Category Archives: Scripture

Heresy

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“Jesus reveals God to us; God does not reveal Jesus to us…We cannot deduce anything about Jesus from what we think we know about God; we must deduce everything about God from what we do know about Jesus…”

As a Christian Jesus is my ideal starting point. If I want to better understand the mystery of God I should seek to better understand Jesus. If I want to better understand the whole of Scripture I should seek to better understand Jesus. What does God feel and think about suffering? Look at Jesus. What does God feel or think about rejects and freaks? Look at Jesus. What does God think about money, materialism, and consumption? Look at Jesus.

Let me quickly add one caveat before I move on. Things are not simple! Just looking at Jesus is not simple. The reality is that I don’t have a clear picture of Jesus. I only see him through my own world view, through my own baggage. So while it is an incredible and difficult task in a sense to look at Jesus, I do believe that it is a forgiving task full of mercy and grace along the way. One of the beauties of following Him is that he knows my baggage, he knows my (in)ability to comprehend and understand who he is and what he is about. And most importantly he is able to meet me where I am at and create transformation and a new creation despite my ignorance or brokenness!

My purpose in this blog is to talk about church. If we are honest about ourselves we must accept the reality that most of what we practice and believe about church is solely taught or read about in the book of Acts and the letters in the latter half of the Bible. Very little of how we define and practice being the church is founded in our reading and understanding of Jesus. While I do not believe that Paul (who wrote many of those aforementioned letters) and Jesus would disagree with each other or throw down in fisticuffs if given the opportunity, I do think that we have improperly done our theology about church (in biblical theology circles this is called ecclesiology). Similar to how we try to fit Jesus into our understanding of God instead of the other way around, with church we have spent more time trying to fit Jesus into our understanding of Paul. Would things be different if we started with Jesus? Would things be different if we attempted to define what a movement of Jesus followers (church) would look like based on the life and ministry of Jesus himself and then look into Paul and the other New Testament writings to see what they came up with in doing the same process?

Take a step back and think about the early church. What did they have? They had the stories about Jesus. They had the Old Testament. They had their own context. And they had the working of the Holy Spirit. WE, on the other hand, get all that PLUS the stories of what those early faith communities did, what they struggled with, the questions they asked, and the dysfunctions they developed. If I created a formula to better describe how the early followers of Jesus came up with what church looked like, it might look like this:

  • Jesus + History (including the Old Testament) + Context + Spirit = first century church

Couldn’t you look at our churches, our ways of defining how to do church and suggest that our formula looks more like this:

  • Paul + your grandpa’s context + Spirit = western church

What if we tried to craft a different formula? Would church today look different if we made an authentic effort to live and practice out of this formula:

  • Jesus + Church History (including rest of Scripture) + OUR context + Spirit = ?

I’m no scholar, but I know that much of the early churches structures, practices, and disciplines were not new. They were things that they borrowed from out of their own context, history, and surrounding culture. They borrowed things that were of value in following Jesus. We, in turn, have made those things concrete. Have we made the wrong things concrete? Have we inadvertently practiced idolatry by elevating that which is not holy (the practices and structures) to a place of holiness? In Paul’s writings we see a community of people struggling with the equation, with the formula. In those writings we see the churches journey, their story, their “becoming”.

Have we I ignorantly tried to adopt their culture, their context, their problems, and their journey without following their lead? Would it not be more true to their journey, to Scripture, if I was to follow the early churches lead by looking at my Lord, looking at my context, looking at my story (history), and listening/looking for God’s untamed Spirit? I wonder what type of church I would end up with?

Sorry for the heresy. I’m an out loud processor, I grow most through dialog, through putting things out there that I may not even agree with…though, to be perfectly honest, I’m kind of liking what I’ve come up with.

F$%& You!

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Ok, pardon the title, I just wanted to get your attention so I could share a bit about my perspective on four letter words (and others that may have more or fewer letters but still fall into the category).

I think I said my first cuss word on accident. I heard someone say bastard in a movie and I had never heard it before. I had no reason to think it was a no no word so I said it freely…until someone told me otherwise. I think I was like twenty four at the time.*

Cussing was never much a part of my vocabulary, nor was it heard in my house much at all growing up. As a matter of fact, as a child I was encouraged not to say crass words such as “butt” “crap” and “sucks”.

As an adult I wouldn’t call myself foul mouthed by any means. Generally I think that cuss words make you sound unintelligent. Specifically the F-bomb is a worthless word in my understanding because when a word can mean anything it really means nothing. Isn’t that the case with the f-bomb? It can be a noun, a pronoun, an adjective, an adverb, etc. You can put it in between any words in your sentence and it fits (even multiple times if you wish). So in my book, it’s a worthless word that ruins your vocabulary. But other so called naughty words are quite useful. Sometimes those words exactly express what you’re feeling, thinking, or experiencing. So in those cases why not drop a four letter word?

Some might argue from Scripture that we’re not supposed to let any unwholesome talk come out of our mouths…which is true. But my understanding of this Scripture (from the book of Ephesians) is that it’s written to a group experiencing conflict within their community. They’re trying to figure out how to do life together in this new context as followers of Christ. The continuation of this scripture is that we’re not to use unwholesome speech but instead should be building each other up and encouraging each other. So here’s the question I pose to you: is this verse challenging our vocabulary or our content? Is Paul (who wrote those words) telling us not to use bad words or telling us not to speak badly about others? I firmly believe that the Biblical challenge is not to avoid saying “ass” but to avoid taking away the dignity of others by saying negative things about them, by gossiping about them, by denigrating who they are, etc. It’s not just that it’s mean, but by speaking about people that way we’re attacking God as the creator of these people…and we have absolutely non right to do this! How dare we call ugly what God has deemed beautiful.

So when Jones tells Jessica that she needs to “cut your damn dreads off” we chose not to yell at him, put him in time out, etc. We simply communicated to him that damn was not the best kind of word to use. But when Jones tells us or another child to shut up or calls someone an idiot (thanks Disney movies) he gets in big trouble because he’s trying to take away the dignity of another person.

You can disagree with me and I’m cool with that. But I personally feel like we spent so much effort in the church teaching our children to not say cuss words while gossip in the church was rampant. We taught our children to guard their vocabulary instead of guarding their content. We challenged them to focus on words instead of focusing on people.

peace.

* This may or may not be an exageration.