Category: Discipleship (Page 13 of 30)
Soren Kierkegaard said sin is substituting things — any thing — for God. Good things, bad things, it doesn’t matter. If you find your identity, if you find your true self, your self worth, your emotional well-being, if your life is centered on any thing other than God, that is sin. Using this definition, Timothy Keller categorizes a lot of what we pursue as modern day men and women as sin in his terrific apologetics masterpiece, The Reason for God:
~If you center your life and identity on your spouse or partner, you will be emotionally dependent, jealous, and controlling. The other person’s problems will be overwhelming to you.
~If you center your life and identity on your family and children, you will try to live your life through your children until they resent you or have no self of their own. At worst, you may abuse them when they displease you.
~If you center your life and identity on your work and career, you will be a driven workaholic and a boring, shallow person. At worst you will lose family and friends and, if your career goes poorly, develop deep depression.
~If you center your life and identity on money and possessions, you’ll be eaten up by worry or jealousy about money. You’ll be willing to do unethical things to maintain your lifestyle, which will eventually blow up your life.
~If you center your life and identity on pleasure, gratification, and comfort, you will find yourself getting addicted to something. You will become chained to the “escape strategies” by which you avoid the hardness of life.
~If you center your life and identity on relationships and approval, you will be constantly overly hurt by criticism and thus always losing friends. You will fear confronting others and therefore will be a useless friend.
~If you center your life and identity on a “noble cause,” you will divide the world into “good” and “bad” and demonize your opponents. Ironically, you will be controlled by your enemies. Without them, you have no purpose.
~If you center your life and identity on religion and morality, you will, if you are living up to your moral standards, be proud, self-righteous, and cruel. If you don’t live up to your standards, your guilt will be utterly devastating.
The only real solution is not simply to change our behaviors, but to reorient and center every part of our lives on God. Our self worth and sense of purpose and reason for living and emotional well-being must all be found in Christ. If he is not the center, we’re going to be in trouble.
This passage from C. S. Lewis’ essay “Is Christianity Hard or Easy?” sums it all up pretty well:
The ordinary idea which we all have is that we have a natural self with various desires and interests. And we know something called “morality” or “decent behavior” has a claim on the self. We are all hoping that when all the demands of morality and society have been met, the poor natural self will still have some chance, some time, to get on with its own life and do what it likes. In fact, we are very like an honest man paying his taxes. He pays them, but he does hope that there will be enough left over for him to live on.
The Christian way is different — both harder and easier. Christ says, “Give me ALL.” I don’t want just this much of your time and this much of your money and this much of your work — so that your natural self can have the rest. I want you. Not your things. I have come not to torture your natural self; I will give you a new self instead. Hand over the whole natural self — ALL the desires, not just the ones you think wicked but the ones you think innocent — the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead.
The almost impossibly hard thing is to hand over your whole self to Christ. But it is far easier than what we are all trying to do instead. For what we are trying to do is remain what we call “ourselves” — our personal happiness centered on money or pleasure or ambition — and hoping, despite this, to behave honestly and chastely and humbly. And that is exactly what Christ warned us we cannot do. If I am a grass field — all the cutting will keep the grass less but won’t produce wheat. If I want wheat, I must be plowed up and re-sown.
Everybody is living for something. Whether you think of it that way or not, whatever it is eventually becomes your Lord.
Where are you pouring most of your time and energy, your money and resources? Where do you find most happiness and fulfillment? What are you pursuing more than anything else? The answer to that question is the lord of your life. And if its anything other than Jesus, it’s not going to work for too much longer. Jesus says lose your life for me and I’ll save it. Throw it away for me and I’ll give you eternal life forever. Make yourself last for my sake and I’ll exalt you on high.
Peace,
Allan
“I have little use for purity, but I do pray for a more faithful church. A more faithful church would, I suspect, make being a Christian more difficult but also more interesting.” ~Stanley Hauerwas, Approaching the End
One of the many reasons I read Stanley Hauerwas is that he is widely recognized as the greatest theologian in America. Another reason is that he’s from Pleasant Grove, my old neighborhood in the southeast corner of Dallas. The main reason I read Hauerwas is that he writes so eloquently and inspirationally about the role of Christ’s Church in the world. He consistently points to the holy mission of God’s people and paints with bold color and lofty strokes a picture of what Christians worshiping and working and living together should look like today. I’ve just finished reading Hauerwas’ latest book, “Approaching the End: Eschatological Reflections on Church, Politics, and Life.” And I’m anxious to share some of it with you.
The church in the U. S. today, according to Hauerwas and just about anybody paying attention, is in a “buyer’s market.” It’s in survival mode. It’s approaching the end. And so a whole lot of them are more concerned with staying alive and viable, by their own definitions, than with pursuing the mission of God. Some of these churches are already dead. They’ve been dead for a long time. But we don’t recognize them as dead because they still appear to be in business. The problem, though, is that their business may only be accidentally related to Christianity.
“The general societal approval and support the church has enjoyed particularly in America is coming to an end. Of course one of the costs Christians have paid for the social and political status they have enjoyed is not to take their Christian identity so seriously that they might destabilize the social order by, for example, challenging the presumption that war is a necessity if democracies are to survive. Thus I am long on record as thinking the loss of Christendom to be a ‘good thing.'”
I, too, have believed for a while now that the loss of Christendom — the culture actually propping up the church and supporting its values, Christianity seen as routine and normal by society, the church depending on the Empire to help it with its mission — to be a good thing. All this coddling by the culture has made us soft. (Now this is me, not Hauerwas.) At some point, whether it’s over ordaining homosexual ministers, protesting against federally funded violence and murder, or protecting the poor, the church is going to discover that we are not friends with the culture. And the church will be shocked. What we’ll learn is that we were never intended to be friends with the culture; we’re intended by God in Christ to convert the culture, not conform to it.
Now, when that day comes, I don’t think we’ll be arrested or jailed or beaten or shot. No, the government will first threaten our tax-exempt status.
And then we’ll all have decisions to make.
Some of our churches will bow to the dollar and pay homage to the Empire to protect the tax-exempt status. After all, they have never known a church to pay taxes to Caesar, they’ve never known a church not in cahoots with the nation, and their imagination to be a church free from the government’s control has been terminally damaged. But some of our churches will be more faithful. Some of our churches will proclaim the Christian confession that “Jesus is Lord,” not Caesar, and actually become the alternative society that our Lord established at the empty garden tomb.
It’ll be difficult. Less money for our programs. Less status for our platforms. Less community support for our evangelism. It’ll be difficult. But a whole lot more interesting. Being the political movement we were always meant to be, the more faithful counter-society, will be very interesting.
“Jesus was not successful. Jesus did not promise his followers that if they did things right, they would conquer with time. The non-coerciveness of agape includes renouncing the promise of power; it includes renouncing the mechanical model of how to move history. Yet that acknowledgement does not mean simple despair or unconcern. It rather means a promise of victory, the paradigm of which is the Resurrection.”
Hauerwas gets in trouble for saying that the first order of business for the church is not to make the world just, but to make the world the world. But he’s right. How will the world ever know it needs saving, that it needs forgiveness and healing and reconciliation, how will the world ever know that it desperately needs Christ Jesus unless the Church shows it something totally different and new? And faithful? And interesting?
Peace,
Allan
“Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked
or stand in the way of sinners
or sit in the seat of mockers.
But his delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on his law he meditates day and night…
For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.”
~Psalm 1
The first psalm asserts that how one responds to Scripture, how a person responds to the revelation of God in Torah, will determine that person’s ultimate destiny. When it comes to the Law of the Lord there are two choices, two paths. Moses gives us two paths in his farewell sermon on the mountain and says, “Choose life.” Jesus gives us two paths in his sermon on the mountain and says, “Choose the straight and narrow.” And the psalmist does a similar thing.
By using both positive and negative examples, the psalm encourages us to adopt the fruitful and satisfying life that’s characterized by complete immersion in God and his Word. So immersed in the Word of God, so focuses on the Law of the Lord, that it shapes and dominates your worldview. This is the way of the righteous. And God watches those who walk in that way. By contrast, the one who does not delight in the Law of the Lord is shaped by the counsel of the wicked. He is formed in the way of sinners. Those who walk in this way will perish.
It’s a choice.
God speaks. God reveals. He calls. God makes his holy character and perfect will known through Torah, and what we do with that word is everything. It’s the difference between growing as a fruitful tree and fading away as useless chaff. It’s the difference between well-watered and well-nourished stability and dry, dusty, windblown impermanence. Two choices: the way of the righteous that God oversees and the way of wickedness that leads to destruction. It’s the wise man and the foolish man building their houses in Matthew 7. The only difference between the two men is attention to and obedience to the teachings of Jesus, hearing the Word of the Lord and putting it into practice.
Our God does not reveal himself to be catalogued and studied; he reveals himself to be followed. Our God does not speak to be heard; he speaks to be obeyed.
You ask your daughter to fold the clean towels and put them away in the cabinet (this is purely a hypothetical situation). You come back in twenty minutes and the towels are still in a wad on the couch and the same daughter is sitting in the same spot watching the same TV, only now she’s eating a Pop Tart. And you say to your daughter, “Did you hear me?!?” By that, you don’t mean, “Did the sound waves caused by the vibrations in my tongue and throat penetrate your ear canals to be carried to your brain where they are deciphered into understandable language?” When you say, “Did you hear me?” you’re actually saying, “Why didn’t you obey me?”
To delight in the Law of the Lord, to meditate on it day and night, is to do it. Hearing is doing. Faith is acting.
The Word of God is powerful. It changes lives. It alters destinies. In 1 Thessalonians, Paul acknowledges the Word of God that “is at work in you.” In 2 Timothy, he claims that Scripture equips a man for every good work. Not doctrinal perfection. Not knowledge about facts and patterns. Paul says it leads to action. Hearing is doing. The righteous one delights in the Law of the Lord and meditates on it day and night not to know more. To become more. We don’t learn or study Scripture as much as we ingest it. We assimilate it. We take it into our lives in such a way that it becomes a part of us and it metabolizes into this fruit: acts of love, cups of cold water, prison and hospital visits, cakes baked, groceries delivered, comfort and encouragement, evangelism and justice.
When Samuel was confronted with God’s voice, he replied, “Speak, for your servant is listening.” James says to not just hear the Word, but to do it.
“I desire to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart.” ~Psalm 40:8
Peace,
Allan
“I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;
I will counsel you and watch over you.
Do not be like the horse or the mule, which have no understanding
but must be controlled by bit and bridle or they will not come to you.”
~Psalm 32:9
I won’t be like the horse or the mule. Every day I will come to you, Lord. Every day I will sing to you. I will pray to you. I will listen to you. I will talk to you every day. I will look for you, God. I will obey you. I will submit to you. Lord, I will follow you. I will come to you.
God, in your mercies, give me the power to keep these promises to you.
Your undeserving and grateful servant,
Allan
Most disciples of Jesus would profess that churches are called to make a public witness to Christian faith. But it seems that more and more of us disagree with what that witness should look like and how it should function. What does it mean for the Church to testify to the truth of Christ Jesus?
I’ve recently come across a review of a yet-to-be-released work by Jennifer McBride called The Church for the World: A Theology of Public Witness. McBride is a theologian and author who teaches at Wartburg College in Iowa. The review and an accompanying interview with McBride are in the December issue of Christian Century. But — D’oh! — I can’t link you to them because the articles are only available online if you’re a subscriber. I’m intrigued by the interview, written and conducted by David Heim. And I’d like to spend this space this week breaking it down. Yes, I’ve ordered the book. So, there may be more of this coming in a couple of weeks.
In response to Heim’s first question, asking the author to elaborate on an assertion that Christian public witness has gone bad in the United States, McBride says:
“The main problem is that Christian presence in public life tends to be triumphalistic. The purpose of Christian witness is to point to Jesus and the reign of God he embodies, but a triumphal presence actually contradicts Jesus’ way of being in the world as depicted in the Gospels.
The triumphal character of Christian witness has contributed a good deal to how polarized our society and churches have become. Christians so thoroughly disagree about war, sexuality, ecological care, immigration and other issues that we wind up on opposing sides of the political spectrum. This is cause for great concern, because partisan politics ends up defining what is Christian; it shapes the way we think and speak about public issues.”
I’ve wondered a lot about this in the past dozen years or so. The Church that I see and experience in the heart of the Bible Belt in the Southwest United States has become so politically juiced that it’s become difficult to think or speak theologically if one Christian’s understandings of Gospel oppose another Christian’s understandings of country or patriotism. Have you noticed? Some Christians will unapologetically claim that one cannot be a true disciple of Christ if she belongs to a certain political party or adheres to a certain political belief. Farther along, and worse, in my judgment, is the way the Church’s identity has been compromised by our embracing the world’s politics. We have become so entangled in the sheets and blankets of the dirty bedrooms of American politics that we are labeled as “right wing” or “conservative” or “Republican” by outsiders we’re trying to convert to Christ. Non-Christians are attaching to the Church the same corruption, deceit, ethics, and behaviors that characterize the worst kinds of politicians. “Tea Party” and “Christian” are becoming synonymous in our culture. And we have only ourselves to blame.
Who do we think we are, seeking or claiming some kind of privileged status in the government or in American society at large? What makes us believe it’s good to force others — by boycott, insult, petition, million-dollar campaigns, attack ads, holier-than-thou attitudes, pamphlets, protests — to live by the same standards we profess as Christians? Why are we so surprised that the more the Church gets caught up in this world’s politics, the more noise we make about legislation and ethics, the louder we claim to have all the answers for how everybody in the world should live, the less and less interested the world is in Christians? Is it really any wonder that society is hostile to us?
You’ve noticed, right? Generally speaking, Christians are now portrayed by the media and understood by the culture as angry, anti-abortion, anti-homosexual, shove-it-down-your-throat, power-hungry, politicos. It wasn’t too long ago we were merely thought to be irrelevant. Too nice. Too naive. Now it’s become just the opposite. Pay attention to our general attitudes. Notice the worldly lengths to which we’ll go in order to get our way. Christian prayer has to be mandated in the public schools, but not Muslim prayer. Christian marriage has to be recognized as legal, but not homosexual marriage. The Ten Commandments must be displayed on the courthouse wall, but not the tenets of Buddha. Christian churches should be exempt from local and state taxes, but not a mosque. Really? Should the Church of Jesus Christ be seeking or claiming some kind of privileged status in government? Should Christians receive more and better benefits from the world’s governments than anybody else? On what basis? At what cost?
We are setting ourselves over and above others, claiming by our words and actions to know more and to be better than everybody else, in direct contradiction to the way our Lord lives on earth. More from McBride:
“We tend to think that as the sinless one, Jesus distinguished himself from sinners by setting himself up as a model of ethical perfection. But Jesus was in solidarity with sinners in at least three main ways that define his person and work.
First, as God incarnate, he assumed sinful flesh, as Paul says in Romans 8:3. He took on human nature’s damaged state and through his body became intimately acquainted with the complexity and messiness of fallen existence.
Second, he begins his public ministry by being baptized with sinners in response to John the Baptist’s call to repent and in this way ‘numbers himself with the transgressors’ (to use Isaiah’s language about the suffering servant).
Third, and finally, refusing to be called good (Mark 10:18), he instead accepts responsibility for sin as a convicted criminal on the cross. Throughout his ministry Jesus denies any claim about his own moral righteousness and instead actively accepts responsibility for the world’s sin and suffers on the cross out of love for fellow human beings.”
What would it look like for the Church to be in solidarity with sinners? To identify with sinners? To be one with sinners? To recognize every day our own sinfulness in the presence of sinners? To sympathize with, to minister with, to be seen with, to learn with, to walk alongside sinners? What would that look like? How would that improve our Christian witness? In what ways would it transform us more into the image of our Lord? How might it change the world?
Seems to me, it’s got a much greater chance of making an impression than another angry ad or fiery Facebook post.
Peace,
Allan
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