Evolution of Christianity

With the discovery of a 47 million year old transitional ancestor, Darwin has just been fully confirmed, and as a documentary will soon claim, this changes everything.

“'Whither is God?' he cried; 'I will tell you. We have killed him---you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon?...Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.'” These are the ominous words of Frederick Nietzsche's madman, who stumbled into a circle of unbelievers and pierced them with his eyes. Such words have a significant new meaning with the discovery of the “missing link” and the subsequent confirmation of Darwinian evolution, something creationist/author Lee Strobel has said “puts God out of a job”1.

Nicknamed “Ida”, a once fabled transitional ancestor between mammals and primates has been found and will soon be displayed for the world to see in an A&E documentary called “The Link”, which aires this memorial day. Over 47 million years old, Ida has already made international headlines as the “8th wonder of the world”2, and is considered to be the final blow to the creationist campaign against Darwin's theory of evolution.

But have we killed God? Has our search for truth yielded freedom from even the gravity of God's love? Have we finally, as Dawkins would hope, evolved into atheists? What room is there for a Christian in the wake of such a stark and vibrant confirmation of the dreaded theory of evolution? Is God truly dead?

Dr. Karl Giberson doesn't think so. In his book Saving Darwin he writes, “I think evolution is true, its an expression of God's creativity...[but] in deep and important ways we have not dispelled the mystery of our existence at all—we have simply established it with greater clarity.” For Giberson and a growing number of Christians, evolution is our generation's helio-centric universe. Darwin is Galileo, and sooner or later we are all going to have to adapt our theologies to the tidal wave of information that comes as a result of the progress of science. It isn't that God is being ousted by science, its that science is reshaping the way we see God.

Enter the evolution of Christianity. It isn't that God has died, but rather our understanding of Him. As the church in the 17h century struggled to reconsider their faith in the wake of empirical science and its placement of Earth in orbit around the Sun, so also the contemporary form of Christianity must adjust to the now obvious truth of evolution. It doesn't displace God, it merely causes us to wonder all the more at His mystery.

What has died is our hubris. Our babelic tower of over-confidence topples just as we were sure it had reached the heavens. We are forced to remember how small our knowledge is, and how little we actually know. For many this is a hard truth. God is best imagined as a conspicuous, domineering, whiz-bang creator; not as a subtle and indirect guide. Though truth be told we know him better as the latter, somewhere along the way we came to prefer the idea of the former. But this concept has not always been in vogue.

Blaise Pascal, the 17th century scientist and mathematician, believed that Christianity uniquely respected the obscurity of God. "If this religion” wrote Pascal in Pensees, “boasted of having a clear view of God, and of possessing it open and unveiled, it would be attacking it to say that we see nothing in the world which shows it with this clearness. But, on the contrary, it says that men are in darkness and estranged from God, that He has hidden Himself from their knowledge, that this is in fact the name which He gives Himself in the Scriptures, Deus absconditus (God Hidden).” It was the opinion of this intellectual giant that Christians can be trusted precisely because they don't try to rigorously explain what God is, or how he does things. Christians being comfortable with mystery makes them better representatives of the mystery that is God.

Of course, with the tectonic shift of accepting evolution, our systematic theologies are left dismantled. We must again ponder the mysteries of the cross, the atonement, the creation, and now even the fall. But this reconstruction is nothing new. “Theology can usefully be thought of as a science”, Says Dr. Nancey Murphy in Reconciling Theology and Science, “We can think of doctrines as being comparable to theories in the sciences, rationally justified by their ongoing ability to explain the data....However the traffic between theology and science goes both ways, we sometimes have to correct our theology as science advances.” Correcting our theology is something Murphy claims Christians do every day in the wake of their experiences. If a grandmother dies despite prayer and petition, a Christian learns how to interpret the verse “ask anything and it shall be given to you”. This hypothetico-deductive side of Theology is the mechanism we use to conclude doctrines, and at varying times in history it has been used to determine all sorts of spiritual truths.

When the Pope's crusades failed miserably Christianity reconsidered exactly how much say the Pope had as the head of the church, which changed our theology of authority. When Martin Luther decried grace by works it changed our entire theology of salvation. When John Wycliffe ended priest corruption of scripture by printing the Bible in common english our theology of the bible was never the same. Our theology of worship has changed from austere chants to decadent guitar solos; our theology of marriage has changed to consider both wedded clergy as well as pious homosexuals; our theology of purpose has changed from conquering the world under Christendom to engaging the world's pain and fear with the teachings of the Kingdom of God. Not 200 years ago our theology of humanity changed as we realized slave ownership was evil. In the last 10 years we have seen our theology of environment change as we consider industry's poisonous effects on the world around us. It is the way of Christianity's narrow path to twist and turn into directions we could never have imagined, our job is merely to follow that path, not determine where it will go next.

God is not dead, but some of the ideas we have used to describe Him are. For us, creationism now goes the way of the geocentric universe, we must accept evolution as a revelation from nature and adjust ourselves accordingly. But even with Darwin navigating the old church van, God is still in the driver's seat. As G. K. Chesterton once said, “Nobody can imagine how nothing could turn into something. Nobody can get an inch nearer to it by explaining how something could turn into something else. It is really far more logical to start by saying 'in the beginning God created heaven and earth' even if you only mean 'in the beginning some unthinkable power began some unthinkable process.' For God is by its nature a name of mystery, and nobody ever supposed that man could imagine how a world was created any more than he could himself create one.”

Christian theology is not meant to declare God's truths, it is meant to discover them. In this sense it is the truest nature of Christianity to evolve.

Ponzi Prosperity Gospel

Today we shriek as we hear of financial scams, corporate greed, and virtually anything money related that isn’t entirely on the up-n-up. While religion has generally been a help in these economically difficult times, there is one segment of Christianity that is scamming as many as they can. Those who have ears (and debt) let them hear.

The Prosperity Gospel, which is manifested in the “Word of Faith” movement (a louder voice in Pentecostalism), has been writing checks with its lips that’s its theology can’t cash. Last year’s Pew Foundation mega poll, which surveyed nearly 35,000 people (one of the largest religion polls ever accomplished), revealed a few interesting facts about Christians in the Pentecostal tradition¹:

• Pentecostals have the lowest incomes of any other Christian denomination.

• Pentecostals have the lowest education of any other Christian denomination.

The results show that Pentecostals have the most high school dropouts, the fewest college grads, and also the fewest post graduates. But the most interesting thing is that they earn the least annual income of ANY other Christian tradition polled. This is shocking, considering that a main feature in popular Pentecostalism is the Prosperity Gospel, where church members are promised that God will make them rich beyond their wildest dreams if they tithe generously and believe that they will receive the money.

The trouble Ive seen...

These Pew findings fly in the face of the main tenets of the Prosperity Gospel. Not only do Pentecostals fail to out-earn the regular “non-spirit filled” Christian, they make less. For me, to read such information is heartbreaking. I am a teacher in a private school that’s part of a Word of Faith church. The church is doing very well for itself, as most Pentecostal churches are, but the people are suffering.

Frequently I speak with coworkers and church members who are slowly slipping into despair. I watch helplessly as their hopes dim, and their pennies fade. When I attend a service at this church I hear the Pastors declare that God will make everybody rich, if first they will throw what little they have into the offering plate. Loud confident voices echo off the palatial walls of the sanctuary, while weary, struggling believers bristle with the hope of God’s "promises". My once weeping friends gleefully dance down the plush expensive carpet to the altar and pull out their dollar bills (not their food stamps and government checks, though they have those also) and cheerfully give. The Pastor nods approvingly as his hands are folded in prayer (a shiny Rolex on his wrist) and his eyes tear up.

Say what you want about the corruption of the pulpit, or the decadence of the minister- that’s not my issue. My point is that while the world howls at the scam artists who make big promises then don’t deliver, Christianity has its very own Ponzi scheme that’s alive and well. At least when Bernie Madoff promised big returns he initially delivered, the prosperity gospel doesn’t even do that much. When Joel Osteen, Ken Copeland, Paula White, or Benny Hinn take your money, you’ll never see it again (unless you happen to glimpse one of their private jets leaving a runway for Bermuda)²

Creating “The Least of these”

When a major tenet of your theology is that people who invest in your church will experience wealth, but then the facts show that your congregants are among the poorest and most disparate in the country, you have just been falsified. Further, when the national economy is in shambles, it should be criminal to continue to avoid taxes as a charity, yet earn immense amounts of capital on the promise of a better future. When we see such things in the business world, we rightfully call it a scam and send those people up the river. Why are we so silent while this happens in every neighborhood in America?

Another concern that the Pew Poll raises is the type of person that is being taken advantage of in these churches. The Pentecostal tradition holds more uneducated people than any other denomination, making them a prime target for would be millionaire pastors. In many ways I am as green with jealousy as these prosperity preachers are with greed, in that the scammed believers have more faith in their little finger than I will probably ever know in my lifetime. They would give the shirt off their back if they believed God wanted them to, and many of them have. These people, while simple, are in essence the purest of Christian hearts, trusting like children the intentions of their Shepherd, and being led as lambs to the slaughter.

If not for the absurdity of the scheme, or the arrogance of the theology, then for these poor, benevolent, mistreated souls our hearts must break. That these people, who would be the very first to give of themselves to please God have been allowed to flush so much money into the off-shore bank accounts of so few is a travesty. While their pastors make a spectacle of themselves these poor faithful who are the least able to earn a decent wage in our society run to the altar with everything they have as an act of worship. If even a tenth of what they have given had been redirected to the charities that truly do serve God, our country and our world would be substantially better.

Bankrupt Prosperity

Imagine that there was a brand of theology in which people were taught that God has promised to give followers an additional arm, say right from the center of their chest. It taught that scripture had everywhere indicated that this was the case³, and that by believing this “fuller” version of the gospel, you were opening up the as-of-yet closed off area of blessings that Christians have forgotten about (ie growing another appendage to better do God's work). After about 50 years the movement has spread worldwide and followers number in the millions, and you look to see how many of these folks have in fact grown that “arm of the Lord”. Upon inspection you find that the vast majority of them have lost an arm, leaving them worse off and less able to even serve God than even two-armed folk do. The irony would be overwhelming, that while it was said that God would give these people more for realizing this secret truth, somehow they have ended up with less than they perhaps even began with.

Despite the fact of statistics, and the continued empirical evidence of devastated human lives (Pentecostals also have the most divorces⁴), few if any Christians have plainly spoken against the Prosperity Gospel, or raised awareness that measures any merit. While high level corruption, and financial disrespect are the soup de jour of each week's media cycle, this prominent and aberrant theology has been allowed to wreak havoc on a mass of people who are grasping at economic straws.

Prosperity Gospel theology is bankrupt. The debate raged for years about how much sense coveting money made in the context of biblical principals, but now the fruit has been born and the numbers don't lie: those who attend prosperity gospel churches are in fact worse off for it.

1http://religions.pewforum.org/reports/detailed_tables

2All except Osteen have been suspected by the Senate of Tax Fraud due to their ostentatious lifestyles on the backs of non-profit “charities”

3Maybe John12:28 would be their anthem (This was to fulfill the word of Isaiah the prophet: "Lord, who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?" )

4Of all major denominations Pentecostals had the highest amount of divorced members (16%). While the “Reformed” group was higher (18%) it was only a tenth the size of most every other denomination.

Apocalypse

I find it interesting that every sensibility of man, even from his most primitive reflections, has pointed to the sudden and terrible end of the universe.

Before men knew what the lights in the night sky were, before they could comprehend the sun or our place in its orbit, mankind seemed to universally know that at some point these things would pass away.

Despite the absolute reality of natures consistency, seasons never failing to come and go on schedule, dawn endlessly rising in the morning and fading into dusk in the evening, animals and trees bearing new life in the spring and withering in the winter; despite all this near nauseous repetition and pattern, primitive man knew that it would end.

It is incredible to me that ancient literature records even more ancient oral traditions in which people commonly believe that the universe (whatever their understanding of it at the time) would in one fell swoop close curtain and be dim forever more. Science had at one point believed the universe was static, endlessly looping from rising states to falling states, but then learned of the 2nd theory of thermodynamics, which states with solemn infinity that all energy in the universe is slowly being extinguished.

Upon realizing this our future seems very sober. No matter how many galaxies we one day explore and conquer, no matter how wide the universe actually is, or whether our species numbers in the trillions as it colonizes and evolves into new and exciting complexities; one day all of sentient life will hold its breath as the cold dark wave of oblivion comes to rest upon it. Death; still, frozen, vapid and unintelligent death will be the final word no matter how far our science or our biology takes us. For mechanics and medicine are governed by a deeper magic: physics.

One day Paley's watch will tick its last tock, and this is as unavoidable and irreversible as the sun setting in the west. Try as I might, I cannot now or ever pluck the star from the pink and purple sky and place it back in the east. Darkness, desolation...death, will be the last word for all known reality, and somehow, remarkably, humanity has known this all along. Discovering that the universe is winding down wasn't shocking, it was the validation of a knowledge we have stragely had all along.

Ironically though, for just as long as mankind has intrinsically known that time itself will come to an end, it has also believed in a transcendent being who has the power to resurrect. A Governor of life and death, an unquenchable source of light and power. Perhaps when the universe has dimmed to only a faint glow, when the light is all but extinguished, finally we will be able to clearly see what was there all along, diminished by the pollution of so much other energy closer to our observation. Perhaps we will see the far off but brilliant light of a new dawn, a new universe, the ever present hope of a future, and life everlasting. Perhaps we will then know, as we have always suspected, that while death will be the final word in our reality, there is another word that comes after that, a word that must be spoken by the being that created us whom we have always suspected was there. He will speak again as He did in the beginning, and we will all come into new life; "Let there be light".

Getting De-Baptized

I read about this story and it added to my ongoing concern for the divide between secularists and theists. I am currently reading the book "Saving Darwin" to try to understand the middle ground between the volatile atheists like Richard Dawkins, and the staunch creationists that line the fundamentalist ranks.

Part of our calling is to reconcile with people, I think we need to consider the implications of that, and at least be willing to find a way to reach into these lives that have become so separated from us.

For Nana

Today my grandmother called me and shared terrific news. She has been given the honor and privilege of sharing the message Easter Sunday at her Unitarian Church in Arkansas. She called because she had a very unique question to ask me, a question that captured my thoughts for the rest of the day and left me tossed in endless directions. Her question was: If Jesus had been here in the 20th Century, how would he have interacted with American Society? How would he react to things like the Vietnam war, or to communism, or to the plight of the urban sprawl? Imagine that Jesus had been there, what would that be like?

When I got home I made myself a cup of tea and sat in my recliner in the living room. Sunlight slipped through blinds, rays visible from the glass of the window all the way to the curled up kitty cats on the floor. I leaned back in my chair and listened to some music playing on my stereo, I tried to imagine Jesus in the 20th Century.

My first thought was John Lennon sitting behind a white piano, a well lit room and Yoko Ono sitting at his side. John was singing his song "Imagine", and I couldn't help but wonder if Jesus wouldn't have held a lighter in the air at a Lennon concert. "Imagine there is no country" says the former Beatle, "and no religion too" I drifted in the waves of thought, the image of Jesus with a fire in his palm, swaying back and forth to the music.

The 20th century was characterized by war, by oppression, and by evil. In the 20th century we saw two world wars, and countless smaller ones. We saw the rise of super-powers, and the first abuses of the popular media. We saw the creation of the ultimate death machines, and the radiation poisoned, half melted faces of their victims. In the 20th century we saw the results of colonialism, the prestige and power of sovereign nations dominating the weaker, the exploitation of everybody from the factory worker, to the dark skinned farmer suffering under Jim Crow. Yes, the 20th century saw the evil in Hitler's eyes, the massacre of 10 million people, the haphazard destruction of the environment, and the disaster of saber rattling hawks with power. For those that lived through the last century, one would think they would recall a literal hell on Earth. However most will tell you that days were not always so dark, that even in the thick of despair, somehow hoped shined through, and things got better. When I consider that I think I realize why that is, and also the answer to the question my Nana asked me; Jesus was there.

Jesus was there with the Jews starving in a prison camp, giving them strength to last until rescuers arrived. Jesus was there when the American economy collapsed, and honest men and women found themselves penny-less and without a bed to sleep in, but somehow managed to forge the bread line in to a better future. Jesus was there when dust bowls ate the crops and lungs of weary eyed farmers, who summoned the courage to leave behind their history and their lives in the name of survival. Jesus was there when a burst of light flashed over Hiroshima, Jesus wept over Nagasaki. Jesus was there with Neil Armstrong as he stepped toward the bleach white surface of the moon, floating in the infinite darkness of space. Jesus was there when a young black preacher rallied millions of men and women of color to demand equal rights, when those people chose non-violence over riots and terrorism.

When Titanic was found, when King Tut's Tomb was found, Jesus was there. When soldiers from Vietnam were buried in Arlington Cemetery, Jesus was there. And during 14 Presidential funerals, Jesus was there. The reason I know that, the reason I know that Jesus was there during the good times and the bad, the reason I know he is that flicker of hope that inspired the greatest among us to rise up and illuminate the darkness is because Jesus' grave, unlike the rest I have mentioned....is empty.

The vacancy is notorious, outrageous, and the source of the greatest debate in human history. This conspicuous absence is also the reason we celebrate Easter, it is the day we reflect on Jesus' rising from the dead, and consider whether his presence has been observable since.

When my Nana asked me if I could imagine a 20th Century with Jesus in it, my first thoughts were a Jesus who protests wars, and marches in the streets with John Lennon. But soon I realized that despite the brokenness, conflict, and savagery that colored the last 100 years, there was an ever present light that guided humanity to a new dawn. A star that lead us over the turbulent seas of misfortune and agony, into the terra nova of God's Kingdom. While humanity continues to grapple with its iniquity, I still am compelled to notice that star shining above us, that great light by which all things are seen, hovering steadily, loyally, by our side helping us to see. Though this light may set, it rises again and brings with it a new day, a new age, and the bright hope of a future. Christ, is this light for me. He has set and yet risen again. When we see our world in horror, when we sense the vacancy again of the Son of God, when hopelessness is its most potent, this is when our Sun rises again, giving us new hope and new life. This is the essence of resurrection.

I see Jesus in our common history, I see our need for him in terrible times, I see our inspiration through him in times of human victory. I believe that it is by seeing his presence in so many stories, that I can embrace the romance of this thing called resurrection, that I can celebrate a day like Easter. On Easter we remember the King who came back for us, who still comes back for us, who's love will not cease, until it is on Earth as it is in Heaven.

Resurrection is the promise of hope, and the reality of Jesus. Seeing his fingerprints in our time, helps me to remember that he does indeed live on, that the grave could not hold him, that victory will yet be his, and that because he has risen to new life, I also may find new life through him. For that is the promise of the light rising in the east, with each new day we hear it say to us, "Fear not" and then with hope and light, “Because I live, you also live” (John 14:19) .

Remember the wheel?

I was thinking today about the difference between "Emerging" and "Emergent". Mark Driscoll seems to have defined the two terms very differently, and noted that "Emerging" is the group of people who are thinking differently about how to do church, considering how to become relevant yet still keep with the past, while "Emergent", explains Driscoll, is the group that is questioning everything from relevancy to theology.

I will be brief but to me its sort of like the car industry right now. On the one hand you have the industry that is trying to put new paint on the old things, produce new models of the old tried and trues. They are asking the question: "How can we sell this in the new market?" The same is true for Emerging churches. They are asking themselves how they can sell their church in the new market, how they can appear relevant in a world that is quickly changing, how can they stay on top?

Of course what these churches, and that end of the auto-industry, are missing is that for some reason their surges of buyers are getting smaller and smaller. Quickly they are being overtaken by the other end of the spectrum, those who are rethinking their philosophies all together, the Hybrids.

Instead of putting new paint on old ideas, the Hybrid industry and those who are leading it are asking entirely new questions. Not "how can we sell this?", but more "why is this?". They aren't just seeking to stay on top, they are seeking to recreate the way we view transportation, burst through the old molds and create something altogether new. Something, ironically enough, that if successful makes fully irrelevant all previous molds and models. Who wants the gas guzzling diesel when the new 100 mpg truck comes out? Who will care about land speed and maneuverability when cars can fly?

These are the Emergents. They are the side that is rethinking everything they thought they knew about church, God, theology...everything. Instead of asking how they can make their church more relevant, they are asking why they do what they do in the first place. Their changes are coming from the inside out, from deep shifts in their ways of thinking, that far surpass a simple new coat of paint...they are a whole new concept. They are reconsidering the old fuel economy of ideas, and inventing new sources of power, new balances and new measures of success.

Where once speed and power were the trophies of a ministry (and the auto industry), now environmental impact and long term resource allocation are fast becoming the new badges of honor. A few decades of this new thinking and we won't even call what we drive churches (or cars) anymore, because they will just be too different from what that word describes.

Emergents are not trying to reinvent the wheel, they are trying to make it obsolete in the wake of what comes next. What if one day people turn to one another over coffee and say, "Remember the wheel?"

Agnostic Christianity

I wonder sometimes if there is such a thing as the sin of certainty. If knowing and not knowing are actually the same thing, only the latter is more honest. What can we actually say that we know? Do we know ourselves, do we know each other, do we know our faith? Are we 100% sure that we know the things we think we know, beyond any shadow of a doubt? And if we can affirm that yes we do know things this well, should we be committed for having too simple a view of reality?

I was considering the word Gnosis the other day, wondering at the very first heresy Christianity ever birthed within itself, the group that became known as Gnostics. Gnosis, I learned, means "knowledge", and that band of heretics were so named because they believed that God had given them a special knowledge about himself, a knowledge that if attained could make one a more perfect Christian. But only those who realized this knowledge were speical, only those who obtained the gnosis would live forever.

Do you see where I am going with this? If the first heretical Christians were called Gnostics because they believed in a supernatural knowledge which saved people, I would imagine that would make the other Christians, the Orthodox Christians, the Agnostic Christians.

Today we use the word Agnostic in reference to the certainty of there being a God. We see it as the middle ground between Theism (one who believes that Theos, God, is extant) and Atheism (one who does not). But this assignment is arbitrary and out of place, sure the word can conveniently convey that there is an opinion of not knowing which is correct, but the word itself I think expresses a much deeper meaning than this mere position can provide.

To be Agnostic about something is to profess unknowing. Its to say that you have been well informed about the various side's theories, have measured and weighed them but feel there is not enough to lead you to firm conclusions. Yet despite this seeming lack of confidence in a particular direction, you are comfortable in your unknowing, content with floating along the waves, unsure which coast these ultimately lead to.

Back again to the first Christians, I wonder if there is an irony in their clash with the Gnostics. The first heresy was believing you had a special knowledge that others didn't have, something in your version of faith that was better, higher, and more enlightened than the rest. These heretics were excited to proclaim their special understanding, but the true Christians were content to remain Agnostics, unable/unwilling to deduce the wonders and marvels of God.

The irony is in how that group of orthodox Christians who were once happily agnostic, morphed to become the various tribes we see today, each claiming to have found something others haven't. Protestants telling the Catholics that they don't understand salvation, Eastern Orthodox telling everybody that they don't get worship, Catholics telling the others that they don't have the knowledge of the Pope. How ironic that the very first heresy, gnosticism, found its way into each faith tradition. Sure the form has changed, but the concept is clear: some have the special knowledge that others don't.

In this light it would seem that the Christians who might be willing to admit how little they actually know, would be the one's returning to true orthodoxy. The one's who would be willing to drop their systematic theologies and monopolies on truth might be the one's closest to the humble beginnings of our sacred story. I'm sure that would seem ignorant at first, but perhaps like Socrates, being confident about what one doesn't know will actually prove how wise one actually is.

"We all want progress, but progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man." - C.S. Lewis

I wonder if there could be Agnostic Christians again. Christians who don't bask in their high and lofty understanding, but follow as if their souls depend on it; who judge not others lest they be judged by the same measure. I'm sure at first these Christians would be seen as "liberal" or "progressive", but wouldn't they actually be regressive? Wouldn't theirs be a departure from the well accepted heresy of special understanding, and a return to the discipline of humility and trust in Christ?

I have no idea.

"If this religion boasted of having a clear view of God, and of possessing it open and unveiled, it would be attacking it to say that we see nothing in the world which shows it with this clearness. But, on the contrary, it says that men are in darkness and estranged from God, that He has hidden Himself from their knowledge, that this is in fact the name which He gives Himself in the Scriptures, Deus absconditus (God Hidden)."

-Blaise Pascal

Apologetic

After my post where I recaptured my student's response over the atheist bus advertisements, I received a surge of attention from various atheist websites and bloggers. With this very small window of attention at my disposal, I could think of no better message to send to so many atheists, than this:

I am sorry.

I am sorry for the oppression: mental, emotional, physical, legal, and spiritual (if you will permit me to use the word in a non-offensive way) that my faith community has put you through.

I am sorry that you have been hunted, persecuted, fought, hastily and unfairly treated. I am sorry that you were never listened to.

I am sorry that I never took the time to listen to your stories, or cared enough to see how my story was impacting you. I am sorry that I allowed my faith to control politics in a way that self destructed government, and imposed upon your, and others', rights.

I am sorry that when you asked me for a reason for my faith, I gave you nothing but ignorant platitudes. I am sorry that when I gave you my best reasons for God, I betrayed the very fabric of his mystery by attempting to capture him in theology, doctrine, and systems.

I am sorry that I have so profoundly misrepresented the man described by the four gospels in the New Testament, I am sorry that I have failed you.

I am sorry that you have to see religious relics every where you go, I am sorry that you have been afforded no voice in the public.

I am sorry that my best attempts to care for you have only botched things up incredibly, I am sorry that when you needed me the most I was cold to you.

I am sorry that I have created a noticeable (please, I mean no harm in saying this) cynicism within you. I am sorry that I have so poorly dialoged with you.

I am sorry that this small post will never make up for the literal thousands of years that the religious have oppressed the non-religious. I am sorry that your honest and straightforward pursuit of truth has been scorned at every turn by those who seem more deluded with their own superiority, than awestruck with having discovered the reality of a thing called "God".

I am sorry that my testimony is unconvincing, as it is laden with hate, cruelty, bigotry, arrogance, and failure.

I am sorry for the crusades. I am sorry for the inquisition. I am sorry for the witch trials. I am sorry for the way we treated Darwin, Galileo, Copernicus, and an infinity of others. I am sorry that we have stifled growth, progress, and human discovery.

I am sorry that we have built monuments to the wealthy instead of homes for the poor, provided temples to the unseen instead of food for the starving, robes for the rulers instead of clothes for the naked. I am sorry that we have used religion as an excuse for wickedness.

I am sorry for the Holocaust. I am sorry for the use of religion to justify violence. I am sorry for 9/11.

I am sorry for the countless people who have been murdered in the middle east due to our blind ignorance, I am sorry for eagerness to take life, instead of preserve it.

I am sorry that I have manipulated, controlled, beguiled, lied, killed, raped, stolen, and blasphemed to maintain my hold on power. I am sorry, that when you needed me most to follow the claims of my Religion, as they are truly presented, I did not.

With perhaps only seconds left of this extraordinary attention my small blog has received, let me say this: I cannot begin to tell you how profoundly sorry I am for the treachery those representing my faith have caused. Had you no other reason not to believe in a deity of some kind, the actions of those who claim to have discovered that deity would be enough to dissuade you, and for that we...I...can only feel ashamed.

I have no ulterior motive here, no secret plan to covert all of you reading this to my wonderful great way of thinking. I wouldn't dare extinguish the richness, the vibrance of your voices that have been so long kept from the ears of the world. I only hope, that somehow despite the anger, despite the betrayal, despite the tyranny I have done to you, you may hear through all that these final words, and know that I mean them with all my heart: I am, I really am, sorry, though I know that alone will never be enough to make up for what I have done.

This apology is overdue.

Getting out of the way of God's Atheist Bus

I recently read an article in the New York Times that explained how Atheists in Britain, with the strong celebrity of Dr. Richard Dawkins at the helm, launched a campaign to preach a godless message across their country via bus advertisements.

I shared the article with my Apologetics students (I'm a teacher at a private school) and asked them to give me their initial thoughts. Most of the kids were filled with outrage. "We should hit back with our own billboards", one yelled. "Yea, and the government shouldn't let Atheists write that kind of stuff anyway, it should be illegal", agreed another.

I kept a blank face while I listened to the students campaign for censorship and more aggressive proselytizing, but in my heart I sighed with discouragement. These kids don't hear anything I say, I thought to myself, despite months of instruction, they still see these issues in only two dimensions. But then, to my great astonishment, one my students bravely put forth a different opinion.

"Well wait a minute", he said with conviction, "haven't we been talking about this all quarter? Before we can just go off half cocked on these ads and the Atheists who put them there, we need to ask ourselves questions about why this is happening in the first place, put ourselves in their shoes." I held my breath as he looked at me for permission to continue his thought, I nodded hiding my excitement.

"Well, what made these people feel it was necessary to put these ads on buses in the first place? Maybe its them who are striking back, at us, not starting a fight or anything. Maybe we started it." A few of the other students began to release furrowed brows as they leaned in to listen. The brave young man continued, "We can't just take aim and fire at them, getting our revenge or shutting them up. Jesus didn't tell us to do that, he told us to see things from their world, take pity on them, even turn the other cheek. And I think if we put ourselves in their shoes, we will understand why they might feel ads like this are necessary. Have you ever thought of how it feels, especially during the holidays, to be bombarded with advertisements talking about the religious reasons for the season? Or how many Christians start flooding their conversations with their christianese and religious verbage that makes zero sense to everyone around them? If I were an Atheist I would be pissed off to no end!"

The students shot a quick glance at me to see how I would respond to the outburst at the end of his explanation, I kept my poker face. Seeing he hadn't gone foul, he continued. "We should feel sad that we make Atheists feel like they need to defend themselves, sad that they are getting aggressive and pushy, because we caused it. We caused it because we made them our enemy after the scopes trial, we made them out to be devils and demons, opposing soldiers in some imaginary culture war. But Christ says our war isn't against flesh and blood, and you don't beat evil with matched aggression, you beat it with love, you beat it by laying down your swords. Fires aren't put out with more fire, they are put out with their opposite, water."

As the students reflected on what was said, they looked at me to measure my approval, which I could no longer fully conceal. With a smile, I held back the excitement in my voice and asked what he would propose Christians do in response to these signs. Sensing my probe for previous lessons in his next answer, he gladly regurgitated whatever he could. "Well" he began, "I would say we shouldn't respond to the intent of the signs, but to what caused them in the first place. We know that its hurt that caused the Atheists to do this, so we need to figure out how that happened, and work hard to fix those relationships. If we really love our neighbor, we should see these ads as a symptom of our broken relationship, not as an attack to be offended at."

He turned and addressed the class as he continued, "And why should we be upset about the message in the first place? The hardest thing in leading people to Christ is to break through their indifference to the 'meaning of life', 'reality of God' stuff anyway. These signs force people to wonder whether or not what they say is true, this practically invites conversation about God, thats the best possible thing that could happen for followers of Christ!"

The room suddenly glowed by the flame of his growing enthusiasm. "Can you imagine how great it would be to stand at a bus stop when one of these things pulls up? Standing next to all those strangers who are tilting their heads reading it, looking around puzzled and all that, how easy would it be to just ask them what they thought, begin a conversation about God's universe with nothing more than a nod and a 'get a load of that'. We should be thanking these guys for making our job easier, for daring the world to wonder about God instead of never stopping long enough to think it through at all. Instead of bursting in with our arguments for God and how much smarter we are than everybody else, we can ask questions and listen to peoples' hearts, hurts, and hell.

We can gently tell them, show them even, that God is real, and does love them. We can even apologize for causing the sign in the first place, and show these people who Christ really was, not the guy who chased people around trying to create a world where nobody thought differently than himself, but loved everybody unequivocally and regardless of their culture or their creed. We can finally say we are sorry for how badly we have misrepresented Christ, we can finally be, finally be...." he stammered trying to think of the right word. "Apologetic", I said, looking him in the eyes.

Suddenly the realization was palpable, the whole room had a new understanding of the subject of my class, and the method that must go behind it in these contentious, and difficult times. He smiled and nodded, then sat down satisfied that the point had been made. I couldn't have been more proud of my student that day, and I can only hope he rises up to become a voice of calm in the storm of ideas that he will face as an adult.

It's rare that a teacher gets to feel he's making a difference in the world. But when I get to hear a 16 year old kid talk like this, hear him blatantly reject the ideas of anger and revenge, to instead choose forgiveness and love, I feel like God has given me a glimpse into a brighter future. I don't think teachers like me bring these sorts of people into the world, I think God does. And since hearing this kid go off like that, my prayer everyday has been that God wouldn't let me get in the way of His revolution, that I wouldn't be the barricade that stops the voice of Christ from spilling out of the mouths of babes, but if I ever am, that He would rip through me without a moments pause.

God is good, my greatest accomplishment in life will have been getting out of His way, and I couldn't be happier than to have a legacy like that.

Revisiting "Emergent"

I thought I might repost one of the first posts on this blog, because I recently invited some facebook friends to join this group, and I think these quotes embody "emergent" thinking more than any of my recent posts would. I would really like to get some more posters to this blog, and also some more conversation partners in general. Thanks for checking these quotes out, please don't be mislead by my posts throughout this blog that can at times be inflammatory and dubious, I have been talking to myself for some time in this website, and what you read is just my attempt to self-reflect and struggle with some things.

Thanks,
-Jimi

A New Kind of Christian- Brian McLaren

"Now take a moment and let this really sink in. To the Christian culture of medieval Europe, none of you today could be considered real Christians. True, you might say that you believe in Jesus and that you follow the Bible- but that would sound like nonsense to them if at the same time you denied what to them was essential for any reasonable person to accept: the medieval worldview, which was the context of their faith [(ie-astronomy, Copernicus etc)]. That brings me to an important question for you to think about: Is it possible that we as moderns have similarly intertwined a different but equally contingent worldview, with our eternal faith? And another question: What if we live at the end of the modern period, at a time when our modern worldview is crumbling, just as the medieval one began to do in the sixteenth century?" - Pg 34

"Most modern people love to relativize the viewpoints of the others against the unquestioned superiority of their own modern viewpoint. But in a way, you cross the threshold into postmodernity the moment you turn your critical scrutiny from others to yourself, when you relativize your own modern viewpoint. When you do this, everything changes. It is like a conversion. You cant go back. You begin to see that what seemed like pure, objective certainty really depends heavily on a subjective preference for your personal viewpoint." -Pg 35

"Our interpretations reveal less about God or the Bible than they do about ourselves. They reveal what we want to defend what we want to attack, what we want to ignore, what we're unwilling to question. When Judgment Day comes, God might ask a lot of us how we interpreted the Bible-not to judge if our interpretations are right or wrong but to let our interpretations reveal our hearts. That will be telling enough." =Pg 50

Searching for God Knows What- Donald Miller

"How many people have walked away from faith because their systematic theology proved unable to answer the deep longings and questions of the soul? What we need here, truly, is faith in a Being, not a list of ideas." p 161

"The story bears repeating: I presented the gospel to Christian Bible college students and left out Jesus. Nobody noticed....To a culture that believes they "go to heaven" based on whether or not they are morally pure, or that they understand some theological ideas, or that they are very spiritual, Jesus is completely unnecessary. At best, He is an afterthought, a technicality by which we become morally pure, or a subject of which we know, or a founding father of our woo-woo spirituality."p 159

"And then I wondered at how Jesus could say He was a Shepherd and we were sheep, and that the Father in heaven was our Father and we were His children, and He Himself was a Bridegroom and we were His bride, and that He was a King and we were His subjects, and yet we somehow missed His meaning and thought becoming a Christian was like sitting in a chair."p 157

"I get this feeling sometimes that after the world ends, when God destroys all our buildings and our flags, we will wish we had seen everybody as equal...." p104

"If you ask me, the way to tell if a person knows God for real, I mean knows the real God, is that they will fear Him. They wouldn't go around making absurd political assertions and drop God's name like an ace card, and they wouldn't be making absurd statements about how God wants you to be rich and how if you send in some money to the ministry God will bless you. It seems like, if you really knew the God who understands the physics of our existence, you would operate a little more cautiously, a little more compassionately, a little less like you are the center of the universe."p 38

"If I weren't a Christian, and I kept seeing Christian leaders on television more concerned with money, fame, and power than with grace, love and social justice, I wouldn't want to believe in God at all."p 28

"The very scary thing about religion, to me, is that people actually believe God is who they think He is. By that I mean they have Him all figured out, mapped out....dissected and put into jars on the shelf."p 20

Blue Like Jazz- Donald Miller

"Too much of our time is spent trying to chart God on a grid, and too little is spent allowing our hearts to feel awe. By reducing Christian spirituality to a formula, we deprive our hearts of wonder." p 205

"I think we have two choices in the face of such big beauty: terror or awe. And this is precisely why we attempt to chart God, because we want to be able to predict Him, to dissect Him...We reduce Him to math so we don't have to fear Him, and yet the Bible tells us fear is the appropriate response, that it is the beginning of wisdom...I stood on the edge of the Grand Canyon once, behind a railing, and though I was never going to fall off the edge, I feared the thought of it." p 205

"Many of our attempts to understand Christian faith have only cheapened it." p 202

"It is hard for us to admit we have a sin nature because we live in this system of checks and balances. If we get caught, we will be punished. But that doesn't make us good people; it only makes us subdued." p 18

Fools Gold- John MacArthur

"By the way, true worship is not something that can be stimulated artificially. A bigger, louder band and more sentimental music might do more to stir peoples emotions. But that is not genuine worship." p38

"The showman's ability to lure people in should not impress us more than the Bible's ability to transform lives"p 41

"There are plenty of gifted communicators in the modern evangelical movement [who] massage people's egos and focus on fairly insipid subjects...
Like the ubiquitous Plexiglas lecterns from which these messages are delivered, such preaching is lightweight and without substance, cheap and synthetic, leaving little more than an ephemeral impression on the mind of the hearers." p36

"Choice- saturated, capitalistic, American Christians [need to] discern the difference between seeking God's kingdom and building their own." p 165

"Truth be told, Jesus never spoke in terms of a one-time decision that you make about Him but rather exhorted His hearers to follow Him wholeheartedly for all of their lives. Christ was calling people to a life that continually confesses Him before men. We do not find in Scripture that the test of discipleship is a one time decision." p134

"Mindless emotionalism, often hyped up by repetition and "letting go", comes closer to the paganism of the Gentiles (cf Matt 6:7) than to any form of biblical worship." p126

"The music has been carefully and purposefully brought to this intense emotional peak. One senses that this is the whole purpose of the congregational singing-to elevate emotions to a white-hot fervor. The more intense the feeling, the more people are convinced they have truly "worshiped"." p 120

"When we look at contemporary ministry, we see programs and methods that are the fruit of human invention, the offspring of opinion polls and neighborhood surveys, and other pragmatic artifices. Church growth experts have in essence wrested control of the church's agenda from her true Head, the Lord Jesus Christ." p37

A Generous Orthodoxy- Brian McLaren

"Has [Christ] become (I shudder to ask this) less our Lord, and more our mascot?"p86

"How many of us have used the cross in Caesar's way, to dominate, rather than in Jesus' way, to liberate?" p 91

"Is it any surprise that with this understanding of salvation, churches tend to become gatherings of self-interested people who gather for mutual self-interest--constantly treating the church as a purveyor of religious goods and services, constantly shopping and "trading up" for churches that can "meet my needs" better?"p118

"This competitive Protestant religious market eventually spawned a kind of infomercial mentality, where each group advertised its unique features, seeking loyal customers for their religious products and services." p137

"To the degree they preoccupy themselves with the question of who's right , to the exclusion of considering whether they are truly good (as in bearing good fruit) they're destined to fade, wither, fail. To the degree that they have sold their spiritual birthright for a political ideology, they must repent; neither left nor right leads to the higher kingdom." p154

"We must, therefore, never underestimate our power to be wrong when talking about God, when thinking about God, when imagining God...language can be a window through which one glimpses God, but never a box in which God can be contained." p170,171

"I believe that we must be always reforming, not because we've got it wrong and were closer and closer to finally getting it right, but because our mission is ongoing and our context is dynamic. For this viewpoint "getting it right" is beside the point; the point is being and doing good as followers of Jesus in our unique time and place, fitting in with the ongoing story of God's saving love for Planet Earth." p 214

"Believing as I do that doctrinal distinctives are a lot like cigarettes, the use of which often leads to a hard to break Protestant habit that is hazardous to spiritual health (and that makes the breath smell bad)..."p217

"While some Protestants seem to let Jesus be Savior, but promote Paul to Lord and Teacher, Anabaptists have always interpreted Paul through Jesus, and not the reverse." p231

"Just as the early Christians could not imagine the gospel outlasting the Roman Empire, 19th century Evangelicals couldn't imagine the gospel outlasting modernity, the empire of Scientism, consumerism, and individualism." p268

"Given the chance, would Christianity eradicate every vestige of the world's other religions?" p286

"We must be open to the perpetual possibility that our received understandings of the gospel may be faulty, imbalanced, poorly nuanced, or downright warped and twisted." p 294

"I am more and more convinced that Jesus didn't come merely to start another religion to compete in the marketplace of other religions. If anything, I believe he came to end standard competitive religion (which Paul called the law) by fulfilling it; I believe He came to open up something beyond religion- a new possibility, a realm, a domain, a territory of the spirit that welcomes everyone but requires everyone to think again and become like little children" p299

"A generous orthodoxy must look back on our first 2,000 years of Christian history and face our failures, our atrocities, our abdications, our cowardice, our complicity, our betrayal of Jesus, and say to ourselves, "Never Forget"." p 305

"True prophets (those who bring a new word from God to assist in the current process of emergence) are crucified; false prophets (those who promise shortcuts that will cause regression or stagnation) are made rich and famous. The process is messy." p 323

"In Christian theology, this anti-emergent thinking is expressed in systematic theologies that claim (overtly, covertly, or unconsciously) to have final orthodoxy nailed down, freeze-dried, and shrink wrapped forever." p 325

God is Pro-Choice

In this overheated political landscape, where Christians often blur the lines between their moral convictions and scriptural mandates, we have heard all too often that abortion is banned in the Bible and considered blatant murder. However, I intend to show here that if God was not Pro-Choice, we would all be going to Hell.

To date the great dispute between Pro-Lifers and Pro-Choicers has been over precisely what time the zygote/fetus/sperm-egg becomes a Human-Being with a spirit, soul, and inherent right to stay alive. However all this issue does is distract from the real crux of the debate: Does a parent have the authority (right) to end their child's life?

What is fascinating about the Evangelicals is how quickly they aligned with the political right on this issue. It was assumed from the beginning that ending any living thing's livingness was by definition murder, especially if that living thing is a human being. However the Biblical view of murder is, and has always been, quite different from the modern view of murder.

In the Old Testament we see God commanding the Israelite army to kill unarmed citizens of conquered cities, something that by today's standards would be murder, but that Christians vehemently argue was not -because it was one nation versus another nation in war, which requires different rules. We even see God commanding the Israelites to kill women and children, and to commit systematic genocide, which again would be murder by our international laws, but the Christians defend it as an act of war, and casualties in war are not murders.

In the Old Testament we see citizens being commanded to pick up rocks and execute criminals in the streets without trial or verdict, something that by every civilized nation's standards would be murder, but Christian's are quick to point out that this was a primitive Justice system -the society was dealing punishment to social offenders, something that is Just in any culture of law and order. We see God himself striking down countless people, even innocent ones, which looks from every angle like murder, but Christians again defend this as Just -since God is Master of all things it is His prerogative to give life, or take it away.

C.S. Lewis once explained this phenomenon of death in the Bible and the appearance of foul play like this, "All killing is not murder any more than all sex is adultery." Murder is a Sin, a criminal act in direct disobedience to God's law. It happens when one human kills, without proper justification, another human in cold blood.

When Cain killed Abel, it was murder. When David killed Uriah, it was murder. They were individuals acting without prior justification against another. However when the Israelites killed their enemies, even their women and children, it was merely an act of war (justified killing according to the conditions of one nation at war with another). When Hebrews picked up stones and executed a rapist in the streets, it was merely a justice system being dealt out not by a mob, but by conscientious citizens acting as agents of the society (the equivalent of citizen's arrest today).

Nobody questions that these killings were not murders, a fact only bolstered by God having commanded people to do them. Since God is perfectly Holy, it is impossible for him to sin, or to command others to sin, so its impossible for these actions to be murder if God commanded them. They may have become illegal by man's standards of law and order, but by God's standards of sin and righteousness, they are not considered murder, or else he would have never allowed them in the first place.

By God commanding these occasions of killing, it is implied that the person doing the killing has some sort of authority to do so, otherwise it would clearly be murder. For instance, a nation at war has authority to destroy the people it is at war with; a society has authority to deal justice against criminal offenders. These groups already had the authority to kill the people they killed, God's command for them to do so wasn't an act of giving them permission, it was an act of direction. We know this because God only directs these killings using people who already had the authority to kill their target: a sovereign nation, a justice system.

This all leads us to the third and final time that God has commanded somebody to exercise their preexisting authority to kill somebody else: Abraham and Issac.

Just as in the other examples, God commands Abraham to kill (not murder) his son. What's fascinating is that this (by the contemporary Evangelical's assumption) is so blatantly murder that of course Abraham would have cried out against God and questioned the directive -but Abraham was silent. The same Abraham who argued with God to defend the homosexual deviants of Sodom and Gomorrah didn't even utter one word to defend the life of his own son! Amazing!

How is it that Abraham, the progenitor of the chosen people, could have so much trust in God that he was willing to commit murder in order to obey Him? How did it not register in Abraham's mind that God cannot possibly be "Holy" and also command him to murder in His name? Despite these obvious contradictions, Abraham unflinchingly drags his son to the altar and raises his knife....

The answer to these questions is obvious: Abraham didn't oppose God because it wasn't murder to begin with! Israel had authority to vanquish her enemies, so God directed that authority toward certain nations. A society had authority to capitally punish offenders, so God directed that punishment toward certain crimes. A Father had the authority to end his own child's life, and God was acknowledging that authority in His directive to Abraham.

If this were not the case, then this story of Abraham and Issac is the only account in all of recorded history where God has blatantly commanded somebody to sin - a situation that would raise countless questions about the validity of God's claim to holiness, and the nature of sin itself. Suddenly it isn't a sin to cheat on your wife if you think God told you to, or rob a bank if you felt lead. But we know better than that. God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He can allow a person to be tempted, even play a role in causing the temptation, but God by the nature of being Holy, cannot command somebody to break His own commands. Its a paradox we will never have to face, and must readily surrender in this Abraham/Issac instance -God didn't command Abraham to do something that would have ordinarily been sinful.

Abraham had the authority to end his own child's life, that is why it was such a great test for him. What role would faith play if God had asked Abraham to murder Lot? Or an Egyptian King? The sacrifice came in Abraham's inherent ability to surrender his son's life by his own hand, to throw away his most cherished possession. Parent's have authority over their children's lives, even to the point of death. Its a point clearly illustrated in scripture, and nowhere disputed.

If this were not so, then our salvation is false as well.

Abraham's test of faith is the archetypal story for the crucifixion of Jesus, the center for the Christian theory of salvation. Just as Abraham had the choice to kill his own son as a sacrifice for God, so God had the choice to kill His son as a sacrifice for man.

"For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son." The story of Christ is not that Jesus willingly surrendered His life on the cross. Its that God willingly gave His own son up to death. The fact that Jesus, like Issac, willingly walked up the hill to the altar is the side plot, the climax however is a Father's choice. You cannot give what isn't yours to begin with. On a certain level, we all know that our children are our own.

There is another dimension to this that few have taken seriously: what could possibly kill God? Nails? Lashings? A spear? Could mere suffocation stamp out the life of the Son of God? The man healed lepers and rose the dead from the grave. He survived for 40 days without food or water. He walked on water and calmed storms, the material world bowed before his ever whim. There is no knife sharp enough, no cross painful enough, to kill the Holy of Holies.

Only one thing could have killed Jesus, only one thing could be strong enough to choke the life out of the Son of God...the hands of the Father. It was the Father who killed his son, and so sacrificed him for the souls of men. Just as Abraham lowered the knife upon Issac, so God rained death upon His beloved Son, only no angel dare stay His hand. "For God so loved the world..."

Yes Jesus died willingly, yes Jesus surrendered his spirit, but consider in what context. Was it not only hours earlier in a garden that he wept and sweat blood over what his Father was commanding him to do? Did he not beg for another way? There can be no question that Jesus wanted anything but the cross, it is part of his incredible story that he obeyed his Father despite this. But regardless, it was his Father who made the choice to give up Jesus' life.

While Jesus and Issac were the sacrifices, they were not the one's doing the sacrificing. Jesus and Issac look up at the familiar hands descending upon them, the hands that had taught them to walk, to eat, to create, now striking down toward them with a force to end their lives..."Father..." they whimper as they watch the horror, "why have you forsaken me?"

Something cannot be forsaken if it was not at one point owned. I am able to forsake my wealth, because its mine to use or to throw away. In fact that is the very definition of forsake, to cast away. How can you throw away what you were not already holding? God was able to forsake His son, able to choose death for His son, because it was within His authority as a Father to do so. The same authority that was implied by God commanding Abraham to kill Issac, that was the great sacrifice, to throw away something that belongs to you.

God is Pro-Choice, and I know this because God already made that choice. If a parent has no right to end their child's life, no authority over them at all, then the story of Christianity is a hoax, and our Jesus is not a savior or a martyr, but the victim of a cruel and twisted crime.

If a Father does not have authority over the life of his own son, then Abraham had no right to kill Issac, and the greatest threat to God's divinity lies in His own command to Abraham, a command to commit murder, a command to commit sin. Even if God was determined to stay Abraham's hand, Holiness does not self-defeat, it does not command its own betrayal. If Abraham did not already have the authority to surrender his own child's life, then God's command that he do so disproves God's very goodness. This would be the mother of all blunders.

The truth is that Abraham did have authority over his son's life, just as Israel had the right to punish criminals or lay waste to enemies -God has given them these authorities for their use.
The truth is our very salvation is based on the fact that God had the authority as a Father to put his own son to death as a payment for our sin.

The authority of a parent to end their child's life is complicated and does not likely come without restrictions. One quickly notes that Abraham had a reason to kill his son, just as the state only kills guilty criminals, and not on a whim. And a nation only kills their enemies, and not just any group of people who are inconvenient. Its likely that certain contexts must be present for a parent to exercise their authority, but what cannot be disputed is that they have that authority.

Christians can still oppose abortion. They can still decide that life is a value presented in the bible, and that they would like to see that value bear fruit in America's laws. Christian's can have any number of reasons to ask the state to limit or outlaw abortion, and if this is their conviction, let them pursue these ends to the glory of God. However, let them also understand that they are asking the secular power of Government to impose upon themselves an authority that scripture clearly says they as parents have. Its like asking the Government to outlaw spanking, when the Bible tells us we can choose the rod to discipline our child. Or asking the Government to outlaw alcohol, when the Bible is clear that a person is completely within their boundaries to have a responsible drink. If you feel more comfortable having the restrictions, by all means fight for them, but you should do so with full knowledge that you seek to limit the authority given to parents by God Himself.

Is abortion a Holy thing? Of course not. I myself am politically Pro-Life, I believe that Abortion is a medieval thing and that our country is above killing 40 million unborn citizens, for whatever reason. However I refuse to Lord scripture over Pro-Choicers and support the harassment of Abortion clinics and those who are considering it. Especially when that harassment finds it's justification in the over-simplified and over-used "Thou shalt not murder". I believe that we must submit ourselves to what the Bible says, and not use the Bible to support our own views. I fear that the Pro-Life Evangelicals have done exactly that.

At the very least the reader of this article should understand that Abortion is a clouded issue in scripture. Its something that is not spoken to directly, and something we pretend to have very clear commands on. However if this Biblical Pro-Choice perspective has accomplished anything, let it be to shed doubt on the certainties we take for granted, and the things we think we have pegged in the word. Even if you think you have found holes in the above argument, you must admit that there is at least some discussion that needs to take place over what the Bible says about this issue, and how arrogantly the Evangelical Pro-Lifers have touted their supportive scripture without giving ear to the whole bible, or even humbling themselves before the word to ask honestly what it says. They came to it with their conclusions, and got back what they already had- in this way scripture is more a mirror than a window.

Part of the point of this essay is to be a caricature of how the Bible is used with little to no real humility. One assumes that they can nail down truth, find the right things, and then present them as a newly formed spiritual law. Part of emergent Christianity is to overcome these temptations, and to have a little fear and trembling in the way we read scripture.

Clarification:
I thought to make this section a separate post, but realized it was most appropriate to drop it here where it will make the most sense. The above argument, and its confident explanation, is an attempt to balance a scale that has been tilted long in only one direction. My sincerest belief about abortion is that it is among the many issues that we do not find a clear opinion from scripture on, and it is impossible to make such forthright determinations on it, such as calling it a sin, or claiming that God is actually Pro-Choice.

My attempt was to demonstrate how easy it is to make one's argument by slanting scripture in their direction, and then accusing the other side of being disingenious. As I said at the end of the essay, it is a caricature. My hope is that people will realize that there are many issues where God has not given us a clear statement, and it is wrong for us to impose an opinion on the word, or claim to bring one about when no clear statement exists. I feel like that is bullying the writer's words, using them as an incharitable tool that only hurts, and never heals.

Update: I was reading through John, and stumbled upon an old verse that I knew, but had forgotten.

John 10:17-18

"The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father."

Another good one, John 14:31

"but the world must learn that I love the Father and that I do exactly what my Father has commanded me."

Christian Charity

Christian Charity Raising Money To Feed Non-Gay Famine Victims

Im not one of those "Love thy neighbor" Christians

This is an article that was posted on The Onion and I found it amazing. Here is the original link for it.

I'm Not One Of Those 'Love Thy Neighbor' Christians

By Janet Cosgrove
Christian
November 19, 2008 | Issue 44•47

Everybody has this image of "crazy Christians" based on what they hear in the media, but it's just not true. Most Christians are normal, decent folks. We don't all blindly follow a bunch of outdated biblical tenets or go all fanatical about every bit of dogma. What I'm trying to say is, don't let the actions of a vocal few color your perceptions about what the majority of us are like.

Like me. I may be a Christian, but it's not like I'm one of those wacko "love your neighbor as yourself " types.

God forbid!

I'm here to tell you there are lots of Christians who aren't anything like the preconceived notions you may have. We're not all into "turning the other cheek." We don't spend our days committing random acts of kindness for no credit. And although we believe that the moral precepts in the Book of Leviticus are the infallible word of God, it doesn't mean we're all obsessed with extremist notions like "righteousness" and "justice."

My faith in the Lord is about the pure, simple values: raising children right, saying grace at the table, strictly forbidding those who are Methodists or Presbyterians from receiving communion because their beliefs are heresies, and curing homosexuals. That's all. Just the core beliefs. You won't see me going on some frothy-mouthed tirade about being a comfort to the downtrodden.

I'm a normal Midwestern housewife. I believe in the basic teachings of the Bible and the church. Divorce is forbidden. A woman is to be an obedient subordinate to the male head of the household. If a man lieth down with another man, they shall be taken out and killed. Things everybody can agree on, like the miracle of glossolalia that occurred during Pentecost, when the Apostles were visited by the Holy Spirit, who took the form of cloven tongues of fire hovering just above their heads. You know, basic common sense stuff.

But that doesn't mean I think people should, like, forgive the sins of those who trespass against them or anything weird like that.

We're not all "Jesus Freaks" who run around screaming about how everyone should "Judge not lest ye be judged," whine "Blessed are the meek" all the time, or drone on and on about how we're all equal in the eyes of God! Some of us are just trying to be good, honest folks who believe the unbaptized will roam the Earth for ages without the comfort of God's love when Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior returns on Judgment Day to whisk the righteous off to heaven.

Now, granted, there are some Christians on the lunatic fringe who take their beliefs a little too far. Take my coworker Karen, for example. She's way off the deep end when it comes to religion: going down to the homeless shelter to volunteer once a month, donating money to the poor, visiting elderly shut-ins with the Meals on Wheels program—you name it!

But believe me, we're not all that way. The people in my church, for the most part, are perfectly ordinary Americans like you and me. They believe in the simple old-fashioned traditions—Christmas, Easter, the slow and deliberate takeover of more and more county school boards to get the political power necessary to ban evolution from textbooks statewide. That sort of thing.

We oppose gay marriage as an abomination against the laws of God and America, we're against gun control, and we fervently and unwaveringly believe that the Jews, Muslims, and all on earth who are not born-again Pentecostalists are possessed by Satan and should be treated as such.

When it comes down to it, all we want is to see every single member of the human race convert to our religion or else be condemned by a jealous and wrathful God to suffer an eternity of agony and torture in the Lake of Fire!

I hope I've helped set the record straight, and I wish you all a very nice day! God bless you!

Spurgeon Quotes

Chapter 1: The minister's Self-Watch.

“It is not great talents God blesses so much as likeness to Jesus”.

“It is a terrible thing when the healing balm loses its efficacy through the blunderer who administers it. You all know the injurious effects frequently produced upon water through flowing along leaden pipes; even so the gospel itself, in flowing through men who are spiritually unhealthy, may be debased until it grows injurious to their hearers.”

“True and genuine piety is necessary as the first indispensable requisite; whatever “call” a man may pretend to have, if he has not been called to holiness, he certainly has not been called to the ministry.”

“Should we as a a nation be called to defend our hearths and homes, we should not send out our boys and girls with swords and guns to meet the foe, nether may the church send out every fluent novice or inexperienced zealot to plead for the faith. The fear of the Lord must teach the young man wisdom, or he is barred from the pastorate; the grace of God must mature his spirit, or he had better tarry till power be given him from on high.”

Chapter 2: The Call to Ministry

“The apostle says, 'Now then we are ambassadors for God;' but does not the very soul of the ambassadorial office lie in the appointment which is made by the monarch represented? An ambassador unsent would be a laughing-stock.”

“The first sign of the heavenly calling is an intense, all absorbing desire for the work. In order to a true call to the ministry there must be an irresistible, overwhelming craving and raging thirst for telling to others what God has done to our own souls.”

“'Do not enter the ministry if you can help it'...for a man so filled with God would utterly weary of any pursuit but that for which his inmost soul pants.”

“This desire should be one which continues with us, a passion which bears the test of trial, a longing from which it is quite impossible for us to escape, though we may have tried to do so; a desire, in fact, which grows more intense by the lapse of years, until it becomes a yearning, a pining, a famishing, to proclaim the Word.”

“If a man be called to preach, he will be endowed with a degree of speaking ability, which he will cultivate and increase.”

“Do not run about inviting yourselves to preach here and there; be more concerned about your ability than your opportunity, and more earnest about your walk with God than about either. The sheep will know the Godsent shepherd; the porter of the fold will open to you, and the flock will know your voice.”

“That which finally evidences a proper call, is a correspondent opening in providence, by a gradual train of circumstances pointing out the means, the time, the place, of actually entering upon the work.”

“It is very difficult to restrain ourselves within the bounds of prudence here, when our zeal is warm: a sense of love of Christ upon our hearts, and a tender compassion for poor sinners, is ready to prompt us to break out too soon; but he that believeth shall not make haste.”

Chapter 3: The Preacher's Private Prayer

“All our libraries and studies are mere emptiness compared with our closets. We grow, we wax mighty, we prevail in private prayer.”

“Prayer, as a mental exercise, will bring many subjects before the mind, and so help in the selection of a topic, while as a high spiritual engagement it will cleanse your inner eye that you may see truth in the light of God.”

“Certain brethren aim at inspiration through exertion and loud shouting; but it does not come: some we have known to stop the discourse, and exclaim, 'God bless you,' and others gesticulate wildly, and drive their finger nails into their palms of their hands as if they were in convulsions of celestial ardor. Bah! The whole thing smells of the green-room and the stage. The getting up of fervor in hearers by the simulation of it in the preacher is a loathsome deceit to be scorned by honest men.”

Chapter 5: Sermons-Their Matter

“Brethren, weigh your sermons. Do not retail them by the yard, but deal them out by the pound. Set no store by the quantity of words which you utter, but strive to be esteemed for the quality of your matter.”

“We must throw all our strength of judgment, memory, imagination, and eloquence into the delivery of the gospel.”

“You should make your sermons like a loaf of bread, fit for eating, and in convenient form.”

“We must in these times say a great deal in a few words, but not too much, nor with too much amplification...One tenpenny nail driven home and clenched will be more useful than a score of tin-tacks loosely fixed, to be pulled out again in an hour.”

Chapter 6: On the Choice of Text

“Let us abhor all one-sidedness, all exaggeration of one truth and disparagement of another, and let us endeavor to paint the portrait of truth with balanced features and blended colors, lest we dishonor her by presenting distortion instead of symmetry, and a caricature for faithful copy.”

“Your pulpit preparations are your first business, and if you neglect these, you will bring no credit upon yourself or your office.”

Chapter 12: The Minister's Ordinary Conversation

“The bow, of course, must be at times unstrung, or else it will lose its elasticity; but there is no need to cut the string.”

“Salt is of no use in the box; it must be rubbed into the meat; and our personal influence must penetrate and season society...Our Master went to a wedding, and ate bread with publicans and sinners, and yet was far more pure than those sanctimonious Pharisees, whose glory was that they were separate from their fellowmen.”

“Give me the man around whom the children come, like flies around a honey-pot: they are first-class judges of a good man. When Solomon was tried by the Queen of Sheba, as to his wisdom, the rabbis tell us that she brought some artificial flowers with her, beautifully made and delicately scented, so as to be facsimiles of real flowers. She asked Solomon to discover which were artificial and which were real. The wise man bade his servants open the window, and when the bees came in they flew at once to the natural flowers, and cared nothing for the artificial. So you will find that children have their instincts, and discover very speedily who is their friend, and depend upon it the children's friend is one who will be worth knowing.”

“An individual who has no geniality about him had better be an undertaker, and bury the dead, for he will never succeed in influencing the living.”

“But if you are drawn into controversy, use very hard arguments and very soft words. Frequently you cannot convince a man by tugging at his reason, but you can persuade him by winning his affections.”

Chapter 21: Earnestness: Its Marring and Maintenance

“In many instances ministerial success is traceable almost entirely to an intense zeal, a consuming passion for souls, and an eager enthusiasm in the cause of God, and we believe that in every case, other things being equal, men prosper in the divine service in proportion as their hearts are blazing with holy love. 'The God that answereth by fire, let him be God'; and the man who has the tongue of fire, let him be God's minister.”

“Moreover, for the sake of our church members, and converted people, we must be energetic, for if we are not zealous, neither will they be. It is not in order of nature that rivers should run uphill, and it does not often happen that zeal rises from the pew to the pulpit.”

“If the prophet leaves his heart behind him when he professes to speak in the name of God, what can he expect but that the ungodly around him will persuade themselves that there is nothing in his message, and that his commission is a farce.”

“Be earnest, and you will seem to be earnest. A burning heart will soon find for itself a flaming tongue. To sham earnestness is one of the most contemptible of dodges for courting popularity; let us abhor the very thought. Go and be listless in the pulpit if you are so in your heart. Be slow in speech, drawling in tone, and monotonous in voice, if so you can best express your soul; even that would be infinitely better than to make your ministry a masquerade and yourself an actor.”

“If non-success humbles us it is well, but if it discourages us, and especially if it leads us to think bitterly of more prosperous brethren, we ought to look about us with grave concern.”

“Never say 'it is enough', nor accept the policy of 'rest and be thankful.' Do all you possibly can, and then do a little more.”

Kierkegaard Quotes

From "The Journals"

"God creates everything out of nothing -and everything that God will use he first reduces to nothing."

"The only possible exception [to having chosen Christ] would be: that you might have possibly been saved another way. To that he cannot answer. It is as though one were to say to someone in love, 'yes, but might you have fallen in love with another girl'; to which he would have to answer: 'there is no answer to that, for I only know that she is my love. The moment a lover can answer that objection he is eo ipso not a lover; and if a believer can answer that question he is eo ipso not a believer."

"Paganism never gets nearer the truth than Pilate: What is truth? And with that crucifies it."

"The idea of philosophy is mediation-Christianity's is the paradox."

"A man who cannot seduce men cannot save them either."

From "Philosophical Fragments"
"One cannot seek for what he knows, and it seems equally impossible to seek for what one does not know."

From "Postscript"

"But who is this systematic thinker? Aye, it is he who is outside of existence and yet in existence, who is in his eternity forever complete, and yet includes all existence within himself-it is God."

"And the principle that not only he is in want who desires something he does not have, but also he who desires the continued possession of what he already has."

"If a dancer could leap very high, we should admire him. But if he tried to give the impression that he could fly, let laughter single him out for suitable punishment, even though it might be true that he could leap as high as any dancer ever had done. Leaping is the accomplishment of a being essentially earthly, one who respects the earth's gravitational force, since the leaping is only momentary. But flying carries a suggestion of being emancipated from telluric conditions, a privilege reserved for winged creatures, and perhaps also shared by the inhabitants of the moon-and there perhaps the System will first find its true readers [lunatics]."

"On the contrary, the subjective acceptance is precisely the decisive factor; and an objective acceptance of Christianity is Paganism or thoughtlessness."

"In this way Christianity protests every form of objectivity. It desires that the subject should be infinitely concerned about himself."

"Devoutness inheres in subjectivity, nobody ever becomes devout objectively."

"If one who lives in the midst of Christianity goes up to the house of God, the house of the true God, with the true conception of God in his knowledge, and prays, but prays in a false spirit; and one who lives in an idolatrous community prays with the entire passion of the infinite, although his eyes rest upon the image of an idol: where is there most truth? The one prays in truth to God through he worships an idol; the other prays falsely to the true God, and hence worships in fact an idol."

"In the case of a mathematical proposition the objectivity is given, but for this reason the truth of such a proposition is also an indifferent truth. But the above definition of truth is an equivalent expression for faith. Without risk there is no faith. Faith is precisely the contradiction between the infinite passion of the individual's inwardness and the objective uncertainty. If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe."

"The eternal truth has come into being in time: this is the paradox"

"For without risk there is no faith, and the greater the risk, the greater the faith; the more objective security, the less inwardness (for inwardness is precisely subjectivity), and the less objective security, the more profound the possible inwardness."

"The absurd is precisely by its objective repulsion the measure of the intensity of faith in inwardness. Suppose a man who wishes to acquire faith; let the comedy begin. He wishes to have faith, but he wishes also to safeguard himself by means of an objective inquiry and its approximation-process. What happens? With the help of the approximation-process the absurd becomes something different: it becomes probable, it becomes increasingly probable, it becomes extremely and emphatically probable. Now he is ready to believe it, and he ventures to claim for himself that he does not believe as shoemakers and tailors and simple folk believe, but only after long deliberation. Now he is ready to believe it; and lo, now it has become precisely impossible to believe it. Anything that is almost probable, or probable, or extremely and emphatically probable, is something he can almost know, or as good as know, or extremely and emphatically almost know-but it is impossible to believe. For the absurd is the object of faith, and the only object that can be believed."

"Christianity is no doctrine concerning the unity of the divine and the human, or concerning the identity of the subject and object; nor is it any other of the logical transcriptions of Christianity. If Christianity were a doctrine, the relationship to it would not be one of faith, for only an intellectual type of relationship can correspond to a doctrine. The realm of faith is thus not a class for numskulls in the sphere of the intellectual, or an asylum for the feeble-minded. Faith constitutes a sphere all by itself, and every misunderstanding of Christianity may at once be recognized by its transforming it into a doctrine, transferring it to the sphere of the intellectual. The maximum of attainment within the sphere of the intellectual, namely, to become completely indifferent as to the reality of the teacher, is in the sphere of faith at the opposite end of the scale. The maximum of attainment within the sphere of faith is to become infinitely interested in the reality of the teacher..."

"Neither the bird in its cage, nor the fish on the shore, nor the invalid on his sickbed, nor the prisoner in the narrowest cell, is so confined as he who is imprisoned in the conception of God; for just as God is omnipresent, so the imprisoning conception is also everywhere and in every moment."

"Humility. What sort of humility? The humility that frankly admits its human lowliness with humble cheerfulness before God, trusting that God knows all this better than man himself."

"Passion and reflection are generally exclusive of one another...even he who is lost through passion has not lost as much as he who lost passion, for the former had the possibility."

"He who with quiet introspection is honest before God and concerned for himself, God saves from being in error, through he be never so simple, him God leads by the suffering of inwardness to the truth. But meddlesomeness and noise are signs of error, and signs of an abnormal condition, like wind in the stomach."

From "Training in Christianity"

"In an impermissible and unlawful way people have become knowing about Christ, for the only permissible way is to be believing."

"By degrees, as this came to be accounted wisdom, all pith and vigor was distilled out of Christianity; the tension of the paradox was relaxed, one became a Christian without noticing it, and without in the least noticing the possibility of offense. One took possession of Christ's doctrine, turned it about and pared it down, while He of course remained surety for its truth, He whose life had such stupendous results in history. All became as simple as thrusting a foot into the stocking. And quite naturally, because in that way Christianity became paganism."

"Talent is to be ranked according to the sensation it produces; Genius according to the opposition it arouses (religious character according to the scandal it gives)."

From "Attack on Christendom"

"'Grace' cannot possibly stretch so far, one thing it must never be used for, it must never be used to suppress or to diminish the requirement; for in that case "grace" would turn Christianity upside down."

"But gradually the human race came to itself and, shrewd as it is, it saw that to do away with Christianity by force was not practicable--'So let us do it by cunning,' they said. 'We are all Christians, and so Christianity is eo ipso abolished.'"

"In the magnificent cathedral the Honorable and Right Reverend, the elect favorite of the fashionable world, appears before an elect company and preaches with emotion upon the text he himself choose: 'God hath chosen the base things of the world, and the things that are despised.' And nobody laughs."

"Wherever there is a cause to be promoted, an undertaking to be carried out, an idea to be introduced--one can always be sure that when he who really is the man for it, the right man, who in a higher sense has and must have command, he who has seriousness and can give to the cause the seriousness it truly has--one can always be sure that when he comes to the spot, he will find there before him a genial company of twaddlers who, under the name of seriousness, lie around and bungle things by wanting to serve the cause, promote the undertaking, introduce the idea; a company of twaddle’s who of course regard the fact that the person in question will not make common cause with them (precisely indicating his seriousness) as a certain proof that he lacks

"Up comes a priest, a priest who jumps up whenever he sees a five-dollar bill. And thereupon the priest celebrates the Holy Communion, from which the tradesman, or rather both tradesmen (both he priest and the business man) return home to their customary way of life, only that one of them (the priest) cannot be said to return home to his customary way of life, for in fact he had never left it, but rather had been functioning as a tradesman."

[About Priests] "Their whole business is based upon living off the fact that others are sacrificed; their Christianity is to receive sacrifices. If it were proposed to them that they themselves should be sacrificed, they would regard it as a strange and unchristian demand, conflicting violently with the wholesome doctrine of the New Testament, which they would prove with such colossal learning that the span of life of no individual man would suffice for studying all this through."

"The fact that one believes can be proved in only one way: by being willing to suffer for one's faith. And the degree of one's faith is proved only by the degree of one's willingness to suffer for one's faith."

"No, the proof that something is truth from the willingness to suffer for it can only be advanced by one who himself is willing to suffer for it. The priest's "proof"- proving the truth of Christianity by the fact that he takes money for it, profits by, lives off of, being steadily promoted, with a family, lives off of the fact that others have suffered--is a self contradiction; Christianly regarded, it is fraud."

"Thou plain man! The Christianity of the New Testament is infinitely high; but observe that it is not high in such a sense that it has to do with the difference between man and man with respect to intellectual capacity, etc. No, it is for all. Everyone, absolutely everyone, if he absolutely wills it, if he will absolutely hate himself, will absolutely put up with everything, suffer everything--then is this infinite height attainable to him." seriousness! I say, when the right man comes he will find things thus."

The Last Word

Christianity is changing with the world, and while change for many of us is scary, its something that we should be used to by now, and almost always realize is for the better.

I believe in a Christianity that is fused into the red letters of Jesus, that is slow to anger and quick to listen, that is humble and genuine and so focused on saving the very least of these, that it is often mistaken to be a tribe of drunkards and sinners as it is so often seen anywhere these sorts can be found. I believe in a Christianity that unites the many denominations, the many unique attributes and theologies that color the cells of this body, into one glorious tapestry of complexity, sincerity, and unity. I believe that the best of our faith, the most remarkable things we will accomplish in our King's name, are yet to come. I believe in hope.

I think Christianity has cornered itself with the emphasis we have always put on our thoughts, and so little put on our actions. The treachery of the Reformation cut deep wounds that made us afraid to do things that align with our faith, despite Jesus clearly commanding them. So entrenched in our theological warfare, that we consciously chose to ignore our King, for no other reason than he seemed to align with our enemies.

Modernity has taught me that "truth" is something tentative at best. Consider the "truth" of Journalistic objectivity, where no two people can agree on any one stated "fact" entirely dependent on which network it was gleaned from. There are countless other examples, especially in theology, which have lead me to conclude that while "Absolute" truth exists, we are far from capable of attaining it, or discerning it in any potent portion. The entirety of our faith is dependent upon our feebleness at the feet of a Father, who must become truth so that we may, in our finitude, come to know it. That truth was Jesus Christ.

For me, there is a new world ahead. A world where Abortion, Gay marriage, and anti-intelligence no longer color the "Christian Worldview". A world where we can be open about our doubts, and even more open about our convictions. A world where a Christian isn't so named for what he thinks, but for what he is- heart, soul, and mind. A world where the enemy is no longer "them", and the hero "us", but instead we see both the villain and the victor in ourselves.

Obama won today, and I made a concious choice to vote for him. The most vehement opposition I faced about my selection was from Christians, who were convinced that I was supporting either the anti-Christ, or that I had no faith at all. For me, in a special sort of way, Obama's victory is my victory. Tomorrow I will return to those same red, angry faces that were apalled at my choice, and they will likely mourn their great loss, and the impending doom of their republic, but I choose to celebrate the creation of something new. I cannot support a government where Christians are the decision makers, and exist only to promote and extend their own existence. Instead, I saw in Obama a chance to still obey scripture (caring for the poor, extending peace to your enemies) while taking a chance of breaking away from the party that claimed to own my faith. It was for me, a bold step toward independence, and toward realizing who I am, and who God has called me to be.

Thank you to the many who were my conversation partners in this theological, and political experiment. All you who challenged my views, supported my views, or merely respected my views. But to no other person can go greater thanks than to my Dad. In his mind he vehemently opposed my decision to support Barack, but refused to lose his son to ideas and jargon, nor stiffle my growth with an overbearing fathertude. He showed me what Christianity should be- a family, even with strident differences at almost every turn, still, a family that refuses to shun, harm, or neglect one another. His love for me exceeded his certainty that he was right, his compassion for his child overwhelmed the scorn of his judgement, and the dissapointment of his son's naivete. Love overpowered his highest confidences, and left him humbly offering his son a chance to be his own man. It reminds me of what Tertullian said, when he observed how Romans saw the Christians they were killing, "...but look how they love one another."

For me this election has been a process of becoming. Not becoming liberal or democrat, I'm honestly neither, but to become something entirely new, a new kind of Christian, evolved for just such a time as this. The journey isn't over, it never is, but I see now a special calling toward something God would like accomplished in my generation.

"Let us hope that the present and wasteful divisions among us are a disease of infancy. Never forget that we are the early Christians."
-C.S. Lewis

Fake Plants

I live in Nevada, an arid, dead, dusty, scorched, wasteland. A place where there is so little natural life, that its entirely likely nuclear waste will soon be stored here, in our endless desert of rocks and dirt. I was sitting on my porch today, reading a book, when I paused to think about what I was reading and reflect a little. I looked around and saw no less than 4 plants decorating my patio, a cherry tree off to the corner, several plants in baskets lining a small black shelf. I thought for a second at how plastic they were, how they were nice to look at, but provided no oxygen, no reality. Over the wall of my patio I saw a few pine trees, planted in my apartment complex to impress visitors into moving in. I thought about how much more real these were than my small, eternally lifeless decorations. However, just as soon as I had thought that, I realized that even these trees, and the grass that surrounded them, were fake. They didn't grow naturally in the low desert of Las Vegas, they had been planted there. Then meticulously and consistently the environment they were planted in manipulated so they could survive. Constantly they were dying and withering away, entire new patches of grass laid down to replace the uprooted brown eye-sores that had either burnt under the summer sun, or dried in the parched winter winds.

I started to think about what constitutes a "real" plant. My plastic patio plants didn't make the cut, nor dd the forced trees and grass that outlined my apartment building. I wondered at how people use plants to decorate, how we can manufacture nature into a pattern, into a place it doesn't belong. Grass and trees in the desert, gardens behind glass, planted on concrete. Even gardens, though beautiful and soothing, are not in many senses "real". They are the intended design of a gardener, of a person who professionally plants things where they would not have naturally occurred, in an order not observable in the natural world. Pruned and perfect, pleasing to the passer-by.

I think many of our churches are little more than the same. New plants are often fake and plastic, only trying to establish a brand and become a decoration for their members, having a building and a purpose, pretty walls and moving music. Other plants are manipulated and gardened. They may be semi-natural in that they are not so fake as their buisiness minded cousins, but they are far from real since they only follow the statistical instructions of seeker-sensitive how to's, or guide book outlines. They follow the steps precisely, and hope to establish some sort of forced presence where they would not have naturally grown, through landscaping they change their fragile climate to better suit their presence. Or worse, they try to only draw into themselves the resources they need to grow, and leave the rest of their environment, the poor, the minorities, the un-Christian, to rot in the desert sun. Gardens-pretty but unnatural, forced into a place against nature's will.

I have always found forests more moving, more awe-inspiring, more peaceful, than any other place. My patio's plastic plants offer me little solace when I think of how lifeless they are. The garden and landscaped world just outside my appartment seems forced and unnatural, only a reminder how little such things matter in a desert world. But forests are so powerful, so overwhelming. They have done naturally what thousands of gardeners over eons of effort could never do. They have created an eco system, a conglammeration of plants, all living and working together to create something beautiful, something powerful, something life giving. Oxygen comes from places such as these, and so does a rich scent of bio-harmony. Forests are the antithesis of gardens, which are carved out of lifelessness, and plastic plants, which are fake to begin with.

So I wonder what a church could learn from these three examples of "plants". One way of missing the point in my illustration would be to assume I mean that planting is easiest amongst friends, in places of Christian stronghold. Thats not what I mean. I mean to question the reality of garden plants, which can only exist to continue their own limited existence, and plastic plants, which are little more than decoration and exist to give us the feel-goods. It seems to me that there is something existential, something real about the forest, or the trees that run up and down non-desert states. They don't exist to exist, they don't exist to be looked at, they exist to give life, they were planted by God himself.

I'm starting to wonder if the best laid plans of mice and men aren't thwarted by God's own expansion project. If our attempts at gardening our plants into existence aren't mistakes to begin with. If our attempts to plant mere frauds to decorate the area aren't blasphemies. What if planting a church God's way meant letting Him plant it, whatever that means, where-ever that takes you. What if relying on the Holy Spirit meant you put as little effort as possible, a concious and difficult choice for the enterprising church planter, into the preparations and manipulations of the landscape, or themself, to ensure their existence. Sometimes I think we choke ourselves with so much preparation or manipulation of people and resources, instead of letting God handle it all. We think that plants won't occur without our gardens and our plastics, but we forget that the forests have been here forever, and somehow without our interference thrive. Sometimes I think our best efforts only get in the way of what God intends to do.

25"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? 26Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

28"And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' 32For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."

Matthew 6:25-34

Emerging Church Conference

I got an email today telling me that there was soon to be an Emerging Church Conference in Albuquerque New Mexico.

One question: Who's going with me?

I voted

I want to say a few things out loud, I will be brief, and I will leave it all here on the table.

First Im terrified of how closely faith and politics have intermingled in the last few decades. It kills me to see political figures "controlling" the Body of Christ, it conjures images of a marionette and a puppet master. I agree with Kierkegaard who said that Christians, by the very nature of their faith, are always in revolution, and cannot be controlled or contained by any person, or group of people. He called the result of that control "Christendom", and accused it of being a cooled down solid, instead of the white hot magma of Kingdom change Chrisitans are called to be. I refuse to surrender to any political party, person, or issue, and believe strongly that Christians are called to be a fire that dissolves the evil in this world, and cannot ever be controlled, not by a pope, not by a president. We are an unstoppable rebel force, and should never be caged by the ideas or convinctions of any small segment.

Second I think presidential elections do little to institute real change. I get that the Obama campaign's slogan is probably little more than that. I get that after the $700 Billion bailout, we have no chance of seing much of the social reform take place that he promised back in September. I see the slogans of both candidates, and really don't put much stock in them. My voting issue wasn't race, it wasn't age, it wasn't parties, it wasn't presence, it wasn't intelligence. Honestly my issue is just the poor, and the war. I think Obama takes the poor seriously, and I think his heart aches for the war casualities. I think McCain does too, but I also know there is still a chance he won't follow through with providing refuge on either of those issues, because of the constituency he serves, and the neo-con values of premptive strike, and small fiscal government. I see a good heart in McCain, and he would make an impressive leader. But I voted for Obama, because I feel like he can't walk away from those two major tenets of his platform, and his constituents will eat him alive if he does.

Part of me voted out of spite, and I'm a liar if I don't admit it. In 2004 I campaigned for George Bush, in the second closest election of all time, I fought for Bush in a battle ground state, making calls, going door to door, manning booths. I did it because I felt like my faith depended on it, I was made to believe that Bush wasn't the Republican candidate, he was the Christian candidate, and the other guy wanted to weed out Christian values forever. So I fought for Christ, and to my shame, watched with a smile as a President who ushered in death again took office. I was tricked I feel. More abortions than ever before have happened in the last 8 years, despite having the most conservative president in modern history. War casualities pile up, but we can't even begin to count the piles of bodies in other countries, or men, women and children we have killed in the name of freedom. My cousin is in the army, and in his 3rd tour in Iraq, and he hates himself, and our country now, for what we have done to the people "over there".

I felt lied to over the last four years, as I watched decision after decision happen with no reflection on scripture, or "what Jesus would do". I felt like I had been duped, and my faith used to deceive me for political purposes. I am quick to forgive the people who did that, and I am very thankful that McCain didn't take his campaign that far this time around, since he himself spoke out against that sort of thing in 2000. But I want the Republicans to see me, a guy who fought hard for them in a key state, who really resents the way they treated my sacred loyalty to Jesus, as if it was something they could direct on a whim. I don't want that to happen ever again, and I'm still ashamed for what I did in 2004. This vote, in a small way, is me saying "I'm sorry" to Jesus, though I know he doesn't endorse a candidate. Voting the other way this time is me freeing myself of any remaining shackle that a political institution may have on my faith.

Third I want to see "emergent" Christianity become something, and I mean now. I caught some of the "change we can believe in" riot over the last year, and a little bit of that "revolution" bug got into my system. Regardless of how much bull it all is, I liked that feeling, and I only remember feeling it once before: when I first read "A New Kind of Christian" by Brian McLaren. Emergent Chrisitanity has been on the verge for over a decade, the brightest lights in it are starting to become old hat, or maybe just old (no offense), and I don't see them passing on their torches, or raising up new leaders in a recognizable way. Yes they are publishing books, yes they are helping others to do so, but something more needs to happen. We cannot ever be satisfied with what we are doing. Some say that we need to slow down, that we dont want to "get ahead of God". My friends if we are right about the Kingdom values of God, and right about our critique of modern Chrisitanity, we are so far behind God that we can sprint the rest of our lives and never catch up. My heart burns to move forward! I feel a divine adrenaline pumping through me, begging me to use what energy has been given and grow a new and vibrant form of Chrisitanity, one that can be relevant to the world of today, and promise a better future to the world of tomorrow. I'm tired of sitting on my hands waiting for these ideas to come of age.

Maybe all this only points to myself. Perhaps I shouldn't be waiting for Tony Jones and Brian McLaren to sound some sort of trumpet, but perhaps I should be making moves here in Vegas. I don't know to be honest, but I do know that a while ago we put to vote what we would have Emergent become in 2009. I want to know the results of that vote. I want to know what is coming next.

The Great Emergence- Almost done

Im really thankful for this book, as it is now putting into perspective some of the things I have observed happening in Christianity. I still wish it hadn't (in my opinion) wasted so many chapters on recapping a scavenger hunt of happen-stance in efforts to cast validity on whats going on, but Im thankful that its starting to get to the point.

Im at the part where Tickle is using a four part quardrant to define North American Christianity, and has laid over that a crucifix type image of four ovals. In the middle she created swirling circles, on the outside corners she created darkened triangles, and in dashed concentric circles she created four spheres of emergence.

This is all getting a bit exciting as I read on, and I hope that everything comes to a head somewhere. But I want to observe some things (and maybe Tickle will cover these- or conspicuosly ignore them) that I am thinking about already.

1) The other "Greats" that occur every 500 years are centralized around definition. In the Schism it was one side, defined against the other. In the Reformation it was one side, defined against the other. Lines are drawn, and that is where the revolution comes out of. I notice that the only real "line" drawn in todays world is "Liberal" and "Conservative". Emergent writers often claim that emergence is the "third way" between them, and I think we are all hopeful that it is, but without definitions one cannot easily see how emergence makes its claim a reality. What we may see with the rumbling of the next "Great" epoch, may just be the final division of Liberal and Conservative Christianity. What if Emergence is just a break-away from "Evangelical-Conservatives" toward the left? Its difficult to counter that idea with more than anecdotal support when Emergence cannot be defined with any actual beliefs.

2) If we reject my first thought, then we confess that "emergence" which Tickle says isn't really named yet, is a reality and will soon solidify into a coherent body that challenges the status quo. The way Christianity did Judaism, the way Gregory did the Papal office, the way Eastern Orthodox did the Western Church, the way Protestants did the Catholics. So this new body must soon become real, and not only theory. At some point somebody has to nail something to a door somewhere, or fire that shot heard round the world. My question is this: Can somebody point to the frame of this body? More than ecumenism, more than rejection of modern frameworks. What the hell are we? Tickle only at the end of her book admits the reality of "postmodernity", which is awkward because for me, Postmodernity has been THE rallying cry of the Emergent Church. We reject Left and Right because we are beyond the modern framework- everything gets reinvisioned. But if thats who we are, why aren't we standing for it? Is it because "standing" is a modern idea, or because seeing emergence as rooted in postmodernity is really missing the point, and Tickle's methodical history of religious explosion is more the real describer of what this is?

In short- What defines us? And the answer "we are defined by a lack of definition" thing is really getting old fast. No revolution started from the "know nothing" party. We can't really take ourselves seriously when we only dress ourselves in invisible clothes-eventually everybody realizes your really just naked (and not in a good way, in a silly way).

And please don't give me a "thats the point" referendum. Nor any "you just dont get it" line. I ache when books like this get published and we all bristle to read them and find out who the hell it is we are, only to read that we need to establish that for ourselves. At some point something happens- somebody tell me what, somebody tell me who.

2 steps back...

I'm not fond of saying "I told you so"...but...

October Surprise

Further there was the Charlie Gibson incident, and the Katie Couric incident.

Then the Tina Fey mockeries.

The week McCain chose Sarah Palin for his Vice President, I had made some serious comments about how I thought that would effect women in politics. I felt she was unready, I felt she was not vetted, I felt she was two-steps back from Hillary's one step forward.

In short, I was right.

Give me Liberty or give me Freedom

Click Here to hear news story that inspired this post.

Liberty University of Virginia (my alma mater) is rallying its troops for the fight of a life-time. Its goal? To be the first University to be the deciding factor in a presidential election.

Virginia is a battle-ground state, and Liberty is a power-center of College students who are almost all voting republican. Liberty has decided to cancel classes on November 4th, and register every student living on campus, to ensure that Virginia remains red.

I have very strong convictions about the irony in all this. Eight years ago McCain gave a dilly of a speech that struck down Jerry Falwell (who founded Liberty) and Pat Robertson for mobilizing the religious of the right to interplay politics and faith. Sure it was at a time when they were painfully criticizing him and protecting George W. in the primary, but McCain had made some solid points about where he saw that sort of thing going.

Liberty's position in this election is just another symptom of something much larger, something that I think threatens the body of Christ. First it was the Moral Majority, then it was Pastors punditting from the pulpit, now its Christian Universities deciding presidential elections. I'm worried that Christianity may have made an unholy alliance with politicians.

I recognize that Brian McLaren has seen fit to use his celebrity to endorse Obama for 08. I recognize that he is not a Pastor anymore, vocationally, and that he is just being an activist. But what I am seeing isn't so much the tragedy of Christians taking political sides, as it is the now political definition of what a Christian is or should be. Whether its McLaren and Miller for Obama, or the late Falwell or Robertson for McCain- what is really happening is that arguments are being made from each side that a person who is following Christ will incorporate certain principles (shared by their candidate) which exemplify a Christian.

What bothers me about this is that we, as emergents, are supposed to be leaving alot of this behind, not just taking the other side. We are supposed to be ecumenical, and the response to 500 years of denominationalism and Christian definitional nuance. But I fear that we may only be playing into the moment, only fueling the fire. We are letting ourselves and our Christ be defined by party platforms, or we are showing how one candidate is more Christian than the other. This is a failure on our part, and I wonder what it looks like to ditch this attempt entirely.

What would it look like if a new kind of Christianity emerged that didn't play the political game. What would it look like if they worshiped God by abstaining from mere human ambitions. I get that part of emergence is being socially concerned and actively pursuing good, but shouldn't that stop short of lobbying for politicians and openly endorsing candidates?

What Liberty is doing isn't wrong, its the norm. And instead of standing up to this sort of thing and laying down our power of persuasion in the hope for a better future, absent of religio-politico corruption and ambition, we have only drawn our swords and taken up with the other side. How are we any different? We are deluded by the same lie: that we can harness the political machine to build an express way to God's Kingdom, and to accomplish God's goals. While that is, sometimes, and only partially, true- it is much more often vociferously false.

I think that if Dan Poole and Dr. Oliver were discussing this it would look like this:

Dan would draw a line in the sand and note how alot of Christians are on one side or the other in politics. He would ask which are really pursuing the Kingdom of God, which had the correct values from scripture: pro-life or social justice; fighting tyranny or healing the terrorized; preventing war by using it, or delaying war with diplomacy? Poole would look to Neo with moist, confused eyes. since politics had become so much apart of his modern faith. A good Christian, Dan would think, votes as God would have him do. 200 years of American democracy has taught us that about our faith. "So which is it?" Dan would ask. "Which side and which issues?"

Neo would shake his head and wave his hand above the line in the sand. "Its up here Dan", the good doctor would say, "its not about left or right, this guy or that guy. God is above man's politics. A new kind of Christian should not submit faith to elections, nor allow the journey to be defined by pundits and perspectives. These are modern fixtures in our thinking. Instead we should look beyond the next four years to the next four-thousand- not where our politics and politicians will be, but where will the Kingdom of God in the hearts and minds of men be? Modernity went hand in hand with democracy, because democracy was the invention of the rational mind. But as we have discussed, God is beyond logic, beyond reason. His ways are higher than ours, and so the way of the cross is not on either side of the line, but hovering above it. A new way, for a new Christian."

Dan would swing a stick wildly and swear in-between gasps. Its impossible for some to cut from their faith, especially those who have an active faith, the political promise for a different world. But as Neo would know even as he dodged the angry stick, Christians and politics are awkward bedfellows. In the pre-modern era we saw Religion use Politics for gain. Then the moderns through their enlightened sense of reason untangled the two, and allowed them to exist separately but supplementally, but it was naive because one always will bleed into the other. In the postmodern world, it shouldn't be the re-entangling of politics and religion, that's a regression. It should be the transcending of the two, a new way, a higher way.

When we will show the world a new way? When will we emerge from this fiddle-faddle of religio-politico hang-ups? Will we ask to be like Liberty, only peddling our politics along side our faith? Only in-grouping and out-grouping, who is with us, who is against us? How do we rise above what we did in the modern-matrix? This is the question: How do we free our minds from that matrix? Freedom from religio-politico hybrids, hell-bent on seeing the world become as they want it to be?

Or maybe I'm missing the point about all this.

The Great Emergence with Phyllis Tickle

I have read a third of the book so far, all in one sitting, and feel that it doesn't measure up to the hype. I get that its all supposed to be one big history lesson, and is supposed to make the case that what is happening now with Emergent is really the eruption of Christianity that occurs every 500 years. I think that argument is a little weak, and baseless besides the trend that something important happens in every 5th decade. I've heard similar claims concerning generations (every 14 generations or whatever) that are equally baseless, and left almost entirely to imaginative speculation.

I may change my tune as I finish the book, but so far I am unimpressed. If anybody really wants a good read that considers what the calamity of Emergence is and where it indeed comes from, I would read Carl Raschke's "The Next Reformation: Why Evangelicals Must Embrace Postmodernity" (pictured below).

Sticks and Stones

When I first came to Christ, I did so with a longing to be forgiven. I was told that Christ spoke the language of mercy, and could give me a life of grace. So I stepped over and entered the kingdom. I embraced my new life, and threw the old one away. Sometimes I would stumble and fall a little as I took my first steps, but my brothers and sisters would pick me up and brush me off. Sometimes they were stern with me. Other times they politely looked the other way until I got myself cleaned up, so I wouldn't feel judged. I'm thankful for both.

I'm even more thankful that nobody judged me before I became a Christian. Nobody chased me down for not knowing the principles and commands of Jesus. Nobody made me feel ugly or unloved. If they had, I may not be here right now. I'm one of the fortunate ones I think. You see today we have forgotten the teachings of our scriptures, our disciples and even our Christ. We persecute and chastise the people in this world not blessed by the blood of Jesus. We criticize and push down those who do not see the light, and struggle blindly in the darkness. We cast stones at the blind. Today we haunt the minds of the lost with a perforating roar of anger. We are fierce , and we are frightening. We hunt them like lions. We shred them like sharks. We are the moral citizens of heaven, sent as an onslaught of righteousness to capsize the sinking ships around us.

Where did we learn this creed, frantically punching holes in others boats? Not from Jesus- He didn't need one. He told us to love the people who weren't in the church. To extend grace and mercy. That they would know Him through us, by our love for them. The picture the world was supposed to get of Christ was to be an endearing foot-washer who desperately desired them. They were supposed to feel loved, affirmed, welcomed and sought. Christ was the guy who sat at a sinners table and talked about life with them. Today, I fear they see Jesus as an angry and vengeful tyrant, who has already picked His favorites, and hates everybody else. And he orchestrates that through the cruel and oppressing Christian kingdom. They hear us chant “turn or burn”, but its not hell's flames that the world fears, its our fiery insults and judgment.

The thing we were taught as kids was “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me”. I think we all believed this for a time. But eventually we learned that we'd prefer a temporary broken bone and bleeding, to the seething lacerations that fall on our spirits from broken relationships and hurtful words. James wrote that the tongue is ”a world of evil” and that it is “set on fire by hell”. He points out that all the sticks and stones in the forest are consumed by just a single flame. The tongue is that struck match that frees hell on earth. Much opposed to what I learned as a child, I know I would welcome a stick or stone, over a hell-fire tongue.

Today our tongues run amok. We constantly burn the people of this world with our words and judgment. We leave lasting scars on their hearts when we speak to them the way we do. When we call out our judgment on them, we cast the very stones that were meant for us. Somehow that doesn't feel like what Jesus would do. I think we all have read of when Jesus happened upon a public execution of a worldly woman. He pointed out the iniquity of the judges, and they dropped their stones in shame and left. Nobody was fit to cast stones into world but Jesus, and instead he opened his palm and pierced it with a nail. Then he told us to love each other so people would know we belonged to Him, because of our love. Shame on us for who we are today: a loveless, self righteous, bigoted community who is more concerned with changing the world than saving it.

I think the problem came when we got confused by something Paul said. Paul explained in 1 Corinthians 5 that the church should hold one another accountable to obedience. And if a person within the church was living in a perpetually sinful way, it could corrupt the whole church so we need to ask them to leave and be stern with them. So sin cannot abide in the body of Christ. However, here is what Paul says in those same verses about the people who do not yet know Christ: “What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? God will judge the world”(v 12-13). Paul only reaffirms what we saw with Jesus and the stones; nobody but God is adequate to judge the world. Somehow we've missed this. We've gotten so caught up in the blinding light of the life we've obtained that we forgot what it was like to be unsaved. How intimidating Christians can be, how much of a majority their principles and values are in this country. Believers don't see things the way they can appear to an unsaved person. Because of that, and our very strident view of things, we will rarely shepherd non-believers into faith in Jesus. We're too busy antagonizing them if they are homosexuals, rebuking them if they are pro-choice, ignoring them if they are atheists, and fighting them if they are Islamic. These people are so busy running from us that they are unlikely to turn around even if we did have open arms for them. But still, open arms is a start. Just not enough to get us where we should be biblically.

For too long we have been casting verbal stones of judgment at our worldly neighbors without a second thought. We burn them with our fiery tongues and never look back to see the ashes we've left them in. To me, thats amazing. Christians, who try to live transparently, hurling insults all over the world while they themselves live in a glass house. We wonder why people think we're hypocrites! Isn't this exactly what the Pharisees did so long ago? They were morally in the safe zone by following God so they criticized and ostracized everybody else, whom they called “sinners”. Today, I fear we are no different. And our neighbors, who we are supposed to be loving on, are fleeing from us because they are tired of us! Tired of our attacks and our “holier than thou” rhetoric. Tired of only being a stones throw away.

I think the bible told us to hold each other accountable, but to love the world with blindness. Which is pretty smart if you think about it, because why would people want to obey Christ, if they didn't love or trust Him? Its especially hard for this to happen when we are so busy calling those people names and telling them we don't like them. How can they know Christ's love if they only see our anger? Before they will want to obey Christ, I think they need to know Christ. And before we can hold them accountable, we may just need to hold them. They have a lot of scars that need healing, and there are a lot of fires our tongues have started that we need to put out. Its time for us to drop our sticks and stones, and pierce our hands. I think its what Christ wanted, I think its what He did.

“My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. This is my command: Love each other.”

-Christ. (John 15:12,13,17)

What is truth?

I have been reading Soren Kierkegaard lately, or maybe he has been reading me. I am learning about how he viewed truth, and how he felt that any attempt to find "objective" truth, "absolute" truth, was a hilarious mistake in identity.

Kierkegaard thought it was the most comical thing ever, when a philosopher proposed some new system of figuring out truth; whether it was Hegel and his dialectic, or Descartes and his doubt. Kierkegaard laughed because each of these philosophers were trying to write as if they were the detached perspective, hovering in space. As if they were an alien, and merely showing up and diagnosing humanity, without having been tainted by their disease. How can a man, who is part of a culture, a tribe, a society, propose that he can leave all those things behind when he comes up with his system of truth? How can men serve us objective truth, with subjective hands?

Kierkegaard chuckles at this, and sighs as he sinks back into his chair. The only real truth holder, says he, is God almighty. God is the only thing absurd enough for us to believe. At first that seems a little derogatory, God being absurd and all, but Soren meant it as a compliment. Jesus, able to be a man born of Mary, and yet the Son of God, is a paradox, a flagrant offense to logic and reason. Its impossible for a man to be God, or for one God to be three people, or for everything to come from nothing: ex nihilo. But where most Christians reach for their erector sets to delicately explain how this is not an offense to the mind, Kierkegaard screams from the rooftops that it is, and it must be. He says these paradoxes are absurd, they render logic impotent, which is exactly why they must be believed.

Truth, for most of us, is what we can see touch hear smell and taste. Too often, we try to make God fit those criteria so we can help others believe, but Kierkegaard says we do them a disservice. He says the only thing that honors God, the only thing He really wants, is for us to take a blind leap, and trust. Like Abraham did when he held a knife to his son's throat, the way Peter did when he stepped out of the boat. Logic, it seems, is the bridge many of us build so we don't have to leap as far. We try to rationalize and consider the probability of it all being true, and so shorten the gap. But this only hurts us, when finally we cannot find the fortitude, the faith, to "leap" even the few inches left that our bridge cannot cross. Our feet have grown accustomed to standing still, and have taken root. We are unbelievers when we try so hard to make sense of our faith, and we are blasphemers when we claim that all of it is "True".

That is a difficult thing to say, or let be said. Kierkegaard thinks that Truth isn't a perspective avaiable to any man, save one: the Son of the Living God. Jesus, then, is the only person who we can find absurd enough to have had Truth. The only person who's entire life violated logic and reason so much, that just as the storms of the sea, logic lay herself bare to him. All other men were born of men, but Jesus was born of God.

It is interesting that the Bible records a conversation about Truth. Jesus is being tried by Pilate, and Pilate is trying to find error in him. He asks Jesus if he claims to be a King, and Jesus responds telling him that he is a King, a King of Truth, and all those of truth hear his voice. Pilate shrugs and says "What is truth?". Irony, observes Kierkegaard, as Pilate was looking right at it when he asked.

Christianism

I have always wondered at the suffix "-ity" that we attach, or somebody in the past thought to attach, to "Christian". -Ity, as it turns out, is a Latin suffix meaning state of being. Words like "clarity", "captivity", "objectivity", all serve to describe the state of the thing itself; it is clear, it is captive, it is non-subjective. I wonder then what "Christianity" implicitly says if not the state of being as Christ.

Rich Mullins was infamous for responding to the "what is your religion" question with: "I am becoming a Christian". Rich felt that one can hardly claim to have attained Christianity, the state of being as Christ, but could more realistically say that one is pursuing it. In this sense, he was reluctant to suggest being as Christ, but felt it was honest to say he was trying to be.

I wonder if Christian-ism wouldn't be better for what we as Christians intend to describe. After all, our faith is a practice in more than one sense of the word. Not only would -ism imply action behind belief, but it might also suggest that a constant state has not been achieved, and instead we are practicing, training, to become more like that state. Christianism is only one of many options, but it seems to be a bit more humble about its announcement of one's religious alignment, and more congruous with other religions, or faith practices. Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism, Shintoism, ad infinitum.

I suppose in one sense we shouldn't like to be so similarly named with the other world religions, but I wonder at how we feel the suffix -ity really helps us define ourselves in a respectful and yet different way. Are we so bold to say that we are celebrants of our state of being like Christ? Shouldn't we at least say, as Rich did, that we are becoming Christians? Discussions about things like this seem little more than semantics, but I think if Postmodernism has taught us anything it is the relevance of language, and the inherent idea behind the words we use.

What word would each of us use to best describe our faith? Does Christianity sum it up for you, or would something else better define you? We tend to add adjectives before the word Christian as our faith evolves, so much so that we are at the point where there are books full of denominational names and what not. Emergent/Catholic/Pentecostal/Baptist/Methodist/
Orthodox/Presbyterian/Reformed/Anglican/Evangelical/Spirit-Filled/Charismatic/
Episcopalian/ad-nasuem. All these words precede "Christian" so as to modify the state of being like Christ, and include some theological distinctive. But I wonder if this is exactly the problem with our thinking, we are announcing our achievement, our new quality, our new nature or ideas.

Perhaps it isn't the modifying adjective that needs to change, but the noun it describes. It isn't that we need to change the numerator or denominators of the fraction, it's that we need to discard the thing itself, and recognize that it isn't so simply stated as math and numbers. We need to stop ourselves from referring to our relationship as the achievement of a new nature, though that is part of what we believe, and instead refer to our journey of faith as exactly that.

Modern Christianity taught us that what was important was the end, that the achievement of a state was where the winner's circle was. But I think Postmodern Christianism will teach us what Jesus and Paul did, that our faith is a race, a walk, a path, a way, a journey =).

Pastors and Politics: An Open Letter

Dear Pastors who plan on violating the Federal ban on pulpit political endorsements this Sunday,

I recognize your frustration, and I see how things have come to this. For years America has only shrugged at religion, and recently Christianity has been caught in a violent tug of war between Republicans and Democrats. We feel entitled to political endorsements; the way Samuel chose Saul and David, the way the Pope crowned Charlemagne. Throughout history, Christians have been central to the political process, and as government theory developed, Christianity developed right along side it. Yet in these times, a Pastor responsible for keeping watch over their flock, and their country, is unable to warn the congregation with political denouncements, or guide the congregation with political endorsements.

How tied our hands are, and how frustrating it all is! But I note that our hands have not been tied by pagans, nor our powers revoked by politicians. Just as Christ told Peter to lay down his sword, it was the Christian body who chose to lay down their power with the birth of the American constitution. Our government philosophy and our religious values collided in the marvelous creation of a self-reforming Government, that listened to the voice of the people, and naturally checked itself with competing branches. The brainchild of 1700 years of Christian witness and political integration, our fore-fathers created for us the greatest governmental system ever conceived by man. And also laid down their power as Christians, and took up their duty as citizens. Pastors, we have not been robbed of our right, we have sacrificed it for the greater good.

Do not forget that many of us, in the Protestant church especially, have been reminded often about the abuses of the once corrupt Catholic Church. The abominations of Pope's seeking political power, and countries oppressing minority religious views to please the nodding heads of pastoral leaders. Have we so quickly forgotten the War of Roses? The atrocities of the Crusades? The injuries of the inquisition? When Pastors control politics, it is a burden too heavy for our humble souls. We are too idealistic, too drunk with passion for God, to wield the might of men so forcibly. Yes, the Pope crowned Charlemagne, but he also crowned Napoleon.

We created a land where church and state are separated, that we might protect them both. The integrity of the church is jeopardized when politicians can appeal to leaders so as to gain their endorsement. The same fate that comes upon those tempted by lobbyists, will await us when corruption slithers herself into our bed, and carries us away in pride and power. How terrible a fate for us all, when the unsaved among our nation see the church as more a machine than it already is, and more biased and more controlled than it ever has been. Are we willing to throw away what Luther fought so hard to gain? Are we willing to be imitators of Calvin in Geneva ruling with an iron fist and burning at the stake all who oppose us? Again we will hunt witches and the immoral in the Holy name of God, we will purge from our great nation the unclean. This is the doom that awaits us if we attempt to rebirth the "political heresy" into our current condition.

Family this is heresy, and madness. We must remember the past lest we be doomed to repeat it; we must remember our own revolution not so many years ago. Pastors have long been heralds and harbingers in American society, and we have brought proud reform and restored human kindness and morality in many areas. Was it not our Rev. Martin Luther King who led the charge for civil rights? Was it not our Rev. Billy Graham who brought a nation to its knees in repentance, and toward salvation? Have we not been guardians, every step of the way, in this fledgling republic? We have been, and remain to this day, the protectors of all people under our flag, and even at the expense of our own power, we gladly lay it down that we might be God's vessels in more useful ways. Are we willing to abandon our ability to provide hope, for the ability to pronounce judgment? Will we use the cross as Caesar did- to dominate- or in Jesus' way, to liberate?

How long will it be before mega-pastors become mayors, and deacons become diplomats? What will become of us, when we open the door to the age of the Pastor-ordained President? What will happen when that president fails us? Will Christ become as a paltry political puppet, a sock on the arm of the statesman? This nation has not written our churches into the constitution, for good reason. While the press is mentioned as a necessary check on the transparency and legitimacy of government, Christianity has not been allotted a speaking role in the election cycle, or a place in the provision of power.

Is it not the height of arrogance to assume that any one of us can speak for Christ? But this is exactly what the pulpit is, the trumpet of Christ to men. This is why we go to such a high degree of effort to prepare the job of preaching, because it is so great an honor, and so heavy a cross. We send men for years to seminary so that they might learn how to not desecrate the pulpit with mere theological propaganda, how to discern rightly the word of God, as they humbly utter what the Holy Spirit gives them to teach Gods' children. How will Christ judge us, when we presume to be his mouth-piece today? Have we forgotten that we are judged more harshly than the rest of the body? Are you so confident in your opinion, which is influenced by so many moving parts and fallible men, that you will preach it as if it were God's? Are you willing to risk the unpardonable sin?

We desecrate our pulpit with politics, and we blaspheme our creeds with party lines. We are called to something higher than to meddle in the affairs of ambitious men. We are not so Holy that we can merely baptize a candidate, and never drink the poison of his words. We do not stump for Senators because we dare not speak for God. We do not campaign for Congressman because it is not our calling. We do not preach for Presidents, because the name of Christ is too precious to risk on a common election, no matter how historic.

Pastors who plan on violating the ban on Sunday, I beg you to take your opinion to the poll, and not the pulpit. Take your church men to a lobby, but let not a lobbyist into your church! We are the Body of Christ, and His Holy hands must not be desecrated by the poison of politics. Your vote belongs to a Candidate, your pulpit belongs to Christ. Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, give to God what is God's.

Please click here to hear the story on NPR news.

Update: News Reports about Pastors who violate ban

Palin- Did this really just happen?

I remember in the last election, everybody hated everybody. Swiftboaters hated Kerry, peace lovers hated Bush, old men hated Edwards and young men hated Cheney. This time around I really wanted to not hate anybody. I wanted to just go to the poll and vote, and let that be that. I wanted with all my heart not to have a lack of respect for either candidate, but only have a difference of opinion about politics. Friday, I watched as that wish went spiraling down the drain.

In the democratic primary, women in America took a giant leap forward. Hillary Clinton (who I ardently did not support), came closer than any woman ever has to being elected to the executive office. It was a historic milestone, it was a triumph and an achievement, it was a proud declaration of who we as Americans are. Until that is, John McCain made a mockery of it.

At this point I've lost any reader who likes John, but I still want to be clear that I don't endorse either candidate. I'm a non-partisan, through and through. But historically speaking, I felt a sting when McCain tried to seize the flow of estrogen in politics and reached for the nearest woman in the republican party. When he announced her on Friday, practically everybody had the same reaction: "Who?"

Not only did nobody know who she was, but everybody was suspicious that John didn't know either, and he simply wanted the ticket to read: McCain and X Chromosome. He was given the benefit of the doubt until it was discovered, embarrassingly fast, that she not only has the scandal of an investigation for abuse of executive power on her name, but her 17 year old daughter is with child. Now I'm not dragging the woman's issues into this thing, it isn't her I am disappointed in, its McCain. He jumped on this woman like a stock market trader swapping coffee for steel, eyes flying left and right looking for the next stat to give him a day-trade boost. He jumped on Palin while the Hillary train was still grinding to a halt, hoping to get it going again.

It bothers me because the man arbitrarily grabbed at the nearest woman without thinking, which gives absolutely no dignity to what was achieved. Furthermore, if he really cared about what women had done in this last election he would have honored that by carefully and painstakingly chosing a woman worthy to carry that torch as the first madam Vice President. Instead we have Palin, who is largely in over her head, and has little left but the fact that she's a women going for her. American's deserve better, and so do women.

From where I sit, I watched as McCain only confirmed the prejudices women critique: men pick women for their looks and for their personality, never for their achievements or their actual credentials. After the firestorm erupts and Palin's "troopergate" investigation publishes in October women are only going to be accused of the same old stereotypes they were trying to break: unable to control emotion and govern justly, relying on their looks instead of their accomplishments. Women will be worse off for the self-interested quick pick of John McCain, and for all his words about how much he respects what women have done- his actions have spoken more loudly.

The parallel of this would have been if Obama had lost the primary, and McCain asked OJ Simpson to run on his ticket. Palin is just a bland, arbitrary, uniformed pick that only show cases how little McCain thought of women's rousing political affair. Sure that's a hyperbole, but watch how quickly women take two steps back as the poorly vetted Palin tumbles down the steps of high office, and then ask yourself if it wasn't disrespectful to have a token women in the campaign. The last wall in women's path, the oval office, and McCain sends in Palin. At least Hillary had the gall to be tested on the national stage, had the where-with-all to face down the best of the best in ruthless debates, had the composure to go head to head with the greatest orator in the last 40 years. I didn't like Hillary but at least she represented the strength of women and did it on her own. Who is Palin?

I don't hate McCain, and this doesn't lock me in for Obama. But I have lost a tremendous amount of respect for John, and I mourn the loss of so much female accomplishment, as it teeters on the head of the poorly chosen Sarah Palin, who wasn't strong enough for the mantle that Hillary left behind, and will inevitably fail to honor it. What will women do when Palin's failures become their cross to bear? How will the next female candidate make her case when the first woman in the executive election was merely a political pawn rashly decided on to grab at drifting voters? Where is the honor in this? Where is the story worthy of women's legacy in America? Where is the candidate worthy of that story?

Imagine this is Jesus...

Keep you in the dark
You know they all pretend
Keep you in the dark
And so it all began

Send in your skeletons
Sing as their bones go marching in... again
The need you buried deep
The secrets that you keep are ever ready
Are you ready?
I'm finished making sense
Done pleading ignorance
That whole defense

Spinning infinity, boy
The wheel is spinning me
It's never-ending, never-ending
Same old story

[Chorus (x2):]
What if I say I'm not like the others?
What if I say I'm not just another one of your plays?
You're the pretender
What if I say I will never surrender?

In time or so I'm told
I'm just another soul for sale... oh, well
The page is out of print
We are not permanent
We're temporary, temporary
Same old story

[Chorus x2]

I'm the voice inside your head
You refuse to hear
I'm the face that you have to face
Mirrored in your stare
I'm what's left, I'm what's right
I'm the enemy
I'm the hand that will take you down
Bring you to your knees

So who are you?
Yeah, who are you?
Yeah, who are you?
Yeah, who are you?

Keep you in the dark
You know they all pretend

[Chorus x2]

[x2]
What if I say I'm not like the others?
(Keep you in the dark)
What if I say I'm not just another one of your plays?
(You know they all... pretend)
You're the pretender
What if I say I will never surrender?

So who are you?
Yeah, who are you?
Yeah, who are you?

</war>

I was reflecting on the election today, and the state of our nation. What breaks me the most is the amount of conflict that's showing up again. The cadence of voices on TV and radio shows signaling my nerves to sense fear, anger, frustration, indignity, and red-faced contempt; in a word: hate. My blood starts flowing and I feel the hairs on my arms stand in readiness, only to fold uneasily while I continue the long drive home, or get myself a glass of water from the kitchen.

Suddenly everybody has an enemy, and everybody is at war. Gays vs straights, democracy vs terrorism, red vs blue, Batman vs Joker...where does it end? Conflict is a caffeinated thing that keeps me awake at night, and drains me of my energy in the afternoons. I'm tired but anxious, alarmed but desperate for rest. Its all like a cricket noisily chirping from underneath my bed, my eyes are burning and my legs twitching for want of relief. But try as I might, I can't make the damn thing shut up.

Its more than fatigue though, there is an air of hopelessness and despair. I feel like the girl from The Fifth Element with Bruce Willis, when she is fighting the whole movie to save humanity but then sees a reel of human hate and war, and falls sobbing to the ground, unsure of why she ever cared at all.

We as Christians are the source of much of this conflict, the purveyor of flames that burn us all. This when our Master called us to be sons of peace, and to love another as ourselves. I know there are good causes worth fighting, and I know that for things to get done we must at times get indignant and disgruntled. That peace comes only as a result of struggle, and endeavor.

But there is a stirring in my spirit, that reminds me of the hope for a future without war. A world where my King washes away the wounds we have inflicted on one another, and dries the tears we have cried both as victims, and villains. The end of days spent searing others' mouths closed with the fire of our own tongues, and murdering our neighbors with our hearts. When we can finally beat our swords into plows, and tearfully reunite as the brotherhood of man.

He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth;
he breaks the bow and shatters the spear,
he burns the shields with fire.

"Be still, and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth."

The LORD Almighty is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress.

Psalm 46:9-11

Christian Political Quiz

Follow this link to take a quiz to determine whether you are a Radical Reformer, a Thumpin Theocrat, a Quiet Critic, or a Private Patriot.

Apomogetics

"As apologetics is changing--as we move from a modern, familiar environment to a new, less familiar one--our apologetic also needs to change. Modernity constrained us to operate in a rationalistic framework-- that is, based on reason alone--and our apologetic accordingly focused on logic, evidence, proof, answers, scholarship, reasons, arguments, and appeals to authority. As we move into the emerging culture, however, our apologetic will focus more and more on beauty, goodness, experience, questions, mystery, community, and humility. " -Brian McLaren (Adventures in Missing the Point, pg 101)

Apologetics has evolved, and in this new age, it needs to adapt to translate Christ to the new culture. Consider how it has changed to accommodate the needs of past times:

• In the first few centuries of Christianity, the apologists gave a defense by explaining to their Roman Persecutors the doctrines of their religion, and dispelling the rumors of what Christianity supposedly practiced (orgies, cannibalism, and anti-patriotism).

• As power shifted and the Roman Empire crumbled, it became important for apologists to convince the Germanic invaders that Christianity was a help to government, and a transcendental (and not merely Roman) ideology. It also became important to defend doctrine and orthodoxy from heresy, here apologetics was uniquely theological and less philosophical.

• In the medieval era St. Anselm provides the Ontological argument, which will later be revised by Rene Descarte. The priority for apologists is to explain why God must philosophically exist, and explanation is focused inward as the apologists urge readers to consider the nature of their existence, and of their very ability to think at all.

• As philosophy gives way to science, the modern era apologists must argue for demonstrable evidence and empirical proof that God exists and that Christianity is true. The enlightenment ignites an exhaustive search for absolute truth, and Christian apologists must compete with a variety of -isms in the market place of ideas to contend for true Reality.
  

So we see that as the culture and ideas change, so too the apologists adapt their method and their goal. First apologists seek to describe Christianity accurately, then to contend for it philosophically, and finally try to prove it unequivocally. But what comes now? What comes in the Postmodern age? Enter "Apomogetics".
Its a re-write on the shortened "pomo" for postmodernism, interplayed with apologetics to create a hybrid, and yes I just coined the term. Apomogetics doesn't exist as of yet, but I'm realizing daily that it should, must, and will. Today modern apologists attack the philosophy of postmodernism on the grounds that it dissolves their absolute truths of science and mathematical certainty, but they fail to see the need to translate our defense of Christ into the new social era. Postmodernism is not a philosophy up for debate, it is a new wave of culture that is sweeping the world, and America is one of the last stops left on the tour.

The question then is what does apologetics look like in the postmodern world? How do Christians prepare themselves to provide an answer for the faith within them? What are culture's questions? Today less and less care whether or not the resurrection checks out by the dates of Pauls letters, or whether God can be proven by the Kalam Cosmological argument. In this emerging world ideas cannot only be true, they must also be meaningful.

So it becomes the apologists duty to wade into the new waters and build us the vessel to reach the distant isles of non-Christian civilization. To pioneer new methods and new visions for how Christianity can re-fit its most important defenses to meet the thinking of a different people. To prepare ourselves for the battles ahead, and not to lag behind in denial of the times we find ourselves in. As culture shifts, a changing of the guard draws near, and so apologists must consider how they adapt to meet postmoderns on their ground.

Recognizing this, I want to assemble interested Christians to prepare for the new challenge. Not to defend ourselves against postmodernism, as current apologists glibly do, but to prepare our apologetics for the new era in human thought and culture. No longer are people interested in the objective certainty of information, nor the Christian "world-view". Because objectivity has been clothed in shame, and all "world-views" are seen as co-equal and impossibly self sanctified. Therefore instead of the apologists who cry "we have Truth!" from the academy's ivory tower, the thinkers of apomogetics may instead cry "we know Truth, and his name is Jesus" from the local pub. Seeing Jesus as Truth incarnate, instead of a person who exists inside of Truth.

Apomogetics must begin to make a home in the terra-nova of postmodernism, not continue in the pointless trend of trying to deny its currency. The body of Christ can survive the postmodern scalpel, and will perhaps even be the better for it. Maybe postmodernism removes the tumors that came with modern hyper-confidence, and the idolatry of human attainment of absolute truth. Maybe the church will find sand in its enlightenment foundation after it has been deconstructed. Whatever the case, the water is turning to wine, and new skins must be made ready to receive it.

Having made my case, I would like to invite anybody interested in this thought project, whether they consider them self an apologist, a postmodern, or neither, to join the group I'm creating to discuss and dream for the future. Please pass this post along through your various networks, so that even if none of this interests you, others may catch the vision and share in the effort. The link is listed below, all are welcome.

Email: JimiJobin@gmail.com
Join the Discussion @ www.apomogetics.com

Obama and McCain battle for my soul..

Today I watched as Presidential hopefuls Barack Obama and John McCain were individually interviewed at Saddleback Church by its Pastor, Rick Warren.

As I watched each of them answer the gauntlet of questions, I couldn't help but notice that John McCain seemed unquestionably "better" and received more applause by the congregation in comparison to Obama. This was unexpected, so I went back to see where Obama went wrong, and where McCain went right. What I realized showed me that they are the two spirits fighting in our churches, and within the souls of many of us. Today John McCain and Barack Obama symbolized the competing idea of what a Christian is, and should be.

McCain smiled warmly and nodded affirming the waves of applause and cheers that came his way after each answer. Nobody could say he didn't know his audience. To each answer he was pointed and brief, and always hinted at humor. He sloganized and told anecdotes whenever possible, and seemed almost pastoral in the way he explained why he was the Christians President. He kept referring to Christian pride, and how we founded this country and how our ways are superior. He kept returning to a Christian obligation to preserve freedom at the cost of lives, especially those in other countries, and how this is what Christ would have wanted. The congregation of so-cal socialites cheered and stood.

Obama on the other hand took a very different approach. He wasn't brief at all, and was seldom funny. He took every question seriously, and often found himself meditating on the question's complexity outloud. He didn't come off as sure, as confident, but more as contemplative and considering. He didn't address the crowd with his answers as did John McCain, who constantly pre-luded each answer with "My Friends..". Instead, Obama looked right into the eyes of Rick Warren, and answered his questions with "Well Pastor...". Not once did Obama bring up the proud history of Christians founding America and being the white light of the world. Instead he talked about social justice, about receiving and aiding orphans, about changing the string of poverty for the oppressed.

It seems each man had a different idea of who his audience was, and so spoke accordingly. Obama thought the people in the audience were followers of Christ, and so quoted the book of Matthew and exhorted us to remember "the least of these". McCain, however, knew that the audience were Christians, and were interested in the modern day agenda of how their tribe can receive more of what they want in the here and now.

After the show, a Fox News commentator reflected on Obama and noted that one of his answers was a very poor choice considering the audience. He described it also as "postmodern", I went back to review the answer.

Rick Warren asked each of the candidates whether evil existed, and how it should be dealt with. McCain responded by naming evil "them" and those who must vanquish it "us". He told the church about Al Qaeda and Bin Laden, about Russia and about Sadam Hussein. He told us we should defeat them.
Obama paused thoughtfully when he was asked, and said none of those things. He first agreed that evil existed, but then said that it was within all of us. He noted Darfur, he noted poverty, and he said that evil should be confronted, in each and every one of us. He said evil is in our cities, and we need to be soldiers in the war God has waged against evil, but rely on Him to be the judge of what is evil, and to extinguish it.

Then he said something I'll never forget, something that lost him the forum, and something the commentators would say was postmodern, and a bad move considering the audience.

"Now, the one thing that I think is very important is for us to have some humility in how we approach the issue of confronting evil. A lot of evil has been perpetrated based on the claim that we were trying to confront evil. I think one thing thats very important is having some humility and recognizing that, just because we think our intentions are good doesn't always mean that we are doing good."

It dead panned in the scheme of things, but for me it highlighted the difference between who Obama thinks Christians are, and who McCain knows they are. Neither is necessarily better or worse in my eyes, and I don't necessarily endorse Obama politically. But I suddenly realized that Obama was addressing a different audience than John McCain. And I need to decide which tribe of Christians my soul is truly apart of. Regardless of how they are named: Evangelical, Emergent, Purpose-Driven, Post-modern--the issue is more how they see Jesus and what that means in their life. Obama and McCain weren't just battling for my vote today, they were navigating the narrows of my soul, and asking me who I think Christ is, and who that means I need to be.

One of them told me that Christ is my mascot, and I should remember that I'm in the right, and have a responsibility to punish those in the wrong. The other told me that Jesus is my Master, and I have a responsibility to be humble, to be charitable and concerned with the poor, oppressed, terrorized and orphaned, even if there is nothing in it for me. He told me that if I wanted to confront evil in the name of Jesus, I would have be willing to bear a cross, and not trust in my own understanding.

In the end, I think I know where I stand. I only hope others will be as thoughtful in their decision. Not for whom to vote for, but for who the King of Kings truly was, and what he truly wanted from us.

Living imPOVerished

Through out the eons of human history people have had a "spirit of the age", what philosophically is called a zeitgeist. In the past this view has generally tinted all action, and organized all thought.

When the world was flat, it was imperative that the edges be found, and so exploration became heroic. When Kings were divinely appointed, disobedience, even civil, was a sin and an abomination; patriotism was piety.

However, as in all cases where a point of view can be identified, the time comes for it to be necessarily extinguished. These periods of time are called transitions. Or as they are called philosophically...uh...transitions. The world is realized to be spherical, so new maps are drawn and new textbooks written. Men like Copernicus, are quacks first, and geniuses later. Kings are found to be tyrannical, and a contradiction of God's stated will. So men like George Washington are traitors first, and heroes later.

There is an old saying that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. I sometimes wonder how we haven't learned that everything we see in life is through the lenses of our particular mindset in this age- of the philosophies, sciences, and acceptable view points that make up our reality. Our view is only one from an array of points, and it's redundantly foolish to see it as THE absolute view from all things, like I'm sure Columbus did just before his man in the crow's nest yelled "land ho", or Marie Antoinette did as the guillotine's blade tickled the hairs of her neck. To recognize one's view as only one of many, to see a timeline as an evolution, and ourselves not nestled to the far right, but somewhere in the ambiguous middle, is perhaps the most accurate view one can have of themselves and all their philosophies.

Is our Christianity, our current version of it, the best? Have we arrived? Are our churches the best they will be? Are our philosophies the highest and most enlightened? Is the way we live our Christianity, the way we see God and His Son, the most correct it will ever be?

In Philosophy, the pure and objective point of view, from which everything seen is Absolutely True, is called the Archimedian Point of view. Some say that God's throne is the only Archimedian Point in existence, and that is how it should be. But if we believe that God alone has complete, final, and full knowledge of all things, why do we brand as heretics and blasphemers those who seek to expand on the current spirit of the age, and consider what elements of our Christianity need to change? Shouldn't we at least consider them, hear them, and process them? If we stay rooted in our own unchanging point of view, I feel we miss out on the riches of new ideas, of fresh and revitalizing thought. We turn away from the wealth of insight and change that reformation offers. Our P.O.V., unchanged and unrefreshed, may leave us in theological poverty.

That being said, if we pledge allegiance to our own point of view, or any point of view, aren't we creating unto ourselves an idol? If God alone sits in the truest of all points of view, isn't our saying that we have obtained it blasphemy? Aren't we seating our-selves on God's throne? Theological certainty, therefore, may very well be a sin. I wonder, are we ready to meditate on that? Are we ready to bust the ghost of the age, and recognize that all these eras coming and going are like waves that we must surf on, instead of rocks that we must stand on? Can we instead see the correct Spirit as the one in Genesis, hovering above the waters and the tides, transcending all ages and all times? I feel that if we really believed that Spirit was in control, and will lead us into all truth, we would not be dissecting God and putting Him into jars for study, but rather following wherever he leads, even into illogicality.

There is a plunder to be found in mystery, and a transition to be made from a modern absolute, to a beyond-modern truth.

What if truth isn't a set of ideas, or of systems, or of propositions, but was in fact a Person? How do our systematic theologies and our heresy trials stand in light of that? If truth is a person, relationships with that person are the best and most accurate pursuit of Truth, not the scientific and mathematical calculus of words in a book.

It might be time to abandon our own points of view, and perhaps just start looking to the One who has the only accurate view of reality. The view from the throne of eternity, the only Absolute Point on the Cartesian plane of ideas.

The depressing art of ru(i)nning a church

It blows me away to watch the dry and leathery hands of Christianity as it sings about flowing rivers and abundant streams of God's love. Sometimes it feels like we have never stepped into the water we are so fond of celebrating. As if we lay on the bank, parched and dying, but smiling all the while and twitching our foot to the beat of a steady drum, singing us toward our death, and our dust.

I'm not being humdrum or cantankerous, I'm just sharing frustration. Christianity has become a business in many senses of the word. Most of the time I casually nod at and understand that most of what Churches do is justified by their need to complete ministry tasks in a relevant way. However recently I have been watching as the ugly, plastic mask of hypocrisy comes out from the desk drawer and fits snugly onto the Senior Pastor's faces. No I'm not talking the sort of two-faced-ness that is ordinary (Pastor Bob saying/doing such and such but telling the congregation rather to do/say blah blah blah). I'm talking about the woodenness and cynicism that has become common in our churches, and that we applaud in our leaders.

Recently a Senior Pastor remarked to me that College/Young adults are futile to pursue with ministry. An arguable point, but his criterion bothered me more than his statement. They were unworthy not because they are inconsistent or irregular, not because they are immature or undependable. No they were a pointless ministry because they don't have money. He literally said this.

Before that yet another Senior explained that when he considers youth ministry, he doesn't want a leader who is a visionary, just somebody who will pull the warm blanket of pacification over the youth's heads so the congregation will feel like things are holistic at their church. He said this proudly, as if he had just read it in the latest ministry book or heard it come down from the demi-gods on Mt. Olympus (Rick Warren, Willow Creek, etc).

It breaks my heart that this is the way things are. That we have reduced relationships and pursuing people to a calculus of staged movement and scripted words, stale ideas and programs. That we hire Pastors not for their passion or their witness, not even for their intellect and training, but for their experience in managing certain kinds of people, and particular amounts of people. What has become of the body of gentle Christ when all our leaders are anointed not by God, but by demographics. Since when did attendance determine somebody's "chosen-ness"? And since when did success mean "targets" and census?

Why is it that the organic are pushed aside to make way for the mechanical, and assembly lines are the preferred way of constructing disciples? Are we living in the year of our Lord, or of our Ford? Oh brave new world, with such people in it. We've chased away the ones who would teach us to love our neighbor and prostrate ourselves before God despite its silly-ness, and elected instead those who would herd us like cattle, and brand us with equally demeaning slogans and catch-phrases. When does it end? When do we begin?

I for one am tired of it. The way we allow our churches to be run, the people we elect to lead us is just as much a statement of our theology as a catechism or a hymn. We are screaming from the rooftops that the machine of Christianity is coming to a town near you, and then you and I shamefully clammer at the doors to be recognized by these unfeeling robots. We wait excitedly for our chance to join them, to become part of the borg. To give up our uniqueness and our passions, our reality and our authenticity, to repeat milquetoast phrases mindlessly echoed in our office halls ("resistance is futile").

I'm ashamed of what we've become, and I'm ashamed for my part in it. I hope things change, I need them to.

Emergent Church Survey

So Tony Jones sent out a Survey not too long ago where he asked Emergent Cohort Leaders to pick one of four options for the future of Emergent.

1) Die
2) Stay small, facilitate networks
3) Get bigger, facilitate conferences
4) Become a denomination/its Postmodern equivalent.

We were supposed to order them in our preference, and then explain why. I chose 4, then 1. Either I want to see Emergent explode and become something identifiable and tangible, or I want it to die and leave the legacy of change to the next, more capable group to come.

Recently I have been reading about a few things that seem to be moving in chorus toward a new theological frontier. Emergent, Postmodernity, New Perspective, all these things seem to collide into one new thing. Its almost as if Protestant Christianity is about to have its own reformation. As if it is about to birth a whole new type of Christianity. Is the world ready? Are we ready?

I ask "are we ready" because I wonder if even Emergent is ready. Sometimes it feels like they are dragging their feet on getting loud and getting out there with new ideas. I salute what has already been accomplished, but I notice, with a heavy heart, that nothing will change, for better or worse, if we don't start standing for something. Part of the fourth option in the survey was to create a Statement of Faith, and start defending them. This would essentially stir the next reformation, the next great schism in the Church Corporate. Its interesting though, that this new split would be 100% different from the last. In essence, it is a reaction to much of the Protestant split in the 16th century. Or at least its trickle down theology that has happened in Evangelical America.

Sometimes the anticipation gets the best of me. Sometimes I'm ready for the Luther archetype to show up and lead a charge. Sometimes...I'm ready to do it myself.

Folly I'm sure. The leaders of this movement have wisdom, and are dodging as many land mines as they can while they tip-toe toward progress. But perhaps the time will come when we run, when we are surrounded by fire and explosions but nothing can stop the momentum, nothing can stop the charge, nothing can stop God. Of course this last bit would instantly be called into question. Emergent's greatest strength and weakness is that it questions everything and suspects the validity of any truth claim...even its own. Its something that I at once admire and detest, but in the end must only observe, and wait.

Nevada Emergent Church

I was surfing the web in response to a book Im reading, "The New Christians" by Tony Jones, when I noticed via ginkworld.net that there are no Emergent Faith Communities in Nevada. Other states to be worthy of so little notice are Wyoming, Montana, New Hampshire, and Maine. We are the MOST POPULATED state to not have even ONE Emergent Church. I might recommend the Church I go to, The Rock, but I'm not sure what precisely constitutes an "Emergent" Church, seeing as how we have no official dogma or doctrine.

However, I am happy to read in Jones' book some adjectives to describe common threads in Emergent people. If you don't define yourself, your critics will do it for you. I'm glad somebody is stepping up and offering some insight.

If anybody reads this, toss me an email and let me know. Thanks.

Salvation Paper

"The story bears repeating: I presented the gospel to Christian Bible college students and left out Jesus, nobody noticed....To a culture that believes they "go to heaven" based on whether or not they are morally pure, or that they understand some theological ideas, or that they are very spiritual, Jesus is completely unnecessary. At best, He is an afterthought, a technicality by which we become morally pure, or a subject of which we know, or a founding father of our woo-woo spirituality." ¹ Every epoch Christianity finds a new focus to devote itself to. In the first century it was survival and martyrdom, in the third century it was heresy and orthodoxy, in the sixteenth century it was the Bible (for protestants) and tradition (for Catholics), and in the more recent twentieth century it has been getting “saved”². While evangelism has always been an important Christian priority, and salvation has always been the single core idea of the Christian faith, it is worth noting the enhanced spectacle the two have taken in the last hundred years. Missionaries have been sent across the globe, Bibles have been translated in countless languages, and 80% of all the Christians who have ever lived have been converted since 1900.³ With the church expanding so dynamically, and the evangelical church basing its entire nomenclature on the idea of getting people “saved”, one wonders what precisely salvation is. In the time of the Preeminent Catholic Church, a person received salvation through their membership in the church, and the receiving of the sacraments by the church. During the era of Christendom, salvation was based on one's citizenship and Christian patriotism. Before this, salvation was based on adherence to the rulings of ecumenical councils. However, after the protestant reformation, and the escalation of American Christianity, salvation is almost entirely based on the saying of a prayer⁴. Where the recipient must specifically request a “personal Lord and savior”, “acknowledge that they are a sinner”, and thank Jesus for His sacrifice. However, one wonders why such prayers are conspicuously absent from the history of the first century church, the book of Acts, or the entirety of the gospels. What exactly is “salvation”, and what are the criteria for its reception? Such a question is perhaps the most important in all of human history, and especially in an era of missiological movement, where the Christian missionary will almost certainly be asked this directly. To answer this question we must observe the Christians in the book of acts, the teachings of the original twelve Apostles, and even the red letters of Jesus Himself.

After an exhaustive search for all New Testament references to the phenomena of salvation, the evidence was compiled and found to fit into a few distinct categories. First there are statements that recognize the need for obedience to Jesus. Second there are those that require belief, sometimes in Jesus, sometimes in the Kingdom of God, sometimes in God the Father. Third there are those statements that are miscellaneous and ambiguous, such as calls for perseverance, eating Christ's flesh, and being “born again”. When these three categories are analyzed, a distinct observation is the prevalence of statements about obedience compared to either belief or the miscellanies. Consider just the statements of Christ from the four gospels, shown in this pie graph:

While belief and obedience are both mentioned as criteria, obedience is noted almost three times as often. Essentially, if somebody overheard Christ talking about salvation, two-thirds of the time he would be talking about obeying his commands, and demonstrating allegiance. This information only beguiles the contemporary evangelical, since they have been taught to see salvation as a one time experience, an event, a temporal confession with eternal effects. Few have seen salvation as a journey, or a daily pledging of loyalty to an invisible kingdom. Some evangelicals however, have noted the problem, such as John MacArthur: "Truth be told, Jesus never spoke in terms of a one-time decision that you make about Him but rather exhorted His hearers to follow Him wholeheartedly for all of their lives. Christ was calling people to a life that continually confesses Him before men. We do not find in Scripture that the test of discipleship is a one time decision."⁵

This lifestyle, this discipleship that seems to be called for by Jesus in his biographies is illustrated in the book of Acts, where his twelve Apostles establish the church and live the essentials of their faith. While the book is a narrative, and not filled with propositional statements, there is much that can be observed in what the Christianity of the disciples looked like, and how salvation is experienced by the first century Christians. One striking characterization is in the way the disciples led people to Christ, baptism. In the book of Acts there are no less than seventeen mentions of baptism, all associated with the salvation of the recipients. The reason we see this action so often is because it was the second part of Christ's final command to his twelve apostles: “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”⁶ Discipleship therefore, and baptism, seem to be the essentials demonstrated in the Acts church. Baptism being the one time decision of faith that acknowledges the recipients belief in Jesus as the Son of God, and being the rebirth of the person into citizenship in the Kingdom. Discipleship on the other hand, is the lasting day to day following of Christ in real life. Neither of these is represented in a simple, one time, three sentence prayer.

Still, despite the example of the Acts church, and the statements of Jesus, evangelicals choose to utilize John 3:16 as their mantra to encapsulate the salvation theory. Because of its emphasis on simple belief, and lack of responsibility to the hearer, the quote fits nicely into the formula of easy, contemporary Christianity. However this verse, not even said by Jesus, seems to be more a quick overview of the reason for Jesus, not the expression of the plan of salvation and all its parts. Yet Christians are led to think that this quick believe and live quip is all they need to spread the vast idea of the Gospel of Jesus, and the quick prayer that comes out of this verse is all Christians must do to expand the complicated and paradoxical Kingdom of God. Such things smack of over-simplified rhetorical answers contrived in a children's' Sunday school class. A caricature of the difficult and holistic command of Christ to pick up one's cross and daily sacrifice themselves on the altar of a living relationship with God. Its abominable.

While evangelicals carry on with their “raise your hand”, “check the box” version of salvation, Jesus and his twelve disciples knew the good news to be something entirely different. Consider the only person in all of recorded history to have actually walked up to God and asked him how he can be saved: the rich young ruler. Jesus doesn't implore the young man to “repeat after me” or “admit your a sinner”. He tells him to give up on the world and its possessions, and follow Him.⁷ Jesus, faced with answering the question actually asked in this paper, responded with the following two words: “Follow me”. Jesus called for a relationship that lasted a lifetime, a journey through good and bad, a discipleship that would reach the ends of the world. Yet evangelical Christianity describes the reception of Salvation in terms of blind trust, and small action. Sitting in a chair is the oft used example. “Trusting in Christ is like sitting in a chair”, they say, “when you face forward you cant see the chair, and as you lower yourself upon it you must trust that it is there, that is your relationship to Christ.” Donald Miller captures the frustration with this idea, "And then I wondered at how Jesus could say He was a Shepherd and we were sheep, and that the Father in heaven was our Father and we were His children, and He Himself was a Bridegroom and we were His bride, and that He was a King and we were His subjects, and yet we somehow missed His meaning and thought becoming a Christian was like sitting in a chair.”⁸

Clearly, the criteria for Salvation is encapsulated in Christ's admonition to follow Him. For to follow somebody one must trust them, appreciate them, believe them, and perhaps even love them. All this is demonstrated in how closely one follows, which is exactly what the twelve Apostles explained in their epistles. These Apostles, highlighted in the book of Acts, were the same who baptized in Christ's name, and persevered for Christ until their own martyrdom. Next to Jesus himself, there is no greater New Testament authority than the actual twelve disciples who literally spent three years following Christ and receiving his teachings daily. Other great lights have emerged on the scene with excellent commentary, such as Paul the Apostle, but none can compare to the testimony and daily witness of the twelve as they heard nearly every word that Christ ever taught, and were the actual carriers of the gospel. In their writings, represented by James, Peter, and John, much is explained and unpacked to the churches they write to. However, no subject is more important in their short letters than the salvation of Christ. One would assume that the disciples would mimic their Master and emphasize the same elements He emphasized, with about the same consistency they observed Him use during His earthly ministry. So if Jesus explained salvation in obedience terms 60% of the time, we would expect the disciples to emphasize it in their teachings at least more half the time. However, when we note every instance salvation is mentioned in the apostolic epistles, we see a very different number. Of the 34 times between them that salvation is mentioned, alluded to, or described, 33 of the instances directly involve the necessity of obedience to, or love for following, Christ. Only one verse is absent of any obedience/followership rhetoric, noting only the essentiality of belief.⁹ However even that one verse is preceded in the same chapter by this verse: “This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands. This is love for God: to obey his commands.”¹⁰ which is a parallel reference of John's quote of Jesus in his gospel. This allusion found in John 15, where Jesus states an almost syllogistic explanation of how salvation works: “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command”¹¹

Christ emphasized salvation in terms of following him, the disciples perhaps overemphasized the same conclusion. Only Paul describes salvation with an emphasis on Grace over action, though he spent his whole life living out his faith in constant persecution and oppression, up to his martyrdom in Rome. Paul was consistent with the disciples in describing Salvation in his epistles, and also with his life as traced in the book of Acts. However in the attempt to combat the ritualism of the late Medieval Catholic Church, Protestants would twist much of Paul's writing to capture the “grace by faith” side clearly, an overcorrection that would set the pace for modern evangelicals to reduce salvation to a quick prayer and hand raising session¹². This is a mischaracterization of Paul's theology.

Paul described salvation as a journey, or to be more precise, a race.¹³ One that must be endured to the finish in order to attain the goal of union with Christ. While in his writing he was often responding to the legalism of the Jewish Christians in terms of Christ's limitless grace despite human iniquity, Paul never went so far as evangelicals have made him go in the last hundred years. In fact Paul is responsible for the famous words “work out your salvation with fear and trembling”¹⁴ His explanation of salvation was just as potent with journey, kingdom language, as the apostles who shared it with him, and the Christ who brought it to earth. Nowhere near the terms of a quiet sinners prayer. To Paul this would have been like crossing the starting line, not the finish line. The race has only begun, and now that it has we should be running full sprint and putting everything we have into it, “run[ning] in such a way as to get the prize.”¹⁵

In conclusion the answer to the question “How can one be saved?” is the answer Jesus originally put forth to the rich man, “[deny the world] and follow me”. The two words, follow me, seem to encapsulate repentance, belief, and obedience nicely. Yet they are also pregnant with all the imagery of the gospel narratives, the staggering and foundational church of Acts, and the first three hundred years of oppression and persecution of the early church. They symbolize the expansion of the “Kingdom of God”, and its many ideals of justice, equality, and love. It is by following Jesus that not only is one man saved, but all men are saved, as following Christ yields freedom and order, the triumph of good over evil, and the blessings of a loving God upon a fallen creation. Evangelicals make a hideous mistake when they sanitize their salvation rhetoric of all the life it was pregnant with, and reduce it down to a simple, formulaic, prayer. When they abrasively move tent revivals into towns and cities and see thousands of hands fly up and “receive Jesus”, when it should have been the Kingdom receiving them, through the transfer of their loyalty, and the fruit of their spirit. Its this lackluster approach to Salvation, offering it as a calculus of ideas instead of a vital and living movement, that has caused the sharp drop in worldwide missions today, where 50% of all missions have been ceased since the year 2000¹⁶. If evangelicals seek to spread Jesus and receive the results of the Acts church, with thousands being added to their number daily¹⁷, they must share the message of Salvation the same way that Peter did at Pentecost, by telling the story of Jesus and the reality of his Lordship, then by imploring the world around us to call him Master. Only this leads the hearers to belief and to respond “what shall we do”¹⁸, to which Christ would gently whisper “follow me.”

Bibliography

Cairns, Earle, E. “Christianity through the Centuries”, Published by Zondervan, Copyright 1996

Harbin, Michael A., “The Promise and the Blessing: A Historical Survey of the Old and New Testaments” Published by Zondervan, Copyright 2005

MacArthur, John “Fools Gold”, Published by Crossway Books, Copyright 2005 by The Shepherd Fellowship

Miller, Donald “The Search for God Knows What”, Published by Thomas Nelson Inc, Nashville TN, Copyright 2004

Wagner, Richard, “Christianity for Dummies”, Published by Wiley Publishing, Copyright 2004

World Christian Encyclopedia (2nd edition). David Barrett, George Kurian and Todd Johnson. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. 2 vols.

All New Testament references from New International Version (NIV)

Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society

1Miller, pg 159

2Cairns

3World Christian Encyclopedia, Global Diagram 4

4Wagner

5MacArthur, pg 134

6Matthew 28:19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,

7Matthew 19:21 Jesus answered, "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."

8Miller, p157

91 John 5:13 I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.

101 John 5:2-3a

11John 15:13-14

12Harbin, pg 516-517

13Acts 20:24 However, I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the gospel of God's grace.

14Philippians 2:12

151 Corinthians 9:24

16World Christian Encyclopedia Global Diagram 4.

17Acts 2:47, 16:5

18Acts 2:37

New Quotes

From the Upanishads: Dialogue with Death















"Then the father replied angrily: 'I shall give thee unto Death.' The father, having once said so, though in haste, had to be true to his word and to sacrifice his son. The son said: 'I go as the first, at the head of many who have still to die; I go in the midst of many who are now dying. What will be the work of Yama the ruler of the departed which to day he has to do unto me? Look back how it was with those who came before, look forward how it will be with those who come hereafter. A mortal ripens like corn, like corn he springs up again."

Death says to the son after being pleased with his willingness to be sacrificed through a special fire sacrifice:
"The fire sacrifice shall be named after thee. When he [others] has learnt and understood this fire, which knows or makes us know all that is born of Brahman, which is venerable and divine, then he obtains everlasting peace."

"Fools dwelling in darkness, wise in their own conceit, and puffed up with vain knowledge, go round and round, staggering to and fro, like blind men led by the blind. The Hereafter never rises before the eyes of the careless child, deluded by the delusion of wealth. 'This is the world', he thinks, 'there is no other;'--thus he falls again and again under my sway"

"Though thou hadst seen the fulfillment of all desires, the foundation of the world, the endless rewards of good deeds, the shore where there is no fear, that which is magnified by praise, the wide abode, the rest, yet being wise thou hast with firm resolve dismissed it all."

"Has it its own light, or does it reflect light? The sun does not shine there, nor the moon and the stars, nor these lightnings, and much less this fire. When he sines, everything shines after him; by his light all this is lighted."

"Beyond the Undeveloped is the Person, the all-pervading and entirely imperceptible. Every creature that knows him is liberated, and obtains immortality. By the words 'He Is', is he to be apprehended, and by admitting the reality of both the invisible Brahman and the visible world, as coming from Brahman. When he has been apprehended by the words 'He Is', then his reality reveals itself."

From The Brahmana

"He behind whom the year revolves with the days, him the gods worship as the light of lights, as immortal time. He in whom the five beings and the ether rest, him alone I believe to be the Self--I who know, believe him to be Brahman; I who am immortal, believe him to be immortal."

"He, the Self, is to be described by--No, no! He is incomprehensible, for he cannot be comprehended; he is imperishable, for he cannot perish; he is unattached, for he does not attach himself; unfettered, he does not suffer, he does not fail.

From the Dhammapada

The Twin Verses
"The thoughtless man, even if he can recite a large portion of the law, but is not a doer of it, has no share in the priesthood, but is like a cowherd counting the cows of others."

Thought
"Whatever a hater may do to a hater, or an enemy to an enemy, a wrongly directed mind will do us greater mischief"

Flowers
"Like a beautiful flower, full of color, but without scent, are the fine but fruitless words of him who does not act accordingly."

The Way
"He who does not rouse himself when it is time to rise, who, though young and strong, is full of sloth, whose will and thought are weak, that lazy and idle man will never find the way to knowledge."

From "The Foundations of the Moral Life" by Baruch Spinoza














The Highest Virtue of Reason
"The highest thing which the mind can understand is God, that is to say, Being absolutely infinite, and without whom nothing can be nor can be conceived, and therefore that which is chiefly profitable to the mind, or which is the highest good of the mind, is the knowledge of God."

IV: The Evil Emotions
"Nothing but a gloomy and sad superstition forbids enjoyment. For why is it more seemly to extinguish hunger and thirst than to drive away melancholy?"

V:Necessary Evils
"Humility is sorrow, that springs from this, that a man contemplates his own weakness."

"But if we suppose that he forms a conception of his own impotence because he understands something to be more powerful than himself, by the knowledge of which he limits his own power of action, in this case we simply conceive that he understands himself distinctly, and his power of action is increased."

Reasonable Emotions
"A man, therefore, who is ashamed of what he has done, although he is sorrowful, is nevertheless more perfect than the shameless man who has no desire of living uprightly."

From "Pensees" by Blaise Pascal











1"The whole visible world is only an imperceptible atom in the ample bosom of nature. No idea approaches it. We may enlarge our conceptions beyond all imaginable space; we only produce atoms in comparison with the reality of things. It is an infinite sphere, the center of which is everywhere, the circumference nowhere. In short it is the greatest sensible mark of the almighty power of God, that imagination loses itself in that thought."

"For who will not be astounded at the fact that our body, which a little while ago was imperceptible in the universe, itself imperceptible in the bosom of the whole, is now a colossus, a world, or rather a whole, in respect to the nothingness which we cannot reach? He who regards himself in this light will be afraid of himself, and observing himself sustained in the body given him by nature between those two abysses of the Infinite and Nothing, will tremble at the sight of these marvels; and I think that, as his curiosity changes into admiration, he will be more disposed to contemplate them in silence than to examine them with presumption."

"When we think to attach ourselves to any point and to fasten to it, it wavers and leaves us; and if we follow it, it eludes our grasp, slips past us, and vanishes for ever. Nothing stays for us. This is our natural condition, and yet most contrary to our inclination; we burn with desire to find solid ground and an ultimate sure foundation whereon to build a tower reaching to the Infinite. But our whole groundwork cracks, and the earth opens to abysses."

"If man made himself the first object of study, he would see how incapable he is of going further. How can a part know the whole?

3"Those who have a lively imagination are a great deal more pleased with themselves than the wise can reasonably be. They look down upon men with haughtiness; they argue with boldness and confidence, others with fear and diffidence; and this gaiety of countenance often gives them the advantage in the opinion of the hearers, such favor have the imaginary wise in the eyes of judges of like nature. Imagination cannot make fools wise; but she can make them happy, to the envy of reason which can only make its friends miserable; the one covers them with glory, the other with shame."

5"To make light of philosophy, is to be a true philosopher"

14"The will is one of the chief factors in belief, not that is creates belief, but because things are true or false according to the aspect in which we look at them. The will, which prefers one aspect to another, turns away the mind from considering the qualities of all that it does not like to see; and thus the mind, moving in accord with the will, stops to consider the aspect which it likes, and so judges by what it sees."

16"Two errors: To take everything literally. To take everything spiritually."

18"If this religion boasted of having a clear view of God, and of possessing it open and unveiled, it would be attacking it to say that we see nothing in the world which shows it with this clearness. But, on the contrary, it says that men are in darkness and estranged from God, that He has hidden Himself from their knowledge, that this is in fact the name which He gives Himself in the Scriptures, Deus absconditus (God Hidden)."

"Death, which threatens us every moment, must infallibly place us within a few years under the dreadful necessity of being for ever either annihilated or unhappy. There is nothing more real than this, nothing more terrible. Be we as heroic as we like, that is the end which awaits the noblest life in the world."

"I am in terrible ignorance of everything. I know not what my body is, nor my senses, nor my soul, not ever that part of me which thinks what I say, which reflects on all and on itself, and knows itself no more than the rest. I see those frightful spaces of the universe which surround me, and I find myself tied to one corner of this vast expanse, without knowing why I am put in this place rather than another, nor why the short time which is given me to live is assigned to me at this point rather than at another of the whole eternity which was before me or which shall come after me. I see nothing but infinities on all sides, which surround me as an atom, and as a shadow which endures only for an instant and returns no more. All I know is that I must soon die, but what I know least is this very thing which I cannot escape."

"The only shame is to have none."

"Nothing is more dastardly than to act with bravado before God."

28"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. A vapor, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But, if the universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him, because he knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him; the universe knows nothing of this. All our dignity consists, then, in thought. By it we must elevate ourselves, and not by space and time which we cannot fill. Let us endeavor then, to think well; this is the principle of morality."


From "Nicomachean Ethics" by Aristotle














4"Most people do not act, but take refuge in theory and think they are being philosophers and will become good in this way, behaving somewhat like patients who listen attentively to their doctors, but do none of the things they are ordered to do. As the latter will not be made well in the body by such a course of treatment, the former will not be made well in the soul by such a course of philosophy."

From "Orthodoxy" by G.K. Chesterton



















"Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess players do." pg 21

"Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion...the poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits." pg 22

"The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason." pg 24

"He is in the clean and well-lit prison of one idea: he is sharpened to one painful point. He is without healthy hesitation and healthy complexity. He understands everything, and everything does not seem worth understanding." pg 27

"The Christian admits that the universe is manifold and even miscellaneous, just as a sane man knows that he is complex. The sane man knows that he has a touch of the beast, a touch of the devil, a touch of the saint, a touch of the citizen. Nay, the really sane man knows that he has a touch of the madman....Materialists and madman never have doubts." pg 29

"Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity...[Ordinary man] has always cared more for truth than for consistency. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them. his spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that. Thus he has always believed that there was such a thing as fate, but such a thing as free will also. It is exactly this balance of apparent contradictions that has been the whole buoyancy of the healthy man. The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand. The morbid logician seeks to make everything lucid, and succeeds in making everything mysterious. The mystic allows one thing to be mysterious, and everything else becomes lucid...He puts the seed of dogma in a central darkness; but it branches forth in all directions with abounding natural health...the cross, though it has at its heart a collision and a contradiction, can extend its four arms for ever without altering its shape. Because it has a paradox in its center it can grow without changing."pg 33

"The one created thing which we cannot look at is the one thing in light of which we look at everything. Like the sun at noonday, mysticism explains everything else by the blaze of its own victorious invisibility. Detached intellectualism is (literally) all moonshine; for it is light without heat, and it is secondary light, reflected from a dead world." pg 33

"We may say that the most characteristic current philosophies have not only a touch of mania, but a touch of suicidal mania. The mere questioner has knocked his head against the limits of human thought; and cracked it." pg 42

"Traditions means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death." pg 53

"For our Titanic purposes of faith and revolution, what we need is not the cold acceptance of the world as a compromise, but some way in which we can heartily hate and heartily love it. We do not want joy and anger to neutralize each other and produce a surly contentment; we want a fiercer delight and a fiercer discontent . We have to feel the universe at once as an ogre's castle, to be stormed, and yet as our own cottage, to which we can return at evening. Can we hate it enough to change it, and yet love it enough to think it worth changing?" pg 77

"Life is not an illogicality; yet it is trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait.It is this silent swerving from accuracy by an inch that is the uncanny element in everything. It seems a sort of secret treason in the universe." pg 87

"He that will lose his life, the same shall save it...A man cut off by the sea may save his life if he will risk it on the precipice. He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it. A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying...He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water, and yet drink death like wine." pg 99

"It is always simple to fall; there are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands." pg 108

"This fixed and familiar ideal is necessary to any sort of revolution. man will sometimes act slowly upon new ideas; but he will only act swiftly upon old ideas." pg115

"The whole point depends upon his being at once humble enough to wonder, and haughty enough to defy." pg 120

"A bird is active, because a bird is soft. A stone is helpless, because a stone is hard. The stone must by its own nature go downwards, because hardness is weakness. The bird can of its nature go upwards, because fragility is force. Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly.Pride is the downward drag of all things into an easy solemnity. For solemnity flows out of men naturally; but laughter is a leap. It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light. Satan fell by the force of gravity." pg 127-128

"Christianity alone has felt that God, to be wholly God, must have been a rebel as well as a king. And now let the revolutionists choose a creed and a god. They will not find another god who has himself been in revolt." pg 145

New Church Exodus

So I watched the first of a four part series at this URL:

http://familyroommedia.com/Dropouts2.html

It basically discussed (biasedly) why the mass exodus is happening of church-goers from organized churches. I developed a few questions of my own:

Is the error the concept of an organized Church? Of an institution brought together to be the body of Christ? Perhaps. The movie would lead us to believe that.

Or is the problem a more complex one? Perhaps it is not organization that is inherently wrong (scripture would agree), but rather in this time and place (Millennium, America) we have seen the conflict of two or more ideas and practices to create, as if, the perfect storm. Perhaps the rivalry of Modernism (pragmatics, logics, catechisms, systems) and Post-modernism (Revival of arts, sensual knowledge, mystery and mysticism) has come to a head. Perhaps also the infinite competition between the many branches of Protestant Christianity has finally suffocated the tree of its fruit. Too many branches? Yes, especially dead ones.

Too many branches- See, there are so many different bodies in the Protestant side of Christianity that a few various behaviors have taken place. With all the competition in the denominations, churches became proprietary about their congregants. "Dont go to the Methodists, they are austere. We Baptists have things correct." Or, "Dont go to the Baptists, their worship is wrong, we Pentecostals have it correct." We have become a cannibalistic race as we began to devour each other with statements of exclusivity. Doctrine began to divide. And from that method. And from both, practice.
Furthermore, once your major denominations are biting each other, soon there will be conflict within the denominations as well. Churches are "successful" based upon the amount of people they have in them- period. Therefore, it becomes in the churches best interest to herd as many people as they can into the gates. They begin treating the sheep like cattle. Doing whatever program, routine, worship song, message, media, or speaker, song leader, wall color, pew cushion it takes to bring in the people. Even while inside a denomination, it became in each church's best interest to act as an individual, and no longer as a cell in a much larger body. This lead to a general disdain of one church to another, and the emergence of the "people rush" mentality where congregants are guilted into brining in friends, co-workers, and family to hear the gospel and thus become members of the church.
Is the answer progression from where the church is? Or perhaps a regression? Did the problem occur when the Catholic church became systemic and organized? Or did the problem happen when we privatized the faith?

People complain that the church is too "organized". They use works to describe the church as a machine, such words as "plastic", "fake", "institution", "wooden", "inflexible", and "routine" are all terms attributed to Church. Is this the true nature of anything organized? Or is this the result of the programs and gimmicks and niches and focus groups and targets and people pleasing that has been going on in our last century? I propose that it is the latter. Ironic it seems, that it was the lack of a backbone for all these years, the wishy-washy please like us demeanor of the Church that earned it the designation “ritualistic”.

Therefore, the solution to addressing these problems in the church is not the progression to something "post" church. Its not to reach beyond what we see into what could be. Its to reach back to what we saw, into what was. The answer is not progression, its regression. To what? Pre-reformation? Perhaps to be honest. Not doctrinally, but epistemologically. But what does that look like? The current Catholic Church? The EO church? Is it a home church? Lets consider the Scripture and think it through.

When the Churches of the First Century were referred to they were referred to by City. That indicates to me that each metropolitan area had its own Church. Now these churches, while independent one another and having their own unique personality, were also intertwined and submissive to the board of church elders, also known as the Church in Jerusalem. Well, heres the problem with what all we've discovered. It looks like almost everything we already have:
The Catholic Church exists in Rome, then each major city or state or country have respectively their own head and sovereignty, except under issues of doctrine (which is exactly how it was in the first century). Some Catholic churches do things differently from others, it depends on their leaders.
The EO church is a mystery to me, but I believe they are the same except their head is in Constantinople, or some such.
The Protestant Church is not one cohesive body. It is the most conflictive body in the history of humanity actually. All the disaster of disagreement without the perks of democracy. The diversity of bones and blood and nerves without the skin to hold it together. It is a body apart. A group torn, twisted, and at war. Hence their name, Protestant, or more basically, a protester. They protest everything, Catholics, EO's, and each other (except where alliances have been made). But even so, many of the larger denominations manage themselves exactly the same as the Catholics, and first century. Somewhere there is a group head, somewhere their is sovereignty.

So what is the problem? It seems people dont want organization, they dont like the plasticity of protestantism, and its privatizations of the faith into a business. Is Catholicism a welcome refuge then? Yes and No. While it has harnessed beautiful things like symbols and traditions (things forgotten or disdained by the eager-to-reform protestants) it is also highly criticized for being too nuanced in ritual and redundancy. While protestant churches have become too much a social club for its members, the Catholic church is not enough of one. Protestantism is frustrating because it is never full, Catholicism is boring because it is never hungry. Protestants want more more more. And if more (by their standards) is what they are looking for, they wont find it in the Catholic church. They already left that church, they dont have any intention of going back.

So where then do we regress to? The Catholic church is the oldest institution we know. What can possibly come earlier, and yet be more satisfying? What can be both Holy and obedient to the command of scripture to have a clear teacher, elders, deacons, organization....and yet be fun and frivolous enough to entertain the attention deficient minds of the Evangelicals? The answer is perilous Im afraid, because the question is wrong.

The problem as we see it, the heart of the observation, is that members in good standing who have been in the church for years and are important members of their congregations are leaving in droves. We wrongly assume this means that the "real" christians are leaving, and thus the “real” church goes with them. We seek to build it around those that leave. But this is wrong. They do not leave because they have become too Christian for even the church -progressed beyond the ability of the church to satisfy. No. They have left because, after due time, the infection of self-worship and pride has finally erupted in its final stages: Self destruction. The Evangelical church has been seeking fame and fortune for too long. Now the most patriotic of its members, so infected with this same virus, have actually turned their greed further inward. They seek to find their own personal happiness and spiritual fulfillment, at the expense of the church they once rushed to magnify.

The problem here is not that the church is missing something. Its that the church contracted something. A virus that has infected its many members, the oldest of which carry the virus in its more developed stages. What we see in the Evangelical exodus is the result of the former "seeker sensitive" and "professionalization of the church” movements. The Evangelical Church contracted a virus called Pride. It believed that the other strains of Christianity were wrong (ie everybody but that particular church) and that they had it all figured out. With no more mystery left to find in God, they had no longer to look upward in awe, but instead outward toward the hurried masses. They sought them like zealots, claiming good justifications but sorrowfully casting themselves upon the false altar of pragmatism. What we see now is the result of that Baal worship. The greed got too much, the many tumors that grew because of it became too obvious. Now the most involved in the cancer hate even themselves for having incubated it. They seek to flee the dying giant of the church, and find safety in some other thing. But they are like a virus again. Leaving their host only to infect another.

What we need is a cure. That cure is humility. That cure is penitence. That is the regression we must come to. Not the church that seeks, the church that stays. Not the church that wants, the church that has. Not the church that might be, the church that is. Slay the ideal of ambition or gain, embrace instead modesty and contentment. Are these not virtues also?

Christians got so caught up in running a race that they forgot it was also a garden. Forgot there was an element of complacency, of growing, of bearing fruit. They got so caught up in seeing new sights and turning new corners, they forgot to stretch their roots into the soil, and allow themselves to be pruned. This is not, however, merely the singular christian's fault. The new exodus Christians are the result of a disease they contracted in the pew of their church. In a sense, they are right to leave. Let them heal in quarantine, I pray. Then return to find a new church, a healthy church, a Godly church. One no longer concerned with power and prestige, under the guise of a kingdom and saved souls. Let the Church grow back its spine, stand tall for its ideals, and obey the Master Who sent it. Let it grow for Him fruit. Let this be satisfying to all. Let this be our regression.

Incipient

Main Entry: in·cip·i·ent
Pronunciation: -&nt
Function: adjective
Etymology: Latin incipient-, incipiens, present participle of incipere to begin -- more at INCEPTION
: beginning to come into being or to become apparent incipient> solar system> incipient racial tension>
- in·cip·i·ent·ly
adverb
I like this word. Maybe it will coincide with our words for "emergence"

Mere Christianity

From "Mere Christianity"

"For example, such silence need not mean that I myself am sitting on the fence. Sometimes I am. There are questions at issue between Christians to which I do not think we have been told the answer. There are some to which I may never know the answer: if I asked them, even in a better world, I might be answered as a far greater questioner was answered: 'What is that to thee? Follow thou Me.'"

"Ever since I served as an infantryman in the First World War I have had a great dislike of people who, themselves in ease and safety, issue exhortations to men in the front line. As a result I have a reluctance to say much about temptations to which I myself am not exposed."

"When you have reached your room, be kind to those who have chosen different doors and to those who are still in the hall. If they are wrong they need your prayers all the more; and if they are your enemies, then you are under orders to pray for them. That is one of the house rules."

"The most dangerous thing you can do is to take any one impulse of your own nature and set it up as the thing you ought to follow at all costs. There is not one of them which will not make us into devils if we set it up as an absolute guide."

"We all want progress, but progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man."

"God is the only comfort, He is also the supreme terror: the thing we most need and the thing we most want to hide from. He is our only possible ally, and we have made ourselves His enemies. Some people talk as if meeting the gaze of absolute goodness would be fun. They need to think again. They are still only playing with religion. Goodness is either the great safety or the great danger- according to the way you react to it."

"Reality, in fact, is usually something you could not have guessed. That is one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It is a religion you could not have guessed. If it offered us just the kind of universe we had always expected, I should feel we were making it up. But, in fact, it is not the sort of thing anyone would have made up. If has just that queer twist about it that real things have. So let us leave behind all these boys' philosophies-- these over-simple answers. The problem is not simple and the answer is not going to be simple either."

"This universe is at war. It is a civil war, a rebellion, and we are living in a part of the universe occupied by the rebel. Enemy occupied territory- that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage. When you go to church you are really listening to the secret messages from our friends: that is why the enemy is so anxious to prevent us from going."

"Why is God landing in this enemy occupied world in disguise and starting a sort of secret society to undermine the devil? Why is He not landing in force, invading it? Is it that He is not strong enough? Well, Christians think He is going to land in force; we do not know when. But we can guess why He is delaying. He wants to give us the chance of joining His side freely. I do not suppose you and I would have thought much of a Frenchman who waited till the Allies were marching into Germany and then announced he was on our side. God will invade. But I wonder whether people who ask God to interfere openly and directly in our world quite realize what it will be like when He does. When that happens, it is the end of the world. When the author walks on to the stage the play is over. God is going to invade, all right: but what is the good of saying you are on His side then, when you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream and something else-something it never entered your head to conceive- comes crashing in; something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others that none of us will have any choice left? For this time it will be God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature. It will be too late then to choose your side. There is no use saying you choose to lie down when it has become impossible to stand up. That will not be the time for choosing: it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realized it before or not. Now, today, this mo[ve]ment, is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It will not last forever. We must take it or leave it."

“I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same.”

“He came to this world and became a man in order to spread to other men the kind of life He has- by what I call 'good infection'. Every Christian is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else.”

[about having the “good infection”]

“Already the new men are dotted here and there all over the earth. Some, as I have admitted, are still hardly recognizable: but others can be recognized. Every now that then one meets them. Their very voices and faces are different from ours: stronger, quieter, happier, more radiant. They begin where most of us leave off. They are, I say, recognizable; but you must know what to look for. They will not be very like the ideas of 'religious people' which you have formed from your general readings...When you have recognized one of them, you will recognize the next one much more easily. And I strongly suspect that they recognize one another immediately and infallibly, across every barrier of color, sex, class, age, and even of creeds. In that way, to become holy is rather like joining a secret society.”

[about understanding God's nature]
"Indeed, if we found that we could fully understand it, that very fact would show it was not what it professes to be-the inconceivable, the uncreated, the thing from beyond nature, striking down into nature like lightning."

"Your natural life is derived from your parents; that does not mean it will stay there if you do nothing about it. You can lose it by neglect, or you can drive it away by committing suicide. You have to feed it and look after it: but always remember that you are not making it, you are only keeping up a life you got from someone else. In the same way a Christian can lose the Christ-life which has been put into him, and he has to make efforts to keep it. But even the best Christian that ever lived is not acting on his own steam-he is only nourishing or protecting a life he could never have acquired by his own efforts."

"Christians are Christ's body, the organism through which He works. Every addition to that body enables Him to do more. If you want to help those outside you must add your own little cell to the body of Christ who alone can help them. Cutting off a man's fingers would be an odd way of getting him to more work."

"He wants a child's heart, but a grown-up's head. He wants us to be simple, single-minded, affectionate, and teachable, as good children are; but He also wants every bit of intelligence we have to be alert at its job, and in first-class fighting trim."

"If you are thinking of becoming a Christian, I warn you, you are embarking on something which is going to take the whole of you, brains and all. But, fortunately, it works the other way round. Anyone who is honestly trying to be a Christian will soon find his intelligence being sharpened: one of the reasons why it needs no special education to be a Christian is that Christianity is an education it-self."

"One of the marks of a certain type of bad man is that he cannot give up a thing himself without wanting every one else to give it up. That is not the Christian way. An individual Christian may see fit to give up all sorts of things for special reasons-marriage, or meat, or beer, or the cinema; but the moment he starts saying the things are bead in themselves, or looking down his nose at other people who do use them, he has taken the wrong turning."

"We might think that God wanted simply obedience to a set of rule: whereas He really wants people of a particular sort."

"People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed. The real job of every moral teacher is to keep on bringing us back, time after time, to the old simple principles which we are all so anxious not to see; like bringing a horse back and back to the fence it has refused to jump or bringing a child back and back to the bit in its lesson that it wants to shirt."

"For many of us the great obstacle to charity lies not in our luxurious living or desire for more money, but in our fear- fear of insecurity."

"Most of us are not really approaching the subject in order to find out what Christianity says: we are approaching it in the hope of finding support from Christianity for the views of our own party. We are looking for an ally where we are offered either a Master or- A judge."

"Everyone knows that the sexual appetite, like our other appetites, grows by indulgence. Starving men may think much about food, but so do gluttons; the gorged, as well as the famished, like titillations."

"It is no good quoting 'thou shall not kill'. There are two greek words: the ordinary word tokill and the word to murder. And when Christ quotes that commandment He uses the murder one in all three accounts, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And I am told there is the same distinction in Hebrew. All killing is not murder any more than all sexual intercourse is adultery."

"In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that-and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison- you do not know God at all. As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of couse, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you."

"They theoretically admit themselves to be nothing in the presence of this phantom God, but are really all the time imagining how He approves of them and thinks them far better than ordinary people: that is, they pay a pennyworth of imaginary humility to Him and get out of it a pound's worth of Pride towards their fellow-men."

"But love, in the Christian sense, does not mean an emotion. It is a state not of the feelings but of the will; that state of the will which we have naturally about ourselves, and must learn to have about other people."

"Do not waste time bothering whether you 'love' your neighbor; act as if you did."

"Do not sit trying to manufacture feelings. Ask yourself, 'If I were sure I loved God, what would I do?' When you have found the answer, go and do it."

"If you read history you will find that the Christian who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next."

“It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at Heaven and you will get earth 'thrown in': aim at earth and you will get neither.”

“We shall never save civilization as long as civilization is our main object. We must learn to want something else even more.”

“It is not reason that is taking away my faith: on the contrary, my faith is based on reason. IT is my imagination and emotions. The battle is between faith and reason on one side and emotion and imagination on the other.”

“A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by yielding to it.”

“We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means- the only complete realist.”

“To trust Him means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There wold be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him.”

“Christians have often disputed as to whether what leads the Christian home is good actions, or faith in Christ. I have no right really to speak on such a difficult question, but it does seem to me like asking which blade in a pair of scissors is most necessary.”

“In fact, that is just why a vague religion-all about feeling God in nature, and so one- is so attractive. It is all thrills and no work: like watching the waves from the beach. But you will not get to Newfoundland by studying the Atlantic that way, and you will not get eternal life by simply feeling the presence of God in flowers or music. Neither will you get anywhere by looking at maps without going to sea. Nor will you be very safe if you go to sea without a map.”

“If you do not listen to Theology, that will not mean that you have no ideas about God. It will mean that you have a lot of wrong ones- bad, muddled, out of day ideas.”

“And that is precisely what Christianity is about. This world is a great sculptor's shop. We are the statues and there is a rumor going round the shop that some of us are some day going to come to life.”

“Of course, what these people mean when they say that God is love is often something quite different: they really mean 'Love is God'. They really mean that our feelings of love, however and wherever they arise, and whatever results they produce, are to be treated with great respect.”

“In Christianity God is not a static thing-not eve a person- but a dynamic, pulsating activity, a life, almost a kind of drama. Almost, if you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance. The union between the Father and the Son is such a life concrete thing that this union itself is also a Person.”

“If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water. IF you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them. They are not a sort of prize which God could, if He chose, just hand out to anyone. They are a great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very center of reality: If you are close to it, the spray will wet you: if you are not, you will remain dry. Once a man is united to God, how could he not live forever? Once a man is separated from God, what can he do but wither and die?”

“Very often the only way to get a quality in reality is to start behaving as if you had it already. That is why children's games are so important. They are always pretending to be grown ups- playing soldiers, playing shop. But all the time, they are hardening their muscles and sharpening their wits so that they pretense of being grown ups helps them to grow up in earnest.”

“It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.”

“Every father is pleased at the baby's first attempt to walk: no father would be satisfied with anything less than a firm, free, manly walk in a grown-up son. In the same way, he said, 'God is easy to please, but hard to satisfy'.”

“Never forget that we are all still 'the early christians'. The present wicked and wasteful divisions between us are, let us hope, a disease of infancy: we are still teething.”

mmm mmm...C.S. Lewis quotes

I recently bought "The Complete C.S. Lewis Signature Classics" and I wanted to share some awesome highlights from the book.

For me, finding good quotes requires me to read the original work. I cannot bring myself to a simple search under an authors name, or a quote book. For me, finding quotes is much like hunting.

I will use the quote books, websites, or snippets to stalk my prey, and locate the readings necessary- but then I hunt the quotes myself, and record them by hand when I find them. I have re-written these quotes myself, tediously, because I believe that is the only way to understand a saying- to breath it and re-communicate it with your own hands.

Because of the sheer volume of CS Lewis quotes I have found (from only one major work) I will only post a few at a time, and comment upon them as I do so. Hopefully, this will make it all more easily digestible, and hopefully more fun to discuss.

More Good Quotes

"What a terrible time this is to be a Christian. The churches have failed and betrayed us, and the ministry preaches hate and murder. If there is a sane and reasoning voice in the Christian church today it is sadly silent."
-Francois Arouet

"The church has failed to follow her appointed pathway of separation, holiness, heavenliness and testimony to an absent but coming Christ; she has turned aside from that purpose to the work of civilizing the world, building magnificent temples, and acquiring earthly power and wealth, and, in this way, has ceased to follow in the footsteps of Him who had not where to lay His head."
-C. I. Scofield:

"Christianity has been buried inside the walls of churches and secured with the shackles of dogmatism. Let it be liberated to come into the midst of us and teach us freedom, equality and love."
-Minna Canth:

“Christianity is the story of how the rightful King has landed, you might say in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in His great campaign of sabotage”
-C.S. Lewis

“Of all religions, Christianity is without a doubt the one that should inspire tolerance most, although, up to now, the Christians have been the most intolerant of all men”
-Voltaire (French Philosopher and Writer. One of the greatest of all French authors, 1694-1778)

“Evangelical Christianity, as everyone knows, is founded upon hate, as the Christianity of Christ was founded upon love”
-Henry Louis Mencken

“Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are.”
- Augustine of Hippo

What Lessons Can Progressives Learn from Evangelicals?

Some churches have left progressives in the dust in terms of serving and engaging people directly. Now, a new evangelical movement offers tips for the left.

Recently, I blogged a series of essays titled "The Revolution Misses You," in which I called for progressives to revive the forgotten dream of practical yet radical change...

Quotes, Excerpts, Lyrics

A New Kind of Christian- Brian McLaren

"Now take a moment and let this really sink in. To the Christian culture of medieval Europe, none of you today could be considered real Christians. True, you might say that you believe in Jesus and that you follow the Bible- but that would sound like nonsense to them if at the same time you denied what to them was essential for any reasonable person to accept: the medieval worldview, which was the context of their faith [(ie-astronomy, Copernicus etc)]. That brings me to an important question for you to think about: Is it possible that we as moderns have similarly intertwined a different but equally contingent worldview, with our eternal faith? And another question: What if we live at the end of the modern period, at a time when our modern worldview is crumbling, just as the medieval one began to do in the sixteenth century?" - Pg 34

"Most modern people love to relativize the viewpoints of the others against the unquestioned superiority of their own modern viewpoint. But in a way, you cross the threshold into postmodernity the moment you turn your critical scrutiny from others to yourself, when you relativize your own modern viewpoint. When you do this, everything changes. It is like a conversion. You cant go back. You begin to see that what seemed like pure, objective certainty really depends heavily on a subjective preference for your personal viewpoint." -Pg 35

"Our interpretations reveal less about God or the Bible than they do about ourselves. They reveal what we want to defend what we want to attack, what we want to ignore, what we're unwilling to question. When Judgment Day comes, God might ask a lot of us how we interpreted the Bible-not to judge if our interpretations are right or wrong but to let our interpretations reveal our hearts. That will be telling enough." =Pg 50

Searching for God Knows What- Donald Miller

"How many people have walked away from faith because their systematic theology proved unable to answer the deep longings and questions of the soul? What we need here, truly, is faith in a Being, not a list of ideas." p 161

"The story bears repeating: I presented the gospel to Christian Bible college students and left out Jesus. Nobody noticed....To a culture that believes they "go to heaven" based on whether or not they are morally pure, or that they understand some theological ideas, or that they are very spiritual, Jesus is completely unnecessary. At best, He is an afterthought, a technicality by which we become morally pure, or a subject of which we know, or a founding father of our woo-woo spirituality."p 159

"And then I wondered at how Jesus could say He was a Shepherd and we were sheep, and that the Father in heaven was our Father and we were His children, and He Himself was a Bridegroom and we were His bride, and that He was a King and we were His subjects, and yet we somehow missed His meaning and thought becoming a Christian was like sitting in a chair."p 157

"I get this feeling sometimes that after the world ends, when God destroys all our buildings and our flags, we will wish we had seen everybody as equal...." p104

"If you ask me, the way to tell if a person knows God for real, I mean knows the real God, is that they will fear Him. They wouldn't go around making absurd political assertions and drop God's name like an ace card, and they wouldn't be making absurd statements about how God wants you to be rich and how if you send in some money to the ministry God will bless you. It seems like, if you really knew the God who understands the physics of our existence, you would operate a little more cautiously, a little more compassionately, a little less like you are the center of the universe."p 38

"If I weren't a Christian, and I kept seeing Christian leaders on television more concerned with money, fame, and power than with grace, love and social justice, I wouldn't want to believe in God at all."p 28

"The very scary thing about religion, to me, is that people actually believe God is who they think He is. By that I mean they have Him all figured out, mapped out....dissected and put into jars on the shelf."p 20

Blue Like Jazz- Donald Miller

"Too much of our time is spent trying to chart God on a grid, and too little is spent allowing our hearts to feel awe. By reducing Christian spirituality to a formula, we deprive our hearts of wonder." p 205

"I think we have two choices in the face of such big beauty: terror or awe. And this is precisely why we attempt to chart God, because we want to be able to predict Him, to dissect Him...We reduce Him to math so we don't have to fear Him, and yet the Bible tells us fear is the appropriate response, that it is the beginning of wisdom...I stood on the edge of the Grand Canyon once, behind a railing, and though I was never going to fall off the edge, I feared the thought of it." p 205

"Many of our attempts to understand Christian faith have only cheapened it." p 202

"It is hard for us to admit we have a sin nature because we live in this system of checks and balances. If we get caught, we will be punished. But that doesn't make us good people; it only makes us subdued." p 18

Fools Gold- John MacArthur

"By the way, true worship is not something that can be stimulated artificially. A bigger, louder band and more sentimental music might do more to stir peoples emotions. But that is not genuine worship." p38

"The showman's ability to lure people in should not impress us more than the Bible's ability to transform lives"p 41

"There are plenty of gifted communicators in the modern evangelical movement [who] massage people's egos and focus on fairly insipid subjects...
Like the ubiquitous Plexiglas lecterns from which these messages are delivered, such preaching is lightweight and without substance, cheap and synthetic, leaving little more than an ephemeral impression on the mind of the hearers." p36

"Choice- saturated, capitalistic, American Christians [need to] discern the difference between seeking God's kingdom and building their own." p 165

"Truth be told, Jesus never spoke in terms of a one-time decision that you make about Him but rather exhorted His hearers to follow Him wholeheartedly for all of their lives. Christ was calling people to a life that continually confesses Him before men. We do not find in Scripture that the test of discipleship is a one time decision." p134

"Mindless emotionalism, often hyped up by repetition and "letting go", comes closer to the paganism of the Gentiles (cf Matt 6:7) than to any form of biblical worship." p126

"The music has been carefully and purposefully brought to this intense emotional peak. One senses that this is the whole purpose of the congregational singing-to elevate emotions to a white-hot fervor. The more intense the feeling, the more people are convinced they have truly "worshiped"." p 120

"When we look at contemporary ministry, we see programs and methods that are the fruit of human invention, the offspring of opinion polls and neighborhood surveys, and other pragmatic artifices. Church growth experts have in essence wrested control of the church's agenda from her true Head, the Lord Jesus Christ." p37

A Generous Orthodoxy- Brian McLaren

"Has [Christ] become (I shudder to ask this) less our Lord, and more our mascot?"p86

"How many of us have used the cross in Caesar's way, to dominate, rather than in Jesus' way, to liberate?" p 91

"Is it any surprise that with this understanding of salvation, churches tend to become gatherings of self-interested people who gather for mutual self-interest--constantly treating the church as a purveyor of religious goods and services, constantly shopping and "trading up" for churches that can "meet my needs" better?"p118

"This competitive Protestant religious market eventually spawned a kind of infomercial mentality, where each group advertised its unique features, seeking loyal customers for their religious products and services." p137

"To the degree they preoccupy themselves with the question of who's right , to the exclusion of considering whether they are truly good (as in bearing good fruit) they're destined to fade, wither, fail. To the degree that they have sold their spiritual birthright for a political ideology, they must repent; neither left nor right leads to the higher kingdom." p154

"We must, therefore, never underestimate our power to be wrong when talking about God, when thinking about God, when imagining God...language can be a window through which one glimpses God, but never a box in which God can be contained." p170,171

"I believe that we must be always reforming, not because we've got it wrong and were closer and closer to finally getting it right, but because our mission is ongoing and our context is dynamic. For this viewpoint "getting it right" is beside the point; the point is being and doing good as followers of Jesus in our unique time and place, fitting in with the ongoing story of God's saving love for Planet Earth." p 214

"Believing as I do that doctrinal distinctives are a lot like cigarettes, the use of which often leads to a hard to break Protestant habit that is hazardous to spiritual health (and that makes the breath smell bad)..."p217

"While some Protestants seem to let Jesus be Savior, but promote Paul to Lord and Teacher, Anabaptists have always interpreted Paul through Jesus, and not the reverse." p231

"Just as the early Christians could not imagine the gospel outlasting the Roman Empire, 19th century Evangelicals couldn't imagine the gospel outlasting modernity, the empire of Scientism, consumerism, and individualism." p268

"Given the chance, would Christianity eradicate every vestige of the world's other religions?" p286

"We must be open to the perpetual possibility that our received understandings of the gospel may be faulty, imbalanced, poorly nuanced, or downright warped and twisted." p 294

"I am more and more convinced that Jesus didn't come merely to start another religion to compete in the marketplace of other religions. If anything, I believe he came to end standard competitive religion (which Paul called the law) by fulfilling it; I believe He came to open up something beyond religion- a new possibility, a realm, a domain, a territory of the spirit that welcomes everyone but requires everyone to think again and become like little children" p299

"A generous orthodoxy must look back on our first 2,000 years of Christian history and face our failures, our atrocities, our abdications, our cowardice, our complicity, our betrayal of Jesus, and say to ourselves, "Never Forget"." p 305

"True prophets (those who bring a new word from God to assist in the current process of emergence) are crucified; false prophets (those who promise shortcuts that will cause regression or stagnation) are made rich and famous. The process is messy." p 323

"In Christian theology, this anti-emergent thinking is expressed in systematic theologies that claim (overtly, covertly, or unconsciously) to have final orthodoxy nailed down, freeze-dried, and shrink wrapped forever." p 325

Song Lyrics

"I wanna be the greatest in the kingdom of God, superzie my church supersize my odds

Fling wide the doors and re-route the streets, this churching thing is pretty neat..."

- From "Buy my book" by Penitent

"Its the magic show, that you didnt know
The illusionist pulls the strings from behind the curtain
Manipulation in lights and smoke, mirrors and prayers its all a joke
Im so sick of slight of hand, I can hardly breath

We put our change in the pot of hope, but an entertainers pocket is all that feels our change
Who are we now so easily controlled, they keep us dumb and never feed us bread
Starving minds starving hearts settling for a fake calf in a palacial room
Then the bass hits my face reverberates in my chest to summon the experience

Pull that rabbit from that hat you bastard, cmon and give us a show
Manufacturing our spiritual milk, giving us bronze instead of gold (x2)

Give us something more, give us something less
Stop filling my eyes and fill my chest
Give me candles give me wax and something true
Give the poor my godly tax and get a cheaper room."

-From "Magic Show" by Penitent

Hey Aaron

So Aaron, here is an internet setting for us to further communicate. If we want, we can let EV know and Im sure they will put us on their website for others to see.

First topic: Favorite quotes, song lyrics, and excerts. I am going to post in a bit and put up some of my favorites, you do the same.

Take care brother. You should have access to this blog, I made you a permanent author or whatever that is, let me know if you dont have access to something, Ill find a way to make it so you do. I want this to be our shared space, not mine.

God bless.

Jimi