Confessions of a Christian Cynic

“In the end we shall have had enough of cynicism and skepticism and humbug and we shall want to live more musically” - Vincent van Gogh

Cynicism is a weighty burden to carry around with you all the time.  My cynicism began before I knew anything about God.  Back then, I fancied a very popular brand of cynicism.  It has a number of flavors - the pessimist, the skeptic, the sarcastic.  Though I dabbled in all, my flavor of choice was the 'realist.'  It's a very self satisfying sort of label and one that few dare to argue against.  I suppose, as a flavor, it would be chocolate - very popular and satisfying and even if it's not your favorite it's hard to argue that it isn't quite good.

But I've found that even after learning about God, my cynicism persists, which comes as a surprise to me.  And if it was weighty before, it's quite crushing at times now.  I wouldn't call myself a 'realist' anymore.  I now believe that although there remains much in the world to be cynical about, there's something deeper and truer which is quite beautiful.  I now recognize, in part, how God works in the world and through us to both build beautiful things (art, life, medicine...) and destroy ugly things (injustice, poverty, sickness...).  

Cynics were originally philosophers who lived around the time of Socrates.  Back then (SO unlike today) many felt the purpose of life was to acquire wealth, fame, health, security, and power.  To whatever extant you acquired those things, was the extant to which your life was a success.  The cynics stepped into this realm and said that the purpose was instead, to live a virtuous life through rejecting all of these things.  And so they did, often to be seen roaming the streets where they lived, begged, and preached.  These cynics had a lot in common with Jesus, it would seem.

I wish I could say, in some clever way, that this was the flavor of cynicism I adopted after beginning to follow Jesus.  It's certainly the sort of cynicism I've been attracted to whenever I've had the privilege to see it.  But it's not where I'm at.  Instead, I'm still muddled up with a darker form of cynicism in which I find myself frustrated by the church.  

It's the bride of Christ, I know, but I find myself wondering if she's right for him.  I want, desperately, to love the church but she can be so maddening at times.  It's not that I hold to the silly notion that you can't love something which frustrates you.  Although my wife has been known to frustrate me, I love her as much as I can imagine loving anyone.  But I love my whole wife, it's only small parts of her which frustrate me on occasion.  I wonder if, with the church, though it isn't the other way around.  It feels as though I tend to be frustrated with the whole thing and it's only the small bits which I love on occasion.  

The more I dwell on these things though the more I realize that, although the church has her issues, the crux of the problem isn't in her but in myself.  There are many great people who are able to look at the whole of the church and love her as she is, to focus on the good, to draw out of her what is pleasant and right, to give to her regardless of what she gives in return.  Those people are my irritation and inspiration - the former because I can't understand how they do it despite her flaws and the later because I so badly want to learn.   

"And I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit in you.  I will take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart." -Ezekiel

Rob Bell - Video: Spiritual vs. Secular

Simply Put

I've been thinking of how to put grace and sin into a short quipy phrase. Try this on for size and let me know what you think...

Simply put, you can sin as much as you want to as a Christian, but if you want to sin you aren't a Christian.

Don't Punch Your Waiter In the Gut

For quite awhile now, I’ve been really skirting around Paul’s writings, much of which offer as much confusion as clarification for me. That said, I’ve been doing some thinking on Romans 7 & 8 lately and may have started to make some connections in my head with what he’s talking about.

Us westerners tend to think more in line with Greek philosophy. But the problem is that the Bible is written mainly with a Hebraic way of thinking. By way of example, westerners tend to describe things in lists and charts. We like bullet points, power points, and for our speakers to be on point. Hebrews, however, will tend more towards concrete examples or metaphors to describe concepts.

The more important distinction for our discussion is how they think of eternal life. Greeks tend to see eternal life as something apart from this physical world that begins after you die. For Hebrews, however, eternal life is much more something that begins here on earth through living a life according to God’s rhythm and purpose.

This is why Jesus can say, in John 17:3, “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” Notice He doesn’t say that eternal life is going to heaven after you die. For a Greek thinker Jesus’ definition doesn’t make much sense, but it fits right in line with how Hebrews think of eternal life. This is also why, when asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus responds “What is written in the Law?” (Luke 10:26). Jesus wasn’t trying to be cute or clever here. It’s just that he was speaking from a Hebraic viewpoint.

So this is why the law isn’t a bad thing but rather a good thing; because eternal life is so closely connected to following God’s law. God gave us laws because he loves us and wants us to live life “to the full” (John 10:10). If we weren’t given the law (both in written word and in conscience), we wouldn’t know right from wrong and we’d never be able to experience that ‘eternal life’ here on earth except by random chance. We might tip our waiter for the good service, but then again we’d be just as likely to punch him in the gut.

I think it’s important to realize at this point that Paul uses the word “law” to mean different things. We should be careful not to assume not to, whenever we read that word, assume Paul is not talking specifically about the 613 commands in the Old Testament. For example, in Romans 7 & 8 the word “law” might better be understood as “controlling power.” So, for example, in Romans 8:2 Paul says “through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.” If you replace the word “law” there with “Torah” (first 5 books of the Bible) it doesn’t make much sense. But if you replace it with “controlling power” it all falls together.

So, anyway, it’s better to have the law than to not have it. But having the law isn’t as good as it could be due to our sinful nature. Once we were given the law, that gave our sinful nature something to rebel against (see Romans 7:8). And so we’re stuck with the problem of knowing what the right thing to do is but, paradoxically, not wanting to do it (see Romans 7:19).

So how does Christ fit into this then? It seems to me that what He did was take away from the equation the condemnation for disobedience. This doesn’t affect the law per se but what it does is weakens our sinful nature in that it no longer has the motivation to rebel simply for rebelling sake (see Romans 8:1-2). It’s the difference between driving a car while your under age (exciting and dangerous) and driving after you’ve gotten your license (neither exciting nor dangerous).

OK, so for all of my Greek friends out there, here’s a list…

1. God gave us laws that we might have eternal life
2. Sin sprung up and began rebelling within us giving rise to condemnation rather than life
3. Jesus takes away the condemnation weakening sins power
4. Now we have a law (that is a “controlling power”) that offers life rather than death

The Bride

Marriage in 1st century Palestine was quite different than we tend to view the process today. The traditions and customs they practiced are alien to our senses of marriage, equality, and love. And so when the Bible makes overt comparisons to the church being a bride and Christ being a groom I think we often get a false mental picture. What’s even more interesting though are the more subtle comparisons made in the Bible that we may not have even picked up on. I think that if we dig into those customs we’ll have a much richer concept of the church’s relationship with Jesus.

First, the father was more concerned about the marriage of his son than his daughter. Back then there was a whole negotiating process that was involved in an arranged marriage. The reason the father was more concerned about the match of a son was because he would have to pay a high price for his son’s bride. Looking then toward God we see that not only did the Father pay a high price (one might say the highest price) for His son’s bride, but the Bible also talks directly about how, in another sense, we were “bought at a price” (1 Corinthians 6:20) and so we no longer belong to ourselves. God has paid a dowry so that we, His church, might become his bride.

In ancient Jewish custom there were two parts to a marriage, the betrothal or erusin, which might be somewhat akin to our engagement process, and the wedding or nissuin. During the betrothal period the bride was legally married, however, at this point the bride remained in her own household rather than moving in with the husband’s household. Meanwhile the husband would prepare a home for his new family (either by carving out a nook of his family’s existing home or perhaps building or buying a new home altogether).

And so at this point we can see Jesus’ words in John 14 in a new light, “In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.” (John 14:2-3)

At some point, which was traditionally to be unknown to the groom, the father would tell his son to go fetch his bride. So, “no one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (Matthew 24:36). So we, the bride, must “therefore keep watch, because [we] do not know the day or the hour” (Matthew 25:13). The groom would then go to the home of his bride and they would return to their new home together amongst a procession and the wedding celebration would then commence.

If nothing else, this has some really interesting implications on the passages that talk about Jesus’ second coming (when He comes back for His bride). It might also explain why Jesus tells parables like the one in Matt 22 where He says, “the kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son.”

Along these lines there’s this great passage in Revelation that I’m still working out the implications of, “I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God” (Rev 21:2-3). Throughout the Old and New Testaments God does the unexpected (blesses the younger brother instead of the elder, chooses the weak rather than the strong, comes as a humble man rather than a powerful king, etc.). Could it be that after all of our waiting for our bridegroom to come and bring us back to the place He’s been diligently preparing for us, that instead he will bring that place to us? We’ll see. After all, the picture painted here in Revelation is not us going to be with Him but rather Him coming to be with us. It’s an interesting twist with some very intriguing implications.

So what does this mean for us then?

Well, for one thing as Shane Claiborne says in his book Irresistible Revolution (actually he’s recounting the words of a preacher he once heard), “We’ve got to unite ourselves as one body. Because Jesus is coming back, and he’s coming back for a bride, not a harem.”

What would happen if we just started there, with radically uniting?

Note: Much of this information came from the following website if you care to learn more: http://www.myjewishlearning.com/lifecycle/Marriage/AboutMarriage/EvolutionAncient.htm

The Woolly Ruminant Quadrupeds and The Capra aegagri

There’s this passage I read recently in Matthew that really shocked me. It’s one of those sections that I’ve read plenty of times before but I’d never really thought about the implications of what it was saying…or not saying. Perhaps you’ve run across some of those passages in your own reading and wondered why you’d never caught it before, and why others seem to have skimmed over it as well. I’ve been discussing this passage with some people recently and just as shocking to me as the passage, was their lack of shock by such scandalous words uttered by Jesus.

But before we get to the passage we should set up the back-story first.

Our story begins in Matthew 21 with Jesus entering Jerusalem. Jesus comes to town and upsets the religious establishment by causing a ruckus at the temple. Shortly thereafter, in the midst of being questioned by the religious authorities, Jesus quotes Psalm 8:2, “From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise...”

Intriguingly, He stops midsentence, just short of quoting the rest of the verse which goes on to say, “…you have ordained praise because of your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger.” Now if you’ve got the Psalms memorized, as many of Jesus’ hearers would have, this is a not-so-subtle dig implying that the chief priests were God’s enemies and would be silenced. So the chief priests and teachers are mad to say the least.

The next day the chief priests and elders come and ask Jesus about his authority, his s’mikheh in Hebrew, which has to do with the type of teacher Jesus was and if he could do what he was doing. You see while a normal teacher or rabbi (also sometimes called a “Torah teacher” or “teacher of the law”) could teach only the accepted interpretations of other rabbis. A rabbi with s’mikheh, however, was able to teach new interpretations of the text. Notice Matthew 7:28-29 just after the famous sermon on the mount where, “the crowds were amazed at his teaching, because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law.” (ref. http://www.followtherabbi.com for more information on this)

Then everything Jesus says from the second half of chapter 21 through the end of chapter 23 seems to be directed towards those religious authorities (priests, teachers, Pharisees, Sadducees, etc.) with the exception of 23:2-12 in which he specifically addresses the crowd, a small section which bears some mentioning.

Jesus’ address to the crowd comes just after having shared some parables with the Pharisee types and discussing taxes and marriage and the greatest commandment. Jesus turns to the crowd and tells them that while they must listen to the Pharisees, “do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach.” So apparently they are “preaching” good things, but weren’t doing them. An interesting critique you might want to hang on to for later.

He then goes on to condemn the Pharisees and teachers of the law for seven things. Let’s look at the fourth of those, in particular, because it will give us some more fuel for the coming fire. Jesus says that the Pharisees give a tenth of even their spices, but they “have neglected the more important matters of the law – justice, mercy and faithfulness.” (Matthew 23:23)

But all of these interactions with the Pharisees and teachers are but a backdrop to the more immediate context of the passage we’re going to get into, for after this Jesus goes off and speaks to his disciples alone about the end of the age. After a rather one-sided discussion of Jesus’ coming and the end of this age Jesus tells a couple parables, both basically saying, “keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour” (Matt 25:13).

And finally we get to our passage, which, although it’s often considered a parable, interestingly, doesn’t start out much like a parable at all and is really more of an analogy. Instead of beginning, “…the kingdom of heaven will be like…” or “again, it will be like…” instead Jesus starts off, “When the Son of Man comes…” (Matt 25:31 NIV). In the context of the disciples’ original question, “what will be the sign of your coming…” this begins to get quite interesting.

So it seems to me that the immediate context of the passage is the disciples asking what signs would accompany Jesus’ coming, which Jesus answers, and then goes on to warn them to stay ready, and finally comes the culmination of the discussion - the crescendo that Matthew has been leading up to for at least the past couple chapters or more.

Matthew 25:31-46 (the Message version)

The Sheep and the Goats [or The Woolly Ruminant Quadrupeds and The Capra aegagri]

"When he finally arrives, blazing in beauty and all his angels with him, the Son of Man will take his place on his glorious throne. Then all the nations will be arranged before him and he will sort the people out, much as a shepherd sorts out sheep and goats, putting sheep to his right and goats to his left.

"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Enter, you who are blessed by my Father! Take what's coming to you in this kingdom. It's been ready for you since the world's foundation. And here's why:

[Allow me to interject here quickly as we’re getting to the crux of the matter.

Now earlier I claimed that what we’re about to read are, “scandalous words uttered by Jesus,” which is a pretty bold claim so let me justify my statement before we get to those words.

As you read what Jesus says, ask yourself, “is there anything in this passage that is glaringly absent?”

Let me put it like this (and perhaps tip my hand a bit) - here’s what I would expect Jesus to have said at this point in our passage,

“Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Enter, you who are blessed by my Father! Take what's coming to you in this kingdom. It's been ready for you since the world's foundation. And here's why:

You’ve heard the good news of my death and resurrection for your sins,
You’ve believed in the justification I’ve offered you,
You’ve repented of your sins and trespasses,
You’ve confessed those sins,
You’ve been baptized in my name.”

But he doesn’t say that. Let’s read on…]

I was hungry and you fed me,
I was thirsty and you gave me a drink,
I was homeless and you gave me a room,
I was shivering and you gave me clothes,
I was sick and you stopped to visit,
I was in prison and you came to me.'

"Then those 'sheep' are going to say, 'Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry and feed you, thirsty and give you a drink? And when did we ever see you sick or in prison and come to you?' Then the King will say, 'I'm telling the solemn truth: Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me.'

"Then he will turn to the 'goats,' the ones on his left, and say, 'Get out, worthless goats! You're good for nothing but the fires of hell. And why? Because—

I was hungry and you gave me no meal,
I was thirsty and you gave me no drink,
I was homeless and you gave me no bed,
I was shivering and you gave me no clothes,
Sick and in prison, and you never visited.'

"Then those 'goats' are going to say, 'Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry or thirsty or homeless or shivering or sick or in prison and didn't help?'

"He will answer them, 'I'm telling the solemn truth: Whenever you failed to do one of these things to someone who was being overlooked or ignored, that was me—you failed to do it to me.'

"Then those 'goats' will be herded to their eternal doom, but the 'sheep' to their eternal reward."

Now you be the judge as to whether Jesus’ words were scandalous or not.

To summarize (because doubtlessly you’ve been naughty and didn’t read that whole section straight through), basically what’s going on is Jesus is saying that when He comes back he’s going to separate out two groups of people based on whether or not they gave needy people food, water, shelter, and clothes and visited prisoners and sick people.

Dan Berrigan, poet and peace activist, used to say, “all good things start small…

…and get smaller.”

That seems, to me to echo, what Jesus is talking about here. You don’t have to “save the world,” just feed the poor among you, give them something to drink, cloth them, etc.

Speaking of the poor among us, I think the problem with Jesus’ statement elsewhere about the poor always being among us (John 12:8) was that it assumed that we’d always be among them. Most of us have quite successfully removed ourselves from any situation in which we might be in danger of knowing a poor person, a person in need of food or clothes. And so whenever Jesus talks about the poor and oppressed we spiritualize it and think he’s actually talking about us.

But what then of faith?

To paraphrase Jesus’ own words, perhaps we should practice the latter, without neglecting the former (Matthew 23:23).

Perhaps, if we are to fear anything at all we should fear the idea of Jesus coming to us today and addressing the crowds of our day and saying that while they must listen to the Christian spiritual teachers, “do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach.” Or what’s more, maybe we must ask, “are we even bothering to preach it anymore?”

Not Even a Hint

I was thinking about Ephesians 5:3 last night.

“But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God's holy people.”

At least in my religious world, we tend to focus on the first part of the verse, that we shouldn’t have a “hint of sexual immorality.” I suspect the idea is that if we go around willy-nilly, even if we haven’t been sexually impure, we can still lose credibility with those outside the church if they think we’re just like everyone else.

But the verse goes on to talk about “any kind of impurity” and “greed.” I’d never really noticed that before. I don’t think we’ve really emphasized that part of the verse near as much as we emphasize the sexual immorality part. I’ve never seen that verse used when someone wants to buy a big house or buy another car or whatever. Why is that? Why is it that we’ve set up sexual immorality as the end-all sin when the Bible seems to consistently bring up the issues of money and greed?

Is it because our culture today is so much more sexual today than it was 2,000 years ago and so it has become a more important issue? From what I know about 1st century culture this probably isn’t the case (um…temple prostitutes?). Regardless, could we also make the argument that greed hasn’t remained a huge problem? And perhaps we could argue that in America greed has become the norm, if not an honored virtue (every actor, rock star, and rapper to show up on MTV Cribs - see photo...oh, nevermind that estate isn't from Cribs, it belongs to Pastor Joyce Meyer, my bad).

Here are a couple things that come to mind…

The parable of the guy who builds the bigger barns to store all of his stuff, and then dies that very night.

The parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus. What is the only sin mentioned of the Rich Man? He doesn’t give anything to the beggar outside his front door.

Jesus reads the Isaiah scroll in the synagogue about how he came to bring good news to the poor. Woe to you teachers of the law who are clean on the outside and on the inside full of greed (paraphrased, see Matt 23:25).

We could go on and on of course, but I guess my overall question is, why is it that 2,000 years ago Jesus talks so much about money, wealth, greed, poverty, etc. but today it’s talked about so very little. A family in the church replete with sexual immorality (the husband or wife is adulterous, the teenage kids are having sex, etc.) is likely to be called out and go through some sort of process which may result in their being removed from the church. But can we imagine a scenario where a family equally fraught with greed (excessive sized house, not giving to the needy…I’d better stop there lest I be talking about a family you know and step on any toes – wouldn’t want that) might go through a similar process?

Don't Ask the Fish

OK, so I was just listening to this talk radio show and they were talking about the final season of the Sopranos coming out. Anyway, this one guy had, some time ago, become Mormon and so he’s stopped watching R rated movies (which includes the Sopranos). But what he was saying was really interesting. He was talking about how after not being exposed to the violence and sex and language for awhile you become more sensitive. Now, he says, when he sees even movies with a lesser rating, he’s often a bit shocked by what passes as PG-13 for instance.

He also talked about how one time back in college he didn’t have cable for a year. This time the experience was less due to religious influence and more on the financial side, which can prove to be far more persuasive at times. Well after a year he finally got cable again, which he was quite stoked about, and for about the next week he had the same sort of conversation over and over with his friends. He’d go to them every day and be like, “Whoa, did you see [such-and-such] last night?! Did you see that one thing? Can you believe that?” To which his friends would respond, “What? I don’t remember that.” Until after further provoking that might finally result in his friends remembering whatever crazy/provocative/delusional thing it was he saw on TV. His friends were simply too desensitized to have noticed those things as unusual or memorable.

“And,” he said, “that lasted about a week until I became just as desensitized as everyone else.”

His point was that we become ultra-sensitive (or is it just less desensitized, but in relation to everyone else we only think it’s ultra-sensitive?) after we’ve taken a step back and removed ourselves from the situation for a bit.

Here’s what it made me start to think about though. I wonder what types of implications this has on us and the Bible. I mean, how desensitized have we become to the Bible and what it says?

The beauty of creation, relationships, community, men, and women.

The wonder of healings, sacrifice, symbolism, and women.

The horror of floods, plagues, genocide, and war.

Much of it becomes lost on us as we’re submersed in the story over and over. Sadly, while there are many advantages to growing up in a healthy church, I’m not sure this is one of them. Much as a small boy who’s grown up amidst death and violence on TV could never conceive of being shocked or appalled by a show like the Sopranos, a girl who’s grown up in the church may never be struck by the gruesome nature of a flood or an army coming to destroy a whole group of people – men, women, children, and goats. What might that look like? What might that smell like for heaven's sake?

Or, on a more positive note, what about the wonder of Jesus coming to a small fishing community in a backwoods part of the Roman empire and healing blind people? Or the shear brilliance of some of Jesus’ responses to questions. Or that He dared to proclaim that his own time, a time of persecution which eventually resulting in a war that ended in the destruction of the temple, was the “year of the Lord’s favor.”

Or what about this, the idea that that guy from 2000 years ago is still alive today and is still claiming that this is the “year of the Lord’s favor.” If that doesn’t sound absolutely ridiculous to you…exactly.

I don’t know about you but I want all of these things to hit me again for the first time. I’m just not sure how to make that happen.

There's this saying, if you want to know what water is like, don't ask the fish.

Liturgy

Awww…I get it! I just had one of those moments – you know the ones where all of the sudden all of the tumblers fall into place, the lock clicks, and the key turns. I’ve been hearing lately that our generation is becoming increasingly fond of liturgy (liturgy is like doing worship by way of ritual, that is to say you have to get up and do something). For awhile now I’ve been really perplexed by this. When I think of liturgy I think of ritual and when I think of ritual I think of all sorts of bad things.

In fact, here’s some free association for you on the term liturgy from my own gray matter; boring, Catholic, Orthodox, repetitive, slow, gray haired people, orthopedic shoes, stand, kneel, stand, kneel, sit, stand, kneel…

Ok. Anyway back to my revelation. I realized that liturgical worship is actually really well suited to our modern (or should I say postmodern) generation. I mean we’re all clinically ADHD, right? We’ve got so much multi-sensory stimulation that we can’t sit still. Kindergartens and grade schools are drastically reorganizing their teaching methods to deal with the fact that we now have our brains hooked up to a metaphorical Ethernet cable as opposed to the previous generations that were plugged in to a 56k modem, so to speak.

You see we can’t just sit down and do any single thing for very long. Our legs get fidgety, our eyes begin to wonder, and we start thinking about food or geopolitics or cartoons. So we pull out a PSP, an iPod, or a text-message enabled cellphone to keep us occupied for a bit.

So there’s this thing called a labyrinth, which is sort of like a maze except there’s just one way into the center (no dead-ends) and you take the same way out. The idea is you walk at your own pace and pray as you go. That’s it, just walk, reflect, pray.

Well what if all of the sudden this middle-school kid (or 26 year old) who can’t pray more than 2 consecutive minutes without his mind wondering or drifting off to sleep (after all, prayer is done alone and in silence with your eyes closed and head bowed), maybe all the sudden they can do this labyrinth thing and pray for 30 minutes.

Question: Is this so different from a “prayer walk”? What makes one liturgical (read: boring) and one nonliturgical? There are all sorts of other liturgical things besides the labyrinth but the question still stands for our example. And I don't have an answer.

I don’t really know all of the implications of this epiphany yet, but I wonder what it could mean for how we do our “personal relationship with God.” I mean, maybe the 20 minutes of Bible study and 10 minutes of prayer time in a silent room (think “Quiet Time”) worked great for those who came before us. But maybe instead of trying to force that same old method (and failing miserably and feeling guilty for it) we can try something new (or should I say really old). Maybe this opens some interesting possibilities.

Killing in the Name of

It has been said by some that Christians are the only ones that kill their wounded.

Somthing for you to chew on.

Fairy Tales

Calvin & Hobbes
Calvin: "Dad, what makes wind?"
Dad: "Trees sneezing."
Calvin: "Really?"
Dad: "No, but the truth is more complicated."
Calvin (later, to Hobbes): "The trees are really sneezing today."

Should it surprise us that so many teens who have grown up in the church have a tough time seeing God as “real”? I mean, look at how the children’s ministries that they grew up in portray God. I never grew up in church but it seems to me that teaching the Bible to kids as if it’s a sort of fairy tale book with a host of fantastical stories is counterproductive in the long run. I suspect it gives kids a false image of God and the Bible as they grow into adulthood.

Sunday school stories don’t look significantly different to a child than the stories their parents read them at bed-time or the Disney movies, other than the fact that in the Bible the characters are people instead of talking donkeys (maybe that isn’t such a good example).

It seems to me that children often grow up viewing the Bible stories in the same realm as Santa Clause. Both are fun whimsical stories that adults have assured them are true. But what happens as children grow up and find out that they were effectively lied to about the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, and even the big guy - Santa. They “grow out of” their belief in the Tooth Fairy, why should we expect Noah’s ark to be any different when it’s taught in the same way.

When we teach kids the Bible as if it were a glorified Aesop’s Fables, they’ll treat it as such sooner or later.

I think the Bible loses its power when we make its stories suitable for children when they often are not. For example, on the walls of many children’s ministry rooms is a scene depicting the ark w/ some animals in it and the whole thing is floating in a bunch of calm blue water – and the elephants are smiling. That’s the children’s version.


Have you ever seen video footage of a really bad flood on TV? There's some pretty horrific footage out there from the tsunami back in 2004 that occured in the Indian Ocean. The tsunami was unbelievably devistating, something like a 9.1 on the Richter Scale. When it was all said and done almost 230,000 people were dead or missing. The earthquake was so violent (the second largest on record) that in caused other earthquakes around the globe as far away as Alaska. And yet, if you believe the Bible, it was nothing compared to the flood.

It’s nothing like the paintings. The water is black with the mud, grime and filth. There’s chaos all around as trees, people, and houses float by. Screaming mothers try desperately to cling to their helpless children. Doesn’t look quite the same when you paint it that way on the children’s ministry wall.


I don’t pretend to know the solution. I’m not speaking as a children’s ministry expert by any means. Unfortunately, I only tend to see its affects on the guys and girls who have grown up with this. But I don’t see this problem so much in Judaism, at least not in its ancient form, so I’m confident it can be done better. Maybe part of it is that Jews tend to read the stories as part of their own history whereas Christians can sort of view the Old Testament as a land “far, far away.”

I wonder if we might be able to learn from how they used to do “children’s ministry” in ancient Judaism. On the first day of class the rabbi would smear honey on the child’s fingers, or hands, or writing slate. Now back then people ate dirt and gravel so honey was like the sweetest most delicious thing you could imagine. And the rabbi would say to the children, who are around 6 years old, something like, “Now lick the honey, and may you never forget that the words of God are like honey. May you never forget that the words of God are the most enjoyable, most pleasurable thing you could ever have. May you be like Ezekiel who tasted the scroll and said it tastes sweet like honey.”

I don’t know if that’s how you see the Bible, but I can say that most teens don’t see the Bible that way. I wish they did.

Calvin: "Dad, why are old photographs black and white? Didn't they have color film back then?"
Dad: "Of course they did. In fact, those old photographs ARE in color. It's just that the WORLD was black and white then.
Calvin: "Really?"
Dad: "Yep, the world didn't turn color until sometime in the 1930s, and it was pretty grainy color for a while, too.
Calvin: "Oh."
Dad: "Well, truth is stranger than fiction."
Calvin: "Then why are old paintings in color? If the world was black and white, wouldn't artists have painted that way?"
Dad: "Not necessarily. A lot of great artists were insane."
Calvin: "BUT... but how could they possibly have painted in color? Wouldn't their paints have been in shades of gray back then?"
Dad: "Of course, but they changed color like everything else in the '30s.
Calvin: "So why didn't black and white photos turn color too?"
Dad: "Because they were color photographs of black and white, remember?"

Lessons from The Beautiful People

To some - crazy, others - genius
To his adversaries - possessed by demons, to his advocates - a god
An extremist to some, a much needed thorn in the side to others
To king him or kill him?
Dismissed and deified
Glorified and vilified
Friend of the sinners and enemy of the saints
Rebel or ruler?
Idolized and demonized
Condemn him or commend him?
Destroyer or creator?

It’s curious to me how such a considerable critic of Christianity can have so much in common with Christ. Not unlike Jesus, the religious establishment has demonized Marilyn Manson from the beginning, and not without valid reasons. But has it ever stopped to listen to him? To hear the cry of those he represents? If his fanbase isn’t the oppressed, the broken-hearted, the poor in spirit, the downtrodden, the hurting, then who is?

Like most of Ecclesiasties or the first half of a Psalm (before the typical redemptive ending), his lyrics cry out to a meaningless world and a god who seems absent and oblivious to our suffering. I want to look at some of the lyrics and see what we might learn.

“it's all relative to the size of your steeple” – Beautiful People

How often have we made Christianity into building our own empires bigger and bigger? The cooler we are the bigger our church. The bigger our church, the more God must love us. We seem to be under the distinct impression that there’s some sort of direct relationship between how much God is blessing us and how many people are coming to our church. But by that standard Jesus would make a sad sorry savior as his group of a mere 120 people (Acts 1:15) when he died was far from acceptable by our standards.

In fact, Jesus seems to have regularly invited people to walk away from what he was doing by making inflammatory remarks (eat my flesh), bucking the system (Pharisees and teachers), confusing people (parables), and not being ‘nice’ (“Get behind me Satan!”).

“Dear god if you were alive you know we'd kill you” - GodEatGod

We could make some obvious parallels to Jesus' life and death here, but what about God in general (the whole trinity, so to speak)? We may not have killed Him, but aren’t we often guilty of twisting him up into a little ball until he fits into our own little box. A place where we can control him and manipulate him to acquiesce to what we want. We tame the Lion of Judah until he becomes irrelevant, a fate worse than death.

How about this passage from C. S. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe just before Lucy meets Aslan.

“Is — is he a man?” asked Lucy.

“Aslan a man!” said Mr. Beaver sternly. “Certainly not. I tell you he is the King of wood and the son of the great Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea. Don’t you know who is the King of the Beasts? Aslan is a lion — the Lion, the great Lion.”

“Ooh,” said Susan, “I thought he was a man. Is he — quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.”

“That you will, dearie, and make no mistake,” said Mrs. Beaver, “if there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or else silly.”

“Then he isn’t safe?” said Lucy.

“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver, “don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”

Let's look at another song from Manson,

"I want to fly into your sun
Need faith to make me numb
Live like a teenage christ
Im a saint, got a date with suicide

Oh Mary, Mary
To be this young is oh so scary
Mary, Mary
To be this young I'm oh so scared
I wanna live, I wanna love
But its a long hard road, out of hell
I wanna live, I wanna love
But its a long hard road, out of hell” – A Long Hard Road Out of Hell

I think this echoes how a lot of teens feel, I know it’s how I used to feel (and still do sometimes). Doing their best to live like a “teenage Christ” on the outside, but slowly bleeding to death on the inside, where few people take the time to look. I think we could do a lot more to give friendship and hope to all the teens that are deeply hurting, the type of teens that make up Manson’s fanbase, the type of teens that have generally been scorned out of (rather than loved into) our churches. This isn’t exclusive to teens of course but I think it’s the locus of our collective error as well as where we have the most opportunity to affect lives.

Jesus' Awesome Charge

So anyway, one time Jesus was talking to his closest 11 friends and was giving them a charge of sorts. He’d been with these guys for like 3 years day in and day out teaching them how to live like he lived and do what he did. That’s what the whole rabbi-disciple relationship was about, becoming like your rabbi. So, he says to them this one time, he says, “Go out and make disciples of every nation…and teach them to do everything I’ve told you.”

That’s a pretty sweet job to have, but here’s my point; I don’t think we read that the right way. I think we look at that and see Jesus saying two different things. Maybe I could say it like this, we think he’s saying, “Go out and make Christians of every nation…and teach them to do everything I’ve told you.” Do you see the difference between this and what Jesus actually said? If not, I’ll try and explain.

I think when we read it the way I just mentioned it leads us to having a 4 hour Christian concert where you say a prayer to dedicate your life to God and get saved in the middle of it. That’s an attempt at making a bunch of “Christians.” From there, we can just point people in the right direction and hope someone else does the painstaking work of teaching them to do everything Jesus taught.

But Jesus didn’t call those 11 young guys to make Christians but rather disciples. I don’t think Jesus was saying two different things(1. Go make disciples and 2. teach them to do everything I’ve told you), but rather (in a very Jewish way) saying one thing in two different ways. Making a disciple is far different than making a Christian. "Making disciples" boils down to the second half of Jesus’ charge to his friends, teaching people to do everything He taught those original guys. That is how you make disciples (not thru a Christian concert or an alter call or some such thing - although those might be important steps along the way).

When we talk about “Christians” we’re just talking about someone who’s sins have been forgiven. That’s great and all, but a “disciple” is way more than that. Back in Jesus’ day (and still today in modern Judaism), a disciple was someone who the rabbi had faith in. No matter how much faith the boy had in the rabbi, he would never become a disciple unless the rabbi had faith in him. The rabbi would never chose a disciple unless he knew that the boy could do what he did and teach what he taught. And so the rabbi would invest his time, energy, and talents into training the disciple to become just like the rabbi.

In making disciples people will naturally become Christians, it’s all in where we focus. Making Christians is easy, especially if you go for the whole say a prayer and be saved theology. To that end you could make several thousand Christians at a nice sized concert. But making disciples is hard. I won’t act like I know what it takes to make disciples but I think it involves a lot of time with someone and probably a lot of love and maybe patience and lots of other hard stuff. And you can’t do that at a Christian concert.

Wouldn’t it be interesting to see what might happen if we flipped the whole thing on its head? Instead of trying to make a whole bunch of Christians and hoping some of them, by shear odds, will become disciples, what if we tried to make as many disciples as we could and hope that, by shear odds, some would become Christians?

How Important is our “Personal Relationship w/ God”?

We’re supposed to have a “Quiet Time” everyday. A Quiet Time basically breaks down to reading the Bible for 5-30 minutes and then praying for 2-15 minutes. Sometimes we’re given “Accountability Partners” (which go by various names) to help us be consistent with our Quiet Times (or QT’s for short).

All this because the most important thing in Evangelical Protestant Christianity is your “Personal Relationship with God.” A question like, "How are you doing spiritually?" is usually code for, are you having consistant Bible studies and prayer times?

But, is it the most important thing? Is it worth the weight we attribute it?

Some of you may have asked yourselves these questions before, others may feel that they are blasphemous and it is one of those “off limit” types of questions you just aren’t allowed to ask.

Well I was talking to my wife last night, who has a great knack for being able to sum up large portions of the Bible into a sentence or two. She’d been reading through Galatians and 1 John or 1 Timothy and said that she’d realized that basically what Paul was saying was that “whatever it is you’re arguing about doesn’t matter, just love people and do good.”

Isn’t that what so much of Paul’s letters are about? Just love people and do good. Isn’t that what Jesus was so often about? Love people and do good.

What really struck me after she said that is how neither Jesus nor Paul really made the focus on having a personal relationship with God. To look at our contemporary church, though, wouldn’t you think that this was the sole focus of the Bible? What I’m not saying here is that a personal relationship with God isn’t important, it certainly is. It’s just that maybe it shouldn’t be our focus.

Think about this, when Jesus talks about specifically about Hell it’s always in reference to people who didn’t love or do good. It’s never about someone who didn’t have a personal relationship with God in the sense we often mean it today.

What about the vast majority of Christian (not to mention Jewish) history when people didn't have access to a Bible. For centuries church was even performed in Latin. Of the thousands of years of history, only within the past few hundred has the Bible been available to the common man.

Maybe the question we should ask ourselves then is, why do we need to be held accountable for reading our Bible and praying everyday, but no one ever asks us if we loved someone today? Reading the Bible is great, we need to read the Bible more. Praying is great, we need to pray more. But who will you love today?

Love wins.

Authority of Scripture

Have you even heard the term “authority of scripture”? It seems to get thrown around a lot, but what do we mean by it?

When you really start to think about it I think some very interesting questions come up. For instance, how can any book be authoritative, much less a book written by Jews and a handful of early Christians who lived some 2000+ years ago…and wrote primarily in narrative (story) form! Do you see the problem we have already? I mean typically when we talk about authority we may picture something like a soldier who stands before his commanding officer and awaits his orders. The commanding officer, no doubt, will say, "clean the mess hall," or "take 2 men and scout that hill" or something like that. But what if, as N. T. Wright once put it, instead of a list of commands the commander begins, “Once upon a time…”

What do you do with that?

Whether or not they would have phrased it like this, this problem has plagued Christians for a very long time. Our rational culture loves to have a list, a system, a matrix, an outline. And so we’ve effectively decided that the Bible was written all wrong, and proceeded to fix it much as a scientist might “fix” a petri dish full of organic material. We must break it down into smaller parts - each book into chapters and each chapter into sections and each section into verses, so that we might scrutinize its fiddley bits. Then we pick apart those small parts and create “systematic theologies” (long boring books) or condense the pieces into the “Four Spiritual Laws” or the “Romans Road” or sum it all up in a “statement of faith” which we can post on our church website.

Speaking of statements of faith, I think Jesus' statment of faith was summed up in a little pamphlet we call the "Old Testament." I'd like to see on a church website's statement of faith page a link to BibleGateway.com - but now having said that, to be more honest, we might have to add links to the writings of the early church father, and maybe for some of us the writings of Calvin or Wesley or Tim LaHaye.

Anyway, have you ever wondered why God gave us this narrative instead of just a list of do’s, don’ts, and how-to’s? I mean surely God could do that, and wouldn’t that solve so many problems? Shouldn’t Paul have just written a 12 step program on how to be saved, or how to do church, or whatever?

But He gave us the Bible, and sorting through the whole thing can get quite messy at times. Ever wonder why He did that? I have.

And how about this – what’s the Bible say about authority. There are some scant references to what we may call “authority of scripture,” but throughout the Bible the scriptures consistently attribute all authority to God. In the beginning God creates all things (now if that isn’t authority…), later we’re told that Jesus is given all authority on heaven and earth, and later we see a transfer of authority to the apostles and then to all Christians via the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. And so perhaps we should be aware that “authority of scripture” is really just short for saying that God has invested His authority into scripture – but then perhaps we must ask if there are other things that He’s invested his authority into (us, for example, via the indwelling of the Holy Spirit) and what that might mean.

Here is an analogy given by N.T. Wright on how we might begin to think about scripture in light of this authority business.

Imagine we find a brilliant Shakespearean play. Everything is amazing: the plot, character development, writing, irony, and so on. The only problem being that we have only found the first 4 acts of what seems to be a 5 act play. What might we do?

Well, likely we'd gather some brilliant actors and perhaps playwrites and such and have them work out a 5th act to finish the play. They’d first need to become extremely well acquanted with the first 4 acts. They’d act it out a number of times, get to “know” their characters, begin discussing subtle meanings and plot lines, etc. Then, in time they could begin to develop a 5th act.

There wouldn't necessarily be just one way to end the play but we'd have the first 4 acts to serve as a type of "authority." We wouldn't want to take a character who had been evil for 4 acts and suddenly make him good for no reason, for example. We’d need to strictly adhear to the guideline the first 4 acts had provided, but then we must, necessarily, take it further in the 5th act. It would do us no good at all simply to try and repeat what happened in act 4 or to repeat lines from act 3 and call it finished.

And another thing, no one could perform Act 5 and say that this is the Act 5. Perhaps the most beautiful part of the play would be seeing how each group of actors finish it. It would be slightly different each time you saw it.

This is, perhaps, one way we could view scripture. Wright divides the first four acts up as 1) Creation 2) Fall 3) Israel 4) Jesus, and we are living out, in our daily lives, 5th act. I love the analogy and the idea that we are actually in the play, for we are the actors. For most of my short Christian life I’ve felt more like a commentator or critic of the play, an outsider. But what if you and I are in the play? Doesn’t that change how we view the Bible? How we view our lives?

Wright goes on to suggest that our predicament is actually somewhat better than the analogy because the New Testament is actually a part of the beginning of the 5th act and some parts of it actually give us hints as to how the 5th act will ultimately end. So we need only to figure out the middle section.

So the point then is that we're a part of God's story. We use the Bible as a guideline of sorts to help us figure out our character and how to develop him further and essentially how we can be the best "character" we can be in God's story. Some may see this as a low view of scripture, I personally think that it is quite a high view of both scripture and of God.



There’s a particular article by Bishop N. T. Wright that got me thinking on this and a lot of what I’ve been talking about is based directly on the article. How Can the Bible be Authoritative

The War on Christmas: I’m with the Atheists on this one

Seriously, the gospel has been commercialized enough in the past hundred years – must we defend the commercialization of Christmas too? Why do I want Best Buy greeters telling me “Merry Christmas”? Christmas isn’t a Christian holiday anymore. At least not in America today. It’s a completely secular holiday based on capitalism and making sure you buy people gifts of an appropriate price range so as not to offend or disappoint.

If anyone cares to celebrate the birth of Jesus on Dec 25th this year, then I’m all for it, but let’s admit that whatever Christmas is – it’s not that. It’s fun, it makes me smile, I get great gifts, the music is joyous, the gift giving is fun. I like Christmas. It’s just that I fail to see the connection with it and Jesus’ birth.

From what I hear, early Christians often gave each other food and other needed provisions. I’m not sure what these “needed provisions” were, but my guess is that they were similar to iPod’s, PSP’s, and PS3’s. They also apparently gave to the poor and needy. Again, I’m not sure what they gave, but I think it’s safe to assume that poor and needy people would have needed a tree with L.E.D. lights and copious amounts of eggnog.

So don’t get me wrong, I celebrate Christmas just like most everyone else. We’ve got the tree and the decorations, and the advent and all that jazz. We give and receive gifts (with a heavy emphasis on the receiving end at my mom’s house). So Christmas is a blast for me. But it’s just not particularly how I’d celebrate Jesus’ birthday if I were going to do that.

That makes me wonder. What would I do if I were going to celebrate the Big Guy’s birthday? Growing up my mom would always ask me to make a list of what I wanted and where I wanted to go for dinner on my birthday. So maybe that’s the question, “Jesus, what do you want for your birthday and where do you want to go for dinner?”

My answer was always something like “a playstation, a remote controlled car, an architecture book, and Alexander’s Steak House.” I'm sure Jesus would say something similar, so this year I’ll get him a remote control car and we’ll go out to Denny’s (after all, it’s all that’s open on His birthday).

Bruce Springsteen

I just ran across this Springsteen song on a webpage by a guy named Doug Pagitt. I can't say I've listened to much Springsteen, but he's a heck of a lyricist.

Land of Hope and Dreams
By Bruce Springsteen

Grab your ticket and your suitcase
Thunder's rolling down the tracks
You don't know where you're goin'
But you know you won't be back
Darlin' if you're weary
Lay your head upon my chest
We'll take what we can carry
And we'll leave the rest

Big Wheels rolling through fields
Where sunlight streams
Meet me in a land of hope and dreams

I will provide for you
And I'll stand by your side
You'll need a good companion for
This part of the ride
Leave behind your sorrows
Let this day be the last
Tomorrow there'll be sunshine
And all this darkness past


Big wheels roll through fields
Where sunlight streams
Meet me in a land of hope and dreams

This train
Carries saints and sinners
This train
Carries losers and winners
This Train
Carries whores and gamblers
This Train
Carries lost souls
This Train
Dreams will not be thwarted
This Train
Faith will be rewarded
This Train
Hear the steel wheels singin'
This Train
Bells of freedom ringin'
This Train
Carries broken-hearted
This Train
Thieves and sweet souls departed
This Train
Carries fools and kings
This Train
All aboard

This Train
Dreams will not be thwarted
This Train
Faith will be rewarded
This Train
Hear the steel wheels singin'
This Train

Cannibal Christians

One thing I find fascinating about Jesus is that he doesn’t make it very easy to follow him sometimes. I can imagine at times some of his followers were like, “easy yoke my foot!” Like this one time (John 6) where Jesus feeds all these people and then just basically leaves. He crosses the lake and goes some 15 miles away or so.

Well, the people back then were poor and there were far fewer McDonald’s in ancient Palestine so cheap food was hard to come by – this made Jesus quite popular. So, the people track him down. After all, a free meal’s a free meal, right? Just ask your neighborhood college student.

Well, when they finally track him down they’re like, “hey, so…when’d you get here?” Which, I suppose was a Jewish way of saying, “fancy meeting you here.” Very smooth. To which Jesus totally calls them out and tells them that they’re just after him for his food (don't act like you didn't have that one friend whose parents always stocked up on Doritos and Snack Packs). Normally we’d expect the people to be like, “ya, you got us, can you do the bread thing again, but this time with chicken?”

But instead, he goes into this spiel about how his body is bread and they should eat him. Errr…what?! Here we are coming for a mid-morning snack and you want us to eat you? Get real! Besides, let's face it, you're all skin and bones and gristle and there are far too many of us; there would never be enough to go around.

Nowadays we read Jesus’ words through this filter where we know the whole story already. And so when we read this business about eating his flesh, we read stuff into it like communion and sacrificial atonement, blah, blah, blah. But you have to take off that filter for a second and realize that these people don’t have the rest of the story yet. If Jesus really is talking about all of those things, his hearers sure as heck don’t know it.

Can you imagine hearing that without all of the context we have now?

Or what about when he told people that they had to hate their father, mother, wife, children, brother, sister, and their own life to be his follower? Now that one, I’d been told, well actually the Greek word that we translate as “hate” really means something more like “love less” or something like that. Um…not true. The word is translated in the NIV as hate, hates, hated, hating, and detestable…never “love less.” It’s the same word in Revelation 17:16 where it says, “The beast and the ten horns you saw will hate the prostitute. They will bring her to ruin and leave her naked; they will eat her flesh and burn her with fire.” 'Love less', my foot.

Now we can explain all this stuff theologically and whatnot, but again, can you imagine hearing that without having the whole picture as we do today?

So, after Jesus talks about how people should eat him, they leave. Can you blame them? Would YOU stay for dinner?

The Bible says that people walk away saying, “this is a hard teaching.”

Now there’s an understatement.

But here’s the thing, Jesus doesn’t say, “no, you don’t understand. It’s a metaphor. You don’t really have to eat me, just follow me around and do what I teach, live how I live and later on, eat some bread and act like it’s my body and we’ll be cool.”

He doesn’t say that though.

He just watches them walk away.

Can you imagine the rumors people began?

I wonder if Jesus said stuff like this for the same reason he told parables instead of giving people a straight answer with a 3 minute Powerpoint presentation with bullet points…and an outline...and a fill-in-the-blank handout. It seems to me that talking to the people in parables promoted relationship with him rather than just giving people answers which they could walk away with.

When you talk in parables people have to keep coming back to figure out what the heck you’re talking about.

But now that I think about it, these statements are like the opposite of this. They actually invite people to walk away, not to come back.

Is that what we need in our sermons; a regular pattern of inviting people into a relationship with Jesus, and a regular invitation to walk away?

Does Jesus know what Eternal Life is?

There’s this really great part in Luke where this guy comes up to Jesus and he’s like, “hey teacher, how do I get eternal life?” That’s a big question, eh? It’s a pretty popular one today and apparently it was pretty popular back then too because actually there are at least two people who asked Jesus that exact same question (Luke 10:25 & 18:18).

What I find truly amazing is that Jesus doesn’t give the same answer to both questions. I mean today we think we have everything nailed down and figured out if we can give someone 3 bullet-points or a little tract or 4 scriptures from Romans or whatever to explain how to get yourself to heaven. But Jesus, who may have understood God even more than ourselves, doesn’t give the same answer to both people.

The first person to ask finds himself at the front of the Good Samaritan story Jesus told. He asks his question and Jesus responds, as he so often does, with a question. Before I tell you his response though, think about how you would respond if I asked you that question. Would you tell me about Jesus’ life and death, and atonement and sacrifice? Would you talk about faith and belief perhaps with a context of repentance and baptism?

Jesus’ response is, “What is written in the Law?”

The law? Can you imagine what would happen if this were the response your minister gave to that question? He’d be looking for a new job before the words left his mouth! Then, Jesus goes on to say that the man should love God and love other people.

Is it just me or does this answer leave you a little unsatisfied – like a Thanksgiving fruitcake from your aunt Maybel? It’s almost like Jesus doesn’t even know what eternal life is! I mean doesn’t he know that you can’t get to heaven by just loving God and people? I mean that’s a part of it sure, but you can’t leave out the really important stuff – faith, belief, repentance, baptism, atonement, sacrifice, blood, etc.

Right?

The other person who asks is the ever popular “Rich Young Ruler,” who is fortunate enough to have a section in the Bible named after him. Jesus’ first response is a total ignoring of the guys question. He responds by asking the rich kid why he called Jesus good. I don’t know. Maybe he was stalling until he could come up with something.

Well, apparently it worked because then Jesus starts listing off some commandments. Wait! Commandments!? Jesus, listen, this is like first day at preacher school stuff! We aren’t saved by obeying the commandments. Everyone knows that. I mean seriously. We were totally with you. It seemed like you had things all together and then you go and get this whole ‘how to get saved’ thing all bassackwards. We really expected more out of you.

It’s almost like Jesus doesn’t even know what eternal life is.

Right?

Well, what if he doesn’t? I mean what if Jesus didn’t realize that eternal life is code for getting to heaven? In fact, in John 17:3 he says, “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”

Well, that screws things up a bit doesn’t it? Eternal life, to Jesus, meant knowing God and himself? So is that why he gave the answers he did?

There are a number of places where Jesus talks about “eternal life.” I’ll let you take a look at some of the other ones on your own. I’m confident it will blow your mind if you let it fester in there for a bit.

For Jesus, eternal life wasn’t something we had to wait for. It begins now, today, whenever. What if this were what we joined in on? What if this was what we invited people to be a part of?

Church in a Postmodern Culture

A lot of people are becoming concerned that many churches are yielding too much to our contemporary culture. Their concern, I think, is that when we combine the church with culture, the gospel becomes watered down or ineffective. I heard an interesting response to this dilemma from a guy named Doug Pagitt the other day.

He impishly agreed with the fear. In fact, he imagined a world in which the church took on the power systems of corporate America so that pastors were required to wear power suits and ties.

Or if we adopted the teaching philosophy of the 16th century, where people stood behind elevated lecterns to deliver their teaching.

Or what if we took on the view that there is 1 person who “knows,” and the masses that don’t and so you lined people up in rows so that they sat still and quiet while the “knowledgeable” person could impart their wisdom to the masses.

Or what if we took on a medieval European understanding of the world so that we built our churches to look like cathedrals?

The point is that the church has always taken on aspects of the culture it’s been a part of, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. We can repaint the Christian faith and make it relevant to a postmodern generation without sacrificing the Gospel. In fact, I might argue that we MUST make Jesus’ message relevant to them – it is our responsibility.

So instead of fighting to keep them separate, maybe it’s time to begin looking at what Christianity can add to Postmodernism and what it can add to us. Regarding the latter sentiment, I think it can give us a whole new picture of what faith looks like (flexible, dynamic, changing, ebbs and flows). I think it can reintroduce art back into the church. It can help us understand our own cultural presuppositions and biases which prevent us from looking at Jesus through another lens. I think it can open our minds and hearts to a God who is too big for any box we attempt to contain him in (and be ok with that).