Jesus will destroy your party

It's coming. Get ready. Soon the wrists of all trendy youth group kids, promise keepers attendees, and pro atheletes with multiple girlfriends will be adorned the new W.W.J.A. bracelets. That's right, Who Would Jesus Assasinate??? It's an inspiring way to remind you of the true nature of our Lord. For those tough times when communists, Islamic fundamentalists, fascists, and especially Democrats oppose you, think of Christ . . . . . and shoot them.

Yes, I'm sure we've all heard about Pat Robertson by now. There was a great political cartoon in the paper this morning that portrayed him wearing such a WWJA shirt. Good to know he apologized today . . . . after absolutely denying it on some FoxNews show a little earlier. It appears he was taken out of context by the liberal media . . . which have evidently infiltrated the television station which he is in charge of. Crazy liberals, getting some Pat impersonator (and a dang good one I might add) to say such lies and ruin his good name. . . .

I typically avoid political discussions. I know considering my own views I would likely anger the vast majority of people I know, including my close friends. And, the truth is, I don't really care that much. I think politics are a smoke-screen for the things that really matter. Anytime you believe an affiliation of any kind makes you inherently right and others inherently wrong, you have sold out to a lie. These are things we need to repent of, not pride ourselves on.

But what about Jesus??? He did ride into Jerusalem on a donkey . . . oooo subtle jab to the moral majority.

No, I don't believe he would be a Democrat, and at least if he lived in Texas I feel he would blast the Republican party. The truth is Jesus never spoke of large-scale politics, but let's not pretend that means he was apolitical. Jesus was someone who was concerned with "microstructure". This is because he was much smarter than us. He knew the hopelessness of creating a better world through government.

Here is truth: as long as people are sinful, any and every moral or political system will be overpowered by that sin. The U.S. can spread democracy to every nation in the world, and the world will still be sick with corruption, oppression, violence and death.

So, what did Jesus do? He made it possible that we would no longer be sinful. He redeemed a small group of people, and in doing so placed his Spirit in them. Suddenly a small sect of Judaism set out with power and authority not to challenge political ideologies (and make no mistake there were plenty in his time), but to fearlessly reverse all the consequences of evil and sin they saw. They cared for the oppressed. They upheld women. All the vulnerable of society: widows, orphans, the impoverished and uneducated, they invited into their community and gave them value. They freed slaves! They healed the sick! The most radical and conflicting political ideologies met around the Lord's table, remembered Jesus, and walked away despising their former affiliations!!! (Read Phil. 3:7 realizing that being a Pharisee was a very political position) To be a disciple of Christ meant you could no longer turn a blind eye to the darker sides of your party, your government, your nation, or yourself. To follow Jesus is to call out evil, with power that's not your own, and attack it!

Make no mistake, this will ruin a nation! There is no country in our world that is not somehow built on greed, violence, and oppression. There is no political party that is free of the same cancers. If George Bush prayed for John Kerry's good and the financial well-being of those who support the Democrats (especially the poor) in the previous election would he have been elected? What if he did so during a debate? If John Kerry had prayed God's blessings on Bush in the midst of his caucus would he have even been in the election? What if we stormed the cities of Iraq not with tanks, but only with food trucks and medical units? If we did we would probably be gunned down, or at least just exploited. The economic loss would be staggering, but it is what Jesus calls us to do.

Without concern with our own rights, privileges, or even our own lives we are to fearlessly go out and do good in his name. If Jesus' teaching is truly and fully applied on the political scene, the only answers are absurd answers. Would our corporations support candidates who believe corporations should pay more taxes to export aid to the millions starving in Niger as we sleep tonight? Especially when they will probably never benefit our economy in the future? That is what the "macro-political Jesus" would call us to do. Which is why Jesus didn't do that; he called those who love him to follow his politics. They are politics that will unquestionably undermine all other political parties and systems.

Jesus' political stance is pure and unadulterated. His politics consist of light vs. dark, good vs. evil, himself vs. sin, and God's Truth vs. Satan's lies. He is an unwaivering monarchist. (Americans take note) He will be the only king. None will succeed him, and he will never defer to Parliment. We can try to breed somekind of party-line Christianity. It will be born deformed and revolting every time. In Christ there is fellowship between political opposites, because all other governments will fall. When his Kingdom increasingly comes democratic America will crumble beside communist China. Monarchal Bhutan will crumble with socialist Canada. If you believe in Jesus as the King (Christ), he tells you that the Kingdom is already here. One government rules, and the only politics are as pure and unadulterated as the one who revealed them.

God on Trial

Lift up your hands to him for the lives of your children
Who faint from hunger at the head of every street

Look, Oh Lord, and consider:
Whom have you ever treated like this?
Should women eat their own offspring?
The children they have cared for?
Should priest and prophet be killed in the sanctuary of the Lord?

Young and old lie together in the dust of the streets
My young men and maidens have fallen together by the sword
YOU have slain them in your anger;
YOU have slaughtered them without pity.
Lamentations 2:20-21

So I've been reading this OT theology book for a few months now. It says some really profound things in very blunt language. By blunt I mean it shakes you up, but doesn't really pierce below our defense mechanisms. Scholarly language is like that. So allow me to sharpen one of the claims that it makes: Christianity has made itself irrelevant to the world by sleeping with stoic philosophy.

Lamentations is a book of the Bible that makes some strong accusations directly at God. "You have slain them. . ." "You have slaughtered them without pity." This is a far cry from the earlier OT claims that God is merciful and faithful!! Were it not in our Bible, I have little doubt we would consider such writing to be completely heretical. How are we to take such audacity that would indict God?

But, then again, what should we make of the audacity of those who would imagine God needs us to protect him from such charges? The truth is, he is presented with such charges every day. The single mother in the conservative church. The homosexual who has received beatings from "Christians". The child who was sexually abused by a father. The mother who watches her son come home with a flag over his coffin. What of the greater tragedies? Pol Pot's killing fields. The ecclesial butcher shops of Rwanda. The tens of millions who vanished in Siberia. The lists go on. We criticize Jewish temples that don't believe in God, yet fail to see that many are descendents of holocaust victims. We gasp at neo-pagan Europe, but forget it is built on the scar tissue of WWII. The world has always been full of indictments on God. It will continue to be this way. What should we say? Should we come to his defense? Does he need us to?

In the book I mentioned earlier, the author claims one of the greatest losses to Christian faith has been the loss of the lament. In the name of reverence we have declared true emotion to be unsanitary in the sight of God. We have canonized stoicism. Kathleen O'Connor has an amazing quote, "Without coming to grips with our own despair, losses, and anger we cannot gain our full humanity." Emotion is vital to our being. To repress them is to live in denial. I believe God is more insulted by us gritting our teeth while saying everything is ok, than he is at us turning to him in accusation. Accusation may hurt God, but has he ever shrunk from pain?!

Lamentations is a book that I now realize has a great deal to teach us. Christians desperately need to learn that God does not need our defense. When people indict him, whether for neglegence or malicious intent, he allows it. Our own Scripture does so.

Our response should be this: don't let people stop with accusations. Don't assume the case is closed. If screaming is necessary, let them scream. If weeping, let them weep. God is not so offended by our mourning or our fury that he shuts the door on us. The church has too often played the role of Peter. We draw our sword to save the life of our Lord. Yet we forget that God does not fear death. We prevent the world from crucifying him and condemn them to hell in doing so. Those who swing the whip and drive the nail are the ones who are cleansed by his blood. They are the ones blessed to fall at the feet of the ressurrected Jesus.

When people assail God with the evils of the world, we should pray. We should cry. But ultimately we should urge them not to stop talking. Not to give up on God. The verse preceding the ones I sited above reads, "Arise, cry out in the night, as the watches begin; pour out your heart like water in the presence of the Lord." Those who hurt need God to know. Those who blame God need to let him know. We should not be so arrogant as to defend God. Instead the church again needs to be a place of lament. A place where pain is not hushed up, nor numbed by pseudo-theology, but is expressed with the fullness of human emotion. I think we would be refreshed to see such a place, for it is there that the Spirit of our Lord comforts and heals.

Radicals Unite! . . . in the middle.

Allow me to share some song lyrics (I'll highlight the ones to really pay attention to):

. . .like a broken boat; safety raft; a love for the water
And I just can't decide
To sink or swim, it's me or them
Should I save myself?
Or go back for the others

Cause maybe there's no gray
And I was wrong to tell 'em so
And maybe all that I've to do
Was done a long time ago. . .

And I've been putting up, putting down
Too many things I know nothing about
Cause I'm jealous and holding pride
As tight as I can, like she was my only daughter

(Chorus)
But there was life before my life
There was provision before my need
There was redemption before my sin
For the sake of the world, I thank the Lord
That the Truth's not contingent on me

So, let me explain. This is a song by Caedmon's Call called The Truth. It's got some other amazing lyrics in it so I highly recommend listening to it. The whole song is a reflection on this guy's selfishness and sinfulness. It expresses his hopelessness in the face of trying to do things for God, and then the chorus comes.

C.S. Lewis describes God as the rock-bottom reality that all else is based on. He is reality. Reality is truth. Or maybe I should say, Reality is Truth. That is the Christian/Judaic/Islamic view of God at its most basic level. What all these religions are getting at is that there is an absolute Reality that underlies everything. And, I find that this is not an idea that many people these days struggle with, except maybe for the very people who would claim the above listed religions.

As religious people, I find that we have gotten the idiotic idea that we need to protect truth. All fundamentalism is based on the idea that there are evil forces in the world which, unless we come to save the day, will corrupt the truth and that is the equivalent of hell. Now I would be all for fundamentalism, IF we could erase the part between the commas, but I find the majority of the time that part is the meat of the sentence. Evil exists (please tell me no one really questions this). Evil is by nature out to corrupt what is true. Still, as finite beings, how are we going to really do anything about this?? Yet too often we humans step in triumphantly with our firm religious beliefs and let God know we have it covered. I think this is what leads me to believe that the majority of fundamentalists out there are truly deists.

I say all of this because I spent an hour today talking to one of my good friends about how the Bible is true. I was doing my best, which might not be very good, to explain the whole emergent, post-foundationalist movement to him. I'm not much of a scholar on the movement, but I know it's basic premise is to get beyond literalist hermenuetics or liberal scholarship as the foundation of Christian faith. The basic question, though, still came down to: if Scripture isn't the foundation of faith then how can it be employed to change people's lives? Essentially, if Scripture isn't truth, then we can't expect it to transform people. Now to my friend this is a vital question. He's a counselor. He is daily faced with the way sin has screwed people up. And he will be the first to tell you, it's the truth in Scripture that he has seen change people. And it sure does seem like if we give an inch by not claiming Scripture as our absolute, then we have no choice but to go the whole mile and slide downward into radical pluralism.

But before all resort to picket signs with trite references to slippery slopes and so on, allow me to finish. I haven't arrived at a definitive answer on this. Part of living in an emerging paradigm is not having such answers, so don't hold your breath. I'm not sure I plan to join Brian McLaren in claiming myself to be a post-foundationalist. I claim God and the person of Jesus Christ as the only foundation that is absolute, but it is a foundation. I think Scripture is the only access to Jesus that is reliable. Is it perfect? Well, I'll get to inspiration another time. But more importantly, if it's not, does my faith crumble? Praise God, NO!!

The world if full of black and white issues. And if you're like me and have a vast appreciation for gray, you find that everyone thinks you're wrong. Still, I refuse to get caught up in arguments, slinging mud at the other side when I really don't even know the assumptions they're basing their arguments on. I am not at all, and very, conservative. I am not at all, and very, liberal. I blatantly refuse to pick sides. If you believe the Bible is inerrant, you're still sinful and so is your interpretation. If you put more trust in scholarship and philosophy, you'll quickly find that your beliefs strangely seem to benefit mostly you, while the rest of the world goes to hell before dying. Either way, I figure I'm in bad shape if I join.

Reality = Truth. Foundationally there is God. He is the Rock that all else is built on. He requires nothing and no one to defend Him. Lies need defending; Truth is invulnerable. Let the world tear the Bible to pieces, a thousand years from now (should the world still exist) it will still transform its readers. It is the only window to the only man who incarnates the absolute, foundational, rock-bottom Reality.

Jesus, savior from post # 3

Ok, let's break down Jesus' life into a basic outline.
1)Birth (incarnation)
2)A childhood of which only a few days are reported.
3)Yada, yada, yada he's somewhere in the range of 30 years old and has mysteriously become a wandering, homeless preacher.
4)He does a bunch of miracles
5)He pisses off some religious leaders who get him killed
6)After burial, he comes back to life and hangs out with his friends and select aquaintences for 40 days before vanishing into the sky.

Maybe, I should include other important events, but I didn't, so get over it. It's a story that is controversial, and ultimately crazy. People can argue and argue that it's made up, but that argument in my mind requires the same amount of "blind" faith that believing the story is true does. I realize I'm being subjective, but if this story is made up, we should hold the writers up as the most ingenious men who have ever lived. The achievements of Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar pale in significance to the achievements of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. And, now that I've angered all the historians I'll move on.

In my last post I talked about the greatness of God, and how from a human standpoint that is a terrifying thing. It is something that inevitably leaves us with the gut feeling that we are screwed. That is why every culture (at minimum the overwhelming majority of them) creates a religion to "protect" themselves from that God. Every religion, including Christianity (Catholic and Protestant) does what it can to distance it's people from God. Whether by doctrines, demigods, philosophies, ancestors, saints, priests, or simple distractions like drugs or television, people will inevitably find ways to avoid the presence that is. We all hate to be sober. Yet, it is only when we comprehend what we are saying in declaring God to be holy and great that Christianity really becomes what it is meant to be.

We say God is somehow, in some mysterious way incarnated in Christ (1). This basically means the most terrifying of all ideas allows himself to be DEFINED!! If that statement doesn't evoke a sense of amazement, it should. I will be the first to tell you, I don't understand the Trinity, and it truly irritates me when other people say they do. They give some formula or creed as if that says the final word on the idea. To me that is idolatry and arrogance. The NT lets us know that Jesus is how God himself sums up his very nature to us. It is silent as to how. The writers are too filled with awe and reverence to assume they could ever explain such things (2). They just know this is God working on earth. They partially know this by the miracles he performed, but I will get to this later.

The ultimate fact we know about Jesus is that he was cricified (5). This is historically unquestioned. And, the one thing that everyone who's heard of Christianity knows about it is that it is symbolized by the cross. Dallas Willard (one of my top three favorite authors) points out though, that the cross didn't become a symbol of Christianity until the fourth or fifth century. One book I'm reading right now said this, "[The cross] is no mere ornament depicting Christianity in general. Rather, it is a vigorous commentary on what gives the gospel its universal appeal." Basically what is implied is this: the cross is not the symbol of Christian faith, but is representative of the most appealing aspect of it.

We embrace the cross, not because that's a cute phrase, but because we don't fear the cross. The cross is a symbol of every intimidation the world holds: loss, humiliation & shame, isolation & abandonment, full justice for every evil and wrong, pain and torture, and most of all death. Embracing the cross is fearlessly accepting the worst horrors that are known in human experience. But, like I said before, this is an understanding that emerged. Christians could only accept the cross as a symbol because they were already characterized by the greatest and most appealing aspect of Christianity: LIFE.

Jesus' miracles (4) were evidence that the life within him was altogether different from any other person. Most of all, he was the first who embraced the cross. He proved that his life had no reason to fear. His life stemmed directly from God (how I do not know), and even dying can't end it (6).

So, now that I've delved into systematic theology (wretched modernist that I am), what does it matter? The point I really want to make is that Jesus is all that stands between me and being a hopeless, cynical agnostic. I am a Christian because somehow I trust the guys who wrote about him. The more I understand the Bible, the more I can see this group of laymen fully in awe of the event they spent four years witnessing. I think it's the type of awe characteristic of those who have come to an understanding of God.

God in list form

"What do you mean, God?" This is not a prayer. This is a question I received three years ago from a chemistry professor who was also a former Brahmin priest in Western India. I had four conversations with the guy at a Starbucks by the local university before I found my faith so jumbled and incoherent that I changed coffee shops to start my belief system over from scratch. Now, years later, I think it's a good question. A question we often avoid by building religion around God that never dares to breach the terrifying subject of who He is and what he's like.

So. . . how do you define God? That one is easy. You don't. You can't. Definitions are limitations. And, if God can be limited, he's not God.

Better then, how does one describe God? Well, first let me say, I will be speaking as a Christian here. My only other experience is as an atheist (high school). I was an atheist purely because of ignorance, so it would be a waste of time for me to speak from that platform. And, since I've never adhered to any other religion, I'll keep my mouth shut there. So, as a Christian how can I describe God?

The Bible lets us know firmly that God is good. Easy enough. This soundsl like something obvious until viewed in light of the culture where the Bible was written, which being polytheistic had a nice blend of "good" and "bad" gods. Also the fact that all of those cultures held to the belief of a distant, disconnected, and sometimes dead creator god. We could argue about this, but I'm gonna say if God is distant, he's bad. There's that.

In Christian tradition there are the "all-encompassing" terms: omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient. These all give the idea that God is not limited. . . . ok, that's freaky, but truly not that informative. Moving on, we find a wide variety of "anthropomorphic" terms (think of personification, if that doesn't help, go restudy your basic English) such as jealous, angry, faithful, our Lover, our Father, etc. etc. These all serve to help us relate to God, but all of us, when sober, know he's not like us. Then we come to terms like mighty (full of might) or worthy (full of worth). Still, these typically lead to him feeling him more abstract, not less.

Then there's holy. Holy is a word we go around using like we know what we're saying, and yet have no idea what we're saying. Holy in a very basic sense means different. Now the sentence "God is different" basically means nothing. Different from what? Holiness is tied to a whole series of adjectives we tend to attatch to God which declare him to be something far over our heads. These are wonderful (full of wonder), marvelous (to be marveled at), amazing (causing amazement), majestic, or the ever overused awesome (leaving us in awe). All of these have to do purely with our reaction to God. They don't say too much concerning God himself. Only what he does to us.

So, what do we mean, God? We attempt to describe him like us (anthropomorphic terms), but this is only to give us a point of connection to God, not to pretend he is summed up by some worldy analogy. We can trust the Bible to think he's good, worthy, or mighty. Yet these do nothing to really say who he is. They are characteristics, not the character. We know he's not limited. That leaves us in terror, but little else. Ultimately we know he's different, and that's about all we can say. When we experience how different he is we see that he is awesome, which says little about him except that he will leave our jaw wide open with now words to say.

Ahhhh, No words to say! There we go. . .

Like I said last time, what we know is, that God IS ! Not much more, and certainly nothing less. We run into this early in life and spend the rest of life running from it, or running into it.

Words struggle to contain the realities they are intended to represent. Most of all the word "God". We say it so often as though it encompasses the whole person it stands for. Really, it serves as a window from our experience into the most mysterious reality that is (notice the language). It is a truth that if we face will uncompromisingly leave us dumbfounded and humbly on our face.

From there we humbly burn our definitions, forget all descriptions, and begin living in the light!

Being Genuine

Kinda going off the last one, here's something I wrote a while ago. . .

It started out around four years ago. I had grown up a sheltered only child. Life was good and predominately easy. Everything was provided for me and it seemed that even outside my home, I would get whatever I wanted. Then came middle school. Whether physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, you name it, middle school was marked by getting the crap kicked out of me by the cruel (and for me, relatively new) real world. Here, for the first time, I asked myself the question who I was.

And, for twelve years I have been attempting to answer that. In middle school the first among many incorrect answers came in the form of what I did. After a few months of getting pushed around by everybody, I decided it would benefit me the most to join the group that did most of the pushing, and received the least. A week later I bought my first skateboard.

Not that skaters were truly that intimidating to the other cliques at my school, it was just well understood they would fight you without any hesitation because they didn't mind getting into trouble. So, for the next five years, I was a skater. Now, truth be told, I had very little in common with anybody in that 'group'. My parents were still married, which out of the fifty or so people in our group, I was one of three that could claim that. I wasn't every very good at skating, and with my lack of gymnastic ability it was doubtful that would ever change. For the first few years in my new group I didn't do drugs. I didn't go to parties (my parents made sure of that). And my parents, discontented with my new found friends, had me at church every Sunday morning, throwing me into the sea of jocks and band geeks that comprised my youth group (or so my friends told me).

I was a skater though. At least that's what I thought. At least that's what I desperately relied on to give me some sort of identity.

High school roled on. In ninth grade I hurt my back and couldn't skate. So I took the easy identity shift from skater to 'stoner'. That lasted a little over a year, until my parents found out and emphatically changed my group of friends for me.

I decided to stick with the "extreme" genre of identity. I took up BMX. But, similarly to skating I never got very good at it. I mostly just built dirt jumps for my friends to go off of. I guess it was during this time that I started finding my identity by who I was around. That continued as I "found Jesus" my junior year of high school. More or less, I became a leader of my youth group by default being one of three active guys in my senior class. This worked as an identity for another year and a half. Then came college.

I went to a Christian school hoping that my youth group identity might hold over. It didn't. When you've been a default leader, then suddenly find yourself among 1500 other guys plenty of whom are natural ambitious leaders, there is a tendency to fall behind. I tried really hard to find a group to identify with: social clubs, Bible studies, I joined the lacrosse team. Still, none of these really worked out for me. All of them left me dissatisfied and ultimately disassociated.
So like I said earlier it started sometime during my sophomore year. . . I had seen one too many, "Hi, how are you?", "Hi, I'm perfect!", "Ok, see ya later" conversations at school. I resolutely decided to be more genuine at all costs. When people asked, no matter how superficially, I would tell them exactly how I was: "Eh, I'm alright. . ." said with the tone of enthusiasm that immediately let them know I was thoroughly dissatisfied with life.

It worked splendidly.

Before that I had hundreds of mild aquaintences who would have grown into luke-warm political friendships. And suddenly I found them pulling away one by one (maybe being pushed away. . .). My eyes finally opened to the shallowness of so many of the things which I had been seeking to find my identity in. And, for the first time in memory, I was simply being who I was (or at least trying desperately to be).

Of all the things I have discovered in life, this might be one of the grandest: I am not responsible for determining who I am!

God made me. He chose the talents he would and would not give me. To try and define myself by something he didn't give me is ludicrous. God also chose my social setting. I firmly believe that a large part of who we are is who we are around. Still, in choosing one group to stake myself on is pure stupidity.

Life is wasted when we attempt to make a name for ourselves! We are given a name. The greatest joy we can have is found in simply being who we are, who we were always meant to be.
This past year I've read a lot of books that talk about being genuine, authentic, real, etc. etc. etc. They all say that we should be, but do nothing to explain how, why, or what that looks like. Truthfully, it's probably because those are not questions that are so easily answered. But, I do think I've found the starting point: God's primary name is "I AM". When asked to define himself he begins with the concept of being. Throughout the Bible, God is never summed up, but only abstractly described. Authenticity is to realize that he intends the same for us. Never to be defined, but primarily to be.

Purpose Statement

I've tried doing this before. I never end up quite satisfied with what I end up writing, or with the whole thing in general. Truth be told, I always feel like I'm being inauthentic when I write stuff for other people to read. Last time I found myself trying to make some kind of statement about whatever it was that was going on in my life. I thought it might not end up all preachy and stuff. . . . but it did. It's not that I'm against being preachy, it's just that if I do end up that way, I hope that I at least might not mind listening to what I have to say. The last few times I tried to come up with a blog, I didn't particularily like reading the stuff I had just written. So, maybe this time will be different, who knows? Maybe I'll erase it all in a week.

Last time it was probably doomed before I even started. If one wants to do a blog, you have to start out by thinking up a clever name for it. I hate the entire concept. I may not be the most humble guy out there, but to come up with some flattering name for myself or my writings feels (at least to me) to be an extremely conceited activity. The only names I feel comfortable with answering to are generally the one may parents gave me, or a nickname I received from friends. I would think it pretty ridiculous to give myself a name and expect others to call me by it. But since I don't really want my legal name on a blogsite, and I never seem to keep nicknames for very long (at least the ones I like) I find myself in a weird spot. What should I pick? What is it that sums me up? What word could I limit myself to? I could go on, but a friend of mine stole this topic from me so I'll let you find his site to read about it.

Basically, I've given up on the idea of screennames (at least on their ability to serve as an identity), and I don't plan to give you much of a purpose statement here with my opening remarks. If you read this, you're going to get some random ramblings that emerge from my day to day life. Some might be profound, some might be trite, some might be mature and some might reflect that I'm 23 and know basically nothing. But, with this blog, I refuse to get bogged down by some thesis that I will eventually be inconsistent to if I have any hope of being honest in what I'm learning about life. So, if you're cool with ambiguity and not having me in a box with the contents listed on the outside, read on . . and I hope my experience meets with yours somehow. It'd be cool to chat and get each other ready for the road ahead.