Category Archives: Jesus

Salvation?

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Christians often explain how Jesus dying for our sins works by saying that God is perfect and cannot be with corrupt humanity (because of our sin). So because of this chasm he sent his son (who is God himself) to pay the price for sin (which is death) and thus fulfill the necessary requirements needed for us and him to exist peacefully in heaven. More or less that’s the idea. I could draw diagrams except that I’m too lazy.

One author questions that formula by retelling the Prodigal Son story like this:

…when the son returns from his partying and recognizes the error of his ways, his father responds by saying “I cannot simply forgive you…it would be against the moral order of the entire universe…Such is the severity of my justice that reconciliation will not be made unless the penalty is utterly paid. My wrath-my avenging justice-must be placated.” The prodigal sons older brother then offers to do extra work in teh fields and pay his brother’s penalty. And finally when the elder brother died of exhaustion, the father’s wrath was placated against his younger son and they lived happily for teh remainder of their days.

Do you buy that retelling? Do you buy our current definition? Are you unsettled? Are you comfy? Speaking personally, I’ve got some questions that I’m pursuing.

Enough said.

People of Peace

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I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be a person of peace. Not a peacekeeper, but a person of peace. I define a peacekeeper as someone that avoids conflict and would prefer to shove things down and keep the status quo than to deal with things, cause conflict, and bring potentially greater and more healthy peace. I tend to fall into this second category.

I want to be known as someone who fights for peace, who makes sacrifice for peace, and who is dedicated to bringing peace. It has been interesting to view comments made over the globally loved and universally used Facebook. I’ve been noticing on facebook that we all have a hard time being people of peace. To be a person of peace you have to value other people (yes, even that person), you have to be willing to listen more than you speak, you have to value the other persons opinion, but you also have to be able to respond in love and honesty.

I believe (and have experienced lately) that it requires major sacrifice to fight for peace. Soldiers understand this, but do we understand it within our own contexts and conflicts? Are we willing and ready to sacrifice some of ourselves for peace?

Jesus was a man of peace. Don’t get me wrong, at times he was pretty harsh, in your face, and confrontational. But he was someone who was not satisfied with the status quo but instead fought to bring peace to a broken world. Talk about sacrifice right?

So I guess the big question is whether or not I want to be defined by my identity in Jesus. Do I want to be identified by the reality of the cross? Do I live a death and resurrection life? I think that if I did I might be more at peace with myself. Maybe not.

Who will go?

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Renie is a woman who has worked in Baja Mexico for over twenty years. Please take a moment to read her words that were written in an email to me a few weeks ago. They are touching and quite challenging to read. Renie has given me permission to share excerpts of this with you.

Hi Ryan,
My husband Ted and I have lived in the Ensenada area for almost 20 years. We moved to Maneadero about 16 years ago after working under a Mexican Pastor for 4 years.
I had felt led to work with sick children for most of my Christain life. My husband Ted and I prepared ourselves to serve by finishing our degrees for service in the mission field. Ted who had been a career military man for 20 years and then finished a teaching degree at Western Baptist College. I finished my RN after working as a Practical Nurse for almost 20 years.
Our first 4 years in Mexico we were involved in learning the language, the culture and the ways God would lead us to help.
We are each almost 65 years old.

We are ready to think about letting those younger and more physically able to take over, but there does not seem to be anyone who has a heart to lay down their lives for the most helpless of this society, profoundly handicapped and abandoned children.

The elderly and the handicapped are the forgotten ones in this society. When I first came to Mexico I was driving around the streets of Ensenada. I encountered an old woman sitting in the median of a busy street . She was a double amputee. She sat on the ground next to a battered wheelchair in sweltering heat, with a cup she extended to cars as they passed by. I was so shocked by this I stopped, picked up the old woman put her and her wheelchair in my car and drove her to her home, ( she directed me). When I got her to her home, her,”family” were not pleased with me. They had placed her there. It was her duty to “earn” her way in the family by begging. The elderly and the handicapped are not valued here. They are often considered a burden to the family, and their only value is how they can be exploited.
There is a place in Tijuana called El Refugio. At any time it houses from 60 to 100 elderly and adult handicapped whose family members have abandoned them. There are a few dedicated souls who work night and day trying to take care of a never ending stream of unfortunate elders and adult handicapped who suffer from dementia, malnutrition, abuse and exposure to the elements.They are turned out in the streets by their own families. The floors and the walls are filthy, the residents sleep on urine soaked mattresses on the floor, and the stench is unbearable…

…Most of the women that help us care for the children we serve are Christians. They are dedicated and selfless. They come to work during the rainy season when they have to slog thru mud up to their knees to get here. They come even when we cannot pay them for weeks because we have not received donations. That kind of dedication and value system is what they have learned in their local churches and speaks highly of the local pastors and what they are teaching…

Who will answer the call?


Sunday: Did we Find the Point?

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In my previous post “What’s the Point?” I asked some questions concerning what the point of the churches weekend worship gathering. I must clarify one thing first. I am not standing on the edge of a bridge ready to jump off, ready to quit church, and wipe my hands of it forever. On the contrary I see my future as starting new churches for people who will not walk into our current church doors. But as I’m working toward planting this church and as I’m making whole piles of mistakes planting the Renovatus church I’ve begun to notice that not only does most of society around us not think that church is important, but even a large number of Christ followers do not see the value in the churches long standing tradition of gathering on the weekend. I think this is a problem. And to even further the problem I look at what I spout off as my own answer to the question “what’s the point?” and I think that my answers do not resonate with either jaded Christians or unbelieving others.

Let me do my best in one short paragraph to summarize the discussion that happened in the comments of this blog (as it was cross-posted on Facebook)…There were many thoughts and ideas concerning whether or not there is any reason to gather on the weekend as the church is known to do. Some have done away with it and gathering with friends during the week instead. Others have done away with it in part due to the churches corruption. Still others have taken breaks from the gathering because of burn out or disagreements. All in all this aspect of the discussion was much less tidy, and for the most part reiterated the original question: is there any important reason to gather on Sundays? Some of the answers as to why we should gather or why it is important to gather together include that we gather together to be reminded that we’re not crazy, or if we are crazy at least we have other crazies in with us. Remembering we’re not alone is a big deal especially when you couch your understanding of Christianity within the idea of living out an alternative society in our world. Living alternatively just doesn’t work well unless you do it with others in community. We need to know that we have support, a safe place, and encouragement. In addition to being a transformed and unique community of people Scripture also talks about how in Christ we as individuals become a new creation. Could it be that the weekend gathering is a public and open way for us to express and profess this identity to ourselves, God, and others. In my smaller group of friends I generally (and naturally) am around people that I connect with more easily. In the larger weekend gatherings an odd smattering of people are brought together under one banner, for one purpose (ideally right?), all united even thought they are extremely different from each other. In that larger gathering our uniqueness, our oneness, our unity, our transformation is all being proclaimed. It must be noted, however, that all this cannot be said without identifying the fact that at different points in history the church has lost its voice, forgotten its unique calling, and has wandered into some fairly destructive behaviors. And while this is true and must be said, the underlying theme of this discussion is that there’s something broken (in either huge or subtle ways depending on your context) that needs renovation.

I personally do not have any sort of great exclamation point statements to add to the end of this discussion. I can, however, tell you some of the things I’m processing through. I think that it is essential to the Christians life to gather on Sundays. I’m not confident of why, and I’m not confident that the manner in which we do it fulfills this need, but I do believe that God has wired us in such a way to need that communal gathering. The people that talked about how worshiping together reminds them that they’re not alone might be enough to answer this question, though I’m still uncertain. I believe there is something crucially important to being a part of a bigger gathering that is not about “me” in particular but about the community calling out to God in one voice. In smaller groups and amongst close friends its generally always about me or you, but in those bigger gatherings it’s about us and Him. I think there’s something important to that. I think there’s something important about being challenged to live like Christ more deeply which often happens (or is intended to happen) through the teaching. While all teaching doesn’t match this, I think the idea behind the sermon/message is to equip you and challenge you to live differently. I’m sure this could be accomplished in different ways and through different mediums but I don’t think it happens very well unless its intentional. It is super rare for a group of friends who are hanging out to spontaneously open up the Bible in order to grapple with some of the deep theological ideas that might challenge our daily lives. Generally the only times those conversations “spontaneously” happen is when you’ve got a group of seminary students together.

That’s all I’ve got for now. I mean, I could throw some stuff up there about how God commands us to gather, but I think that’s a somewhat fruitless discussion. It’s like telling an alcoholic to “stop it”. Well duh! Of course he/she should stop drinking, if it were as easy as someone just saying “stop it. It’s bad for you.” then there would be very few alcoholics! It’s not just about what’s right or wrong, what we’re supposed to do and what we’re not supposed to do, it’s about the journey there, it’s about the purpose of it, it’s about the person behind the commands, etc. Also, there are many good practical or technical reasons why we should gather together as the church is known to do. It’s easier to gain momentum as a group, it’s easier to support mission work, ministries, and to help people. You can have a larger impact on a neighborhood or city as a larger group and can additionally be a place where people feel like they can visit without being known or whatever. But I consider all these technical/practical which are of great importance but by themselves do not resonate as much as the deeper theological and heart ideas that the two paragraphs above talk about.

How am I doing? Are we tracking? Do you disagree? Do I make sense? Can you teach me something?

Thanks for engaging in this dialog, may we all be sharpened and grow together!

peace.

The Freedom to Choose

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I know a missionary who after returning “home” to America from doing mission work in Africa for some 15 years found himself sobbing in the cereal aisle as he stood there by himself with so many choices he did not know what to do. Where he had been living for the last 15 years his number of choices for nearly everything was limited to one or two items. But all of a sudden he came face to face with the culture shock of have an innumerable number of choices for something even as mundane as breakfast cereal.

In our culture choice has become the new God. Supposedly* the worst thing we can do in our world is to not allow someone the right to choose what they want, when they want it, and how they want it. We are inundated not simply with options, but so many choices that we have even created theology where God is the ultimate chooser. Which job should I take, which dining set should I buy, which china should adorn our dining room table, what restaurant should we go to, which car should I buy…and we beseech the almighty God to make his will clear for our lives because the most important thing to us is that we do not choose poorly. This blog is not even intended to go into the debates that Christians have surrounded themselves with concerning choice: abortion, gay marriage, assisted suicide, health care, and I’m sure the list could go on.

But I want to pause here because I believe there is a hypocrisy in our culture concerning the illusion of choice. I do not know who is at fault, if anybody is, but I do see it and I do believe it must be addressed. You’ll notice earlier that I threw out the word “supposedly” concerning the freedom to choose. Because while this is an underlying assumption, while there is outcry over those those whose choices have been taken away or not allowed like gay or lesbians for example, we have become perfectly comfortable with a level of suppression that pervades our society. I see this in two ways.

  1. Those who are on the outskirts of society, the poor, the elderly, homeless, etc. have been told (in many different ways) that they have no power to choose. Statistically those who grew up in the system of poverty will stay in the system of poverty. Welfare is setup in such a way so as to create suckers, feeders of the system. You are not rewarded for finding work or trying to better yourself. Trust me, I could tell you a number of stories of people who have lost, for example, their food and health benefits from the state that totaled $500 because their income went up $300. What does that teach those in poverty? Don’t make more money! The major blessing for those in poverty with regard to welfare is to have more children ’cause you get more benefits! We shut up the elderly in homes so that we don’t have to care for them. We tell them that their value is in staying to themselves, playing bingo, and knitting afghans that nobody will use.
  2. I should have clarified my previous statements because I do not see this second thing as a suppression of choice but rather a perversion of choice. We have so valued choice in our culture that it is destroying us. Watch Jerry Springer for a moment and count how many times you hear someone say something along the lines of “It’s my body, I’ll do what I want.” or “You can tell me what to do!” Somehow our primary expressions of choice have brought addiction and oppression. Off the top of my head here is a list of things that have become regular in our society through the guise of choice: overeating, using chemicals to grow our food, destroying the earth through pollution, killing babies and damaging pregnant mothers, teenage pregnancy, sex trafficking, the myth of materialism…the list could go on for a long time! Our freedom to choose is killing us! No, seriously, that’s not hyperbole but its both an expression and very much a reality that our freedom to choose has become the thing that is destroying both our physical bodies our our emotional selves (not to mention the spiritual aspect of this that I believe pervades both the physical and emotional).

As I read the stories about the life and work of Jesus, however, I see him constantly empowering people for new choice. Yes, he helps people through physical healing, but it nearly always included a “Go and sin no more” clause at the end. In his teaching, like the Sermon on the Mount specifically, I see him teaching a bunch of down-and-outs that there is blessing in being poor in spirit, in being meek, humble, persecuted, desiring justice, and to be in a place of mourning. I see Jesus teaching a message that says that “you have the freedom to make new and healthy choices! The world tells you that you’re poor but I tell you that it’s actually a blessing to be poor in spirit because the kingdom is filled with them. The world gives you reason to be in constant mourning, but I tell you that it’s actually a blessing ’cause you’ll know comfort more than any others. The world has not shown you justice and so you therefore desire it above all else, but I tell you that this desire is a blessing because if you’re seeking justice you will find it!” I see Jesus taking those whose choices have been seemingly removed from them and he is giving them hope that they have freedom to choose even in the midst of their suffering.

At the church that Jessica will be planting in a year and a half we have crafted a core value that says:

Choice-God’s love is a gift that has not only transformed our future hope but gives us the possibility for restored lives today. Intentionally living out this reality is a gift that can be chosen by any follower of his. We are given the gift of choice.

But is this just one more choice in the midsts of a world inundated with choices? Is the choice to enter into kingdom living that eventually culminates in a clearly heavenly kingdom just one more choice in a world thats overrun with choices? Or is there something different about the message and the method?