Stop Preaching At Me!

"It is not enough for Christians to preach the gospel at people; we must share the gospel with people."

-From: Encountering New Religious Movements: A Holistic Evangelical Approach

I am troubled. I was going to write more, but I just can't.

40 Minutes of Religion

"this call from many different denominations and faiths"

"bearing false witness"

"I want to repeat it so that every member of your congregations understands"

"core ethical and moral obligation"

"I am my brother’s keeper and my sister’s keeper"

"speak the truth".

"Time and again, men and women of faith have helped to show us what’s possible when we’re guided by our hopes and not our fears"

"the way that our religious faith instructs us"

"God bless you."

These are phrases you might expect to hear in a church service, however these were the troubling words spoken by President Obama in his address "40 Minutes for Health Reform." They are troubling not because a US President spoke them, nor because they were used to push for health care reform. What troubles me is the US President who spoke them when speaking to a group of Christians for health care reform.

I do not question President Obama's salvation, that is not for me to determine. However, this man, who is now trying to use the Christian faith, scriptures, and morality to support health care reform, in the past has been blind to the Christian faith, scriptures and morality. Obama is turning to morality when it benefits his agenda, however when the moral abomination of partial birth abortion is on the docket his morality and Christian faith hold no ground. He is willing to socialize health care on account of "morality" but will not stand up for those who are the most vulnerable. I am troubled because the US President is using Christian faith, scriptures, and morality only when it benefits him and his agenda. As a Christian I am troubled when another Christian uses their faith only for their own gain.

On another note, is the health care reform Obama is calling for even supported by the Christian faith, scriptures and morality? When did Jesus say, "When someone comes to you asking for something to drink or for some bread, you should send them to the nearest government office so that they can get food and water?" Obama is right that it is necessary to care for those in need. I would even argue that as Christians it is our responsibility to care for those in need. However, we go down a dangerous road when we hand over our opportunity to be compassionate to our government. There used to be a day when the church provided for the social needs of the community. The govenrment has moved in on many of the areas the church used to serve, and maybe that is because the church is lacking, but the solution is not to give more of our respinsibility to the governement. The solution is to begin to be the church. If the church cared for the poor, fed the hungry, and healed the sick, there would be no need for a social health care system oh what I mean for health care reform.

Jesus the Humanist

Jesus is possibly the greatest humanist to every walk this earth. He came not to burden people with rules and laws, but to free us to be truly human. While Humanism rejects anything supernatural, it is impossible to be complete as a human without the supernatural. It is Jesus who looks to all humans, no matter what their condition, class, or culture and affirms them as worthy of salvation. It is only through the cross that one can become fully human, something which would not be possible without Christ.

Jesus thought so highly of humanity that he became a human so that he might redeem us. Jesus chose to be lowered from his status as God so that he could suffer for humanity. If that isn't the ultimate example of love for humanity, I don't know what is. For us to be fully human we need to turn to Jesus. For it is only through him that we can be made complete. Apart from a relationship with God, no human is whole. I am not trying to say that we should treat people who are not in relationship with God as less human than those who are, and treat them worse. No, we ought to be like Jesus, and see the potential for all humans to be complete in him. We should follow in his footsteps and be a part of completing other. We need to bring people to Jesus so that they might become fully human in him.

Imagine

Imagine is without a doubt John Lennon's most successful song. It has been sung by people all over the world from Iranian protesters to the President of the United States (Bill Clinton). The song, with its mellow music asks us to imagine a Utopian existence with no heaven, no countries, no religion, and no need for greed or possessions. It concludes that if these things are removed there will be people only living for today, peace, and worldwide unity where everyone is fed and has all they need. At first this song may present something desirable. When in reality if Lennon's dream were to come true and there were no religion this world would be in a heap of hurt and trouble.

Even if there were a world where everyone had food and there were no wars, people would still suffer. Humans are not the only cause of suffering in this world. Nature has its way of wreaking havoc on us humans. Just think of Hurricane Katina, or the Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004, or the 1931 floods in China which killed somewhere between 2 and 4 million people or we could currently look to those starving from famine around the world. Imagine if there were no religion during and after these disasters. Many, many more people would have died. As it is an indisputable fact that the number one source of relief in these disasters, both short and long term are religious organizations. It is the religious who step up and save lives during hard times.

This past winter the city I live in experienced one of the worst snow storms in its history. The first place people who had no shelter were able to go was churches. The churches in our community saved the lives of many people who would have otherwise frozen to death. Lennon is out of touch thinking that a world with no religion would be a good place.

A world without religion would be a world without hope, a world without peace, a world filled with suffering and no one to care about it. I say we should imagine a world of true religion that doesn't take advantage of people. A world where the hope of heaven drives people to work harder at making this world a better place for all. Imagine a world as God would truly have it, if we would only allow it.

Gospel Invitation

He told us, as disciples, to make disciples. Not converts to Christianity, nor to some particular "faith and practice." --Dallas Willard
When the gospel is presented what is being presented? So often, in hopes of seeing people enter the Kingdom of God, "altar calls" simply present a decision to get out of hell. Or, to look at it from a more positive perspective, people are given the chance to "accept Jesus" so that they can go to heaven. While entering into a relationship with Jesus does gain you access to heaven it is not what the Christian life is all about. I would even argue that these weak "altar calls" have the tendancy to give people a false sense of security in their salvation, only find out after their death, that they do not even have salvation.

As Willard has so well written, Jesus NEVER told us to make converts to Christianity, he did however tell us to make disciples. Our responsibility as Christians is not to make more Christians but to make more disciples of Christ. Gaining access to heaven is merely the tip of the iceburg of Christianity. Think about it, if Christianity were only about having sins forgiven so that one might go to heaven, why don't we all committ suicide after being converted (sorry pastors you have to wait to go to heaven, someone has to convert new believers). I know this seems extreem, but allowing people to believe that all that matters is "accepting Jesus into your heart," leaves us to ask, why continue on living, I have done all that is really important.

It is about time that the Church starts paying attention to Jesus and not to those who create large numbers of "converts" that never become disciples. As the Church we don't need to be purpose driven, contagious or developing the leaders around us, we need to be creating followers. That's right followers. Our churches are doing something terrible by creating so many leaders, we need followers, followers of Christ.

Think back to the high school cliques, the followers in the group would always talk about the leader and how they knowthe leader and how they hang out with the leader and spend all day bragging that they get to hang out with the group leader. The followers are the ones who get their aquaintances and friends to join the group in order to hang out with the leader. The Church has one leader and that is Jesus Christ. If we began developing followers (disciples) we would begin to see churches that were driven by a desire to follow Christ, churches that people came to because the followers were so excited to be following Christ, churches that would be developing the followers around them.

It is time we stopped creating superstar leaders that can convince people that they need to make a single decision to get out of hell. It is time we started to become followers of Jesus, and called others into lives of following Jesus. It is time we became disciples so that we can go and make disciples.

God IS Bigger than Systematic Theology

A friend tipped me off to a blog posting which had the following sentence as an introduction. One of the really dumb ideas floating around Post-Modern "Christian" circles is this idea that "God is Bigger Than Your Systematic Theology". . . The post goes on to quote from Philip Melancthon to support the claim that "Post-Modern 'Christian(s)'" are dumb in saying that God is bigger than Systematic Theology. I do not know if my friend agreed or disagreed with the post, however, I found this post to be rather, well, dumb. How can anyone claim that any theology, I don't care if it is Systematic, Piratical or even Biblical Theology, is as big as God. All forms of theology are the study of God, not God himself.

God is by far bigger than any study of himself. There are a number of reasons this is so. First is that we only know God from what he has chosen to reveal to us through the Bible. Don't get me wrong here, in his infinite wisdom God knew exactly what should be revealed to us, but no thoughtful person would imagine to think that everything there is to know about God has been revealed. If that were so, the trinity and the personhood/deity of Christ would have been explained in way more detail. No, God did not reveal himself completely to us in the scriptures. He only revealed what he chose to reveal, what was necessary. God revealed all that is needed to enter into relationship with him and how to grow in that relationship. Remember that God's foolishness is greater than the wisdom of men (1 Cor. 1:25). If he did completely reveal himself, we would never be able to completely understand it, no one I know claims to completely understand what he has chosen to reveal to us.

I was really surprised (well not really) to see that Systematic Theology was being lifted up so high. I think this is once again an example of bible-idolatry taken to the extreme. God is even greater than the scriptures that reveal him. The authority of the scriptures do not come from themselves but from the one who inspired them. Scriptures get their authority from being the word of God, not that God's words get authority from being scripture. Since all (orthodox Christian) theology, even Systematic Theology, is rooted in scriptures and is therefore less than the scripture, which is less than God. Therefore it is dumb to say that Systematic Theology is anywhere near as big as God. If you want to test this go throughout the scriptures to find contradictions, you won't. Then go down to your local Christian bookstore and pull off the shelves all the Systematic Theology texts and go through them, they will contradict each other all over the place. If Systematic Theology were as big as God this would not be so.

On one last note, let us not forget who we worship. It is the one true God, FatherSonSpirit, creator of the universe, king of all, not theology or even the Bible. Let us not loose focus of our true love, the one who gave it all for us. If we keep focused on God, we will not fall into the idolatry of theology.

Married and Celibate

Sorry, for those of you who thought I was taking a vow of celibacy. Although with having four kids under the age of five, some of you may think it would be a good idea. I wanted to bring up a new prospective I have on celibacy and abstinence. As many of you know two weeks ago our family welcomed in its sixth member, which means many things for me, including . . . well . . . celibacy, at least for a short period of time. The other day I was thinking about . . . well . . . my wife and God spoke something to me which I wish I had known way back in High School or even Jr. High. Celibacy or abstinence does not have to be a negative thing. It should not be viewed as not doing something, or avoiding something. Rather it can be (and this is really nothing new) and should be viewed as a spiritual discipline.

At first I thought, duh, celibacy is often seen as a spiritual discipline. However so often it is viewed as merely not having sex. The problem with this is that by itself not having sex is meaningless. During this brief time of celibacy I have two choices. I can count down the days until I can be with my wife again, or I can use this time to grow closer to God. When I fast I do not count down the time until I can eat again. Whenever I get hunger pains I turn to God. I use the hunger to remind me where my satisfaction really comes from. I use the hunger to remind me to pray and spend time with God. So, why not do this with celibacy? When I have the desire to be with my wife I can use it to remind me where my satisfaction really comes from, to remind me to pray and spend time with God. This time can be viewed as one of the difficulties of bringing a new life into this world or as one of the blessings of bringing a new life into this world.

This concept does not end with married people who remain apart for a short period due to medical reasons. It also applies to abstinence. Working in youth ministry for many years, I have heard so many reasons to wait. You don't want STDs, it will damage you emotionally, what if she gets pregnant, the Bible tells you not to do it, and the list goes on. While many of these are good reasons to abstain from sex until marriage, only looking at abstinence as not having sex because doing so would or could be bad, falls short of being a good reason to abstain. I think it may also be the reason so many Christians fail to abstain. The positive side of abstinence is too often over looked. Abstaining from sex now can draw you closer to God now. Abstinence can and should be seen as a spiritual discipline. Abstaining from sex is not just to avoid bad consequences, but it is also an opportunity to draw closer to God.

Reflections on The Shack

Well, I have finally finished reading "The Shack . I could take the rest of this post discussing the theological genius or heresy one might believe exists in this story, however this would not do justice to the creative wonder Young has pieced together. This book took me quite some time to read, simply because I got bored about a third of the way into it and put it down. Although, after many people coming up to me and asking my thoughts on the book, I decided to pick it back up and finish it. I am truly grateful for those questioning people for getting me to finish this book.

What impressed me the most about this story was Young's ability to portray the absolute love which exists the triune God. Multiple times throughout the story the love of the Father, Papa, towards the Son and Holy Spirit and visa-versa is displayed. But Young also captures the love of God towards his creation, especially us.

Near the end of the book (I don't believe this is a spoiler so don't worry about reading further if you have not read the book) when Mack is speaking with his friend Willy, he tells Willy that God has a message for him and that message is, "Tell Willie that I'm especially fond of him." As I read that it was as if the message was from God to me, "Tell Scott that I'm especially fond of him." This almost brought tears to my eyes, which if you ask my wife is, well, impossible. However I was overwhelmed in the idea that God is especially fond of me. I still can't really grasp that concept. The creator of the universe is especially fond of me, and of you.

I am convinced that if we are able to continually remind ourselves that God is especially fond of us our lives will be filled with joy. We may never fully understand the love God has for us, however if we can catch a small portion of his fondness for us, we will be complete. I am not sure why it took me until the end of this book to get what Young was driving home the whole time, however I hope that today you can grasp the idea that God is especially fond of you. Theology aside, grasping the idea of God's fondness of me made this book well worth my time to read.

What to Pray For?

As a pastor I am often asked to pray for people. People come to me with requests to pray for illnesses of themselves and their family, financial hardships, difficulty with family, spiritual guidance and the list could go on . . . and on. As you can imagine I spend a lot of time praying, not just for other's prayer requests, but also for my own. All this praying is good, however while teaching on the Trinity at a youth conference recently it occurred to me that one of the most important things to pray for is often overlooked.

I was teaching on how the Church is to be a relational community similar to that of the Trinity and read a passage out of John 17 where Jesus prays for all the future Christians. In his prayer he prays that we would all be united so that the world might believe he has been sent by the Father. For some reason something new clicked. Jesus just prayed that we would expand his kingdom through our unity. In the past I had focused so much on this as a passage on unity that I missed what Jesus was praying for. He was praying that we would expand the kingdom, that our lives would be witnesses of him. After the conference was over I had to look into this. I that one of the most commonly things prayed for in the New Testament is the spread of the gospel. Think about there are tons of prayers about expanding the gospel, "thy kingdom come on earth," "this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent," "pray that I may declare it (the gospel) fearlessly," "I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now." I could go on, but you see how often prayer is focused on evangelism.

I would argue that a majority of the prayers we send up to God are for things we need or want and a few of those prayers are that we would spread the gospel. While in the New Testament prayers for the expansion of the gospel are found everywhere. Imagine what could happen if we as Christians spend as much time praying for the growth of God's kingdom as we spend praying for our temporary desires to be met.

Taboo

Christians, as the people of God who should be assisting in the redemption of creation in Christ, have some difficulties to face. One of those is cultural taboos. There are many things which are considered taboo which we as Christians need to participate in. Our culture tells us that the homeless are on the streets for a reason which they caused and that we should not acknowledge their existence. Yeah, it is o.k. to give to the Salvation Army or volunteer at a soup kitchen around Thanksgiving. But actually acknowledging the homeless as people, that is something different.
A couple of weeks ago I was at a meeting with "city officials" discussing an emergency homeless shelter which we opened up this past winter and how we could better prepare for future winters. The city was concerned that the homeless did not freeze to death on their streets but that is about as far as their concern went. One of the "officials" commented that she actually made a connection with one of the guests and opened up to her, another "official" stated that we need training so that the volunteers can learn to keep their distance and not get attached. It was seen as taboo to be vulnerable to the homeless at the shelter. About a week ago I was reading a web page about reaching out to the homeless and it warned not to look at homeless in the eye when around them. Don't look at them in the eye, what are they animals?
If we are to follow in the footsteps of Christ we need to treat the homeless as what they are, people who have found life difficult. We need to look them in the eye and vulnerably enter conversation, enter their lives so that we can help open the door for the savior. We need live taboo lives.
Encountering street folk is not the only place where we need to live taboo lives, Jesus was constantly being accused of being a sinner, drunkard, and all sorts of other taboo things, because he lived with those who were living taboo lives. If we are to reach the whole world with the gospel we need to go and do likewise, we need to live taboo lives.