10 Cities

Apprenticeship: Solution to Our Problems

Discipleship is a vague term within church circles, ranging from the harshly legalistic to just about whatever you want it to be. However, when you read the Gospels and the New Testament epistles, it seems that discipleship is pretty much the whole process in between now and when the show's over, either individually or corporately. Even Jesus' Great Commission commands to go make disciples. It's a big deal. In fact, outside of loving one another as Jesus loves us, it's the thing we're charged to do. However, we live in an age that has withstood so many trends, both harmful and just over-used. We tend to be a people of reactions rather than anything else. People react against rationalism with fundamentalism. People react against fundamentalism with evangelicalism....and so on. When it comes to discipleship, we've been beaten up, shamed, guilt-ridden, on the one hand. And, on the other hand, we've been left wondering if it just means teaching the Bible or helping someone memorize Scripture, as an encompassing definition...we don't really know. We know salvation. We know baptism and the Lord's Supper...but discipleship remains elusive to most. 

 

It's not legalism. Discipleship does involve activity. But that activity isn't a prerequisite to be a Christian, or even a good Christian. There is no law of discipleship that we must do and do well in order to get God's approval. We're saved by grace, not works, lest anyone should boast. However, we are also told, just a few verses later, that God created us to do good works, in advance. Grace is not opposed to effort, but earning. Discipleship, although not a requirement for approval, is a necessary thing.

 

What is it? Discipleship is synonymous with life in the Kingdom of God. I prefer the word "apprentice" rather than disciple. It paints a more cogent picture. You can't step into the life offered in Christ without also stepping into what it all means. Of course, it results in joy, peace, patience, etc. (we'll get to more of that in a minute), but it also requires efforts to kill off old habits (pick up your cross and follow me...). It involves suffering, sacrifice but leads to joy, sanity, compassion fueled by great hope. It's the kind of life that is a treasure worth buying an entire field to bury it to keep it safe. It's a process that moves us beyond just dying to our old so-called life and into a real one, overflowing and contagious to those around us. There's no graduated levels of improvement or certifications. In fact, we may not 'feel' much better than when we first started the process. That, ironically, is also a result of this sort of life (humility).

 

Apprenticeship in Christ is a learning process in becoming who we are and Jesus is our Teacher...our Mentor. We are learning from Him...to be like Him...to think, say and do the things He would say, think and do were He us. For people like me, that is a tall order. But my perception of things, particularly myself, isn't His. It will, eventually. I'm still asking for that.

 

Who are we? When we have placed our confidence for everything in the hands of Jesus Christ, we experience God's love for us firsthand, and are declared children of God...holy ones. Those are loaded terms and paint a picture of an apprentice of Jesus Christ that may seem almost embarrassing compared to how that person feels or sees himself or herself. But, it is there identity. They are in Christ. Christ is in them. They may not see it now, but they will. They may not notice the good works God prepared for them to do (that's usually the case--we couldn't handle our pride if we always knew) but one day it will all fall into place. In the meantime....we continue to pick up our cross...continue to pray, associated with each other...try to work through this new life until it all consummates in Christ's return.

 

In Greek, hagios (ἅγιος) means holy one. "Saint" is not a very good translation. Holy one is a term exclusively used for God's heavenly host/assembly in the Old Testament (Hebrew: קֳּדָשִׁ֗ים/qodeshim). Another OT name for them is sons of God (Hebrew: בְּנֵ֣י הָֽאֱלֹהִ֔ים/bene elohim). Both of these names are exclusively used to describe followers of Jesus in the New Testament/Christ's church.

 

That's not a coincidence.

 

The comparison (who we are) to God's host of heaven seems ridiculously foreign compared to what we experience right now (what we're actually like), whether we admit it or not. Being an apprentice of Jesus is precisely what we do where we are, always in the presence of our Teacher, like children-heirs learning to live, rule and reign before we inherit the Kingdom (Galatians 4:6-7).

 

Eclipsing that process by focusing only on minimum entrance requirements leaves us as heirs who either don't know how to live or pretend we do. We front-end the process and hope the rest of it all pans out. That's a root to just about every problem we face. That would mean discipleship or apprenticeship is the solution for just about every problem we face. In fact, there's no reason to believe learning to live in the Kingdom of God as an apprentice of Jesus doesn't also tend to evangelize (minimum entrance requirements). In fact, they are two sides of the same coin.

 

The ongoing results of learning from Him now isn't how you vote, where you go to church, who's side you're on or with whom you associate. Its:

 

joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control.

 

Read that list again. How much of that do you see around you? I'm not talking about the front-end appearance managing but the real thing. We could use more of it. It's not a set of new commands. That's not what we do, it's who we become to resemble, which reminds us of who we actually are...Holy Ones, Sons and Daughters of God. They come from stepping into the life Jesus offers, in Him and with Him, in every facet of life. It's not that voting or political issues or matters of justice aren't important. They most certainly are. But they aren't the fruit of the Spirit. We front end things that should follow naturally as a result of that fruit. For example, take same sex attraction. There are many who imply that heterosexuality is a fruit of the Spirit. It isn't. Self-control would be. So, it makes sense for someone with same sex attraction, resembling self-control and goodness, glorify God just as much as someone who is heterosexual. It's not that the issues surrounding our sexual revolution aren't critical. It's just our response to it and the initial and natural pull is for us to front-end it and focus on managing the outcomes rather than abandoning those, focusing on being an apprentice of Jesus and leaving the outcomes to Him.

 

Joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control. Think how powerful those results would be in our world....in our nation....in our community....in our church. That's immensely more powerful than anything we try to front end in our own strength. And these things aren't contingent on our circumstances. When we go through struggles and painful periods, these results don't just extend salt and light and justice into our world...they also give us immense hope, reminding us of our destiny which provides the fuel/grace to persevere. It's a loving sanity...the opposite of everything around us...it's a deep confidence in our Lord and His continual presence in our lives.

The Weight of Your Identity

"Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace...When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. For the wages of sin are death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." - Romans 6:20-23

 

We live in a world that adamantly tries to manipulate us to comply with all the narratives it promotes. That includes our identity.

 

Who are you?

 

In a secular culture, all the options offered us fall woefully short of our existential reality. "I am a lawyer" or "I am a mom" or "I am the president of the Rotary Club", which are all fine things, cannot bear the weight of a person's essential identity. When we place those things in the center of how we define ourselves, we are enslaved to it. It can't help but mold and shape us. To the extent "mom" cannot inform our being president of the Rotary Club, we find those identities not big enough for real life. We chose a virtuous, albeit, finite reference point that can't bear the weight of our actual identity. But can we simply make our identity all of those things? We can certainly list them as parts of our function or our relationship to others, but it simply cannot take center stage in our essential identity. These things have their place. We bring who we are into all of those places. Sometimes we can choose an identity that's almost purely synthetic or entirely out of our imagination, despite whether it comports with reality. That especially goes for the more popular political hot topics like sexual orientation or gender. We try to force it to fit, while pretending not to force it at all...like it is as natural as sunshine. Christians tend to do this too, especially when they get confused about what life is supposed to be like as a follower and friend of Jesus. We declare ourselves cured of all diseases and then begin hiding the sores that tend to show themselves along the way. That's a miserable life. It doesn't have to be that way. In fact, the life Paul talks about in this text betrays that sort of life.

 

Who we really are...our true identity...is not entirely made up by us. It can't be. If we choose that we are a turnip, we are still not a turnip no matter how hard we try to convince ourselves and everyone else we are a turnip. We are contingent, meaning we were born and we die. We aren't a sufficient reference point to declare who we are, without it backfiring on us. We were made to be who we are, no doubt. But the most important part of our identity is to be embraced through discovery of what that means, not made by our will. Our will is engaged in discovering it and moving toward that, but not creating it. Who we are will inform all the other roles we play...we will be enslaved to it. And, by enslaved, I do not mean that to be a derogatory term. We are all slaves to something.

 

Let me repeat that: we are all slaves to something. What matters is who or what you are a slave to.

 

Whatever you have placed in the center of your life, as your identity, is your master, whether it is sex, politics, money, family, body image, fame...when the demands of your chosen identity command, you respond. It doesn't necessarily have to be bad things. But if they are insufficient to bear the weight of identity, it creates a difficult life. That's the fallacy of modern libertine attitudes of doing what feels good. It's a euphemism for obeying the commands of your bodily urges. It also ignores the consequences of doing so. You are a slave. You are either a slave to sin or to righteousness. You cannot be both, at the same time.

 

There are a couple of things in this text that are important to mention. Nowhere in this text does Paul say that we are no longer sons or daughters of God if we submit ourselves to sin again. There is no mention of the fact that if you do submit yourself to sin, you are lost and have to either start again or consider yourself out for good. No, he implies that believers are capable of deciding submit either way. This is the difficult part of the Gospel that even evangelicals today have a difficult time accepting. By submitting yourself under the Lordship of Jesus Christ, you are a part of God's family. It doesn't matter what you've done or will do. You are a child of God. You are approved because of Christ's finished work on the cross. Approved workmen are not ashamed, as Paul writes to Timothy.   

 

The second thing about this text is the fact that a follower and friend of Jesus is someone who may offer themselves both to sin or to righteousness. We allow one or the other control over our life and it's never at the same time. Paul states one way leads to death and the other to eternal life. But can a follower of Jesus end up letting sin control them? Of course. It happens all the time. In fact, our entire lives as a Christian is a struggle to stop. And, until we die or Jesus comes back, we will never accomplish that. The idea in this text is whether or not we can simply live like we used to live before we were identified in Christ and Paul's answer is clearly no. It's not a no with the threat of eternal damnation. It's a no with the ultimate consequences of what that sort of living leads toward. It makes no sense to become a slave to Christ but then slavishly obey something else. And what, who or Whom you serve will shape who you become. If you fall back on the old familiar, you will reap the consequences of it. Even with grace, you will still have to contend with the consequences of sin. Paul wants them to avoid such a painful life. Life as a believer already comes with the promise of suffering. It makes no sense to compound it through our own doing. What Paul wants to tell them is that it can go hard or easy...regretful or grateful. Seems like an easy choice. But in our context of a life prior to Jesus, what seems easy isn't what we're used to choosing.

 

Being set free from death means being set free from sin. That doesn't mean you stop sinning. It just means you are free to not obey it. And the more you deny sin, the less power sin has over you. The more you submit to righteousness, the more you can transform into what your identity says you are to become. That's fairly familiar and obvious, but it also entails that you will discover sin you probably never considered sin before. The more you obey Christ, the less sin dominates you but the more sin you discover within yourselves you didn't know was sin. For me, it was pride, arrogance...both stemming from fear and my resolve to pull myself up by my own bootstraps, both morally and intellectually. That's sin. I didn't think it was 20 years ago. In the Old Testament, they had sacrifices made to unintentional sin. Unintentional sin included sin that you didn't intentionally pursue yourself. It also includes sin you haven't considered. Making sacrifices for unintentional sin meant that everyone who made such sacrifices was a screw up to some degree...and that to that degree they may not even be aware. God was aware, hence the sacrifice. For us that are no longer under law but under grace, we have that safety net to pursue righteousness, even if it uncovers the most unseemly things within us. That's one of the most amazing things about grace.

 

Coming back to politics, gender, sexual orientation and the narratives of the world...I have questions only you can answer: do you really think you can be defined essentially by these things? Are these things able to bear the weight of your identity? Be careful to think that through. Also, if you were entirely honest with yourself, do you think getting what you want or doing what you want will make you happy, cause your life to flourish or make you into the person you think it will? Do you think there there is a limited or fixed boundary to nature that should inform our will or freedom or do you think there is no such boundary and we can become turnips or sponges, if we so desire?

 

These sound like arcane (maybe ridiculous) questions to you, but I ask them to get you thinking. Thinking is a good thing, especially when it comes to self examination. A life not examined isn't worth living. And if you honestly examine your life, I pray you have enough confidence to accept wherever that leads.

 

Have you gave your life to Christ but have messed things up or feel its too late to walk things back? To think such a thing is to think that you are powerful enough to thwart the will of an omnipotent God. You give yourself far too much credit in your own criticism. Maybe you have given your life to Jesus but you feel like you are all talk. If people knew your secrets, you'd be suicidal...you feel you have to pretend to be a person you aren't. I have been there. Sadly, that sort of thing can be encouraged within church, which is to its harm. Being a follower of Jesus means being honest with yourself, first. If you can't be honest with yourself, you can't be honest, period. We are all messed up. But we are all His and this is all going somewhere. Stop pretending. You may fall out of circles with your honesty, but a clear conscience is far more valuable than uptight friend you probably couldn't keep in the first place.

 

Have you not given your life to Christ but have placed your identity in something else? If so, has there ever been an occasion where you have to convince yourself things are going just fine when you deep down know they are not (Christians do this too, by the way)? What if I told you that a new life, and one with amazing promises, starts with accepting His promise for you with empty hands, plus nothing else. It doesn't matter what you've done. It doesn't matter who you are. He loves you for who you are right now. He doesn't only love you if you're who you're supposed to be. You and I will never be who we are supposed to be, this side of death. Despite the latest cause, nothing this world offers you can save you or make you into the person you were created to be. No one ever thinks of buying a new car to use as a vegetable garden. Human beings were not created to be anything except our Creator's representatives in this world. Anything else is an adventure in futility. Submitting yourself to Ultimate Reality may mean doing a 180, but it's not enslaving yourself. You already are a slave. Your politics or circles may find that idiotic or humorous. But, that doesn't make it less true. And, if you choose to laugh, a life without Christ will need whatever humor you can find, once the reality of this world bears down.

 

Let Him set you free from the slavery you endure. Let Him transform you into who He plans for you to become. You'll still mess things up. But if you accept His offer, the kind of life He promises you never runs out of supply, no matter what you go through. I've got 22 years and change to say this with certainty. And I pray He does the same thing to you He did for me all those years ago.

Here's the Church, Here's the Steeple: Thoughts on Spirituality, Trends & the Local Church

These are some thoughts I have been having for several years that I have not been able to put into words until now. You may read them and think I still haven’t been able to accomplish that. Maybe so, but that’s due to my inability to communicate clearly, not an impingement on the thoughts themselves. Keep an open mind on the following. It has to do with what church looks like, how it seems to have morphed in our generation. In some ways it has been for good. But it also has in ways that I think have crippled us and maybe cheated us from access to His Kingdom in ways that have always been available to us. Hear me out: I think we have made the Sunday morning service something far more than it is supposed to have ever been. The symptoms are our thinking about worship and study. We also have been scared to death to approach faith itself without tripping the fine balance we have created among our denominational doctrines and traditions. Things tend to follow from there.

Worship

Do a word study on worship for both Hebrew and Greek. It will astound you. Hardly ever does it refer to singing songs. It does, but as a ratio for all references, it’s very low. What does worship usually reference in the Bible? It can refer to bowing (showing reverence), praying, serving. In Romans 12, Paul describes the most rational or reasonable form of worship is to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice. What that means is offering your entire life, whatever you do, as an act of worship. The Bible teaches worship as your entire life, reflecting what’s most important to you, a reaction of what that ends up looking like in how you think and act, as well as a conscious or subconscious pointer back to Christ as how you are defined.

We have made worship, popularly, a 20-minute participatory concert. There’s nothing wrong with that. Worship would include such things. But when someone talks about worship at church, that is exclusively what they mean. Hardly ever is worship used in a sentence to describe any of the other ways it is referenced in scripture.

Preaching

The Greek word for preaching basically means proclaiming. It’s very much tied to teaching but with the added element of it being before gathered believers and with the added function of exhorting, encouraging, rebuking, using scripture to help bring us into focus compared to all the voices out there. It’s a necessary thing and very much biblical. However, it’s not uncommon for preaching to be the only access to Bible study people have. Many have made preaching the weekly Bible study. In a sense, it makes sense in American 21^st century life for that to be pervasive. We have jobs, children to raise, bills to pay…not much time for an hour every other day or once a week, outside of church, to spend studying Scripture. But the trade off is that preaching becomes our Bible study, which is every Sunday morning. What then happens is that we put all of our authority for anything scriptural on the backs of the Sunday morning pastor. That’s a task that I would be most of them would not want to encourage (most—some are wanting that pinnacle of authority, unfortunately). So, if we want to know what God thinks about work, politics, society, even the Bible, we listen to our pastor preach and that’s how we get our knowledge. It puts all the focus on the Sunday morning message and it creates evangelical flock that seems helpless without going to the pastor, rather than scripture. We should be digesting the things of God on our own, if for no other reason to help the local church pastor to fulfill the office held. At the very least, when a pastor says we should hold him accountable, how can we do that if he's the sole source of our study?

Faith

Evangelicals have historically been muddled on the concept of faith. In some quarters, faith is a force or energy that is accessible to the believer to make things happen. You see that in the Word of Faith circles (Kenneth Copeland, Joyce Meyers, Steven Furtick). In others, faith is the transactional event where your ticket is punched for heaven and everything else in between now and then is making sure all your associated beliefs are correct, while waiting for death or Jesus' return (Reformed, fundamental Baptist). In yet others, faith is an ambiguous human connection for human betterment (progressive strains). For skeptics, faith is a religious belief in God that is not needed in the age of modern science.

Faith is confidence in something not seen (Hebrews 11:1). No one lives without faith. Sitting in a chair or flipping on a light switch necessarily requires faith. Once more, what you do or don’t do (so long it isn’t against your will) reflects belief. No one calculates the strength of the chair compared with their weight prior to sitting…or runs a continuity test on the circuit for the light prior to flipping it on. Faith is a fundamental feature of normal human existence. Once more, Christians believe you cannot do anything in this life to please God without faith. What does that mean? It means whatever you do in faith is to do as an act of worship (see above) which reflects giving your life to the God who has shown unfathomable mercy (Romans 12:1-3). It doesn’t mean doing things right or correct. It has more to do with the intent or motivation behind what you do.

Faith isn’t a force or energy. Evangelicals who believe this are more aligned with Steven Spielberg than scripture. Any miracle or supernatural thing that defies natural explanation isn’t something done by faith, but by God or by God through human beings. The Word of Faith movement creates a crippling ministry of laying on tons of shame and guilt on people when bad things happen to them. If faith is a force and speaking words makes reality, then when you get cancer or your child dies, that is entirely your fault. It’s spiritual malpractice.

Faith also isn’t transactional. Faith is a life transformed by believing in Someone Who is responsible for the transformation. Faith justifies, which means faith in Jesus as Lord makes you part of God’s family. That same faith also transforms. I believe in Sola Fide, but just as Ephesians 2:8-9 are true, so is verse 10 of that same passage. Works cannot save, but a faith that is without works reflects a faith in something other than what’s proclaimed (James 2:17). Believing this doesn’t believe in a works-based salvation. It believes in a salvation that makes a transformed life possible. This is probably why many Reformed and fundamental Baptists have preached a Gospel that is really only a speech about minimum entrance requirements. It’s also why they have been so worried about believing what the Bible teaches about works to become a legalism. By worrying and reacting to this unfounded fear, they’ve created a sort of legalism of their own making.

In short, if the belief the Dodgers are the best team in the nation results in going to Dodgers games and wearing Dodgers windbreakers, why is it so weird to associate belief in Christ in a similar way? Where the Word of Faith has created a paranormal idea of what faith is, the Reformed and fundamental Baptists have tended to reduce it down to a punched ticket.

Local Church As the Kingdom

Because worship has been something almost entirely reliant on the Pastor of Worship and Bible study to be something almost entirely reliant on the Lead Pastor, the local church has become something distorted from what it is. Dallas Willard stated that the three incomplete gospels in modern America are:

the 1) Gospel of Forgiveness of Sins,

2) the Gospel of Social Justice and

3) the Gospel of Local Churchmanship.

If the problem with the gospel of forgiveness of sins is that it eliminates any relevance of the life Christ offers us in this life and the problem with social justice gospel is that it entirely ignores the individual’s need for spiritual transformation as a starting point, the problem with the gospel of local churchmanship is that the Kingdom of God is equivocated to the local church, which it is not.

A preference for belonging to a church because of locality or worship practices has ballooned into thousands of individual kingdoms to themselves, virtually isolated from each other (and even encouraged by the local church in many cases—this is abuse to other fellow believers). The fact worship and Bible study are focused on Sunday mornings is what I believe to be symptoms of this gospel. It has become the path of least resistance. Hebrews says we shouldn’t neglect gathering together often. But I had church on Saturday morning over pancakes with friends. It was far more meaningful, honestly, than the big corporate gatherings I attend in quite some time. That verse isn’t a gotcha verse for making that gathering only to be going to the big campus on Sunday mornings.

I don’t have a solution. I’m not writing this to just poke a finger into the eye of local churches. I belong to a local church myself. There’s plenty of finger poking that can be done at my expense for sure. These are my thoughts. But I also believe that although church has remained the same in essential ways as the first century church, it has also changed over time, with the times. I don’t see this as a trend setting or following phenomenon. I see it as the providence of God over His Bride. The shift in re-analyzing what church is probably reflects the fact she’s in flux towards the next manifestation of what church will look like. The best we can do, as a form of worship, is seek His counsel ourselves, through His Word, through meditation, awareness and fellowship with each other. It will all work out the way He wants it. But, the worst thing we can do is the two extreme tendencies to worship tradition or force things to happen.

Now, I know when I mention some of these things, particularly Bible study, many of you may get bunged, as if I am trying to create a bondage you don't need. To dispel as much of that as I can, let me tell you that the weight of the church or Christianity is not on your shoulders. God has done just fine before you were born and will do just fine after you go. This is for you. It's something to enrich, not burden. The problem with talking about these things is desire. How do I get the desire to study the Bible or make my life a form of worship without it being forced or just an awful form of bondage? Maybe this is where faith comes in too. Rather than worry about it, place trust in Christ with even the desires we wish we had. Don’t beat ourselves up if we go through ‘dry spells’ without cracking open the Bible or spending time in silences for a while. Give ourselves a break in that regard. Putting local church worship and preaching in its proper perspective are healthy things we can do but putting the desires in our hearts is something only the Spirit of God can do. We just need to practice our faith even here and trust that He can and will, without us required to know when and how.

God's Voice & the SBC Safe Space

In Islam, there's a weird doctrine about the eternality of the Quran. The hadith teach that the Quran wasn't created in the 7th century. They believe the Quran, in it's verbalized or written form, has always existed, from eternity. However, they also believe in the tawid, that Allah is one and shares eternal existence with nothing else. How do you reconcile these things? You don't. If you try, you get condemned for blasphemy. Christians don't have this view of the Bible...sort of. Many actually do tend to fall into the issue of making the Bible the sum-total of your entire Christian walk. In many cases, you end up with just as strange a metaphysic as the Muslims, where there seems to be an equating of Jesus, the Word, with the Bible, the written Word.

Here's the recent video blog from J.D. Greear giving his (and the SBC) position on whether God speaks to people today. The real question isn't whether God speaks to His people but how He does this. Does God ever speak to us independent of Scripture or is 100% of all God's communication with His people only through the Bible? Greear quotes Hebrews 1:1 as a sort of proof-text for his idea that God speaks to us through the Bible. However, it's not a great or even compelling proof-text. What Hebrews 1:1 says is that, in the past, God spoke to His people through the prophets (which can easily be assumed to point to Tanakh) but in these last days God has spoken to us through His Son, Jesus. Greear says this clearly represents Scripture since everything we know of the Son is in Scripture. But that's not the question, nor is that what this text is saying. First, with regards to what the writer of Hebrews is saying, read the rest of this pericope:

In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, ² but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe.³ The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. -- Hebrews 1:1-3 (I added the emphasis)

I don't think Hebrews 1:1 was written to be a proof-text the way Greear is using it. But aside, this, I think the over-all implication of that interpretation is off too. Does reference to the powerful word refer to the written word or the Word in the sense we get from the opening chapters of John's Gospel? 

Is the universe sustained by the Bible? No. That's nonsense. The Bible teaches Christ sustains all things through his powerful word...but t equate 'word' with written Scripture just doesn't make any sense. 

Is Jesus the Bible? No. The Bible is about Jesus...it points us to Jesus, but it is not Jesus. That, also, would make no sense at all.

I am in no way saying Greear would answer yes to these things. But I do think he's trying to walk an impossibly thin line with this position...and really doesn't need to. He's trying to stay away from the extreme cessationist view that God stopped talking after the canon was compiled....and the other extreme of crafting God's will to suit his own gain. There's a third rail response to this question. Before explaining that, I want to show three things wrong both extremes as well as the mistaken middle ground, as expressed by Greear in the video. 

There's no question the Bible is God's Word in all that it affirms for us (putting aside the apologetic for those who don't buy into this). There's no question the Bible is the ultimate authority for us in determining God's voice. Should we be bold enough to listen for God's voice, outside of studying Scripture....does God speak only through Scripture or in other ways? Greear says, basically, he's open to that but doesn't know....and that it's much safer here on the guard rails of being open but cautious about the idea. Many hold this view, which is sort of the middle path. Others go farther and state Scripture is the Word in every sense of how it's referred to within the Bible. There becomes a muddled equivocation between Scripture and Jesus, as a result.

Why the equivocation between the Bible and Jesus? I think it has much more to do with a reaction against doctrinal abuse than it is a hermeneutic from Scripture. Even Greear admits so much to this. There clearly are violations of morality and common sense among many who start off saying, "God told me...". But to use a reaction against a scriptural abuse to form doctrine is as wrong-headed as getting fast and loose with "God told me..." stuff. Why is it wrong-headed? Wouldn't Greear's position simply be a sensible, conservative one? No, and I'll tell you why.

First, Scripture clearly teaches us that God, Himself, makes His home within us when we accept Jesus as Lord (1 Corinthians 3:16, 6:19, 2 Corinthians 6:19, Ezekiel 36:27, 2 Timothy 1:14, Ephesians 5:8, Romans 8:11, John 16:13, Galatians 5:18, Romans 8:15, to name just a few). The Godhead, an independent agent, dwells within the believer. What does that look like? Well, clearly, it involves communication that goes beyond just reading the text. In 1 Corinthians 2, Paul tells us we have the very mind of Christ. In 2 Timothy 1:14, Paul states that the Holy Spirit guards the good treasure given to Timothy. That implies more than a book or a proof-text. Romans 12:1-3 states that we submit ourselves to God as an act of worship (far more than studying or memorizing scripture), we can begin to discover the will of God, through the renewing of our minds. Not only will Scripture aid us in that, but submitting all of our life as our act of worship will give us new insight and a new way of thinking. This teaching simply cannot be reduced to only Bible study. It is far more encompassing than that....and the Scripture about Christ and His Spirit is also far more encompassing too. The Spirit teaches us, speaks to us, guides us, convicts us...many times that is through Scripture. But, it would be a huge mistake and a misreading of the same Scripture to say the Spirit does this EXCLUSIVELY through Scripture.

Second, you can't judge a philosophy based on its abuse. If Kenneth Coplan says things like Jesus was the first born-again human, or that Creflo Dollar tells us God told him to buy a new jet plane, that doesn't mean it is dangerous to consider God speaking to us outside of Scripture. What it means is that Coplan and Dollar obviously have fallen far from the entire mind-renewal process Paul tells us about. Instead of discovering God's will, they'll turn over all the cards and tell us what it is...which usually benefits them, at our expense. The problem isn't seeking God's voice in every day life, outside of Scripture. The problem is with false teachers who decide to remain ignorant about Scripture in order to serve their own interests, which is really what Christ died to save us from. But, it would be an over-reaction...throwing the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak, to decide it safer to stick only with the Bible to find out God's will about things. What is God's will about you buying a microwave? How about God's will on leaving or staying at a current job? You need the Bible as a continual resource to help mold your thinking, but if you don't think the Spirit has anything to say to you in the moment or about the more mundane things, you are missing the boat on all that the Spirit offers you.

Lastly, Scripture doesn't say God only speaks through Scripture. But in the examples given by Greear, as well as many others, when the this topic arises, it's always in the context of a big, miraculous event. God speaks more in the mundane moments than He does in the more spectacular events. There is also nothing that says God will stop speaking to us outside of Scripture either.  God still speaks to us outside the Bible, but God never says anything to us that would ever contradict what He's revealed in the Bible. In fact, the Bible is the resource to test and see if what we hear is from God...or not. We need to do that, many times, because learning to distinguish God's voice from all the others (especially our own) is a process that takes time. He's given us His Spirit and the Scripture. It would be as big of a mistake to reduce that down to Scripture-only as it would Spirit-only. All the sola's of the Reformation period probably open the door on going way too far on this sort of dilemma.

So, how do we listen for God's voice in a responsible way? I think J.P. Moreland has cornered the market on how to do this, in his book, The Kingdom Triangle.

First, we study Scripture and learn to replace the junk we have believed with truth.

Second, we practice spiritual disciplines, using means of grace, through the Spirit, to make our bodies, our social context and our circumstances serve Jesus, rather than being a slave to them. Means of grace are very diverse and even individualized, depending on the person's own struggles or habits.

Third, we remain open to God moving, speaking, revealing....all the time, every day, every moment, even (and especially) when times are awful. One way of helping encourage us in this is to read testimonies of people who credibly reveal how God revealed or acted in their situations. It encourages us.

But, if you miss out on either of these three things, you will go awry, as many have. For those who are way too careful to listen, watch or wait to discern God outside Scripture, they grow cold and controlling. For those who neglect study of Scripture, you will go off into believing all sorts of harmful things that will harm yourself and others. And for those who neglect the disciplines, you'll have a hard time hearing God because you keep getting in the way due to your own impulses and desires. You can see this play out in all sorts of ways. There's a plethora of examples.

Say it another way: If you neglect study, you'll remain ignorant to the things of God. If you neglect the disciplines, your desires and impulses will continue to enslave you, rather than you getting a handle over them. Lastly, if you are not open the the miraculous...to God's communication to you, you close yourself off from an incredible amount of joy and wonder that could fuel you to continue making His Name known enthusiastically.

I like Greear, but he's too good of a Southern Baptist on this topic and has decided to stay very safe and secure in the tight margins of the predictable (sort of) open but (overly) cautious view of hearing God.

 

 

America: A Melting Melting Pot

Dallas Willard stated that in modern America, freedom and liberty are euphemisms for impulse and pleasure. When pressed on particular tropes of freedom and liberty, regardless of the more popular issues being bantered around, it's tough to disagree with Willard on this point. An ethic of unfettered impulse or pleasure is an ethic of unfettered will over reality/nature. Nature is actually seen to be a tyrant that is the enemy of the will. An individual gets to define not so much who they are, but what they are, and anything that even hints at resistance toward the will's freedom to do so is considered evil.

 

Plato's critique of democracy, in The Republic, addresses this in an almost prophetic way. For Plato, democracies eventually fail because there's an underlying ethic reflecting an egalitarian view of ideas. That devolves into a war of subjectivity, where conflicting ideas end up clashing with each other. What gives way is a new dogmatic orthodoxy that denies criticism of any ideas, requires celebration and protection of all ideas and the polis devolves into chaos. The chaos, of course, leaves a vacuum which is eventually filled with tyrannical rule. In short, democracy is the cradle of despotism, rather than civilization.

 

America treats desires and pleasures as groups of people, rather than just things people can have or entertain. What you end up with are people at war with each other because of extreme identification with these impulses of the will. As a result, you can't conceivably have psychological disorders anymore. You have problems recommending any solutions without them undermining other ones. This is true intersectionality....the chaotic clash caused by an egalitarian view of ideas and desires that drive them, which eventually undermine other ideas and devolve into conflict.

 

One great example of this has been the sexual revolution, driven by postmodern Marxist ideas of identity politics. The legalization of gay marriage didn't cause havoc, per se, but the philosophical ideas used to argue for its legality were havoc-causing side effect. The definition of marriage gets expanded to include more than the concept of marriage was originally intended, muddying the entire enterprise. Next, gender becomes nuanced, separate from biology. A person who is male, based on chromosomes and sex organs, identifies as a woman, or vice versa. Next, even the term 'lesbian' is nuanced and the original gay marriage philosophy undermines itself. A man who self-identifies as a woman who is attracted to lesbians looks a lot like heterosexuality, enough to convince lesbians to adopt a puritanical position (which smacks a lot like conservative ethical positions) against other lesbians even entertaining a sexual relationship like that. One group of marginalized persons that are part of their same ever-increasing acronymed identity group, find themselves at odds. The same thing has applied to racial politics as well as modern feminism: an unlikely conflict between two subgroups of the same political cause. Of course, this hasn't developed into full-fledged chaos yet, but to say chaos hasn't got its foot in the door now is to be blissfully ignorant. 

 

What can we expect with the new sexual revolution?

 

Chaos, unintended consequences and a society that no longer has a way to maintain any sort of identity or cohesiveness at all. In other words, societal collapse. Identity politics has no room for trade-offs because identity politics has no room for reality. Reality requires limited people embrace trade-offs. That ticks off the postmodern mind.

 

The only viable option is to return to a pre-modern view of natural law and appreciation of reality as something limiting the will. But, that will not happen. There is no way a heavily politicized people who are now accustomed to celebrating a person's desire to become a brussel sprout would ever conceive of embracing the idea of nature limiting freedom. Hell is more preferable. Of course, there are more moderate liberals who are thoughtful enough to realize identity politics is a serpent eating itself, desiring progressives adopt a little natural law to keep the balance. But, you simply cannot adopt a little natural law. You either embrace reality or reject it. So, that pits our current trajectory towards chaos as almost fatalistic. 

 

The conservative response to identity politics has unwittingly turned into an identity politic of their own. In other words, the best way to fight cultural identity politics of the left is to become an identity politic of the right, as if that was something possible.  It isn't. Conservative politics has devolved into a highly pressurized desire to force progressives into accepting conservative ideals, as if that were possible. The only other concievable outcome of the conservative identity politic is the unthinkable conclusion to 'convert or die'. No one on the right is saying that, but I don't see how you get around it...and if the right decides to pursue that line of thinking, were it to seize power in all sectors, then it will just usher in another bloody reality, as opposed to the bloody reality explicitly envisioned by Marxist identity politics.

 

The only hope we have in America is the Gospel (duh!). But, the Gospel never over-rides individual will. Any historical examples where the Gospel results in force is not the Gospel but an abuse of it. Nowhere in Scripture are people forced to accept Jesus and His Kingdom or face the sword. In fact, Scripture reveals people who are changed, but never by force. In a cultural environment where force seems to be the only answer, we are stuck between thousands of horrible solutions we will entertain and a solution we will probably never consider. As a Christian, we don't have to be El Sid and we also don't have to crawl in a cave until the dust settles. We are Christ's disciples who are in the world, even though we are not of it. 

 

That brings me to American Patriotism. I've been watching the Netflix documentary about Steven Avery. One thing I can tell you without it being a spoiler is that Manitowoc County and the State of Wisconsin were horrible wrong in how they handled the arrest, conviction and appeals of Avery and his nephew. There are so many infractions against Avery's constitutional rights as well as infractions against basic methods of investigation...I mean, even if the guy is guilty, if there is any possible exculpatory evidence, it's the responsibility for authorities to disclose it to the defense. They failed big on all counts. Instead of fixing their issues, the county and the state officials simply dug in their heals and acted abhorrently in hopes of anyone questioning them to go away too. They're cronies, regardless of Avery's guilt.

 

It reminds me of my time as a juror on a case where police arrested a young girl for DUI. The problem with the case the State made against her is that they simply didn't have evidence for the charge. What they had was a charge against her boyfriend and an accusation of her bad attitude toward the arrest of her boyfriend. Maybe she's guilty of that. But the State had to make its case...and it failed. One juror was the former mayor of Harrah, Oklahoma. His vote was guilty because the arresting officer's testimony is considered expert testimony. Myself and another woman called BS on that logic and declared our not-guilty vote was because the State utterly failed to make its case. It was a hung jury and declared a mistrial. 

 

Why does that remind me of the actions (and inactions) of Manitowoc County and the State of Wisconsin? People tend to glorify local officials, be they Attorney Generals, judges, police, sheriff. etc. What am I not saying? I am not saying people in these positions are not to be respected. They have an incredibly difficult job to do...which is my point. When you put these people up on a pedestal, you provide them an escape valve to buy into their own press...which encourages them to feel entitled enough to make decisions that are contrary to the oath they swore. That's how you get people into thinking police offer is equivalent to expert witness...why the sheriff becomes more of a crony than an enforcer of law. Just to make this simple: it is not only logically possible...but actually probable to be very patriotic and also unjust. The one does not guarantee the other.

 

I can go on forever about the bankruptcy of neo-liberal and progressive thought. But it has usually been a thoughtful traditional core that pulls America away from the fire. That core is increasingly becoming just another flavor of the identity politics of the left...patriotism, God, guns and guts...creating a culture where there are celebrity public officials and a necessary group of detestables that need to simply go away (like they have treated the entire Avery family, right nor wrong). America is becoming two horrible political camps who smell bad in completely different ways.

 

America was never great because it was America. That's a useless tautology. America was only great to the extent its leadership humbly considered itself in a servant-like position...and its people had at least some common ground with one another on essential things. America's history is a mixed bag of that and not that. It has been great to the extent it resembles that and not so great to the extent it hasn't. But both of those things (humility and common ground) are quickly evaporating in totality. There is hardly any essentials that opposing tribes can agree. And, as for humility, even the staunched conservative increasingly finds humility as vulnerability. The solutions are not to be found in any camp. The solution is Christ and His Kingdom. His Kingdom never expands through violence or arrogance. The Kingdom is also reality and reality is what you always run into when you're wrong, in case it's hard to define.

 

Here's the error on behalf of modern politics: Not all ideas are equal. Some are actually better than others, as they are tried up against reality. All people, however, are equal. Once you make ideas equal, you create an inordinate amount of tribes and tribal clashes that end horribly. When you treat people as equals, regardless of the ideas they hold, there can actually be disagreement without the worry of total disintegration. All people are equal. Not all ideas are.

 

The Gospel addresses this in an elegantly simple way: there is only 1 Messiah and none of us are Him, of which the real Messiah offers a transformation that obliterates hostilities, slippery slopes and tribal inclinations. But, only through the Messiah can this happen. It can be easily recognized and agreed to apart from Him...but can never be realized apart from Him. Unfortunately, America will most likely have to learn this lesson the hard way.

 

 

 

 

 

Rejection: Are you something wrong?

Rejection is probably the most significant way to describe life after the Fall. Some would say, 'no, it's sin', as if rejection, abandonment and human throw-aways aren't sinful things. Sin is a description and the outflow of a ruptured relationship. We were created to be God's human family to rule and reign over the earth. However, we believed a lie and decided it better to reject that destiny and look after ourselves. One more chapter and brother spills the blood of brother. It doesn't really get much better after that. History flows, from that point onward to the cross, as viral rejection that gets into our DNA. It's our heritage as sinful human beings.

 

Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! -- Isaiah 49:15

 

It implies that, even though the mother-child bond is the greatest of human bonds, there are still mothers who reject their child. There is not much to keep that child from being destroyed in life once her mom pulls her love back from her. It happens. Yet, God's bond with His own children is far stronger than the mother-child bond. This verse is both alarming and reassuring, all at once. 

 

Rejection hurts more the closer this rejection comes to your inner circle of sufficiency (mom, dad, wife, children, sister, brother, etc). It makes you feel there's something congenitally wrong with you that makes normal bonds impossible. Almost as soon as the spouse decides he no longer loves you or the sister conveys you're expendable...or just an obligation...something deep within you breaks. The feeling of facing the destruction of a chaotic world comes closer to the forefront. You feel alone. You examine what went wrong...why did they throw you away?

 

'Did you do something wrong?' devolves into the question of 'Are you something wrong?'

 

You re-examine all the rest of your relationships. Are they true relationships? Do I even have a support system at all? There is no one looking after you. You are alone.

 

We don't stay there, unless suicide is considered. We can't live alone. We were made for relationships. When relationships are destroyed or become illusory, the essential part of us that requires connection flails in the expanse of arbitrary circumstance. Over time, we've been busy working on survival skills. When self-stranded on the island away from God, we become Robinson Crusoe with all the ingenious ways of surviving on this cruel island...maybe even flourishing on it. The world offers  us a tool box of strategies to take ourselves out of the stare of the abyss where we were thrown by rejection. That tool box is diverse, but all of the tools are lies or basic beliefs we decide to use, not because they are true, but because they are useful in keeping us from the vulnerability of being tossed outside on our butts.

 

We find ways to present ourselves as intellectually adequate, morally adequate, financially adequate, culturally adept. Maybe we put away the cigarettes, alcohol or speed and start lift weights or taking martial arts classes, achieving the appearance similar to that of wearing a pistol. Adequacy is the main magic trick we work on for the watching world around us. We pretend to be resilient...put on a good face and find a distraction (any distraction) to keep your mind off of all these swirling thoughts. It angers us that even if we can put away further back in the hippocampus, it's still there. And, even the tiniest object, word, musical note or color could have those fears flood back into the forefront, eclipsing everything else.

 

Along the way, we discover that we are quite capable (and endeavor) to reject others. In a sick way, our rejection of someone assures us that we are part of a bigger community of rejectors...we aren't the sickly kid in the corner. 'Do it to them before they do it to you.' It may be wrong, but better them than us. Our world isn't split between victims and perpetrators. It is a world of victim-perpetrators and perpetrator-victims. The flow of pain is fueled this way.

 

This isn't a new thing. It describes our world even thousands of years ago. In the midst of all this punishment and self-abuse, we find something so foreign to our world that it is easy to overlook or ignore.

 

3 He was despised and rejected by mankind,
    a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
    he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.

⁴ Surely he took up our pain
    and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
    stricken by him, and afflicted.
⁵ But he was pierced for our transgressions,
    he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
    and by his wounds we are healed.
⁶ We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
    each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
    the iniquity of us all.

Isaiah 54:3-6

 

For years, no one knew who this prophetic text was talking about. Someone who would refuse all the tools given to us to survive in a broken world...someone who would, as a result, be despised, rejected, abandoned. This man would die alone. He would die alone for the very same people who despised, rejected and abandoned him. Where we believe that the way to survive in this world is to toughen up and learn how to deal, this man lays his life down to be devoured by the same world, in order to cure those in it. This sounds insane. 

If you think it sounds insane from a human perspective, according to Paul, it's also quite unexpected from a cosmic perspective too.

 

¹³ When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you^[d] alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins,¹⁴ having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. ¹⁵ And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross. -- Colossians 2:13-15

 

Jesus makes a public spectacle of powers and authorities, triumphing over them by being beaten, whipped, stripped down and nailed to wood in plain site.

 

That makes no sense.

 

Actually, it does. It's real love. Real love is described in this way:

 

2 Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit,if any tenderness and compassion, ² then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. ³ Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, ⁴ not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.

⁵ In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

⁶ Who, being in very nature^[a] God,
    did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
⁷ rather, he made himself nothing
    by taking the very nature^[b] of a servant,
    being made in human likeness.
⁸ And being found in appearance as a man,
    he humbled himself
    by becoming obedient to death—
        even death on a cross!

⁹ Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
    and gave him the name that is above every name,
¹⁰ that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
    in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
¹¹ and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
    to the glory of God the Father.

Philippians 2:2-11

 

Jesus, Himself, describes His work on this rotten planet this way:

 

There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. - John 15:13

 

God doesn't find His infinite glory and power something more valuable than His love for the world. Therefore, He degrades Himself into becoming one of us...takes on human flesh, suffers all the things we do and eventually suffers things we can't imagine...to defeat the lies of rejection.

 

He does this to kill the lie that we are alone. We are not alone. He loves you. He loves me. There is nothing you or I can do that will change this. Even the love you may have with your spouse or child is tenuous, at best, compared to His love for you. Never-ending love is never-ending life. Remember we are made for relationships. There is no relationship more essential than this one. It is eternal life, now and without end.

 

Is this religious bull crap?

 

Keep in mind that your idea of religious bull crap is one of those tools you have picked up along the way to avoid getting hurt. it isn't so much true as it has been useful for you. It has no basis of reality, except the reality we have created around us. A better question is: is this too good to be true? That's a far better question.

 

In the end, the only way you can buy into this redemptive love is to inexplicably embrace it...accept it. It's a self-vindicating exercise. Everything else flows from there. It becomes more than a proposition: it becomes who you are and who you will become. Everything changes from that simple moment of surrender. There will still be rejection. However, the pain from rejection will just send you running back into the arms of this Love, for healing, wisdom, perspective and a hope that will not ever disappoint. He will also show you that the one who hurt you isn't your enemy. You can forgive him or her or them. They hurt you because of their own hurt they carry around with them. The rest is nothing but show.

 

For anyone reading this who still weep at the pain of being thrown away by another human being, especially one who was so important to you, you are loved. I am writing this for you, because He would want me to do so...because He loves you so much. I love you too. And my love isn't something for my own advancement. It's not to get something out of saying so. My love is an overflow of His love for me and a shared desire to see Him bring you closer to Him and His people. I have been rejected and have rejected. I hurt and have hurt because of that. I may not have been through what you've been through, but I know how it can hurt. I also know there can be healing.

 

Don't define it through your outward, local observed church or Christian environment. Define it by His love for you and leave the rest to Him. Rather than defend yourself to survive, let His love make you real, truthful and resilient in His presence, rather than your own survival strategies.

 

One day, we will sit by a vibrant river and exchange war stories. In the meantime, I am around to talk, if you need an ear. And there's many more like me than you realize. He told me to tell you so.

 

Jesus, I smell big business...

I live in the south. When it comes to Christianity, it's sometimes tough to tell the 'good guys' from the 'bad guys' around here. Most people go to church in the south, whether they are followers or not. It's just part of what you do when raised here (I tend to get along a little better with the 'bad guys' who don't go). When it comes to business, it's not really uncommon for there to be some pretty interesting stories about the mix of Christianity and business. I know of Christian business guys who will approach you with a smile, work you like a pipe wrench...and then invite you to his church. It sort of feels like getting handed loose change for cab fare home. The same breaches of confidence that happen elsewhere, happen here too. The church invite is probably what would distinguish this part of the universe. If this guy was pressed about the strange dichotomy between his faith and his business practices, I am sure there would be something like, 'it's not personal. It's just business' somewhere in there.

 

Is that true? Is following Jesus a matter of shrewdly bilking people when it comes to actual business, and something else outside of business? After all, what is business as far as the Bible is concerned, anyway? What is a businessman as Jesus would define that term?

 

I'm a businessman, I suppose, for the record. I am also a Christian. I try to follow Jesus, albeit not so well at times. I never understood the 'It's nothing personal' lingo from Christian businessmen. I perfectly understand it when it comes from the business world. After all, it's kill or be killed, eat or be eaten, just like the Serengeti, when it comes to business outside of a Christian frame of mind. That's actually considered a business ethic in many circles. But it does seem strange when it comes from Christians. 

 

Do I have to separate my Christianity from my business?

 

No, I don't believe I do. I may separate it out of habit...listening to the wolves around me, but it isn't necessary I do that.

 

Is there anything in Scripture, particularly the New Testament, that can guide me in business? When I look, I find lots of things about what a life following Jesus looks like, but nothing specifically about business, other than a fortune cookie mention of honest scales, or something like that...until I realize I am looking at it the wrong way.

 

Although they're not specifically on how to do business, I did find these gems:

 

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.  Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. --Philippians 2:3-4

Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming.  In these you too once walked, when you were living in them.  But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth.  Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. -- Colossians 3:5-10

But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth.  This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic.  For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. -- James 3:16

You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’  But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.  And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well.  And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.  Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you. -- Matthew 5:38-42

 

Lot's of stuff about a general attitude. There is mention of forgiving debts, but does Jesus teach anything at all that's useful for business as a vocation?

 

There's Jesus' teaching on the talents or the wicked servant. The imperative for the talents parable was to wisely care for the King's money while he's gone. In the case of the wicked servant, the imperative is to collect as much cash from customers as you possibly can, to avoid being stomped by the boss. In Luke 12, the rich fool, in contrast, who rests easy in his full barns ends up croaking that night, leaving all his full barns to some stranger. Jesus doesn't shy away from business. Business was as prominent then as it is for us today. But the lessons are never maximized ROI (unless the ROI is extending the Kingdom of God). The common denominator is to be responsible for someone else's wealth and not to place any confidence in your own. 

 

So, just when I think there's nothing about business ethics...wait, actually there is. There's quite a lot. In fact, I think my assumption is wrong. Rather than wondering what the New Testament has to say about business ethics, it doesn't bother splitting ethics into baskets, like we do (especially with business). There's one set of expectations for anything in life. Several of Paul's texts take that teaching within explicit context of husband-wife, parent-child, master-slave. Business ethics are the same ones as those I have been reading above. There is no special set of ethics for business and the kind of people described in the verses above are assumed to include the banker, consultant, lawyer, entrepreneur. And, these are usually not a set of rules, but a picture of what a person looks like who seeks Christ in all things, whether in business, pleasure, family or anything.

 

But, here's the rub...how do I lend to someone and not expect repayment as a general business practice? If I were a bank, I'd go broke fast. Wouldn't that be unethical, from a business standpoint? How about turning the other cheek when challenged by an enemy/competitor? With all that needs be done in such a short time, how could I possibly walk two miles with someone only requiring I walk one...when I don't have time to walk 1 mile?

 

I don't think Jesus is contradicting himself between these teachings, nor asking bankers to never expect their loans be repaid. That's looking at it from the wrong perspective. In fact, the common denominator between the 'soft' teachings and these more harder parables about money and finance have to do with one thing: service. In every mention, Jesus never gives you a good view of someone having a predator-like attitude or someone who feels uniquely entitled to get while the getting is good. Quite the opposite. He constantly warns his audience that you do not want to deal with what you deserve or your rights, but you also had better deal responsibly and honestly with others.

 

The problem is my definition of business is not Jesus'. Jesus defines business as service to others. To be a business man is to be a servant. A good business man is a servant to others who entrusts God with all outcomes.

 

I have to trust God with my business and do my business as a servant. That means I can't pretend to be the acute successful broker dude who sometimes has a Midas touch....or even be the evil business dude who calls the loans on the poor family. I am a servant with a Quick Books license and federal tax ID. If I trust the Lord with my money and especially my business circumstances, it means I know that no matter what comes of them, everything will be okay. To honor Jesus even in a boardroom or hearing is trusting Jesus with those outcomes. That doesn't mean I always do it this way. And it certainly doesn't mean every time I trust I make more money. Sometimes I do. But it's not a formula. I have to trust the Lord in the boardroom, conference call, client visit, etc., even if they are hard.

 

What I can tell you, with 100% certainty, is that every time I do trust the Lord, I find out I can trust the Lord...and everything does turn out okay. It may not be what I would have predicted or even desired, but everything is okay. It leads me to worship the Lord then, and then make my work a form of worship. When I fall back into the worldly business ethic of snappin' necks and cashin' checks, I don't have to grovel hardly at all. I accept that Jesus paid for everything he knew I would do, and paid for it anyway. Rather than ride grace like a wild pinto into a crowded theater, I can use that grace to trust him more, appreciate him more, and learn something from it all as I get closer to an eternity that pales the largest business deal in the history of business deals.

 

I love him and he's always good to me, even when I don't trust him, which makes me trust him all the more.

 

 

 

"Pfft. Get a Pic of Us Imitating the Camel-Hair Guy."

“To what then shall I compare the people of this generation, and what are they like?  They are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling to one another,

“ ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;
we sang a dirge, and you did not weep.’

For John the Baptist has come eating no bread and drinking no wine, and you say, ‘He has a demon.’  The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is justified by all her children.” -- Luke 7:31-35

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (Lk 7:31–35). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

The entire speech started out with "Who did you go out in the wilderness to see?" He gives a curious ending to this message:

"And blessed is the one who is not offended by me." (Luke 6:23)

He then gives a description....

"We gave you a positive, upbeat message."

Response: "Too shallow"

"We gave you a sober message."

Response: "Too negative."

"John avoided all alcohol and socializing of any kind."

Response: "John's anti-social."

"The Son of Man came eating and drinking."

Response: "He's a horrible influence!"

Who did these people come out to see?

Themselves.

People end up in the cosmic garbage dump because they either think way too much of themselves, or have bought their own press of being way more than they actually are. Being self-absorbed and being open to the Good News are incompatible states of mind. Christians tend to fall into the same pattern too. Many times we do that because the object of why we fall into that pattern have to do with godly things, like church or preachers or whatever. Just when you think you are here to do some good is the exact time you should ask, 'why do I call myself good?' There's no way you will listen to some crazy guy wearing camel hair unless you stop focusing on the crazy outfit or the unsophisticated preaching methods and hear what's being said. When you do that, you put down the camera because you can see how things actually are, and that will drive you to the foot of the cross every time.

It's the difference between life and death.

You and I are a horrible reference point to much of anything except an example of the most unlikely to still be here. It's tough to remember that the second you get on Facebook...but the truth of it never wavers. We have one Messiah, per universe, and you or me isn't it. But we have one. And he will accept our arrogant, important selves with open arms, if we would just put down the camera.

Christmas, Dragons & Unpredictable Hope

In Bethlehem, in Israel
This blessed Babe was born
And laid within a manger
Upon this blessed morn
The which His Mother Mary
Did nothing take in scorn
Oh tidings of comfort and joy
Comfort and joy
Oh tidings of comfort and joy

Fear not then, said the Angel
Let nothing you affright
This day is born a Savior
Of a pure Virgin bright
To free all those who trust in Him
From Satan's pow'r and might
Oh tidings of comfort and joy
Comfort and joy
Oh tidings of comfort and joy

Reducing glory down to something lackluster...and horribly addictive

The old school Christmas songwriters weren't afraid of the supernatural aspects of reality. There's two ways of seeing things: the observable and what's behind the observable. I love science...what science I know and understand. Science has helped us technologically as well as medically. Science, by it's own definition, cannot provide us the why's behind reality...only the observable how's. All of the titanic aspects of reality are not quantifiable and, as such, are unanswerable by science. There is another side to reality: one not seen but yet intertwined into the seen. There is evidence of the unseen in the seen. There is a much larger picture the unseen brings to the seen.

 

The first Christmas is certainly a great example of this reality. Christmas, these days, has become reduced down to a season of anxiety, rush, worry and pressure. It's been stripped of its supernatural elements to the point that lyrics like those, above, are allegorical or just metaphor....but to what? In our secular world, the answers to that question are about as allegorical or metaphorical as the question itself. No seems to know and the answers are more haiku or fortune cookie-ish than actual answers. 

 

As a result, the majesty and the mystery that the supernatural aspect of Christmas bring, is replaced with fodder for the natural elements of human nature and a world that always stands ready to institutionalize anything into its gears of merit, performance and, ultimately, manipulation.

 

Have you ever stopped, in this social media-soaked world we live in, and wondered if the things we value are truly valuable? I watched a disturbing documentary called The American Meme, that follows the real lives of social media celebrities: their unexpected climb to fame, unforeseen success and ultimate disillusionment. It's a hyper-fast True Hollywood Story of every-day common people becoming gods and goddesses, only to find it unfulfilling and desperately wanting a way out. One of the main celebrities followed, Kirill Bichutsky, a guy made famous from his photos of celebrities and wild parties, contemplates suicide at the end. As social media has democratized fame, it has also democratized the despair it ultimately brings with it.

 

But we don't have to become another Paris Hilton or Josh Ostrovsky to understand the emptiness behind the values of merit and performance institutionalized by this world. The church is caught up in that wheel as well.

 

Recently, mega-churches have almost spontaneously sprouted into existence, gone viral, then the head pastor either gets caught or cut down, leaving it to flounder around until it either breaks up into smaller versions of its former self or disappears altogether. The values in these churches have unwittingly adopted those of the sad social media narrative: performance-based merit. What follows is axiomatic. People put the lead pastor on a pedestal, believe he's sinless and are shocked to find out he's a human being, just like them. He's as susceptible to buying into his own press as his congregation is willing to create it. 

 

Among the dry ice machines and saccharin smiles of the orchestrated show, there are hurting people who are desperate. There are hurting people behind the saccharin smiles, the dry ice, and the pulpit too.

 

There are many who come to church for answers or another way than what they know. Life has been more than hard. It is amazing, for many of these same people, that they have even survived as long as they have. They can't be considered successful, unless surviving is success (and it is).

 

There are others who feel like if they take off the mask they have been wearing all these years, they will be rejected and thrown into the human garbage pale. As the powerful performance comes to a close, they think to themselves, "Is this it? Is this what it's really all about?" Has Christ's church gone awry? No way. Is there hope for the hopeless? You bet (and that's coming from a recovering cynic). You and I just have no idea how that will all play out in real time.

 

More to that.

 

There is the true reality, under all the makeup and plastic surgery in the world of performance-based merit, that cries out for salvation while we make sure to pretend we already have it, for the sake of our well-managed reputation. We are hurting. We need something tangible, not more platitudes and allegory. 

 

When we put away childish things, whether they are a materialistic view of reality or some heavily done-up version of it, we will not be free falling into destruction like we fear. We find our salvation. We find it because it has already been procured for us. This isn't wishful thinking, some idiotic platitude or a sappy metaphor. It's true. The window dressing was never needed. It was all part of the institutionalized performance-based machine we know so well.

 

There be dragons...more than just a birth

What if I told you the comfort and joy comes from a story, not just about a woman and a baby in a manger, but also a dragon, his allies and a human counter-part that is dispatched by the dragon to take the woman and her children down in a cosmic battle for control?

 

Revelation 12 is not usually what you hear as a Christmas sermon. But it is a Christmas text, nonetheless. It involves signs in the heavens of a woman or virgin, with twelve stars above her head and the sun and moon at her feet; a dragon as well as baby's impending birth. There is clearly astrological prophetic language here, hence the signs in the heaven as well as mention of the sun and moon. There's quite a lot of astrological prophetic language in the Bible. It's not witchcraft. Witchcraft is appealing to power not of God to control outcomes and other people. Astrology was the cosmology of the people who wrote the Bible. Pointing to signs in the heavens were used to either tell us what God has done or will do, using God's creation as a means of providing us observable ways of knowing He's going to come through with His promises.

 

End of digression: the woman is with child and the dragon wants to destroy this child before it grows up to complete his destiny. Who is this child and what is his destiny? Revelations 12 tells us: 

 

And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it. 5 She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne, 6 and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, in which she is to be nourished for 1,260 days.

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (Re 12:4–6). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

 

Not only are these signs in the heavens something to point to God's work (it very well could be pointing to the birth of Christ, September 11, 3 BC), they also represent real persons. (Double-entendre is also a common biblical thing.) The woman represents Israel and the Church (the Twelve Stars above her head as the twelve tribes). The dragon represents Satan, the Accuser and enemy of God's people. The dragon already knows of God's promise to provide a King to defeat him and his allies. The prophets were clear of that.

 

Nothing is really mysterious of such a plan. Just look for the woman who gives birth to this King and kill him before he can grow up and destroy Satan's rule. Not only were people who read the law and the prophets looking for this Priest King, so were the rebellious powers and rulers in the unseen realm. According to Revelations 12, the dragon fails to devour the child.

 

But, if you read the Gospels, you definitely see the dragon hasn't given up. Things don't go as the dragon had suspected. Look in Colossians 2 to find out exactly how this King would defeat Satan:

13 And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, 14 by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. 15 He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (Col 2:13–15). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

Read that text carefully. There are tons of surprises even for us in our day. It reads strange.

The King wins by being killed.

The people of the King are made alive with Him through His death.

The dragon and his allies were defeated by His death. They were 'stripped off' or disarmed by Jesus' death on the cross.

In fact, the very thing the rulers and powers had been trying to do since before the King's birth (kill this King), they not only sanction but make sure it's carried out. They thought the very thing God uses to defeat them was the sure-thing they thought could defeat God. 

The King defeated His enemies and saves His people by giving in to His enemies and dying on a cross. If you saw Jesus crucified, it would appear to be humiliating defeat. But, from God's perspective, it was the total opposite: it was not just victory but final victory.

Why were they defeated like this? The not only failed to devour the King, they also failed to keep the King from redeeming His people at the very same cross.

The text says that through this death, the sin nature is cut off from us, freeing us to be made alive to the things of God. Sin nature, being the nature where sin originates, which is our beliefs, desires, habits that are all forged out of a place separate from God, as well as the trespasses this manifest sin nature produces. The death on the cross cancels the charges against us. We have no accuser. Since sin brings death, we never die in Christ, even if our bodies do. Death has no hold on us. Since Satan is the Lord of the Dead (reference to Beelzebub in the Gospels), his claims against us become null and void. We belong to God, in Christ, not the Lord of the Dead. He can't hold anything against us anymore.

For those who are theologically interested, the crucifixion cancels our debts through substitution death. The crucifixion also rescues us from the claims Satan and the powers and rulers of this world. All of it defeated on the cross. Salvation procured. Power of God demonstrated. You cannot reject other atonement theories for just one, since the biblical text describes atonement in more than just one way.

End of second digression:

You want to know how these supernatural powers and rulers operate? Performance-based merit. Because meriting God's approval is impossible for someone with a nature to sin, we all fall prey to the condemnation of moral law as well as Torah. The cross and the resurrection changes all of that. Because everything we have done or ever will do that's wrong is paid for in His blood, no one can accuse us before Him. Because the nature that produces that sin progressively becomes necrotic, we transform into rulers and powers ourselves...those who serve their King to eventually rule and reign with Him forever.

Being made alive in Him also means no longer being subjects of the rulers and powers of this world system of performance-based merit. All of this world is subject to the unseen rulers and powers who have claim over them ever since Genesis 11....until the cross. The cross cancels our service to these rulers to serve the King who frees us by His very death. 

There is another way to live when made alive to God in Christ...a way exemplified by our King...which makes the world scratch its head. This other way distinguishes His own from the rest of the world as well as points to a strange group of people who will one day judge angels and rule with their King (more about that below).

In short, these powers and rulers wanted to destroy this King because this King had come to save us. They didn't want us saved because they knew God planned for us to replace them to rule with and in the King. These supernatural rulers had been condemned to die the death of mortal men (Psalm 82:6-7). And they were to be replaced by those who place confidence in Jesus Christ, the King (Hebrews 2:5-8, 1 Corinthians 6:3).

They didn't see it coming...

10 And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. 11 And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (Re 12:10–11). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

 Revelation 12:10 doesn't say salvation and the power of the kingdom of God will come...or that everything has been accomplished so they could come. It clearly says salvation and the power of the kingdom HAVE come. How? Through the blood of the Lamb, who is the King, Jesus.

Guess what? We didn't see it coming either. In fact, the entire idea of supplanting supernatural beings to rule and reign the cosmos with the Creator and Sustainer of same cosmos seems like something more out of a comic book than a future destiny. That's probably why we reduce the entire message down to a good place to go when we die.

Putting everything under their feet...more than just a death on a cross

That good place to go is certainly part of it. But it is just part of the story. When do we begin experiencing salvation and power of God's Kingdom? Now. But there is so much we experience and observe that goes against that being true. How can we believe it? 

Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. 9 But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.
10 For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. 11 For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers, 12 saying,

“I will tell of your name to my brothers;
in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise.”

13 And again,

“I will put my trust in him.”

And again,

“Behold, I and the children God has given me.”

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (Heb 2:8–13). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

 Suffering is our sign of being sanctified. We see that elsewhere in Scripture (Romans 5:1-5, 8:19-22, James 1:2-4). The garbage we are going through is how we will be victors in Christ. Turns out, the very thing we think should defeat us and distance us from Christ are the very things that remind us of what He has done for us but also what what we go through He will do to establish us in ways we simply cannot imagine. As we suffer, we persevere and as we persevere, something supernatural happens: we develop character and that character reminds us of the hope ahead of us as well as the presence of His love now.

Oh Tidings of Comfort and Joy!

So, what's the take-away of Christmas? 

The comfort and joy we have in a baby born in a manger is the unfolding plan of God to save His people from death and sin. Here's the part you usually don't hear. What is this salvation for? It is to be a part of God's family that rules and reigns the entire created order, both seen and unseen. That is our joy and our comfort. 

The comfort and joy we have is also in God's presence. He has poured His love for us into us through His Spirit, Whom He has also given us as a constant companion along the way to this hard-to-imagine end point He has procured for us through the death of His Son.

You may think you have screwed up your life to the point where your life no longer matters. There is far more going on with your past that will be used in redemptive ways to pave your future for glory. You can't see how. But, then, you couldn't see how a humiliating death on a cross could actually be absolute and irreversible victory either. You can't screw up God's plan for you. That makes you out to be far more powerful than you are.

You may find yourself alone and hurting inside. But you are not alone...ever. If you have placed confidence in the baby who's birth we celebrate to this day, He loves you and is with you now, in your pain. He's using even the pain to mold and shape you into a person you never thought you would become. If you thought about it, how much more valuable is your character and integrity than anything you have or how others may perceive you? It's far more valuable than all the gold in the universe. 

You may think the church has turned a corner and is heading into trouble. Not so. His promise for the church is sure. And, based on everything you have read here, there is no way you could ever look at the weirdness of the church and know for sure where it is leading. Remember, total defeat was death on a cross. That's not just a way to humble ourselves but also something to hope for. Faith is hope in things not seen. There is far more going on every moment than you could ever imagine. In fact, God's sovereign acts in this world include the moment-by-moment mundane. God's acts are not just in miracles or miraculous events. They are also in holding reality together for existence (Colossians 1:17, Hebrews 1:3).

So, Merry Christmas!

If you have humbly submitted everything you are to Jesus Christ for all that He is and has for you, you have tangible reasons for great comfort and joy. If you haven't, keep in mind the offer is there for you too. There's nothing you have said, done or believed that would disqualify you from this future. In fact, all of the Children of God are exactly those who were never qualified to be Children of God in the first place. That, too, is a powerful reminder of what Christ accomplished on the cross.

Swimming In the Secular Soup

Everyone’s probably heard or read the David Foster Wallace story about the fish…old fish swims by two younger fish…old fish says to the younger fish, “How’s the water this morning?” The two young fish look at each other and say, “What the hell’s water?”

Sometimes we swim in something for so long, we are no longer aware of what it is we’re swimming in anymore. I’m not sure if I’m the only one who wrestles with stuff like this. And, I guess I risk further alienation for saying so. But, I have found a huge difference between my natural take on things and my professed ‘beliefs’. I put beliefs in quotes because my real beliefs are how I look at things without giving it any thought. My ‘beliefs’ are how I am supposed to look at things or how I wish they were, whether I admit it or not. The first is natural and requires no thought at all. The latter is a second or third move, isn’t natural, and requires me to force it over my actual beliefs. If I force them enough, over time, the hope is they would actually become my actual beliefs. And, at 50 years old, that discipline never has worked for me. There’s a huge chasm in between these two things, in some cases.

Since I was old enough to think, I have breathed in the same air you have. I have come to discover how to think in the same ways you have. And, as a result, my view on things isn’t that different than yours. Part of that process has involved coming to understand and accept, without question, some things that may not even be expressly taught. I have been expressly taught that the ultimate goal in life is to be a useful member of society. Useful member is more of a catch phrase. If you asked me to define it, I would probably struggle. And, the words that came out would ultimately be about my being part of some economic order. I am a useful part of a society that exchanges goods and services so that life goes on…the wheels on the bus go round and round. I’ve been politically conservative as well as liberal in my short 50 years of life. But that definition of my purpose hasn’t really budged. I’ve believe that I am either to be someone who uses my gifts, talents and sweat of my brow to produce and provide, building assets to leave my progeny a larger balance sheet than when I arrived (conservative)…or I am to be concerned about making sure everyone’s balance sheets are increased at equitable levels, as an objective of ultimate justice (liberal). Both are ultimately interested in the economic order...because that’s all we can see and all we find of ultimate importance, regardless of what we say we believe. What’s ultimately important? Food to eat. Roof over our head. Reliable transportation. Working cell phones. Sending kids to college. Things like meaning, God, heaven, community are all nice thoughts. We may even preach on these things. But, when the rubber meets the road, they are nice thoughts. Ultimately, it is about survival and getting through the day. That’s very modern. And, by modern, I mean the way things have been viewed for about 500 years. Personally, it’s the way things have been viewed by me since I was old enough to think.

Whether before or after Christianity, my natural thought is that this world is all there really is. The important things are necessarily immanent. As an atheist, there is no supernatural anything. There is only science and outside of science, dangerous conjecture. As a deist, god created everything and let it go. As a Christian, I have believed that heaven is out there in a place beyond the reach of observation…that God is a Being who lives in that place beyond the reach of observation, called heaven. He popped in the natural world here and there and left us with some spiritual lifelines to help in pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. He, also, seemed detached, except when it came to our behavior. Our job is to make sure everyone believes all the right things as he watches our behavior in that process. When we die, we get to go to heaven, if we haven’t messed things up. In the meantime, we fall back on being that same useful member of society within the ultimate goal of an economic order of some kind.

The common denominator in all of these positions in life is the focus on this world swallowing up any other thoughts outside of it. And I credit that as modern thinking. What I mean by modernity, is the belief that this world….this economic order we participate…is all there is or is the only thing we should really bother ourselves with while we wait for heaven.

As an atheist, modern thought entails we are ultimately animals, here by chance, doomed to extinction. There are things like morality, purpose and value, but they are useful fictions for us so that we can make the society comprising the economic order bearable while we wait for the inevitable.  

As a Christian, modern thinking entails we try tack on new beliefs that Jesus died for our sins and if we accept what He did for us on the cross, we will go to heaven when we die…as an overlay to our natural take on reality. These beliefs don’t replace modern thought. They are only sort of like adjunct extensions to it…sort of enhancers. We use this new bit of information to help us be better useful members of the economic order, as we wait for heaven or the second coming. There is a supernatural, god, angels, demons, heaven, hell…they are just located far off and have little to do with this world. We may even believe they do have lots to do with this world. But our actual behavior reflects otherwise. Our behavior reveals that we are immanently focused only on this world as practical reality.

No one dares, whether as a skeptic or a Christian, to honestly admit there is a difference or chasm between what we think we are supposed to believe and what our natural take on reality actually is. That would be social suicide. So, we create the age old hegemony of making sure we protect each other from having to talk about it or wrestle with it by instituting boundaries with punishments and rewards, so that we stay away from this dangerous thinking. But that has left us, whether Christian or skeptic, in a predicament that hasn’t really been that sustainable. We are fragmented people, insulated in an inadequate take that tries to be a good economic citizen and let in a little transcendence and enchantment in controlled doses, as needed….but only in very safe, predictable dosages.

As an atheist/deist, I found this universe haunted. The mind seems mysterious and far more than just a brain. Morals seem to be as much of a hard cold fact as scientific facts. There doesn’t seem to be a way to escape or stand outside of thinking in terms of value or meaning. The more we try, the more we sneak them back in. And, as a good secular economic member of society, this is more than a bit unnerving. It’s just like living in a haunted house. That’s probably why we love horror films so much. It’s sort of a voyeuristic pressure release. But outside of entertainment, I’ll create ways to buffer myself in a bubble that is as uninterrupted by these hauntings or enchantments as much as possible. Because it is impossible for me to completely eradicate these mysteries from my consciousness, I’ll redirect them into the outlet of appreciating art, music, literature. Those are my measured doses of transcendence.

I also look at the material universe and find it very difficult to find a place in it. I seem to stand out as an odd observer without a place to belong. No other type of animal seems to think about these things. No other life form appears to aspire, fear death or search for significance. I’m more of an alien, alone…a wart on the universe, trying to play it as cool as I can, minimizing the schadenfreude as much as possible. That’s why I think comedy is such a salve to our soul. We get to laugh at ourselves through a Will Ferrell movie or someone’s observations in a standup act.

As a Christian, there doesn’t seem to be much of what I have been taught in the church that has much relevance. My sins are forgiven. If I stay true to my faith in Christ, I will go to heaven when I die. All that’s left, in the meantime, is behavior modification and doing it with a saccharin smile. And, although I tend to sway towards the cynical, I have a very strong suspicion that almost all the more visible Christians I see are hopelessly trying to pretend they’ve found a happy place, hiding pain and disappointment behind the smile. Misery loves company. If I was uncomfortable trying to live out my non-theistic beliefs, I’ve just added more baggage onto it with this narrative. There doesn’t seem to be much good about this Good News…and it certainly doesn’t seem like an ‘easy yoke’, no matter how often that verse is recited. Even within the church, the same sort of permutations happen between fundamentalists, evangelicals and progressives. All are hopelessly breathing in and exhaling modern presuppositions about life and either separating themselves from the economic order or diving head first into it as if it, rather than anything transcendent, is the only important thing. Everyone is defining the boundaries and using the same border patrol tools to keep us all comfortable and familiar.

My problem wasn’t so much the content of the beliefs I have tried to embrace as much as the hidden beliefs I didn’t know I had. That hidden belief is my buying into unspoken assumptions about reality that hardly anyone questions…beliefs I have held to without question since I was a child. And, those hidden beliefs are geared to make this world…this economic order…far more important than the transcendent aspects that continue to haunt us as we work very hard to keep ourselves insulated from it. Modern thought is soldered into our brains and sticks with us no matter what external or vestigial belief system we wish to overlay on it. Christianity is not an exception. There are some basic aspects we are taught from the time we are in diapers…this world is all there really is…survival is entirely up to us…what goes on in this world doesn’t point to anything else beyond it…mystery and uncertainty is a disease to be eradicated no matter the cost…never show uncertainty if you have it. I struggled to find a safe harbor to live these presuppositions out in a haunted universe, as a non-Christian. It was a very hard life. But I brought them into my Christian life as well. It wasn’t any easier.

The reason why I say the universe is haunted is because it seems to point beyond itself in order for it to make any sense. And I have an increasingly sneaky suspicion that whatever it points to seems to somehow be in it as well. Heaven and the supernatural isn’t so much a place somewhere else, but the weird and inexplicable parts right here and now. God isn’t living in that place way out beyond observation. The world doesn’t hold itself together on its own. It is sustained by something…or Someone. All of my categories of god, supernatural, are intertwined in this material world, all the while thinking of heaven as somewhere out there and God being way out there in it.  The miraculous isn’t just sudden breaks in natural law but natural law itself. Being is a miracle. The supernatural realm stabs my senses at the birth of a child as well as the death of a child or the love of my wife or the good times with a dear friend. It invades my settled and familiar categories and understandings without permission. My job, as a useful modern citizen, is to ignore or explain away these things away as best I could. At the very least, minimize them as something we can talk about, but only up to a point, before it gets weird. But those bonds of understanding are weakening more and more. When I read the Bible for the first time, it was so radically different from my modern view of reality. And, with few exceptions, I tried to superimpose my modern view on scripture, albeit uncomfortably. I would turn to a modernistic apologetics to help me ease the tension. But it never really addressed the root problem.

One of the strongest fears I have had to overcome in truly understanding reality or, at the very least, how my brain is wired, has come from the outside threat of humiliation and shame.  In skeptic circles, there is no thinking. There is only prescriptive dogma. You question evolution? Shame on you for being so ignorant. You think it is a bit speculative to be certain the universe is 15 billion years old? You think human beings may be more than just material bodies with a brain and nervous system? You believe in supernatural beings, let alone God? You should be socially quarantined and have no influence on anyone, for the sake of society. Just take the old church persecution of anything that contradicted the Magisterium and you have captured the sort of hegemony our secular culture wields today.  Christian circles isn’t that much different. Questioning any point in the Synod of Dort or the Acts 29 church model is frowned upon. The common thread is a fear of being wrong and a bigger fear of people possibly finding that out. So, the task is for everyone to be sufficiently kept in the dark by using fear of shame and humiliation as useful tools for effective border control.

So, is it even possible to know the truth? Is the Gospel true? Is our secular culture correct in all its dogma?  I think so. In fact, I am very comfortable in knowing what the Bible affirms is the best explanation for reality…in fact, it’s the only one. When it comes to some of the huge questions that culture used to ask, no one’s got an alternative outside of Scripture. Am I 100% certain I am right? Nope. In fact, that whole idea of being 100% certain is phooey. I am sure. And, yet, I could be wrong. What I have discovered is that, so could you. That goes for everyone. The ideal situation isn’t to start with some psychological positive-thinking that your beliefs are accurate and then work backwards from there. The ideal situation is to risk everything to find out what’s true and what’s probably not…and adjust accordingly. It is a risk because you don’t know where it could lead. Where it will most likely lead you, as it has lead me, is the fact that I am not the Messiah…and I am not in control of anything. I can have an impact on others. But there is so much mystery between me being a real agent in this world and having no control over outcomes, appearances or circumstances. It has forced me to accept that embracing mystery is actually refreshing. The idiotic Cartesian Anxiety of requiring certainty is replaced with a part common sense, a part reasonableness and lots of wonder.

I have peace in so many areas that I never thought I would have. And they are all due to my faith and walk with Jesus Christ. He alone has opened my eyes and thoughts to not only what’s real out there in the world, but also what’s real inside of me. He has shown me specifics of how many of those natural beliefs that I accept without thinking are actually wrong…as well as some of the other ‘beliefs’ I have adopted even as a Christian. He’s shown me how much of the chosen ‘beliefs’ I accepted were done out of a reaction against someone who harmed me. I wanted no part of whatever they believed and associated those beliefs with them. In other words, I chose beliefs as a reaction, out of a motivation of vengeance. Them being true or not had little to do with it. Then there are also those ‘beliefs’ I chose because they could be exploited to benefit me. In other words, I could exploit my situation, relationships, in order to get what I wanted, whatever that was. Again, it had little or nothing to do with whether those ‘beliefs’ were accurate or not.

In other words, Jesus has not only made Himself real to me, He’s taught me (and continues to do so) about myself as a way to help me better understand others and the world around me. One of those lessons is that I really haven’t been that interested in reality. I have only been interested in bending it to meet my insatiable demands. I’m not just talking about before I became a Christian. I am talking about after as well. He is showing me those basic assumptions I have carried with me, without questioning. And, as a result, those basic natural understandings or natural take on things have been severely challenged. The concept that this world is all there really is, regardless of what I wish to be the case, has far less power than it used to. The idea that mystery is always a bad thing is also weakened. I realize I am very small and finite. I don’t need to understand anything. In fact, mystery tends to make room for wonder, which is something that dies inside you when you reach middle school (or earlier). The idea that the point of my life is to be a useful citizen and contribute to the economic order is actually somewhat Satanic. It’s Satanic because it requires that I believe there is no one there to help me in life but myself. “If it’s to be, it is up to me.” I have to believe I am ultimately alone with only whatever good fortune I have to build up my balance sheet. That’s the essence of what went down in Genesis 3. Those are lies. God is there. He isn’t silent. And He loves you more than you could even love your own children. And if you let Him in to your life, He isn’t ever going to leave you or forsake you, even if you can’t understand what’s going on.

Although unlearning basic things and relearning truths to replace them isn’t a comfortable thing, I wouldn’t ever go back to how I understood things before. I am not afraid of truth, wherever it takes me, because I trust in what I could never observe with my own eyes. I trust He is the truth and it always leads to Him…and He is love, life and light. So far, that is exactly what I have discovered. So, I accept the discomfort of having to relearn knowing it’s the best medicine. I’ve learned it’s okay to be wrong…even wrong about almost everything. Having to always be right is a very lonely place to be.

It goes without saying that when I am in a political conversation with someone who uses the shame and humiliation tactic to push a political narrative on me, I accept that they have nothing else to go on. Without truth, all you are left with is power and the allure (and illusion) of control. But, I also experience this in much of church. It’s different there because the narrative isn’t bullied on others so much (in some cases it is), but that it’s an environment where nobody really believes all that they preach. Nobody is as together or happy as they portray. It’s mostly a show and one in which everyone is an actor, from the worship on down to the greeters. That’s not a universal thing, but it is prevalent. It’s prevalent because even evangelical Christians eat, drink and breathe in the same modernistic stuff that people outside the church eat, drink and breath in. We just ‘tack’ on a Christian narrative to our natural take on reality and hope it all just works itself out. And, when it doesn’t, we can have our world rocked. But our job is to keep that too ourselves. No one is supposed to find out our world is rocked or else we will be considered outside the will of God. I think that’s sort of why churches split, fight or abuse their own people. Everyone is jockeying hard to protect themselves from the potential exposure of being challenged or outside of the familiar and comfortable.

So, even in church, rather than find a tribe of like-minded people, I try to find friends, wherever they may be. They may not think like I do. That’s okay. And, rather than trying to make anything happen or change any minds, I try to be a friend back. And I let the rest take care of itself. What choice do I have? What choice do you have? The mission field is everywhere. The biggest mission field isn’t Africa or India. It’s inside your own mind. Without that being transformed from being conformed to this culture and age, anything you try to believe is ad hoc and forced. People don’t understand things that way. They understand by being open to reality and adjusting to it. That requires our full mind and will. Any other way is forcing a round peg in a square hole. That describes our culture. No one dares to be real. And the more real we attempt, the more contrived we become. That’s because a basic understanding of survival we learn from this world is that no one should be entrusted with who we really are lest we be hurt or even destroyed. Reality television is scripted, planned, exploited, etc. There’s nothing real about it. Social media is a digital mask to hide our past, perversions and pock marks. We get to become another person we like better than the real us we hope no one ever knows. What a sad world we live in. But we do not have to live in it. Yet, it requires faith…believing or trusting in what you cannot see…in order to save us from being cultural zombies. And, based on what we are taught from a very young age, faith like that is almost suicidal. And, so we redefine it to be something more palatable or safe. Truth isn’t safe. But it is good.

I have no idea who will read this or where you may be coming from in this life if you do. What I can tell you is that there is so much I’d like to tell you but feel inadequate to do so. And it seems so petty and naïve but it is true. I found Jesus. He is what He says He is. He’s not just a historical figure that died on a cross and rose from the dead. He’s the One who met me in my pain and has constantly revealed so much to me since that I can’t see how I ever lived before I knew Him. Maybe your marriage is stressed. Maybe it’s broken. Maybe you suffer from the death of a loved one or a loss of a job or the threat of being utterly destroyed by a predator. Can I just leave you with pitiful attempt at advice? Give Jesus a chance. Open up John 14:6 and read it to yourself a few times. Open up Romans 12:1-2 and do the same. I can’t answer your questions or solve your problems. But I was a skeptic. I let my guard down and let Jesus into my life. And, even then, there was so much wrong about me and about my thinking, attitude. I am still a gigantic mess of a human being. But I am so much better off than I was. And it is due to Him.

Call Him my invisible friend all you want. If that helps you make sense of what I am saying about Jesus in light of your basic understanding of reality, fine. I perfectly understand. I was there. But you’re wrong. I was wrong. And, if you’re like me, you are your own worst enemy, despite your best efforts. I am pointing you to Him, not sage advice. He’ll be the One who can do the rest. Take the first step and just simply admit the paths you have taken are confusing, conflated and with unanticipated results (to put it kindly). Just ask Him to come into your life and start helping you in the great mission field of your own mind. I promise you that you will not be disappointed with anything other than not doing this earlier.

“Once again, Jesus spoke to the people and said, ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows Me will never walk in the darkness, but will have the light of life.’” – John 8:12