion that made life better for EVERYONE that he came in contact with, loving EVERYONE as they are, not after meeting a set of conditions . . . THAT’S the center.  THAT’S what makes all this other stuff make sense.

I’m not saying stop going to church.  I’m not saying there’s more to church than meets the eye.

I’m saying there’s less to church than meets the eye.

To the people trying to figure out this Jesus life: Don’t make church the center of your faith.  It’s important, yes. But compassion is more important.  Grace is more important.  Where you go on a Sunday is a matter of personal preference, not life or death.  Try and discern what the goals of your community are.  Is it building? Is it expanding?  Is it becoming the most recognized church in your town?  Is it propagating your religion or values? Or is it about counter-cultural living?  Is it about Justice and actively finding ways to do the right thing?

I’m done with church.  And I’m just getting started.

faith / reset — 4 Comments
25
Oct 09

christian?

“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” – Mahatma Gandhi

It used to be that I thought being a Christian was the best thing a person could be. I assumed the meaning of life was to follow Christ, by going to church every Sunday, trying to get “more in touch with the Holy Spirit,” that if you “spoke in tongues” or were “a prophet” than you must be an amazing Christian and God’s favor must be on you.  The goal of life was to be more like the good Christians that I saw every week worshipping, becoming angry at the injustices that Christians were experiencing, and enjoying pure and holy fellowship one with another.  I thought that becoming awesome at my bass guitar so I could play in great worship bands or that becoming a “praise and worship leader” was much better than having to endure the traditional music of the church.

I was messed up :)

Seriously, I do want to be careful here.  I understand that there are great people who have come before me and many more that will come after me that will disagree with much of what I say.  I understand that there is value in the church and that much of the “bad” often overshadows the good.

However, I also want to be clear in a statement that I’ve made on this blog before: I’m done with the traditional church.

I side with Gandhi.  In my version of the statement “the traditional” could be substituted with the typical, the archetypal, the stereotypical, etc, etc.  I have found both personally and through the testimony and experience of others that there can often be a disconnect between what is said or preached by the church and what is actually practiced by the church.

Christian? To be like Jesus?

First, let’s figure out some of the hallmark characteristics of Jesus.

Compassion: The first thing that comes to mind when I think about the life of Christ as it’s described in the Christian Bible is that he always showed compassion.  To everyone and in every circumstance: from the healing of the Centurion’s daughter to the Samarian woman, to the blind men who were healed, to the women who would have otherwise been stoned for her adultery, compassion is present in all of these circumstances.

Acceptance: Until a couple of days ago, I probably would have used the word tolerance here.  But as has been appropriately pointed out to me in a Facebook conversation I’ve been having recently, tolerance is offensive.  Jesus accepted all people regardless of their race, gender, beliefs, social status, criminal history and I feel strongly that these same acceptances would continue to include other characteristics such as sexual orientation.  He touched lepers.  He ate with tax collectors.  He drank wine at parties.  He requested pardon for his murderers. He did more than simply tolerate the fact that “sinners” existed and should be “loved” despite their “sins” – Jesus accepted people.  Period. Obviously he never claimed that murdering was right, or taking more money than you should was ethical.  But regardless of their baggage and bad choices he partied hearty and pardoned fully.  I would also argue that it is approaching impossible to both love and tolerate.

Anger: Jesus anger and outrage was always founded.  Interestingly, anger has been described as the “emotion of judgement” and it has further been argued that we as non-Jesus are sinning when we become angry (Bruxy Cavey, The Meeting House Podcast – 10/04/2009) because it is judging which we as Christians are told not to do.  Also interestingly, the angry moments of Christ all deal in some way with religion – those who purvey rules over relationship and compassion, and those who have denigrated the value of God’s house . . . that is, those who have made it about themselves, self-gain, rather than about God and his plans.

Fellowship: Jesus recruited a following who stuck with him through the good times, at least.  I believe that Jesus understood the value of relationship and cherished it.

Faith: Jesus had faith in God.  Jesus also had faith in people who others seemed to have no faith in.  To paraphrase many who have spoken about Jesus’ disciples, the fact that he selected people that had been established in professions, meant that he chose not the culturally defined “best of the best” but people that were deemed “not good enough” to continue with studies to become a Rabbi, for example.  No, instead, Jesus chose the not-so-goods, the sloppy seconds, etc, etc.

Grace: Jesus was grace incarnate.  To quote a friend’s lyric “this is grace.  to be held like you never made mistakes.”  C’mon now.

With these characteristics identified we see a church culture that ranges from mildly differing to blatantly opposing these values….

Instead of compassion for others we see a level of self-interest that I, personally, feel is evil.  As the church, we allow millions and millions and millions and millions to be spend on facilities and programs as if it’s all about us.  We need larger, more compelling facilities so that we can get more people to come as if the act of coming is superior to the act of going.

We speak about being welcoming and accepting, and yet condone vehemently protesting abortions with hateful words and imagery.  We condemn homosexuality and homosexuals for wanting to have a legally recognized form of their love in marriage.  Somehow we’ve forgotten the years of careless treatment, and defamation of this sacred institution. Until fairly recently, my spiritual history had until left me thinking that certain significant people in my life were “bad” because of the choices they made.  Is it OK to live as though Jesus had double standards?

We’ve decided that it’s OK to be angry – that “righteous anger” is justified, except that anger is never condoned by Christ.  Bruxy Cavey discusses this at length in the podcast linked above it’s a great listen.  Essentially, my take away was that becoming angry is similar to casting the first stone, and we have no right to it.  But in church culture we’ve almost glorified righteous anger as a sign of heightened holiness.

I think you get where I’m going.

In short, I feel as if I have denigrated what it means to be a little Christ.  I feel as though I’ve given Gandhi justification to say what he said.  We Christians tend not only to not live like Christ, but seem to be missing him on many of his major point.

Which is why I’m not ashamed to say that I love Jesus or that I want to be like him, but I never enjoy claiming to be a Christian.  It has come to be affiliated with characteristics that Jesus never aligned himself with.  Trying to live like Christ and trying to be a Christian are two different things . . . and I think you know which I’d like to do.

faith / reset — 1 Comment
16
Oct 09

god?

I used to think that God was keeping track of every good and bad thing that I did in an effort to evaluate my efficacy as a created being and determine when and to what level He should turn up the heat.  It scared me to think that some little stone left unturned could cover up an estranged lie or fit of rage that could cost me my heavenly mansion and evenings strolling along the golden-paved main streets of paradise up in the sky.  I even posted on an old blog that I didn’t think it was right to refer to God as my friend.  Who on earth am I to have a friendship with God – I’m a subordinate peon at best.  Yes, He was the creator but He is also the “I-could-snuff-you-out-at-any-moment-er”

Frightening when you consider it.  “O mighty smiter, spare me your wrath for one more day.”

This is the first of what I’m sure will be a long series of rambling but honest posts about how my views of God, faith, purpose and life have changed in the past few years and I’ve meandering along the journey.

Up first… God

Here are the basics.  God created the heavens and earth and everything in it.  In fact THIS is one of his core characteristics – creating a creation that can in turn create – trees beget trees, people beget people, bacteria beget bacteria.  You get the picture.

After he created people, some stuff happened and ever since He’s been trying to get our attention… more about this to come.

First for the confusion – the Old Testament.  We see a lot of things happen in the OT.  God leads his people from captivity under an evil regime to freedom, provides a ram instead of a son for a sacrifice, etc, etc.  At the same time, he calls for the annihilation of entire people groups.  It’s odd.  I’m not going to lie.  I can’t rationalize it away.  All I know is that it was very different to hear of a God that wanted to infiltrate human space and time to connect with His creation.  He did that first through tabernacles and temples and tablets (aka, the ten commandments + ark of the covenant combo)

Now, it is true that God COULD assume the role of senile old man hurling happenstance lightning bolts towards the planet.  But we are given glimpses into the character of God through a guy named Jesus – who also happens to be the last means by which God has chosen to connect with us.  To attempt to understand the modus operandi of Jesus is to do the same with the modus operandi of God.

Jesus was a man of ultimate love and compassion, a defender of the weak, an opponent to the stagnant and fallacious status quo.  He lived out what the prophets had said hundreds of years before:

Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream.
Amos 5:23-24

So, who puts the “right” in “righteous”? Again, if we look at what we know about Jesus . . .

He stood up for the woman that was supposed to be stoned and said . . . “Wait a minute.  If there is someone here who has never broken the law and sinned . . . then go ahead a throw the stone.”  He told the story of the son who squandered the fathers wealth on sex, drugs, and arabian music, and emphasized that the father RAN to greet the “wayward” son before he even made it back home.  The father never even asked for an apology.  The son was welcomed home no questions asked.  This kind of love is what we see in Jesus.  What angered him the most was emptiness and shallowness and selfishness.  Those leaders who were supposed to be examples of “what was right” were in fact exactly what was wrong.  They were the ones that were stoning instead of bridging gaps.  They were the ones who were building themselves up instead of building others up.  They were the ones that were going through the motions with no concern for connecting with God.

We have this image of God as being a white haired anal-retentive pissed-off judge who finds some perverse joy in banishing the evil to hell.  But we have no basis for this except for our own imagined fears, shortcomings, and misgivings.  Everything we see about Jesus says that what He thinks about judgement and what we think about judgement are two different things.

All that to say, my first step had to be realizing that God is not “out to get me” and waiting to strike me down.  He wants me to love and feel compassion and do what’s right more than he wants me not to dislike, not to be ignorant, and no do what’s wrong.  This is a major difference, though not always obvious on the first pass.

But THIS God, who is not angry with me, but wants to connect with me, forms the basis of a completely new understanding of what I thought I believed.

faith / life — Comments Off
10
Oct 09

rob

I’m in the middle of collecting my thoughts for a series of “reset” posts – how my understanding of faith and life have been altered over the past couple of years.  Until then, I wanted to share this.

Last night I was able to experience one of Rob Bell’s signature presentations of faith as he stopped in Charlotte for his Drops like Stars.  After weaving each thought into what can only be called a work of art, he gave us this quote, from a novel by Susan Howatch, spoken by a sculptor character named Harriet March.  She said this:

“That’s creation . . . you can’t create without waste and mess and sheer undiluted slog.  You can’t create without pain.  It’s all part of the process.  It’s in the nature of things . . .  So in the end every major disaster, every tiny error, every wrong turning, every fragment of discarded clay, all the blood, sweat, and tears – everything has meaning.  I give it meaning.  I reuse, reshape, recast all that goes wrong so that in the end nothing is wasted and nothing is without significance and nothing ceases to be precious to me.”

For someone who is just now realizing the value of the discarded clay, these are powerful, powerful words.

life — 3 Comments
4
Oct 09

want to want to

Dawn is quickly breaking on a strange, convoluted, and dim-if-not-dark night of my life.  I lovingly refer to this passing phase as “my resetting years” and it all became apparent because of feelings of isolation and entrapment. Had you or I the time to take in all of the details, I am not convinced that they would really benefit the discussion and so I have decided to give you a very quick synopsis: I’d be happy to share the complete collection with you if you’re genuinely interested….

The essential details are:

  • my wife and I have experienced some isolation from almost everything/everyone that we knew and loved within the past few years;
  • along with this isolation came a sense of entrapment – that no matter what we did we could not affect the larger details of our lives;
  • this initiated an extended period of anxiety mixed with questions about life and love and faith.

We were both raised in good homes in a good church – our foundation was solid.  We were involved, and respected, and happy.  With the onset of this isolation, however, a number of questions also made their way into our consciousness.  It was around this time that we began reading authors like Rob Bell who started to make us think that maybe there was a lot more “stuff” just beneath the surface that we never considered (I’m sure I’ll post soon on exactly what some of these things are).  There was an obviously but seemingly uncorrectable sense of unhappiness with our professions and circumstances.

These issues coalesced and manifested as physical symptoms of anxiety in late December 2006/January 2007. Several months of introspection and other therapeutic mechanisms ensued.  These were eye-opening and enriching, and while many questions were still unanswered and even remained occluded in the depths of my soul, a long, meandering, often hazy and difficult journey began.

From then until now it has been just over two years.  There have been a number of difficult questions involving faith and self-worth and priorities and tradition and God and friendship and love.

I have only recently (read: in the last few weeks) realized how long and far and trying and draining and rewarding this reset has been.  For the first time in a long time I have a real sense of self-confidence.  I want to be around people and more often than not I believe that they want to be around me – some of them have even SAID SO in one way or another.  Inside of me now is a burgeoning faith that is my own – not founded on, or a dependent of tradition or others.  After years of lamenting the loss of who I used to be, I’ve discovered who I am supposed to be.

I know that questions are OK.

The practical implications of this are astounding and immediate.  Others have recognized a change in literally the past few days.  My wife has said “I feel like we’re friends again!” – which is not to say that we weren’t – I was just a lousy friend.  Suddenly I feel like I can approach people free of my longstanding fear of rejection.  I’m writing again. I’m reflecting again.

I am happy.

Brennan Manning, in Ragamuffin Gospel describes a similar scenario which I will paraphrase here, as it seems to really capture my experience at that time…

God, I don’t know if I love you.  I don’t know if I want to love you.  But I want to want to love you.

Though at the time I couldn’t or wouldn’t put this into words, I did know that I wanted to want to be at a place of peace, I wanted to want to be compassionate, I wanted to want to keep going.  In my time of reset I didn’t know what would work or what was right. Unknowingly that last statement framed the posture of my life on this most recent leg of my journey.

Even as an often embittered and indifferent wanderer, I knew that I wanted to want not any old ways but truth and grace and peace.

And slowly, but safely and securely that prayer was answered abundantly and fully.  And the God that I had always heard of as faithful at every step, and loving beyond comprehension, and accepting without precondition, I now know for certain to be faithful. And loving. And accepting.

I want to keep going.