faith

faith / reset — 3 Comments
16
Nov 09

will of god

I believe that church:

complicates the simple matters of living like Jesus and loving on others with extraneous, counter-productive, wasteful, and often damaging processes.

:: from “church?” post ::

In the mix of well-intended teachings, traditional churches lean towards if not outright teach some convenient “facts” that simply aren’t true.  As an example (in fairness, painted with a large sweeping stroke), issues of “right” and “wrong” or “black” and “white”.  There is no grey in the utopian world of the 20-21st century church.  Nothing about my own experience with Jesus or reading through the Bible leads me to believe for a moment that this is true.

Hormone-befuddled teenagers sense this.  The classic question at Bible studies where teens were allowed to discuss matters of sex: “How far is too far?”  At the heart of this question is a sense that all points along the “sexual immorality” spectrum are not as perfectly defined as parents would insist that the are.  Without question there are some “endpoints” that are made known, but there is a whole realm of issues that are undefined.  Teens inevitably make their own decisions here.  Some rationalize that as long as they don’t do “X” then they’re good and others fearing lust’s eternal damning flame decide that “J” or “K” is all they can muster lest guilt kill them prior to confessing the 17 sins of the day.

The more and more I think about life, the more I realize how this question ought to set off a host of questions about the black and white scenarios that many of us are taught.  Unfortunately for me and for many others I know that this isn’t necessarily the case.  We are blind to the parallels.

Most of us who believe that there’s a god worth believing in struggle with the purpose for which we’ve been put here, at least at some point in our journey.  If God went through the trouble of creating this blue orb in a maniacally massive universe, surely there’s some point to it all.  We point to passages about the will of God and how we “are desirous to be found doing the will of God upon His rapturous return to earth.”

God has a “plan” – but it’s most likely less defined than most of us would like to believe.  We give ourselves far too much credit when we think that choosing brown pants over puce has cosmic consequences or that writing messages on goldenrod is more holy than if that same message were written up canary yellow.  God may not have caused that last chocolate morsel to fall to the floor.

We have this concept of God as sitting at the control panel some grand, incalculable machinery tweaking settings, taking measurements, eyeing gauges, and causing every metric to level out at just the right level so that those three tacos we prayed for show up on our plate prepared just so.  We assume he gets frustrated when the flux-capacitor shows signs of failing and he has to call in Christopher Lloyd to repair it.

What if God has delegated this level of accuracy out?  God: the ultimate crowd sourcing advocate. What if he’s got enough faith in the abilities that He’s given us to make the small things work out?  What if He has actually said “Here’s the plan: Love me.  Love other people. Make it happen”?

A few years ago during a much-needed counseling session Dr. “Bette” introduced my consciousness to the concept of living an “active” life vs. living a “passive” life.  She likened it to another of her clients who was constantly being picked up by women at a bar, but despite the quantity could never find a woman with the qualities he desired.  It’s because he was never actively choosing – he was passively being chosen – so he never pursued that which he aspired to.

And we sit around waiting for God to act.  We pray long and hard finding just the right words to convince God of all the reasons why he should attend to our hearts desires, why he should open the doors after he closes some further down the hallway.  We routinely leave it all in His hands while in the same breath claim to be that very thing – His hands.

Perhaps it’s not important how we love.  Perhaps the important thing is that we love.

Perhaps it’s not important how the church reconciles the questions regarding homosexuality. Perhaps the important thing is that we love.

Perhaps it’s not important if the bible isn’t “inerrant”.  Perhaps the important thing is that we love.

Perhaps it’s not important if your Arminianistic or Calvinistic or even if you know what the difference is.  Perhaps the important thin is that we love.

Perhaps it’s not important what we do.  Perhaps the important thing is that we love.

Some people will quickly point out the “distance” that this puts between God and his creation.  Except that in much the same way that I have the mannerisms of my father and mother and how their character has characterized me – even while thousands of miles way – Gods very character and image is right there, tucked just below the surface.  It’s transforming if you let it be transforming.  God is present in every decision that we make.  Choosing “rightly” means taking a small step in the right direction.  It’s not all or nothing.  It’s small steps towards doing what’s intrinsically  human and intrinsically mystic.

It’s the will of God.

faith / general / life — 2 Comments
12
Nov 09

wonder

One of the tragic losses from the modern era has been the loss of unabashed awe.  During this time in history, we see a dramatic surge in knowledge from the various facets of science.  The capabilities that we possess as the human race now to produce, create, repair, heal, and discover are incredible and directly attributable to the precision and determination with which we have been able to work in relatively recent years.

But in the process of building our knowledge and the endless pursuit of the provable we have all but lost one of the most amazing aspects of humanity.  Our self-aggrandizing quest for limitless knowledge has chipped away at our understanding that the “awe of the unknowable” is in itself inspiring.  It is almost no longer “human” to consider a question unanswerable, to remain in the dark about anything that can be considered remotely important.

We have moved into a time where questions have no inherent value unless they are followed with an explanation.  Great thought is now empirical rather than philosophical.  The greater value is now placed on the state of knowing rather than the art of learning.

In fairness, anything finite can be understood.  The workings of the human mind and neurological system are incredibly complex and once thought impossible to fully comprehend.  Very intelligent people are already beginning to model human brain activity in new ways using new technologies developed by the very systems they are studying.  Someday we will have an incredibly accurate visualization of the intricacies of this aspect of life.  Assuming the laws we have in place are true, and our universe turns out to be finite, we will traverse it, and grasp the things that are unknown.

As scientific fact continues to be refined (e.g. all the “steps” in our evolution, the quirks with Einstein’s relativity, etc) we will eventually reach true understanding about almost everything.  And we should pursue these things with exactly the same fervor as we currently do.

But there is value in the admission that not all questions are answered with facts.  There is inspiration and new outlooks on life when we admit that there are things we will never be able to answer without bias or opinion masquerading as truth.

We can practice this now.  Some of us will never know the full-details of the intricacies of the way the body does the things that a body needs to do to survive.  Be inspired by this.  Whether you believe it was created by a god or arrived at by the laws of nature, it is amazing to think about what had to have happened to reach this point and what has to happen every second of every day.

Think about the mind.  No one alive today will ever fully understand the way that electricity some how transforms into conscious thought.  There’s value in being filled with awe about this and not just seeing it as an unanswered question.

And yes, then there’s the issue of faith and death and what happens next.  This is perhaps the quintessential “unanswerable” question.  By their very being “questions of faith” at best they can only be answered with thought and persuasion.  The “answers” to these questions can change from hour to hour and from person to person.

With questions of faith there are no “Yes” or “No” answers.  And perhaps that’s why these questions are so appealing to me – because of how much recently I’ve been avoiding black and white as much as possible.

And, yet, somehow we often relegate this realm to that of the fairy tale because we cannot say with certainty what the “answers” are.  That’s the beauty of these questions.  They can answered at best with a “maybe” and more often an “I don’t know.”

Black and white is nice, but it’s also the easy way out.

I want to get lost in the wonder of everything that’s around me.  The subtleties of life.  The interactions between people.  Questions of love and faith and dreams and aspirations and worth and purpose.

I want to be introspective.  I want to question the meaning of life and my value as a human and be better for it.  There is no room for this without awe.  The unknowable, in some mystic way, is the only way to begin to answer these issues.  It is only by venturing out from the black and white domain that we’ve created that living even begins.

And even when we admit that some “answers” are unknowble, no questions are “unanswerable.”

We can claim to know more than any generation before us, to have mapped the heavens and observed the molecular.

So what.  Do you think?

faith / reset — 4 Comments
8
Nov 09

prayer

I can’t say that I’ve been wrestling with prayer – that would be an overstatement.  Rather, prayer has always been perplexing to me and continues to be one of my biggest issues and questions.  Lately, as others around me have been wrestling with prayer, I’ve been processing through some of the same questions and concerns.
The dominating understanding of prayer in terms of pop-culture seems to be asking for something from God – maybe asking for a healing or a miracle or a raise or a new car or for a particular candidate to not become the next president of the United States.
For Jesus-followers, the Bible says that:
I tell you, you can pray for anything, and if you believe that you’ve received it, it will be yours.
or
Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.
Mark 11:25 (NLT and NIV respectively)
Now, while I can tell you stories about praying for a million dollars and a big house and a fast car and how I have none of those things, I’d rather complicate the matter by talking about friends who have prayed long and hard for physical healings and deliverance from sicknesses.  They pray with all the faith in the world.  And nothing changes.  Their loved ones continue downhill.
Religion usually gives one of two very easy answers for this: 1) you didn’t pray hard, long, faithfully enough or 2) it wasn’t in the will of God.
These aren’t good enough for me.  This says that God rewards the people who are faithful, the people who’ve got it all figured out and the rest of us who are still struggling – well, it sucks to be us.  This says that once you reach a certain point, only then will God hear your prayers.
And this from a God who “causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and and the unrighteous?”
It’s not a good enough answer for me.
My reset here has been to starting thinking about prayer as more than just making an ask.  It’s talking.  It’s a conversation: a two-way flow of words, thoughts, wishes, intentions, feelings, concerns, questions, and  answers. I’ve understood this for a long time but it’s felt very one-sided.  Almost as if I trusted God was listening but never really heard much from Him.  This is more experiential than anything else.  I don’t know where this “casual” approach to prayer came from or is referenced in the bible.  Then again, I don’t know how it become so holier-than-thou and elitist either.
I’ve WANTED to hear a voice.  I rarely ever have.
I used to think I had to do something special to get God to listen to me.  I know that’s not true either.  He listens to all of us.  He probably gets annoyed at all the bickering and back-biting and ill-will wishes via the prayer line, but I really do believe he listens.
So, my biggest questions now revolve around the answers.
I don’t expect that I’ll hear an audible voice much.  I’m not ruling it out and I’m not convinced that I HAVEN’T on one or two occasions heard something “real” but I’m not counting on hearing words.
This whole prayer business raises lists of other questions, not the least of which are major, major challenges like “the will of God,” or WOG.  The WOG is thrown around so haphazardly and inserts itself as a matter of convenience, ignorance, or indifference.
Why didn’t I get into that school?  Not in the WOG.
Why is the sky blue?  Well son, it’s the WOG.
How will we know the right thing to do?  The WOG will work itself out.
Perhaps this is the next thing to talk about.
There are some core issues surrounding prayer that I still don’t know if I can answer.  Example: How does God decide “who” to listen to?  Bruce Almighty shows us the chaos that follows a blanket yes to all.
I think the central premise of prayer is off.  Prayer can be a very selfish endeavor.  God bless ME.  God forgive ME.  God heal MY friend.  And it’s hard to approach without this selfishness.  We’re interested in self-preservation.
Perhaps it’s fear.  Do we come to God more afraid of hell and suffering than with love and awe?  Is it the “he holds our fate in the palm of his hand” mentality?  We only have limited face-time with the big man upstairs so we should make all our big asks now.
And at the end of the day, I don’t have an answer.  Maybe putting all the big asks on the table is the right thing to do.  I have a hard time processing prayer and I’m sure I will for a long, long time.  I don’t need to understand the mechanics of it, but it sure would be nice for me to have some rationale behind it.
Paul says to pray without ceasing.  That to me does, in fact, make sense.  I do feel pretty online at most times during the day, and in those moments when I encounter something notable, I’ve got no problem being thankful or making an ask for it.
And perhaps I’ve not asked with the right faith, believing that I’ve received something.  Or perhaps I’ve already received everything and don’t know what to do with it all.

I can’t say that I’ve been wrestling with prayer – that would be an overstatement.  Rather, prayer has always been perplexing to me and continues to be one of my biggest issues and questions.  Lately, as others around me have been wrestling with prayer, I’ve been processing through some of the same questions and concerns.

The dominating understanding of prayer in terms of pop-culture seems to be asking for something from God – maybe asking for a healing or a miracle or a raise or a new car or for a particular candidate to not become the next president of the United States.

For Jesus-followers, the Bible says that:

I tell you, you can pray for anything, and if you believe that you’ve received it, it will be yours.

or

Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.

Mark 11:25 (NLT and NIV respectively)

Now, while I can tell you stories about praying for a million dollars and a big house and a fast car and how I have none of those things, I’d rather complicate the matter by talking about friends who have prayed long and hard for physical healings and deliverance from sicknesses.  They pray with all the faith in the world.  And nothing changes.  Their loved ones continue downhill.

Religion usually gives one of two very easy answers for this: 1) you didn’t pray hard, long, faithfully enough or 2) it wasn’t in the will of God.

These aren’t good enough for me.  This says that God rewards the people who are faithful, the people who’ve got it all figured out and the rest of us who are still struggling – well, it sucks to be us.  This says that once you reach a certain point, only then will God hear your prayers.

And this from a God who “causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and and the unrighteous?”

It’s not a good enough answer for me.

My reset here has been to starting thinking about prayer as more than just making an ask.  It’s talking.  It’s a conversation: a two-way flow of words, thoughts, wishes, intentions, feelings, concerns, questions, and  answers. I’ve understood this for a long time but it’s felt very one-sided.  Almost as if I trusted God was listening but never really heard much from Him. This is more experiential than anything else.  I don’t know where this “casual” approach to prayer came from or is referenced in the bible.  Then again, I don’t know how it become so holier-than-thou and elitist either.

I’ve WANTED to hear a voice.  I rarely ever have.

I used to think I had to do something special to get God to listen to me.  I know that’s not true either.  He listens to all of us. He probably gets annoyed at all the bickering and back-biting and ill-will wishes via the prayer line, but I really do believe he listens.

So, my biggest questions now revolve around the answers.

I don’t expect that I’ll hear an audible voice much.  I’m not ruling it out and I’m not convinced that I HAVEN’T on one or two occasions heard something “real” but I’m not counting on hearing words.

This whole prayer business raises lists of other questions, not the least of which are major, major challenges like “the will of God,” or WOG.  The WOG is thrown around so haphazardly and inserts itself as a matter of convenience, ignorance, or indifference.

Why didn’t I get into that school?  Not in the WOG.

Why is the sky blue?  Well son, it’s the WOG.

How will we know the right thing to do?  The WOG will work itself out.

Perhaps this is the next thing to talk about.

There are some core issues surrounding prayer that I still don’t know if I can answer.  Example: How does God decide “who” to listen to?  Bruce Almighty shows us the chaos that follows a blanket yes to all.

I think the central premise of prayer is off.  Prayer can be a very selfish endeavor.  God bless ME.  God forgive ME.  God heal MY friend.  And it’s hard to approach without this selfishness.  We’re interested in self-preservation.

Perhaps it’s fear.  Do we come to God more afraid of hell and suffering than with love and awe?  Is it the “he holds our fate in the palm of his hand” mentality?  We only have limited face-time with the big man upstairs so we should make all our big asks now.

And at the end of the day, I don’t have an answer.  Maybe putting all the big asks on the table is the right thing to do.  I have a hard time processing prayer and I’m sure I will for a long, long time.  I don’t need to understand the mechanics of it, but it sure would be nice for me to have some rationale behind it.

Paul says to pray without ceasing.  That to me does, in fact, make sense.  I do feel pretty online at most times during the day, and in those moments when I encounter something notable, I’ve got no problem being thankful or making an ask for it.

And perhaps I’ve not asked with the right faith, believing that I’ve received something.  Or perhaps I’ve already received everything and don’t know what to do with it all.

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.

faith / general / life — 2 Comments
9
Sep 09

worry for nothing

Recently I’ve been reading “The Furious Longing of God” by Brennan Manning.  In it, he says this:

…I’ve decided that if I had my life to live over again, I would not only climb more mountains, swim more rivers, and watch more sunsets; I wouldn’t only jettison my hot water bottle, raincoat, umbrella, parachute, and raft; I would not only go barefoot earlier in the spring and stay out later in the fall; but I would devote not one more minute to monitoring my spiritual growth.  No, not one.

A funny thing happens when you come to know the freedom that being in touch with Jesus offers: you can potentially be overrun with guilt.  There is a checklist that may seem to descend from the sky (though, I now realize this checklist comes from somewhere very different) that outlines each of the many things that you have to do if you are to truly experience and relate to God.  You have to pray, and read your Bible, and confess your transgressions, and do a good deed everyday, and study, and sing, and reflect.

Herein lies one of the problems with Christianity as it is expressed in 2009.  There is so much to do that we miss the great intention behind it all:

Cease striving and know that I am God.
Psalm 46:10 (NASB)

Yes: a life being lived modeled after the way that Jesus lived his will involve self-improvement.  It is a good thing to read scripture in order to understand the way that people thought and processed things in and out of connection with God; to take the good, and the bad, and the confusing and incorporate these things into our own lives.  It is good to spend time in prayer.  Relationships are the means by which real change takes place and a relationship with God is no different.  Doing good is good.  Confession is good.

But when the redeemer becomes taskmaster, when guilt overpowers freedom, a core component of the whole system is jeopardized.  God’s intention has never been “Keep ‘em occupied so they don’t have time to bother me.”  Instead, God’s intention is that as much as is humanly possible we live in a type of union with Him.  Not performing for him.  Not doing his bidding and returning to the bell-tower a la Quasimodo.  Just being confident in His love, in the security of His relationship with you.

Manning finishes up this thought-process with this:

What would I actually do if I had to do it all over again?  Heeding John’s counsel, I would simply do the next thing in love.

As a person of faith, I struggled for a long time with wanting to look the part which involved doing all the things that were expected.  I know I’m not alone in this.  I saw certain things as bad and (*gasp*) unholy.

We can “do” ourselves in.  Don’t misread what I’m saying – I know that “belief” and “action” are as integral to each other as breathing is to life.  But preoccupation with the irrelevant minutiae of our spiritual lives is counterproductive to living like Jesus lived.

So, may you live with the confidence that Jesus is in the processing of reinvigorating your soul with life; that during this process, there are people that He wants you to meet and interact with, things that He wants you to do that bring just a little bit of heaven to earth; that he never intended for you to become preoccupied with the endless pursuit of self-improvement; and that He wants you to stop your striving, and know He is God.

faith / general / health care — Comments Off
3
Sep 09

human’s rights

Yesterday, I laid out what I thought it meant to be human. At the core of life, if you ask me, are relationships (we should value and be engaged in relationships) and a desire for self-/corporate-actualization and improvement. There are lots of aspects of being human beings but arguably these are the most uniquely human.

In order to tackle the question of whether or not we should be pursuing universal health care, we need to figure out if humans deserve health care.

What are human rights?

What are humans entitled to because they are human?  There are many different perspectives everything from we have no more rights than animals on the planet to we have complete and total reign over every resource around us.  As with everything, there has to be some reasonable middle ground.

On personal levels, we sometimes hear that human rights are those things that only God gives you and only God can take away.  So let’s think about what a few of these could be.

  • life
  • ???

I’m up to one.

Some of us believe “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”  I don’t have an objection to this other than to say I don’t know where we can find proof of this.  I believe that if you add ” . . . within certain boundaries” after each of those things, then that’s probably a little closer.

Modern day nations have tried to put some definitions to this concept too.  Canada has a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the US has a Bill of Rights, and even the UN has the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I’m sure many other nations have similar documents.  Each have a slightly different perspective – it’s interesting to compare and contrast the Canadian and UN charters with the US Bill of Rights, by the way.  None of them have consensus on what the rights of a human are – and the priorities are noticably different.

I’m going to assume that the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as it was drafted by several different nations, is most representative of the generally accepted list of human rights.

After article 1 which says that are humans are equal and should act towards each other with a spirit of brotherhood, it says this:

Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

Here’s a paraphrase of what they list as human rights….

  • life, liberty and security of person
  • no slavery or torture
  • equal as persons before the law
  • no arbitrary arrest/confinement
  • impartiality in determining rights and before tribunals
  • presumed innocence
  • no arbitrary interference with privacy
  • freedom of movement into and out of their country
  • right to asylum in other countries and a right to nationality
  • marriage
  • right to own property individually and in association with others
  • freedom of though, consciousness, and religion; expression and opinion
  • peaceful assembly
  • participation in government
  • social security (here’s the full text of article 22: Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.)
  • right to work
  • right to leisure
  • standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family (again, full text: Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.)
  • right to education
  • right to participate in cultural community
  • social/international order

The declaration finishes by saying that we all have duties and responsibilities to the communities in which they live and that these rights are inalienable.

Now, I don’t necessarily agree that all of these are rights necessarily – I think privileges at some point come into effect.  I don’t know that we have the “right” to leisure necessarily – it may be more of a privilege of being able to work and earn resources.  But I think this is an excellent jumping off point for the rest of our discussion.

I will say this: while I don’t necessarily believe that “free health care” is a human right, I do believe that  affordable access to sufficient health care is.  I also believe a couple of things about how this affordable health care should be provided, though granted not with any particular solution.  I believe that we have a responsibility to contribute to the improvement of our communities by giving out of our immense, incredible, unprecedented wealth so that others who are otherwise unable can be taken care of.

To this point, I’ve not spoken much of faith – though, as “everything is spiritual” I don’t think it’s hard to see the parallels.  Helping others live healthy productive lives makes the world a better place – which is what Jesus’ peeps are supposed to be doing.  I think there is a good case that the Bible teaches a lot about the responsibilities of of individuals and nations alike to provide for those who cannot provide for themselves.

Now, I know where this leads…. what about those who choose to not provide for themselves.  I don’t want to ignore that, but I don’t want to deal with it right now.  Next time: more about nations ensuring that human rights are taken care of. Decided against this…I’m not a theologian and there’s so much about nations in the Bible that I don’t understand…probably wouldn’t be responsible.


faith / rerun — Comments Off
2
Sep 09

heaven v. hell

rerun: This was first posted on my old blog on March 23, 2008.

It’s been a while since I’ve waxed philosophically here. Mostly I haven’t been thinking philosophically much – not sure why.

Let’s just say that I’m emerging from a long, dry spell.

I’ve been thinking about heaven and hell.

It’s something that I’ve written about before and something that I’ve definitely continued to think about. I guess it all started with the Brian McLaren and his writings – Generous Orthodoxy and the “A New Kind of Christian” series in particular. Then there’s Rob Bell too.

At Watershed lately, they’ve been talking about the questions that some of the peeps there have had. It was part of the “Quandary” series. So it’s been back in my mind.

We’ve got this dichotomous view of heaven and hell. Black and White. Or, we’d like to think it’s black and white. We also have this view that heaven and hell is a “something to come later” concern. All this combines and results in a group of people that try to convince people that they’re wrong and need to “turn or burn.”

Here’s what I’ve been thinking.

First: Heaven and Hell are present realities. They happen in various amounts and through various means every day. There are some big things we can cite – Darfur does far too much to increase the amount of hell that we encounter. At the same time there are countless moments of heaven on various scales that make the kingdom of heaven a little more of a reality. Jesus talked about the Kingdom of heaven being at hand – being present. Our job is to make that a reality.

Secondly: Rather than being a dichotomy, heaven and hell represent endpoints on a scale. I don’t want to get to scientific with this – all I mean is that if we think about the kingdom of heaven (that is a reality where things are as God intends them to be) as being one endpoint and the kingdom of hell (that is a reality where thigns are exactly the opposite of what God intends them to be) then the things that happen here place us somewhere on the scale between heaven and hell.

Thirdly: We can AFFECT where we are on that scale. The decisions that we make and the actions that we take culminate in such a way that can move mankind towards one of those endpoints (either heaven or hell). We can choose to bring heaven to earth or to bring hell to earth. In practical terms, when we choose to be kind to our neighbors that are far too loud late into the night (not that I have any experience with that) we bring heaven to earth. When we choose to sit and talk with a homeless man rather than just pass them by or maybe just blindly throwing them a couple of bucks, we bring heaven to earth. In the same way, we can choose to bring hell to earth by choosing to do things that are less than what we know we should be doing.

All that to say I wish we could stop thinking about hell as a place that “sinners are condemned to” and start thinking about how heaven “is a place where people act as though every one is a child of God; where His love for them is greater than our condemnation of them.”

It’s dangerous to think this way – or at least threatening. People think that you’re universalist and that you’re throwing out what it says in the scripture. In reality, I feel like it’s holding more closely to it. There’s no judgment – that’s not my role. I’m doing to others as I would like them to do for me. I’m loving my neighbor regardless of who they are. I still think there’s a “right” way to live. It’s not heretical.

Anyway – just thoughts.

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