Tag Archives: church

Seriously, Do We Really Need God?

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Being a follower of Christ is not rocket science. I spent much of my life thinking that it was. I spent many years placing guilt on myself if I could not “sufficiently” give “proof” for my beliefs. That is, I had to be able to both show from science and history that the Bible and Jesus were everything that they claim to be, and I also had to be able to prove from the Bible that the certain set of rules that I followed from Scripture were the “right” set of rules. This carried with it the constant fear of being wrong in your interpretation of the Bible, it cultivated a defensive atmosphere and also was very good at creating sides that we could all pick and defend.

I would contend that being a Christian is not rocket science. It’s not all that hard to figure out…living it out is something entirely different!

**page break**

Ok I’ve got to shift. I’ve written this whole post now (you just haven’t finished reading it) but another post, a more important post has emerged that I’ve got to get your input on. Here’s the question, do we really need Jesus to be a “Christian” (obviously the term christian itself is worthless without the christ part, but lets thats not the point)? Jesus simplified things by saying that the whole of Scripture could be summed up in two statements. Love God. Love people. But what I’m wondering right now is how essential is the “love God” part to what it looks like to be a follower of Christ.

Virtually all of the practices that define Christianity (if we’re being positive and not deconstructive) would be and should be practiced if you lived by the one simple rule to “love your neighbor” Here are some quick examples:

  • Alcohol: If you continually  lived out of your love for people you would not drink too much alcohol because you would never want to impair your decision making in such a way as to do something destructive and to hurt people. Also it could be argued that a strong love for people can only be healthy within the context of an appropriate love of self. And if you value yourself you would take care of your body.
  • Sex: You definitely wouldn’t be sleeping around or sleeping with anyone that was not firmly committed to being “yours” (I’d consider marriage to be this appropriate context) because how in the world could you ever justify sleeping with another mans not-yet-wife! Not to mention the fact that anyone who has had sex can attest to the life changing intimacy that takes place and the fact that if you love others you cannot take that piece of intimacy away from people that you are not forever committed to!
  • Compassion: This is the most obvious of all. If your only rule in life was to love others than you would be serving the poor, collecting clothes for children, feeding the hungry, caring for widows and single mothers, etc. How could you not if you loved people (oh the irony I see in this bullet point)
  • Church: you would most definitely be a part of a church. But it might not look like churches traditionally look like. If your only rule was to love people I imagine you would be compelled to get together with like-minded people to recharge and challenge each other to go back out and continue loving people in new and creative ways.

That was a quickly assembled four examples, but I believe that you could nearly reassemble all the practices of the Christian faith under the one umbrella “love your neighbor”. So the question is, do you really need to love God? And if so, how in the world is that played out? And please tell me that going to heaven and thus avoiding hell is the only impact of bringing God in the mix!

Death

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Death has (and should) defined following Jesus from the very beginning. Christianity is called to be a mysterious comination of life and death.

It is through the death (and the fact that he rose back to life) of Jesus that people find life. Before his death within the context of the passover meal (which is a meal centered around the Isralite lives that were spared amidst the death of the Egyptians) that Jesus told his followers to remember him by continuing the tradition of the passover within a new context. This new context was that the bread now represented his body (which died on our behalf) and his blood (that was spilled on our behalf) both of which can only be understood surrounded by the context of his life that was constantly being poured out for those around him. Jesus offered people living water, called himself the bread of life, and used metaphors associated with living things (mustard plants, growing seeds, water, bread, sheep, trees, etc.) to communicate the nature of his mission and his church. At the same time speaking about the kingdom he said that “unless a seed falls and dies…”, and “you must deny yourself, take up your cross (death), and follow me…”, and again “whoever loses his life for my sake will find it…”

Death and life.

We see this in the early church where people were willing to live radically for Jesus. When disease would break out in a city in those days everyone but the sick would leave town. It was a quarentine of sorts. But the Christians stayed. The Christians were the ones known for staying behind and caring for the sick even if it meant risking death for themselves. We can read story after story where Christ followers were willing to die because of the phrase “Jesus is Lord” that they refused to renounce. They found life in those words. They found so much life that it was worth death.

What in the world have we made being a follower of Christ turn into? We argue about carpet colors, we spend billions of dollers each year in new church buidling construction (it was 2 billion a year in the 80’s), we spend our time trying to keep all the Christians happy (in other words we’re spending time prioritizing Christian needs over those outside our doors), we spend time arguing about worship instead of engaging in it, we fight over being more right instead of “fighting” over being more sacrificial…you can fill in your own experiences here.

If I know one thing for certain its that Jesus did not die so that we could be comfortable. Comfortability is probably an enemy to living in and living out Christ’s transformational kingdom. Comfortability is in opposition to dying to self.

If we are to truly experience the mystery of the church, that is, of experiencing both life and death, we’ve got to start with the question “is Jesus Lord of my life”. If Jesus is lord of your life that implies that…

  • You’re relinquishing control
  • You’re giving him access to every aspect of your life
  • You’re willing to join him in death
  • You’re able to join him in resurrection
  • You’re invited to live resurrection daily
  • Carpet colors do not matter
  • Fill in your own blank here

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.

Gun Control

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Just read this story about a church that’s hosting an “Open Carry Celebration” where they’re inviting everyone to bring their handguns, sing songs about America, and even buy a $1 raffle ticket to win a free hand gun! They say it’s a “celebration for all who support our 1st and 2nd amendment rights” and the advertisement invites you to “come celebrate our rights as Americans”.

Let’s not even discuss the issue of gun control and the right to bear arms. I mean it’s a very important topic but one that seems more suited to someone who has done more research (seems like a good English 102 paper). I personally just prefer for people not to shoot each other. Anyway, the big question is whether or not this is appropriate in the church.

I’ve got two differing thoughts:

  1. My first response was a toned down outrage or frustration that a church would do something so ridiculous. That a church would actually be a part of inviting everyone to bring their guns, to celebrate America, and all that jazz. Seems like churches have a hard enough task funneling peoples worship toward Jesus and building excitement concerning the Holy Spirits work in peoples lives. Do we really want to spend our time drumming up enthusiasm for carrying guns and worshiping our nation? Is that the churches role? Isn’t our role to be the body of Christ? Didn’t the early church have a simple motto “Jesus is Lord” which was in stark opposition to the phrase of the day “Caesar is Lord”. In other words when the Roman empire was trying to get it’s citizens to sing the praises of Caesar the early church turned their phrases upside down and reinterpreted them to give glory to the true savior of the people. While no president has claimed to be God, it is interesting that in honor of our country we sing songs, we have parades, we light fireworks, we even pledge our allegiance (synonyms include faithfulness, devotion, fidelity, honor, obedience, piety, and duty) to our nation. If that doesn’t sound like the actions of worship I don’t know what does. It’s just interesting isn’t it? When hymn books include “God bless America” and “America the beautiful” next to songs like “Holy Holy Holy” and “How Great Thou Art” I start to have some serious questions about where our loyalty lies. So my first thoughts included all this. A bit of disgust. A bit of judgement (though I prefer to call it righteous indignation). A bit of…well you get the point.
  2. My second thoughts were an attempt to see all of this from the point of view of a good ol’ boy from Kentucky (where this church is located). I mean good ol’ boys are the people they’re trying to bring to Jesus. So if a ridiculous gun control day helps to bring people to Jesus then by all means do it. Don’t get me wrong I wouldn’t suggest doing something immoral and wrong in order to introduce people to Jesus, but I’m confident that these people have absolutely no spiritual or moral conflict with gun possession! So within that context I’d just place this event in the same box that I put other goofy attempts at creating “evangelistic events” like churches often do. At least they’re trying I guess right? I mean I’d prefer a different route, but at least they’re doing something! There’s a really awesome church here in Vancouver that advertised their Sunday services with tigers and monkeys on stage. Kind of goofy I thought. But in the end they brought more people to new faith on the lion, tiger, and bear week than any other in their history.

I don’t know where you sit on the issue. I’d love to hear your opinion. You’ve heard some of my gut immediate thoughts, right or wrong as they might be. At the very least let’s all agree that this is a really weird story.

peace.

Contextualizing Suckers

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I was blessed to have a great conversation with a person last week that made me tear up. We weren’t talking about anything necessarily emotional, it wasn’t a bear all session but it was one of those conversations where everything that a baby church dreams about was happening. This person was struggling because there were too many suckers around her. Other people use the word “follower” but I prefer the term “sucker”, you know, they’re the people who just want to suck off you. They come to you to be fed emotionally, spiritually, and physically. They want you to make them dinner, listen to their problems, and help them work out a solution. It’s not bad, these aren’t bad people, they’re normal people. They’re most people. Most people at churches are suckers because most people at churches are taught to suck. In many ways you can’t grow unless you’ve got someone you can suck off of.

Anyway, this girl was stressed ’cause she’s tired of feeding suckers. As a fairly new Christ-Follower it was great to hear her lament about the good ol’ days when they had other friends who shouldered more of the load, who they could suck off of. It was great because I was able to contextualize for her and say “Yeah, those people who you used to chronically suck off of, they were called leaders. And, well…welcome to being a leader!” I was able to tell her that she’s experiencing the pain of transitioning from being a follower/sucker to being a leader. And it’s hard. And she doesn’t want to do it. The greatest part is that she’s not leading because she went to some new leaders course at our church and she’s not leading because the staff wisely assessed her as an upcoming leader. She’s leading because she lives her life in such a way that she listens to the Spirit, cares for those who need Jesus around her, and invites those people to journey with her. So in turn people are following her. I think it’s John Maxwell that says that leadership is simply influence.

Part of her struggle is that all the churched people want to add more things to her schedule, they want to add “evangelism nights” (whatever that is), they want to add special trainings on how to do evangelism, and other “good” churchy things. So she screams out that she doesn’t have time for this stuff, that she’s too stressed and busy as it is! And where I teared up a bit was when I was able to say that she is living the life of a missional (and I defined this to her as someone who sees their every day life as an opportunity for God to use them to transform the world around them in simple, spectacular, and mundane) follower of Jesus and that this is our prayer for every follower of Christ.

By the end of the conversation a weight seemed to be lifted off her shoulders and I think she walked away believing the reality that the Spirit was doing something in her, that the draining she was feeling from people sucking off her was actually God pouring her out to those in need, that her role is vitally important in the kingdom work of Vancouver, and that she needs to hang out with a couple other leaders to commiserate and be sharpened.

It was a blessed conversation and I look forward to having many more.