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Category: Christ & Culture (Page 32 of 45)

Church Politics

January 31, 2012 / / 0 Comments

During Eddie Wynn’s funeral yesterday, I must have heard at least a dozen phones go off at 3:18. “Yet I will rejoice in the Lord!” I was informed later by three or four others that there were dozens of phones beeping and buzzing all over the worship center at Comanche Trail. In the middle of a funeral. Hey, what better time or place?

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“The Church exists to set up in the world a new sign which is radically dissimilar to the world’s own manner and which contradicts it in a way which is full of promise.” ~Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 4.3.2

Oh, my word, we get so caught up in the politics of this world. The time we spend listening to talk radio and watching our own cable network’s spin on the news of the day, the energy we use extolling the virtues of our party or candidate and bashing the policies and platforms of the opposition, the ways we engage so passionately in debate betray a troubling preoccupation with the methods and means of an Empire to which we are not citizens. Yes, as children of God, we are rightly concerned with social injustice, disease, violence, war, crime, death, poverty, abuse, and all the effects of sin on his creation. But, as citizens of heaven who declare Jesus as Lord, not Caesar, we are called to join him in redeeming his creation in his name and by his manner.

Someone — I can’t remember who — once either told me or wrote in something I read that we are not to conform to the world, we are to convert the world.

Yeah. We don’t use the world’s ways; we use God’s way. And God’s way is by his Church.

“The most interesting, creative, political solutions we Christians have to offer our troubled society are not new laws, advice to Congress, or increased funding for social programs. The most creative social strategy we have to offer is the Church. Here we show the world a manner of life the world can never achieve through social coercion or governmental action. We serve the world by showing it something that it is not, namely, a place where God is forming a family out of strangers.

The Christian faith recognizes that we are violent, fearful, frightened creatures who cannot reason or will our way out of our mortality. So the Gospel begins, not with the assertion that we are violent, fearful, frightened creatures, but with the pledge that, if we offer ourselves to a truthful story and the community formed by listening to and enacting that story in the Church, we will be transformed into people more significant than we could ever have been on our own.” ~ Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon, Resident Aliens, p. 82-83

Last month, when the movers were re-locating our furniture from the apartment to our new house, the driver of the huge truck asked me, “Do you think it’s OK for preachers to preach about politics in the pulpit?”

I answered, “I preach politics every single Sunday!”

We are citizens of the Kingdom of God. Our King is the risen Christ. Our allegiances are to him and his sovereign rule over every aspect of our lives. Thank goodness I’m not dependent on the sinful ways and means of this world’s governments for my well being. Thank goodness I’m not counting on this world’s leaders for my safety or security or sanity. Hallelujah, our God reigns! And he is redeeming the world in ways that make no sense to those who are driven by power and control, compelled by money and status, motivated by force and threat.

We belong to a polis. And, as our King says, it is not of this world.

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Huge rivalry basketball game tonight: Amarillo High at Tascosa. Whitney and I are going to take in the JV boys at 5:30 (let’s see what Braden’s got), the varsity girls at 6:30, and then the headliner varsity boy’s contest at 7:30. If the Sandies (20-3, 4-0) win it tonight, they’ll clinch a playoff berth in District 2-5A. This AHS team seems to be pretty good. They’ve got nine lettermen back from last year district champs, eight seniors on the team, and lots of big game experience.

I’m also interested to watch my friend Bret McCaslan tonight. The man puts himself in a position to act like Christ every Tuesday and Friday night. He intentionally places himself in harm’s way, he subjects himself to ridicule and humiliation, he makes himself vulnerable to the violence and hatred of the masses. He’s a high school referee. He’ll be in the middle of a crazy scene tonight, and in position to occasionally become the focus.

Go, Sandies!

Allan

Blowout at Armageddon

December 1, 2011 / / 1 Comment

We know there’s a battle going on between good and evil. We understand the conflict. We get it. Forget the TV and newspaper and the internet. There’s horrifying evidence of the evil on every channel, on every page, on every website. Forget that. Let’s acknowledge that we’re all personally caught up in it. We understand it personally because we’re dealing with it right now. Broken families. Bad news from the doctor. Pink slips at work. Addiction. Rebellious kids. Divorced parents. Intimidation. Depression. Hopelessness. Things are not the way our Father intended. We know that.

The earth God created and called good and the people he created and called very good are being tortured. Tortured by war, disease, violence, death, poverty, greed, lust, injustice, slavery, idolatry. We’re paralyzed by Satan, imprisoned by sin, terrified by death.

We’re in the middle of a cosmic war.

Our merciful Father knows that, too. He understands it. That’s why he gives us a beautiful vision of the already-determined outcome of the battle. He shows us the ending.

God gives it to us in Revelation 20: the battle of Armageddon. Satan calls together all the wicked of the world, all the evil in the universe. They come from all four corners of the earth. They’re gathering for battle against God’s children:

“In number they are like the sand on the seashore. They marched across the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of God’s people, the city he loves.”

Looks bad for God’s children. They’re surrounded. No escape. Out flanked. Outnumbered. Outmanned. Out of luck. It’s over.

“But fire came down from heaven and devoured them!”

There is no battle of Armageddon. Look it up. Revelation 20. There’s no battle. Satan never even touches the saints. None of God’s children are harmed. Not even a scratch. It’s like Jesus rides up on his white horse and says, “Make my day.” Boom! It’s over. We don’t fight anything. We don’t have to. That’s the Lord’s job.

Of course, it’s against our nature to sit back and let God do the fighting for us. The picture in Scripture of what it looks like for us to oppose the evil in our world is not typically the way we handle things. Instead, our first inclination is to politic. Picket. Petition. Boycott. Lobby. Threaten. We think if we show enough force, if we gather enough power, we can defeat evil by voting correctly or by supporting the right platforms together or by pushing the proper laws through worldly systems.

No.

The ones who are called “conquerors” in Revelation, the “over-comers,” are the ones who have submitted faithfully to suffering and death, totally trusting in God to deliver. God’s children are the ones who live in patience and mercy and grace and trust God completely to take care of the battle.

It’s important for us to know that the victory of Jesus Christ has already been won. In a blowout. A rout. Not even close. And it’s important for us to live with that expectation. Or into that expectation as though it’s already here. We live every moment today in light of what we know is ultimately going to happen.

We don’t wait to acknowledge the complete and sovereign rule of God. We acknowledge it and we submit to it right now. And we witness, we testify. We change the world. Not by power or force or influence. But by patience and gentleness and mercy and love. By faith and loyalty in our God and his victorious Christ. And, yes, even by some suffering. For a little while.

Ephesians 2 says we are already, right now, seated with Christ in the heavenly realms. We are. So we live like it.

Peace,

Allan

Counter Cultural Jesus

November 11, 2011 / / 3 Comments

Everything about our Savior flies right in the face of what the culture says is important. The values our culture upholds are counter to everything Jesus stands for. The ideas and philosophies our culture exalts are actually opposed to our Christ and his Kingdom.

Our culture says fight for our freedoms and assert your rights; Jesus willingly gave up his rights and his freedoms for the sake of others. The culture says gain more and more wealth and status and power; Jesus left behind all the wealth and status and power he enjoyed at the right hand of the Father to serve others. Culture says defend yourself at all costs, don’t let anybody mistreat you; Jesus walked purposefully into his own torture and to the cross to die. Culture works hard to establish and maintain boundaries between people of different colors, different languages, different backgrounds and zip codes and tax brackets; Jesus invites all the people of every nation, tribe, and tongue to enjoy a common feast at his one table.

Jesus is completely counter-cultural.

I asked our Wednesday night Bible class this week in what ways the Central church is counter cultural, in what ways do we go against what society says is the proper thing to do? One of the first things somebody shouted out was that we feed the poor, we take care of the needy.

But that’s not counter cultural. Our society applauds those who feed the poor. The popular media produce slick feature stories for mass consumption about people who take care of the needy. Fancy buildings are named after those who minister to the less fortunate.

Somebody else said we proclaim God, we believe in God and profess his name. No, that’s not counter cultural, either. Not at all. This society absolutely upholds a belief in God as fundamental. Basic. I asked if any of the 75-80 people in the room had ever even met anybody who claimed there was no God. Only one woman raised her hand. Believing in God is a very cultural thing here. Very cultural.

The conversation went on and on, and I could write several pages about it. The bottom line is that some of the things we’re so proud of as disciples of our radical Lord don’t hardly make any ripples at all in our society. They don’t stick out as different from the crowd. We’re doing what everybody else is doing; we’re just attaching Jesus’ holy name to it.

We can do better. We can do more.

I mean, we’re still, for the most part, segregating our church body from the ones we’re blessing with food and monetary assistance. Some of us are in a huge multi-million dollar building with coffee bars and cushioned chairs and some of us are crammed in a crowded house across the street. We still betray our prejudices when our conversations are sprinkled with “us” and “them.” Some of us are watching Fox News four and five hours a day and listening to political talk radio, filling our hearts and our souls with angry words and malicious thoughts that oppose the very ideals of love and joy and peace for which our Lord died.

In 413 AD, Augustine wrote in “City of God” that Christians were villified by society because they were so different from what the culture expected. You can go back and read for yourself how the earliest Christians were criticized by the culture: Christians are bad citizens; Christians don’t march; they don’t fight; they don’t build; they don’t help govern; Christians are mixing the classes and races at common meals in common living quarters; they’re destroying the social structures of the society; they’re not patriotic; they’re not loyal to the Empire; they say we are to serve one God instead of the State; they advocate forgiveness toward our nation’s enemies.

Those are the teachings of the Church. Those are the apostolic interpretations of Scripture. And those teachings and that way of life is completely counter to the ways and powers and authorities of this world. It got Christians in trouble back then. That kind of living gets Christians in trouble today. Right here in Amarillo.

(When your Bible class is taking prayer requests this coming Sunday morning, try requesting that we pray together for the Iraqi and Afghanistani soldiers, that God would protect them and return them safely to their families. See where that’ll get you.)

We can do better. We can do more.

Someone Wednesday night pointed out that Central decided a dozen years ago to stay right where we are in this downtown location instead of moving away to a nicer, more upscale neighborhood on the outer margins of the city borders. Ah, yes. Very counter cultural.

Culture looks at deteriorating property values and changing demographics and says, “Get out while you can.” Culture sees declining church attendance and lower contribution numbers and says, “You’ve gotta leave.”

Central saw the very same things and said, instead, “We’ve gotta stay.” Central made the very difficult choice to eschew financial and geographical security, to put off any cares and concerns about attendance and buildings and cash, to fight through very real fears and anxieties of the unknown in order to fully embrace Christ’s mission in this zip code.

I praise God for that. Amen.

And I look forward to that great day when all the barriers have been destroyed here on earth just as they are in heaven. I long for that day when we truly worship our one God together as his children, when we truly fellowship together around that one table. Sooner, rather than later. Right here at Central. A clearly counter cultural vision that would get us in trouble with society. It would cause ripples. It would be noticed. It would be criticized. And it would bring glory and honor to our eternal Father.

We can do more. We can do better.

Peace,

Allan

Middle Class American Jesus?

November 9, 2011 / / 3 Comments

We’re studying the radical ideas of discipleship found in the Gospel of Mark in our Wednesday night class here at Central. Tonight, we look at the idea of getting behind Jesus that is so prevalent in Mark’s writings. Jesus is in front, we are in back. Jesus leads, we follow. It’s not enough to be on the way with Jesus, we must recognize our place behind Jesus on that way. Behind him. Not beside him. Certainly not in front of him. He’s leading, I’m following. He’s leading, his Church is following. Jesus must be the one in front.

And the Church says, “Duh!”

What we’re going to talk about tonight is the fact that we are called to follow Jesus so that we do Jesus things in Jesus ways. Ways and means do matter a great deal to our Lord. How we do something is just as important as what it is we’re doing. The ways and means must always be consistent with the end.

Look at the call to follow: “If anyone would come behind me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” ~Mark 8:34

Jesus calls us to completely abandon ourselves. He calls us to leave our certainty for uncertainty; to flee safety for danger; to ignore self-preservation and embrace self-denunciation; to run from security to accept downward mobility. In a world that prizes self-promotion, we claim to be following a Lord who calls us to crucify ourselves.

And we have a great tendency to spiritualize all that. We want to turn the radical call of Jesus into just a metaphor. His teachings are mainly just abstract thoughts, right? It’s figurative language, right? Jesus speaks in extremes to hopefully make us think differently, but not necessarily act differently.

Wait a second…

We’re starting to redefine Christianity here. We’re starting to define Jesus by our thoughts and ideas, not his. We want Jesus to keep us comfortable when, all along, Jesus came to this earth to shake us out of our comforts in order to save us.

David Platt, in his little book, Radical, says we’re always wanting to turn our Sovereign Lord into a nice, harmless, non-threatening, middle-class, American Jesus:

A Jesus who doesn’t mind materialism and who would never call us to give away everything we have. A Jesus who would not expect us to forsake our closest relationships so that he receives all our affection. A Jesus who is fine with nominal devotion that does not infringe on our comforts, because, after all, he loves us just the way we are. A Jesus who wants us to be balanced, who wants us to avoid dangerous extremes, and who, for that matter, wants us to avoid danger altogether. A Jesus who brings us comfort and prosperity as we live out our Christian spin on the American dream.

Jesus came here to save us; to shake us, to move us, to transform us into the perfect image of the Son of God. That doesn’t happen by doing things our way. That doesn’t happen by doing things the way the rest of the world does things. It happens when we fully submit to the impossibly difficult task of doing things the Jesus way, when we trust our Lord enough to allow him to work in and through us as we make the faithful attempts to live like him, when we dedicate ourselves to following through life and through death the One who goes before us.

“Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the Gospel will save it.” ~Mark 8:35

Peace,

Allan

Together in Prayer

October 30, 2011 / / 5 Comments

In the first century, Israel was ruled by Rome. The Roman Empire reigned supreme. There were Roman garrisons in every city; there were Roman soldiers on every street. The Jews were allowed their religious laws and festivals, but all under tight Roman restrictions. Upstart priests were arrested; rebels were mercilessly crushed. And groups of God’s people who were known as Zealots began to lash out in anger and violence.

As Roman rule became more oppressive the Zealots stashed their hillside hideouts with swords and spears and daggers. There were secret killings, public assassinations, and bloody revolts. The Zealots were committed to a life of violence against the Roman government. They challenged the presence of Roman soldiers; they provoked the Roman armies. And by July of 67 A.D., the violence escalated to the point that 40,000 Galileans were massacred in the hills outside Nazareth.

Zealots were admired by the Jews for their courage. They were honored by the Jews for their dedication to God’s cause and for standing up for what’s right. Zealots were heroes. And the violence continued to accelerate.

As the land we live in today becomes less Christian — or as the Church becomes more Christian — I believe it’s absolutely realistic for us disciples to be labeled and/or targeted by the government. As time goes on in this country, I think it’s feasible that Christians could come to be associated with dangerous radicals, to be blacklisted, to come under closer government scrutiny, to lose our tax-exempt status, maybe even to be arrested.

So, how do Christians respond?

As the realization sets in that we do not live in a Christian nation, I’m afraid that we Christians are guilty of lashing out in anger and violence. We’re more like the Zealots than we ought to be.

Lengthy petitions. Angry letters to the editor. Hate filled emails that are forwarded and re-forwarded and forwarded again. Malicious videos. Spiteful attitudes. And we fight and we rally and we march. And we target a certain political party and we classify a particular political ideology as evil. And we blast away. Both barrels.

When the government put the screws to God’s people in the first century, the Zealots responded by killing with their swords.

When the government clamps down on God’s people today, I’m afraid we respond by killing with our words.

Our risen Lord Jesus says killing with swords and killing with words is the exact same thing.

In the early days of God’s Church, Peter and John were arrested for preaching and teaching the resurrection of Jesus. They were questioned by the authorities and then ordered to stop speaking in the name of Jesus. 

Upon their release, Peter hurried home to Capernaum where he immediately wrote a scathing letter to the Sanhedrin in which he referred to Caiaphas as a flaming liberal and questioned his citizenship and his sexuality and made copies of the letter for all the apostles.

No.

Peter drew the dagger from his belt, the one he had used in the garden the night Jesus was betrayed and, shouting “Jesus is Lord!” he ran it through Caiaphas, killing him, while John plotted the destruction of the evidence.

No.

“On their release, Peter and John went back to their own people and reported all that the chief priests and elders had said to them. When they heard this, they raised their voices together in prayer to God.” ~Acts 4:23-24

Yes.

May we be a people who never ever lash out against those who oppress us. May we never attempt to injure anyone with swords or with words. And when resistance to the Kingdom and opposition to our Christ gets worse in this land, may we find our strength and our comfort with each other. May we respond to political crisis and government hostility in united, fiery, passionate, intense prayer to our Father. May we be bold to continue preaching and teaching in the name of Christ Jesus, our King. And may our God act in mighty ways to further his Word and advance his eternal Kingdom.

Peace,

Allan

It’s A Problem, Right?

October 13, 2011 / / 1 Comment

“Cruz Control!”

Nellie is dealing, man! His perfect strike from right field in the 8th and his three-run jimmy jack to put it away in the 11th have given the Rangers complete command of this ALCS. Young finally drove in a run and appears to be slowly returning to form. Kinsler’s running the bases like a seasoned veteran. Mike Napoli’s still red-hot; his throw to nail Jackson, coupled with his catch and block at the plate on Cabrera, were things of sheer beauty and grace. And watching Wash running in place in the dugout as Hamilton rounded third made everything seem just as fun as last year.

And: Is it a cobra or a sitting duck? What is that thing? Whatever it is, it’s not as cool as the claw and antlers.

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Jesus and the Church today don’t attract the same people. That’s a problem, right? While he was ministering on this earth in our flesh, Jesus seemed to attract a certain kind of people. But his Church today seems to repel those kinds of people and attract others.

In just about every Gospel account, anytime Jesus met up with a religious leader or a well-respected pillar of the community, they were offended by the Son of God. They were repulsed by Jesus. Threatened, even. But those who were on the margins of society, those who had no power or status or wealth, were intrigued by Jesus. They were attracted to him. The outcast is always the one who connects with Jesus. Those are the ones coming to Christ. The city rulers and “church” leaders were the ones trying to put Jesus down, trying to kill him.

Our experience today seems to be just the opposite.

Timothy Keller, in his little book The Prodigal God, speaks to this as he compares and contrasts the two lost sons in the Luke 15 account of Jesus’ most well-known parable. (What? You’ve never read Timothy Keller? Oh, my. Look, as soon as you’re finished reading and commenting on this blog post, the very moment you’re done, click here and buy Keller’s The Reason For God. And when it arrives, read it!) The younger son types were always attracted to Jesus while the older brother types were cynical and suspicious. But that’s not the way things are in our American churches today:

“Jesus’ teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day. However, in the main, our churches today do not have this effect. The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to our contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church. That can only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did. If our churches aren’t appealing to younger brothers, they must be more full of elder brothers than we’d like to think.”

What kind of  a message are we sending when we relegate the poor of our community to a back room downstairs? What are we saying when the Hispanic church can meet in our building, but only after we’re finished with it? What do we communicate when the outcast feels more warmly welcomed at Wal-Mart and McDonald’s than he does at church? What’s the “gospel” we proclaim when we’re quick to hand a guy a five dollar bill for lunch but avoid like the plague the thought of ever actually inviting that guy to our homes for dinner?

That’s a problem, right?

If we ever came to the conclusion that acting like our Lord — doing Christ-like things in Christ-like ways — was the way to go and acting the opposite of our Lord was wrong, then things might change. But none of this will ever change a long as we think it’s OK the way it is. That’s a problem, right?

Peace,

Allan

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