Category: Christ & Culture (Page 1 of 42)

Better Christians!

“We don’t need more Christians; we need better Christians.” ~Francis Chan

Most of our culture in America right now, especially with the majority of people younger than us, are turned off by Christians. The world is sick of Christians. People don’t listen to Christians anymore. So, as Christians, it’s tempting to think, in order to win the world, we need to be less Christian. Christians don’t have credibility in our society anymore. People seem to be angry at Christians. So, maybe we shouldn’t act too Christian all the time. Maybe we should relax our Christianity every now and then.

No. The whole premise is wrong.

Yes, we do hear the world complain about Christian fanatics. These fanatics get born again and they start screaming against things. They holler and yell and make speeches and forward posts against politicians and parties and same-sex couples and evolution and abortion and the homeless and immigration. Pick a topic, pick any issue, and Christians can appear to be very judgmental and intolerant and loud.

That’s what turns people off.

And when that kind of behavior is done in the name of our Lord, it turns me off, too.

Most people say those folks are too Christian. They need to lighten up on their Christianity. They’re too radically Christian. They take their Christianity too seriously.

No. Those kinds of folks are not Christian enough. They’re not taking their Christianity seriously enough.

The people who are considered extreme Christians are overbearing, self-righteous, harsh, and opinionated. But they’re not radical Christians; they’re not Christian enough. They may be radically zealous and extremely bold. But they’re not radically humble. They’re not extremely compassionate. They’re not over-the-top loving or extravagantly forgiving or fanatically empathetic. They’re not sacrificial servants. They’re not like Jesus very much at all.

Some Christians can be arrogant and selfish and actually be a hindrance to the Gospel. We can be working against our God as he redeems and restores the world. We say we carry a message of grace, but how are people going to experience it as truth when we act that way? Sometimes, in the name of Jesus, we just run over people. We can be so narrow-minded and stubborn sometimes that nobody’s right about anything but us. Jesus totally embodied a powerful message of truth that called people to repentance and accountability and a choice. But he never ran over anybody.

If we are really fanatics and radical Christians–too Christian–the world would fall in love with our God. If the world saw all of us walking to the cross, walking with a cross, serving and sacrificing, dying to ourselves and dying for one another, loving unconditionally, forgiving lavishly, showing mercy and grace to all, speaking only kind words–radically Christian!–the whole world would fall down and worship our God.

Peace,

Allan

The Will of Jesus to Practice

More and more research is being released about the effects of cell phones and digital technology, telling us what we already know, what we’ve known for 20 years. But somehow it keeps being presented and received as groundbreaking. What? Cell phone bans result in academic improvement? No way!! Who could have ever guessed that? The latest is coming out of the Dallas School District where Robert T. Hill Middle School banned all phones on campus five years ago. According to school officials there, the campus culture has shifted. There has been a 75% decrease in bullying (I’m not sure how they measure that), and a 13-point gain in the number of students meeting the standards of the STAAR tests. According to the story from Channel 5 in Fort Worth, the biggest pushback generally comes from the parents. Not the students. Parents complain they need to be in constant contact with their children. Of course, because we want to raise our kids to need to live with us into their 30s.

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Our first “4 Midland” pulpit swap and Thanksgiving service is this Sunday. I’m preaching at First Baptist this Sunday morning and Steve Brooks, our brother from First Methodist, is preaching here at GCR. Darin Wood, the pastor at First Baptist is preaching at First Presbyterian while their pastor, Steve Schorr, is preaching at First Methodist. And then all four of our churches are coming together Sunday evening for a combined Thanksgiving service. In advance of these glorious events, I’m posting this week about Christian unity as a gift of God to receive, our Church of Christ heritage to embrace, and, today, the will of Jesus to practice.

My prayer, Jesus says, is that all of them may be one. May they be brought to complete unity. It’s this unity, this uncompromising love and acceptance we have for all baptized disciples of Christ, that will prove to the world Jesus really is who we say he is. Our unflinching commitment to love and accept and unite with all Christian brothers and sisters will astonish the world!

Well, Allan, not ALL people who’ve been baptized. A lot of people are not baptized like we are. A lot of churches don’t do the Lord’s Supper like we do. We can’t worship with and have fellowship with ALL Christians.

That’s why the Church is not astonishing the world.

Our Lord’s prayer is for unity. Christ’s will is for complete unity among all his followers. We need to get there. So, let’s lay it out.

If God accepts someone, I have to also. I can’t be a sterner judge than the perfect judge. I don’t know anybody who would say, “Well, God certainly accepts this woman as a full child of his, but she doesn’t meet all of MY standards. I’M not going to accept her.” Nobody would say that. The truth is, I must fellowship everybody who has fellowship with God. All the saved. Everybody who’s saved.

So, who is saved?

Well, all those who hear, believe, repent, confess, and are baptized (by the way, that’s another Church of Christ creed).

All those who hear what? The Gospel! And believe what? The Gospel! Who repent and confess what? The Gospel!

Okay, what’s the Gospel? That Jesus Christ is the Son of the living God, that he alone is Lord, and that we’re saved by faith in him.

The Bible sums it up in several places, but that’s pretty good. Believe in Jesus as the eternal Son of God, declare him Lord, and, by faith, submit to his lordship in baptism. We’ve never required anything else. The Church through the centuries has never demanded anything more. We’ve never asked anybody their position on atonement theory or women’s roles before they’re baptized. We don’t put a person in the water and then catalogue all their beliefs on the plurality of elders and the age of the earth before they’re saved. Now, some of us try to do that after they’re saved! We can act like a health club sometimes: “The first month is free but then, after that, you’re going to pay through the nose! For the rest of your life!” No, that stuff is not the Gospel. The apostle Paul says nothing but Christ and him crucified.

“Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.” ~Romans 15:7

We are called to accept others by the same standard as when Jesus Christ accepted us, to continually accept others based on the way they were accepted at their baptisms–the way you were accepted at your baptism. Your acceptance by God is a gift. The fact that Christ Jesus accepts you is nothing but pure grace. Now, show that same grace, share that same gift, to everyone who calls Jesus Lord.

Peace,

Allan

Our CofC Heritage to Embrace

The Cowboys ushered in the experimental phase of the 2024 season last night by getting blown out at home. Again. Among the miscues and missed opportunities against the Texans, the mass of penalties and the highly questionable play calls, double-fumbles, a boinked field goal, and a botched fake punt, Mike McCarthy’s biggest post-game regret was that he didn’t give Trey Lance a couple of series at the end. The roof fell down on the Cowboys last night, both figuratively and literally. Forget the Lombardi Trophy, this team can’t even compete for the Governor’s Cup. I’m reminded of the immortal words of Bum Phillips after his Houston Oilers dismantled the Cowboys on Thanksgiving Day in 1978, “I’d rather be Texas’ Team than America’s Team any day.”

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My gifted and talented brother, Keith Stanglin, the executive director of Center for Christian Studies in Austin, has written a brilliant article on the new Apple Intelligence commercials that are airing multiple times during almost all college and NFL football games. You’ve seen the spots: the mom making an AI generated video for her husband after she forgets his birthday, the guy in the boardroom who uses AI to generate a report after being called on the carpet for not doing his work, the employee sending an AI email to his boss that hides the fact he’s a disengaged slob at work. Keith points out the obvious. These commercials don’t try to hide what AI is all about; the ads emphasize it as the selling point. Laziness and deception. Cheating. Hiding. The old vices are the new virtues. AI calls evil good and good evil. And most of our world embraces it giddily. Thank you, Keith, for your words of wisdom and warning. This is a great read.

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In advance of our first annual “4 Midland” Thanksgiving service this Sunday at First Baptist, I’m writing this week about Christian unity. Yesterday I posted about Christian unity among all disciples of Jesus across all denominations as a gift from God to receive. Today, I’d like to present Christian unity as our Church of Christ heritage to embrace.

215 years ago, Thomas Campbell was preaching fiery sermons about Christian unity in western Pennsylvania. His convictions about the unity of all Christians and those sermons got him censured by his presbytery and then fired by his synod. At the same time, another Presbyterian preacher in Kentucky, Barton Stone, dissolved his presbytery to unite with everyone who desired to move away from denominational labels and just be known as Christians. In September of 1809, Campbell wrote what he called the Declaration and Address of the Christian Association of Washington County. It was a call to Christian unity based on Jesus’ prayer in John 17 and on the whole of Scripture that presents complete unity as God’s holy will for his people.

Some of the Declaration and Address is tough sledding; it was written over two centuries ago. But I love reading it. It’s our founding document in Churches of Christ. This document is where we get, “Speak where the Bible speaks and be silent where the Bible is silent,” although I’m afraid we’ve become a people who speak where the Bible speaks and, where the Bible is silent, we have even more to say. Our foundational Church of Christ creeds come from the Declaration and Address. “Christians only, but not the only Christians.” “No creed but Christ,” which, ironically, is a creed. I can’t find, “guide, guard, and direct” in this document, but I know it must be in there.

The Declaration and Address reminds us in Churches of Christ that we began as a Christian unity movement with a deep conviction that all Christians are one. All Christians are together. Our unity in Christ transcends all denominational differences and it should be demonstrated in visible and public ways for the sake of an unbelieving world.

I’ll share just a couple of passages:

Proposition 1 – That the church of Christ upon earth is essentially, intentionally, and constitutionally one; consisting of all those in every place that profess their faith in Christ and obedience to him in all things according to the scriptures, and that manifest the same by their tempers and conduct.

Proposition 2 – They ought to receive each other as Christ Jesus hath also received them to the glory of God. And for this purpose, they ought to all walk by the same rule, to mind and speak the same thing; and to be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment.

Proposition 9 – That all that are enabled, thro’ grace, to make the Christian confession and to manifest the reality of it in their tempers and conduct, should consider each other as the precious saints of God, should love each other as brethren, children of the same family and Father, temples of the same Spirit, members of the same Body, subjects of the same grace, objects of the same divine love, bought with the same price, and joint heirs of the same inheritance. Whom God has thus joined together no man should dare to put asunder.

Introduction, pages 9-10 – Not that we judge ourselves competent to effect such a thing; we utterly disclaim the thought. But we judge it our bounded duty to make the attempt, by using all due means in our power to promote it; and also, that we have sufficient reason to rest assured that our humble and well meant endeavors shall not be in vain in the Lord. The cause that we advocate is not our own peculiar; it is a common cause, the cause of Christ and our brethren of all denominations. All that we presume to do, then, is to do what we conceive to be our duty, in connexion with our brethren; to each of whom it equally belongs, as to us, to exert themselves for this blessed purpose.

It was a radical, mind-blowing vision. Christians only. Unity in Christ. For the sake of the world. Putting aside personal preferences and tearing down denominational walls. Campbell and Stone dreamed and prayed for the one Church we read about in our Bibles, the one Church Jesus prayed for at that last supper, the physical and tangible unity of Christ’s Church that proves to the world he really is Lord.

It was risky. Dangerous. It cost them their jobs. It cost them relationships with family and friends and professional colleagues. But Campbell and Stone valued the sound doctrine of Christian unity more than they valued their own church’s distinctions that divided them.

A couple of times in the Declaration and Address, Campbell writes, “What? Shall we pray for a thing and not strive to obtain it?”

Peace,

Allan

Reality Check

Most Christians I know will be voting in this country’s general elections tomorrow. For a variety of reasons and motivations, with a mixture of hopes and concerns, most Christians are heading to the polls. To those who are deciding to vote, I generally say something like this: I believe it’s okay for followers of Jesus to vote; just don’t pretend it’s an act of righteousness.

Here in the United States, where we live, we’ve got, for all practical purposes, two political parties. Generally speaking, there are some Kingdom of God values in both party platforms and also things in both party platforms that fall woefully short, if not straight up oppose Christ. I don’t think all Christians who vote against abortion hate immigrants and I don’t believe all Christians who vote for civil rights and refugees want to normalize gay marriage and gender fluidity. It’s complicated. There’s room for a carefully discerning Christian to vote for either party with a clear conscience before God and his Christian brothers and sisters.

But both parties get their way through power and threat, wealth and numbers, insults and lies, division and force. The goals and the methods of both parties are not at all in line with what I call Christian politics.

As Christians, we have our own unique politics. We are citizens of the Kingdom of God. We have a King. His name is Jesus. And he’s not on the ballot tomorrow. The Bible says our King was declared with power when the Holy Spirit raised him from the dead to be the Son of God: Jesus Christ our Lord! (Romans 1:4)

And he has told us how to live, how to function with others for the greater good, what to prioritize for the sake of society. In other words, politics. What laws are going to govern how we take care of others, how are we going to get along together, how will we help people flourish? That’s politics. And God through Christ has told us what it looks like. We follow very clear and very specific politics. The Ruler of God’s Kingdom has shown us how to change the world, how to make things right, how to fix things for all people.

It looks like Jesus on the cross. It’s sacrifice. Suffering. Forgiveness. Love. Mercy. Grace. Compassion. Empathy. Serving others. Unconditional love, for all. The crucified and risen Jesus is our King. These are our Kingdom of God politics. And you can’t find them in the politics of the world’s kingdoms.

I don’t see one good party and one bad party in the United States. I don’t believe it’s one righteous platform and one evil platform. It seems to me it is one broken, fallen, sinful, political system of a temporary and fading worldly kingdom that’s opposed to the politics of the Kingdom of God.

As Brian Zahnd pointed out in his recent voter’s guide, “The bottom line for political parties is power and the bottom line for Christians is love; therein lies the rub.”

The U.S. political system has very little to do with how God is saving the world. The fate of the Kingdom of God is not hanging in the balance tomorrow. It’s much more important that your soul be filled with love than for your party to win the election. We all need these reminders. It’s okay to vote, but voting is not how we witness to the Way of Jesus.

Hunter S. Thompson is given credit for saying, “There’s a terrible danger in voting for the lesser of two evils because the parties can set it up that way.” The current circumstances make it difficult to argue against his point.

More to my point, the great preacher Charles Spurgeon said, “Of two evils, choose neither. Christians must turn from the endless cycle of voting for the lesser of two evils and expecting an unrighteous act to produce a righteous result. Choosing the lesser of two evils is still evil, and never should we do evil that good may come.”

Each of us has to make our own decisions about what we’re going to do tomorrow–whether or not to vote; if we do vote, for which candidate to cast a ballot; and to what extent we place our hopes and dreams in this country’s politics and candidates. The guiding principle for Christians is that we know our God is chasing different goals and using different methods than those represented on the ballots. The way of our God is always different from the way of the world.

It’s not a cynical position like that of 20th century activist Emma Goldman, who said, “If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.” It’s more about a proper perspective when weighing just how much, if any, of himself or herself a Christian wants to pour into the process. Pay attention to how much energy and emotion you’re putting into this thing. Be aware of how the ups and downs of this week, and maybe the rest of this month, impact your behaviors. Keep your allegiances in the proper order.

C.S. Lewis once observed, “He who surrenders himself without reservation to the temporal claims of a nation or a party or a class is rendering to Caesar that which, of all things, most emphatically belongs to God himself.”

Peace,

Allan

Brian Zahnd’s Voter’s Guide

One of our shepherds here at GCR, Brandon Brunson, posted this “Christian Voter’s Guide” yesterday written by Brian Zahnd. Carrie-Anne showed it to me. It does such a good job of concisely and precisely reminding us of our primary commitments and allegiances during an election season. Seems good to me to post it here, as well. Not all of us are on Facebook.

The Christian Voter’s Guide
by Brian Zahnd

1. The political process, while necessary, has little to do with how God is saving the world.

2. The fate of the Kingdom of God does not depend upon political contests.

3. Don’t be naive, political parties are more interested in Christian votes than they are in Christian values.

4. The bottom line for political parties is power. The bottom line for a Christian is love. Therein lies the rub.

5. While in pursuit of the Ring of Power, you are not permitted to abandon the Sermon on the Mount.

6. If your political passion makes it hard for you to love your neighbor as yourself, you need to turn it down a notch.

7. Your task is to bring the salt of Christian civility to an ugly and acrimonious political process.

8. To dismember the Body of Christ over politics is a grievous sin.

9. Exercise your liberty to vote your conscience and conviction, while accepting that other Christians will do the same and vote differently than you.

10. It’s more important that your soul be filled with love than it is for your political team to win the game.

Peace,
Allan

Your Choice 2024

“If you always vote for the lesser of two evils, you will always have evil and you will always have less.” ~ Ralph Nader

There are some very famous preachers and authors out there who are telling Christians it is our obligation and responsibility as disciples of Christ to cast a vote in the upcoming U.S. presidential election. I know this because several of my Christian brothers and sisters are forwarding to me the sermons they’re listening to and the books they’re reading. Related to this is the prevalent idea that if you don’t vote, you are doing nothing. If you don’t vote, you are siding with evil. If you don’t vote, it’s a give up, and you’re just letting evil win.

As with the previous post, I would like to respectfully disagree and humbly offer a more imaginative Gospel vision.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve watched Josh Howerton preach from his Lakepointe pulpit in Dallas that Christians who decide not to vote are “abdicating their responsibility given by God” and are in “rebellion against God.” Howerton goes so far as to claim that voting for a third party candidate or casting a write-in ballot is also an act of rebellion against our Lord. He says voting is a “spiritual responsibility” about 15 minutes after he claims “selection is not sacrament,” in other words, you can’t decide to not vote for religious reasons because voting is not religious. He separates the secular from the sacred, the holy from the profane, even as he says a Christian decision to abstain from voting is wrong. It’s a little confusing.

Howerton’s cohort in Virginia, Gary Hamrick, preaches from the parable of the talents in Luke 12 that “voting is a Christian duty.” In some sloppy exegesis from 2 Corinthians 5 and Matthew 5, he asserts that God has “charged us to be his ambassadors in this world, to represent him” by voting. Voting, according to Hamrick, is how Christians are to be “salt and light.” Voting is a “God-given job” for disciples of Jesus. “What can we do to advance the Kingdom of God for the glory of God and stem evil?” Hamrick asks. “Vote!” He asserts that “Christians voting can change America.”

Just as troubling is the sentiment that deciding not to vote because of religious reasons equates to “doing nothing.” Eric Metaxas, a best-selling author and champion of this view, claims in interviews and speeches and in his book “Letter to the American Church,” that refusing to vote is “not getting involved.” He says the Church is “supposed to speak against evil, to speak truth, to resist evil when it rises up,” and I agree. He says “If enough churches and pastors don’t stand, evil will have its way with our nation,” and I agree. But he equates speaking and standing and resisting with voting and being heavily invested in the political system and parties of the United States.

I believe we have swallowed a lie that voting is the only way to effect change in our communities. Despite the living proof all around us that voting really changes nothing at all, many of us talk and act like if you don’t vote, you’re not being a good Christian because you’re not getting involved, you’re not being active in fixing the things that are broken. That is simply not true.

I’ve always believed that if unlimited abortion were legal and available everywhere, if you could get an abortion at a 7-11, if there were no restrictions on abortions or abortion clinics, they’d all be out of business and shut down if the Church would only do what it’s called to do. To love. To come alongside. To provide community and support, to mentor and equip. To foster and adopt. Those who run crisis pregnancy centers will tell you most pregnant teens don’t want to get abortions, but they don’t feel like they have any other option. They don’t feel any support or assistance. They feel alone. They feel no hope.

Voting does not solve the abortion problem; it has made it worse.

I believe it’s okay for a Christian to vote; if done carefully and with the right perspective, it’s almost always a good thing. But I’d rather have one Christian out there reading to little kids at Emerson Elementary during a lunch break or mentoring the teenaged mothers at Young Lives or delivering food boxes with Mission Agape than ten Christians putting political signs in their front yards and punching ballots on election day. I know lots of Christians are doing both of these things, voting and getting involved in serving their local communities with the love and peace of Jesus. But some followers of Jesus object to voting because it violates their Christian ethics. Instead of supporting one of two evils, some Christians choose to not participate. And I think it’s more than okay for that Christian to make a real difference in the lives of people and in his or her neighborhood or city by, instead of voting, sacrificing and serving broken people in the name and manner of Jesus. It’s to be commended.

To act like voting is the only way or the best way to change hearts or a nation is to ignore the Bible and the actions of Christ. Our Lord Jesus, the incarnate Word and will of God, shows us that the way to change the world, the way to save the world from evil, is to love and forgive, heal and feed, reconcile and give, to lay down our rights and give up our position and status. To say voting is the only way is to ignore our own Church of Christ fathers like David Lipscomb who saw citizenship in the Kingdom of God and allegiance to Christ as King as incompatible with participating in national elections (Psalm 146:3). It’s to downplay or even disregard the ways and means God through Jesus gave us to bring abundant life to to our communities. It’s to believe the only way to save the world is to use the world’s preferred methods. To say all Christians must vote is to have a severely limited view of what God does in and through the love and service and relational ministry of his chosen people. As baptized disciples, our options are never limited to choices offered by the world.

A Christian brother told me yesterday that we have to choose, even when both candidates are less than ideal, because God is a God who chooses. (I’ll write later about the damaging lie we’ve swallowed regarding binary choices.) I never got clear on what he meant by that: God chooses, which means we must also choose. But I am very clear on the kinds of people and things our God chooses.

When it comes to the oppressor versus the oppressed, our God always chooses the oppressed. Our God always chooses the slave over the master. He sides with the powerless over the powerful. Our God stands with the marginalized over the insiders. He doesn’t pick the first born, he picks the eighth and ninth born. He chooses the weak over the strong, he chooses the small over the large, he chooses the vulnerable over the secure.

If you are a Christian, you are not compelled to vote in a national election. You are not somehow called by God to participate in the politics of a broken, fallen, sinful, fading, worldly kingdom. You are compelled by the love of Christ to sacrifice and suffer with the world and for the world, to love and forgive, to be a continuous source of hope and peace. Voting is your choice. If you do vote, it’s okay; just don’t pretend like it’s an act of righteousness. And I would suggest you consider God’s choices as you make your own.

Peace,

Allan

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