Something about the Church June 9, 2007
Posted by Erik in Uncategorized.add a comment
It happened slowly – a revolution that took place at glacial speeds and with the same kind of momentum. A glacial ice sheet is so massive, so powerful that it changes the world by its existence. It is completely irresistable, but its power is almost entirely invisible.
In the atria of houses, in the courtyards of temples and the porches of schools – this unseen revolution was borne by simple people without agendas. There was no grand strategy or plan, no vision or organization.
The soldiers of this revolution were not armed with swords or spears or arrows. Instead, they carried love in its purest form as their only weapon – to protect themselves and others. Nothing but love. Love you; love others; love God.
They gathered, found acceptance and peace among others who shared their hopes and dreams. They celebrated Jesus in one another; they learned life and love from each other and shared it with people outside their gatherings.
These little communities of revolution were thriving, exciting and dynamic. The people came together over a mutual insanity – an amazing life they called anastasis, “resurrection”, and this amazing person who was/was not in their midst that they called christos and meschach - the anointed one, the chosen one.
He had been broken for them – his body shattered, his blood spent. He had given himself into the hands of death to “save” them; and his followers, this organism of many parts called ekklesia, or gathering, experienced not his death but his life in their lives.
They called this experience koinonia – the sharing, or the commonness. They lived Jesus, and in living as he had, they knew that he lived on. As they got further from the time of his life, they could not say with certainty that he had been raised from the dead. The only evidence they had that he still lived was that they lived, and they loved as he did.
They were risk takers and trend setters who changed their worlds by working together. They were unusual, unprecedented and yet they were madly successful. Thousands of little communities popped up all over the Mediterranean world. They were in every city and port, every town and village. People started putting their neighbors first, starting changing their priorities and altering their little pieces of the world. The church – it very slowly and steadily influenced communities and imperceptibly made the world a better place. Just as Jesus lived in obscurity and labored in the unknown, so too the church was an unseen force without advertisements or billboards or armies or political campaigns. It had no trappings of religion, just life and Jesus.
What is called church today is a faint, whispy shadow of these ancient Jesus people. If the church is meant to reflect Jesus, the reflection is fogged and murky. Over the centuries, politicians and demagogues and philosophers have tainted Jesus’ reflection with their organizations and doctrinal statements and theologies. They have tried to reduce the living One who is and was and is to come (Rev 1:8) to some kind of way of thinking, some kind of logical being. REDUCE Jesus to anything and he becomes just one of us.
Crusaders hacked Muslims to death; Inquisitions sentenced Jews to gruesome deaths. Church leaders crowned emperors; reformers massacred their opposition. Christians enslaved “pagans”, slaughtered the heathen. The church became an agent – not of love – but of hate. Jesus became a symbol of death and intolerance instead of shared dreams and hopes.
And it is in this shadow, and not the shadow of those ancient, beautiful Jesus people, that we live. Christianity, in all its varied colors and shapes, still lives as the bastard child of the medieval church and not those people who lived Jesus. Our vocabulary, our theology – we are tainted because when we take the name, we take the history.
This is a call for a radical change, not a little surface alteration. We must see our history for what it is. We do not need to reject all of it, as cults and Puritans might tell us. Even this most corrupted form of Jesus’ body has produced some most beautiful echoes of Jesus. We need to simply accept this history, this Christianity, and know that it is there.
Centuries of debris litter our “Christian” thinking. It is filled with castoff pieces of cultures and worlds that we have journeyed through. We cannot confuse this flotsam with Jesus. That mistake is what has made the church so useless.
Do I consider myself a Christian? This is a question I have really, honestly been struggling with lately. When I hear that word, sometimes it gives me the creeps. To me, Christians are introverted and, well, weird. They are consumed with their religion, to the point of selling it to friends and neighbors with sometimes attractive literature but usually tackyness and insincerity. They express love to people outside the church for the purpose of converting them and not for the purposes of love itself.
They walk around judging people for their hair or their clothes or their station in life. They set lines and boundaries for acceptability and they withhold true love from those who do not meet these standards.
So, if you mean by the word Christian, someone who is like that? No, I am not a Christian. I want nothing to do with that.
But if you mean someone who believes you can live in anastasis, that there is a living Jesus who was/is/will be in our midst, loving through us and being loved through us? If you mean someone who sees righteousness as relating to God rather than following the hop-scotch steps to heaven?
Then yes, I am. That is what I want to pursue in my own imperfect, tainted way.
Harmony June 9, 2007
Posted by Erik in Uncategorized.add a comment
I was sitting in Barnes and Nobles this afternoon, putting some stuff together for a book we’re trying to write, and trying to explain some of the subtleties of wicca (I have had enough exposure to it to get the general idea), and I had a sort of ephipany.
There I was, surrounded by walls, shelves, and books. Straight lines EVERYWHERE. This is the mark of our modern, rational world. We love symmetry and order. We like systems and plans that always fit together, always please the eye.
Wicca has a tremendous attractiveness to it because it is an escape from this modern systemism (I think that’s not a word). In many ways, wicca revolves around the idea of finding harmony with the universe. They bill themselves as an ancient religion (which isn’t technically true), because they see their faith as a return to some kind of lost oneness with nature.
At first, this sounds very un-Christian (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing), but in reality it is at the heart of everything Christians say they believe. Think about it for a minute. What is the purpose of Genesis 1-3? It is to show how we fell out of step with the rest of creation. It explains why humans seem to screw things up when they do stuff.
At the very core of our most sacred story is the disruption of the natural order of things – we call it sin. Look at how the ancient Poet put it:
You will eat the fruit of it
But only in pain for the rest of your days.
It will give you thorns and thistles
You will eat the fruit of it.
You will eat bread, but it will be because you sweat to earn it.
until you return to the dust you were made from.
You are dust and to dust you return.
[Genesis 3:18-19]
Paul put it this way: “Creation was involuntarily enslaved to futility…the entire creation groans and labors in labor, even now.” [Romans 8:19, 22]
No matter how you put it, we were meant to exist as PART of creation and things got messed up. The result is the chaos and disorder we see around us. It is entropy; it is sin.
So, the purpose of true religion isn’t just individual salvation but the salvation of the earth, the universe – creation. And we are the agents of that salvation by seeking and finding our places in the harmony of things.
See, the straight lines and the obsession with straight lines and proper geometry, etc – is about controlling nature, bending it to our will. We try to make little gods of ourselves by altering creation; but we are NOT gods, we are people and we fit into this world.
We are creation, not creator.
It’s About Context May 25, 2007
Posted by Erik in History and the Bible, Treatises.1 comment so far
I wanted to share a discussion I’ve been having with someone. It is from a bulletin board on my friend Steve’s church’s website. Somehow or another, I got into this dialogue with a guy I have never met; and I mentioned something about my education.
PaintdWlf: The quantum particles are said to be in “superpositions”. They colapse into reality once observed. So far there is no known way to be or construct an objective observer. Interaction with consciuosness is the trigger, subjectively. Your individuation of consciousness looks out upon everything else, day to day speaking. If God is the still point around which everything revolves, who are you really?
erikd: whoa – I haven’t seen so many big words in close proximity since my last seminary class…which is why I kinda abandoned the whole concept of systemic theology.
PaintdWlf: You were in seminary? Please share, what were your courses of study? Systemic theology…have you learned enough to abandon such persuit? You are not alone.
erikd: I was indeed in seminary. As a point of fact, I have a Masters of Arts in Christian Studies – which serves essentially to hang in my office and look impressive. I completed my course of study, but I changed my major from theology to pastoral ministry because I felt that systematic theology does nothing to help people and the impression I got from Jesus was that he was more interested in helping people than in being theologically or politically correct.
erikd: My original intention after undergraduate work had been to go to the University of Chicago or Brown and study Egyptology and Levant archaeology. I find that most literature about the Biblical world is either extremely out-of-date or just plain incorrect, especially in Christian literature. Things prevented me from that path (the will of God, perhaps) so I pursued theology instead. But honestly, my heart is in history.
Even though I really have no idea how we got on the subject of my course of study in seminary, it was kinda of a blast from the past for me. I remember standing on the platform the night before my graduation and telling everyone that I wanted to study archaeology and ancient cultures. And every summer I seem to revisit that dream and start shopping around for schools.
Ultimately, it was a matter of convenience. I did not want to move my family to Rhode Island or Illinois to spend $40,000 a year on a course of study that is not really in demand anymore. I have had to satisfy myself with reading whatever I can whenever I can and taking an odd course here and there…oh, and the whole seminary thing.
What gets me more than anything is the ignorance with which Christians in general approach their own Bible. They are blissfully unaware of the context of the things they claim to be God’s Words. Most get their “historical” research from sources that are a hundred years old – often written before archaeology even emerged as a refined branch of anthropology.
We are all too willing to put our theology before everything, often re-interpreting passages of Scripture based on a theological conclusion rather than on any kind of historical research. Take for example, Jesus’ statement about “the gates of hades” in Matthew 16:18. There are all kinds of theological explanations of this statement, but if you do a little research, you discover that in the Hellenic culture “the gates of Hades” was a fairly common euphemism for a cultic shrine in various religious practices. In particular, “the gates of Hades” in Caesarea Philippi was a cave where people worshiped a number of gods. Jesus was standing there, overlooking the actual “gates of Hades” and making a literal statement. The assembly of believers is greater than the assembly of the worshipers at the gates of Hades. People would be drawn to the ROCK of the church rather than the gates of Hades.
The Gates of Hades in Caesarea Philippi
The more historical context you research, the more alive the Scriptures become – and to be honest the less theological they are. We want to see some deep theological statement about Satanic warfare or something, but Jesus was simply using his own context to comment on the power of the Kingdom.
I cannot tell you how many Sunday School versions of Biblical narratives are so far removed from their actual context that it makes me sick. Unfortunately, these children’s versions of the facts affect our adult understandings. We think in terms of the visual cues we are exposed to as children.
Far from making Bible teaching boring, understanding the context and conveying it to folks often makes the Bible much clearer and more real. It takes the Bible out of this “mystical” setting and places it on a firm foundation in the reality we live in. It allows the Scriptures to be more than just a book of theology – and I would argue whether there really is a such thing as “theology.” I am not so sure God really wants us putting together systems to try to understand him. Before too long, we’re worshiping the system rather than God.
If anything, I think pastors should study history instead of theology. They should be immersed in the worlds (notice the plural) of the Bible and not in the systematic teachings of theologians who probably never cracked a history book except to get a random source for something they already believed. Knowing the languages and cultures in which the Scriptures emerged isn’t just a nice thing – it is a necessary thing. Otherwise, we are no better than the medieval church that twisted the Biblical narratives to their own schemes.
Reborn May 7, 2007
Posted by Erik in Definitions.1 comment so far
One night, a Pharisee named Nicodemus, who had quite the reputation among the Jews, came to Jesus in the middle of the night with some concerns.
“Look, rabbi, we all know that you are a teacher from God because nobody can do the stuff you do unless God is with him.”
Jesus looked at him and said, “Yeah? Here’s one for you. Unless a man can be born again, he cannot see God’s kingdom.”
Now it was Nicodemus’ turn. “What? How can you be born again when you’re already old. You can’t just get back into the womb and be born again!”
So Jesus answered him, “Look. I’m telling you that unless you are born of water and the RUACH, you cannot enter God’s kingdom. If you are born as flesh, then you are flesh; and what is born of the RUACH is RUACH. So don’t be surprised that I am telling you that you have to be born again.
“The RUACH blows wherever it wants, and you hear the sound but can’t tell where it came from or where it is going. That’s how it is with people who are born of RUACH.”
Nicodemus said to Jesus, “WHAT?!?”
Jesus answered him by saying, “You claim to be a teacher of Israel and do not know this? Why am I not surprised? We can only speak about what we know, what we see; so you can’t receive my witness. If I tell you about the earthly RUACH and you do not believe, how can I explain the heavenly RUACH? No one explain heavenly things if he has not been to heaven, except the Son of Man, who is in heaven.
“Look, Moses lifted up the brass serpent in the wilderness, right? That is what the Son of Man must be – lifted up – so just like the snake, if you believe in him, you can have eternal life and not die. You think the brass serpent was about love and life?
“God loves the people of the earth so much that he gave his only Son so whoever believes in him can not die and instead will have eternal life because God didn’t send his son into the world so it could be condemned. He sent him so the world could be saved through him.”Believe, and you are not condemned. Don’t believe and you are condemned already because you don’t believe in the name of God’s only son. Here’s the condemnation – light has come into the world but men love darkness because they like to do evil stuff and hide it. If you do evil you hate the light and you certainly don’t rush out into the light because it makes what they do very obvious. On the other hand the person who does true things comes into the light so what he does can be seen as what they are – God things.”
[John 3:1-20]
When John sat down to write about Jesus’ clash with the old religious world, there must have been a ton of stories he could have told. How many people did Jesus tick off by challenging their world views, by condemning their legalism, by pushing and shoving them into active, living faith? And he chose this particular one to illustrate just how different Jesus was from the other rabbis of his day.
It is an interesting choice for a lot of reasons. This is not really the place to dive into that particularly part of the story, but think a little about the way that Jesus challenged Nicodemus’ thinking from the very beginning. He uses this term born again over and over – almost clubbing Nicodemus with it. And in evangelical Christianity, the term has been so overused that it carries little of the meaning that Jesus charged it with on that night.
John chose these Greek words carefully. The idea of born again is two Greek words, ?e???? ????e? (pronounced hen-naO anO-then). The second word, which will will transliterate as anothen, is a complicated concept. It can mean “again” but its more literally meaning is “from the top,” “from the beginning,” or “from above.”
In fact, the context of what Jesus says, when he starts talking about heaven, seems to indicate that John wants us to take it as the last – “from above.” In other words, Jesus says “you have to be born from above to see God’s kingdom.”
Jesus seems to be saying that there are two ways of looking at the world – from the point of view of earth/flesh and the point of view of above/heaven. If you want to see God’s kingdom, you’ve got to take God’s perspective. And the only way you do that is to listen to the one who has the perspective of heaven, namely Jesus. He refers to himself as “the son of man” and “God’s son” repeatedly. There’s no doubt that he is referring to himself – John makes sure things are phrased in such a way that you have to see that.
For me, what Jesus is saying is pretty simple. Faith is not about “born again” experience. Instead, it is about looking at Jesus and recognizing who he is and listening to him like he is who he says he is. It starts there, not with some prayer we pray. Faith starts and ends with Jesus.
If you want to see the kingdom, if you want to know God, you have to start by recognizing your own earthly perspective, that everything we know – even religion – is man’s point of view. It is earth/flesh. But the RUACH point of view, the Spirit point of view is Jesus. How did he view things? Accept his viewpoint as the better one, especially when it conflicts with your own. That is being reborn.
jesus May 7, 2007
Posted by Erik in History and the Bible.add a comment
Jesus said, “I was hungry and you fed me; I was thirsty and you gave me a drink; I was naked and you clothed me.” (matthew 26) He called us to something radical…
Mother Theresa saw Jesus in the poor, the leper. She served them as she would have served Jesus if she found him in the same situation. She lived something radical…
A relational theology must embrace the fact that the relationship is greater than just two individuals. It transcends the individual. It is bigger than you and me or you and Jesus.
Jesus is superimposed on every person you meet or interact with. In a relational theology, Jesus is served or scorned in every relationship we share.
The Compassion of the Christ April 24, 2007
Posted by Erik in Articles.add a comment
Like so many others, I was forever changed by The Passion of the Christ when it was released in 2004. The graphic depiction of Jesus’ suffering was – for the most part – accurate, and coupled with my faith, it made for a very poignant experience.
I bought the DVD, but it has sat safely in my entertainment center – unwatched. I just could not bring myself to watch it again.
But recently, I read an article by Brian McLaren in Leadership and it really called into question my own view of Jesus and what it means to be his church in our world. McLaren was extremely disappointed by the media hype that surrounded Passion, and he really struggled with some indescribable frustration with it. Then he had the opportunity to watch another film, Hotel Rwanda. This film has already appeared in my blogs, and it is still on my top 5 most influential films. Here is what McLaren said:
Consider this for a minute. The Passion was a poignant portrayal of Jesus’ suffering – what he gave for us. Hotel Rwanda presented a situation in which one, who did not have to do so, protected many. He extended compassion where he had no reason to do so.
Which film called for a more radical transformation?
As I see it, Hotel Rwanda stirs our passions not just to remember what Jesus did, but to do what Jesus would do. And this is not about following some moral code but rather about actively living compassion out.
This is something very foundational to our faith, the very essence of koinonia – the sharing community so unique to Christianity. It is what is missing in so much of what is called Christianity.
We seek to be reminded of who Jesus is, but we do not often want to be reminded that we are to be as he is.
When was the last time you shared in the suffering of those who are persecuted – no matter what the reason for their persecution? Do we only have compassion for those who suffer for our faith? For our pet compassion projects?
I cannot help but believe that God left us here to be active agents of compassion and cultural/civil change. Our faith is defined by Jesus dying on the cross and being raised from the dead; but it is seen in our acts of selfless compassion and love – our crosses.
You see, when Jesus said “Take up your cross and follow me,” I am not so sure that he was talking about us “crucifying the flesh.” I think that he had something else in focus – that a Christ follower commits his life to selflessly redeeming others. That we are crucified not by some kind of mystical self-cleansing. The obsession with our own individual status has completely ignored the fact that it was Jesus’ act that demonstrated his love, not just his cleansing or preparation. He died for others; he gave; he demonstrated ultimate compassion.
This is our cross – to love others, to sacrifice ourselves for them. It is precisely NOT about me being spiritual; it is about me being sacrificed.
Human Sexuality April 23, 2007
Posted by Erik in Connections.add a comment
Over the years, I have discovered a tremendous spectrum of misunderstanding on the subject of sexuality in general and sex in specific. I confess to have been involved in sexual sin in my own past – a confession that I make quite openly actually. I am not proud of these failures, but they are part of the person I am and I have learned to accept them.
It was my own failures in this area that led me to question the morality which I had been taught from a young age. Essentially, the impression I got was that sex was something done behind closed doors and that any kind of exploration of the subject was strictly off limits. Your genitalia were referred to as “private parts” and there was simply no discussion of these things.
After failing to remain pure and facing the consequences that that relationship had on the proper relationship I later had with my then girlfriend and now wife, I decided it was time to rethink this complex subject. Over the years, I have rethought and repainted this part of my belief structure about a dozen times; and I am sure that God is not done yet.
Here are my essential conclusions.
First, God invented sex. For some reason our culture – especially our prudish Christian world – seems to forget that God did it. He made mankind as male (Heb. zqr, “the plow”) and female (Heb. nqbh, “the furrow”) [Gen 1:27], and formed their bodies with very intentional functions. It was God who made the nerves that come so close to the surface in the genitals, and it was God who invented the orgasm. It was God’s doing.
Second, God intended the genders to be attracted to each other. God did not say to Adam and Eve, “Hey, I covered you in all kinds of stuff so you wouldn’t look at each other except in your bedroom when you feel led to procreate.” He made them naked, and he gave them free reign of their territory. Read the Canticles (Song of Songs) and discover for yourself that man was made to treasure the form of a woman, and women were made to love the strength and shape of their men.
So, God invented sex; and then he intended us to be attracted to one another. Is there anything more to say? Yes, actually there is.
Sex is about connecting with someone. Make no mistake about it, the sexual act is a spiritual thing. Human beings are the only creations that God made who were both physical and spiritual. We were made for this connection; it is the very essence of being human.
This connection is bigger than and more important than the physical act that usually accompanies it. Our world worships the physical act, and twists and perverts it because they believe the physical act is all there is to sex; but they are wrong.
Because of the sexual sin I fell into, I have the ability to see sex in both lights. I thought I had something with the girl I lost my virginity to. But in reality, it was just sex.
In comparison to the relationship I have with my wife, what I did before does not even show up on the charts. It was dangerous; it was exciting; and make no mistake about it, it felt good. But in the end, it was purely physical – slot a and tab b.
Today, my wife and I have something else. It is something growing and changing and it is never the same because our connection is never the same. We are interacting with one another all the time, learning about each other and seeing God do stuff in our lives. Sometimes we are distant and sex becomes just another physical thing; but other times, we are spiritually together and then sex – becomes a form of worship.
We connect with one another spiritually, and that connection is from God; and when it is coupled with the physical connection – which is also from God – well, there is nothing on earth to compare to it. It connects us with God because it is how God made us. He invented sex; he intended the attractions; and he formed the avenue of spiritual/physical connection we experience.
Ultimately, sex is about God. He is not embarrassed by it – he created it. I think that when a husband and wife come together, it is a joy to God. He celebrates it.
Weird, isn’t it? Thinking of God celebrating a couple having sex? But he told Adam and Eve to do it and then called it “good.” If God did not approve of it, why are there all those “begots” in the Bible?
We, sadly, have taken something beautiful and twisted it. Sex has become an end in itself, and we no longer see the beauty of it outside of the physical sensations, etc. It has become a psychological crutch for those longing for love but incapable of experiencing anything more than their physical satisfaction.
This is the problem with human sexuality today, and it is the reason why I advocate celibacy until marriage. IT has nothing to do with sex being bad or embarrassing. I am quite open about it (sometimes too open for my wife), but sex is a God-thing. I love it; I love to celebrate it.
Here’s an example of how our world has changed. In the ancient world, when a marriage took place, the bride and groom would go inside his father’s house and consummate the marriage while the guests partied outside. In fact, their equivalent of the best man would stand guard outside the door, and the groom would hand him a sheet stained with the blood from the woman’s first sexual act. (Keep in mind that girls married VERY young – 13 or younger sometimes). When the sheet was publicly displayed, the guests would erupt in cheers and joy.
Can you imagine that happening today? What usually happens today when a girl loses her virginity? The guy goes off and brags to his buddies about deflowering her and usually after a short relationship, he discards her. And that’s just the girls who aren’t sexually assaulted before they get to that point.
Our sexuality is so messed up in our world. Because we pretend it is a dirty little secret, people flaunt it and abuse it. Because we have skewed our understanding of God’s role in it, it has become totally physical.
It is sad. What God intended for beauty and good has become something perverse and twisted. What he intended as the ultimate connection, the ultimate sharing, the consummate bonding has become something casual to be shared by strangers for the sensation of it.
The Challenges of History April 21, 2007
Posted by Erik in History and the Bible.add a comment
We are in the middle of preparing a pretty massive undertaking – a historical and grammatical study of the book of Ezekiel (more properly pronounced as Yehezqe’l). This is a big deal because in all my years in Christian circles, I have never heard someone actually teach this enormous portion of the Hebrew Scriptures.
Okay, that is not a completely truthful statement. I have heard people teach from Ezekiel, but I have never heard anyone teach this prophetic book in its context. Usually it is cited in studies of Daniel or Revelation or the end times in general. There is little regard for the context of the book itself, of the history that surrounds it and the massive political and religious upheavals that surrounded its origin.
Here is a perfect example. I grew up thinking that people from the biblical time periods all dressed essentially the same way – you know the costume. They are wearing a long flowing robe and a kinda cloak over it, and of course a sheet on their heads.
But when I started to study reliefs from the various time periods of the Bible (the Hebrew Scriptures alone span nearly 4,000 years of civilization!) I discovered that probably none of the Biblical time periods featured this style of dress, except maybe the New Testament…and even that is a stretch.
To the right is an example of the Egyptian’s view of the known races – from right to left, Libyan, Kushite, Syrian (Aramean) and Egyptian. This particular picture dates from a little after Abraham, but since the Arameans were in fact relatives of Abraham, this is probably how he would have dressed. Shockingly different from the pictures in the children’s Bible most of us had as a kid, isn’t it?
Likewise, I want you to see an Assyrian representation of typical Israelite dress about the time of Ezekiel. The three individuals to the right are Israelite artisans being led captive by the Assyrian. Notice the way they are dressed – more specifically, the way they wore their curly beards? This is nothing like the almost jolly, cartoony characters of the beloved flannel graphs.
So teaching Ezekiel in his historical context is difficult. How do you smash everyone’s illusions and show them the reality of the Biblical world? How do you explain that far from the idealized world of Sunday School lessons, Ezekiel’s world was a political whirlwind? That he had seen four different kings rule his homeland and had been taken captive by the brash general/prince/king Nebuchadrezzar (whose name is actually spelled wrong in many places in the Hebrew Scriptures)? That Ezekiel lived in the ancient equivalent of a concentration camp?
How do you lay out the facts in such a way that we realize this is a living document? That Ezekiel did not write in a vacuum about future events but in reality wrote about contemporary, imminent events?
How do you explore the odd vision in Ezekiel’s introduction (chapter 1) and see it for what it is instead of trying to interpret every little bit and piece of it with some kind of symbolism?
How do you see Ezekiel in light of the early exile instead of just some nebulous time frame we refer to as “biblical times”? How do you learn what it was like to be part of a captive people in Babylon – not just from Biblical sources but also from contemporary histories?
These are the challenges of history, of teaching Scripture in context. It is extremely difficult and requires research and work – which is why most preachers don’t do it. But in the end, it yields a much truer vision of the Word of God. It yields an experience instead of a text. And that makes everything worth it.
If Christianity Were A Person… April 20, 2007
Posted by Erik in Articles.add a comment
I just recently got my copy of Blue Like Jazz back from someone who had borrowed it. This is one of the books that I consider catalytic in my spiritual walk, and if you haven’t read it, you should.
Anyway, there is a passage in the book where the author’s friend Peggie expresses that she felt that if Christianity were a person, it would not like her very much. This was an odd statement for me the first time I read it, and I had to really think about this personification that Peggie was making.
If Christianity – and I mean the mainstream perception of Christianity – were a person, what would he/she look like? To be honest, the image that I came up with was not pleasant. This is more or less what he would be like.
Chris T. Anity is a very opinionated person. In fact, he does not even listen to what other people have to say before shouting them down or ignoring them. He is very focused on taking care of himself and only forms real relationships with people who agree with him
He is too busy with pen pals in foreign lands to invest in the well-being of the hungry and poor in his own city. He worries more about appearances than about needs. In fact, his entire life revolves around being right and correct and making sure other people know it.
He votes Republican, but largely is ignorant of the world situation at large. He does not read anything except stuff printed by other like-minded people, and in general is out of step with his times.
Whenever he faces a struggle, he pretends like it is not a big deal. He does not cry and believes there is no place for weakness in his moral conduct. He thinks everyone needs to perform to a certain standard and anyone who doesn’t is obviously just not good enough.
Anytime someone answers him, he seems to be able to give chapter and verse for his opinion. The scope of his vision seems to be narrow – too narrow to embrace anything other than his own thoughts. He talks his own language – has his own vocabulary for things and often cannot explain himself to people who do not share his vocabulary.
Oh yeah, he condemns anything that might be fun.
That’s the way evangelical Christianity looks to the world. You may not like it, but its true. This is how the world at large views us.
Now imagine if we could live our faith in such a way that people might begin to think that maybe Christianity might like them. Imagine if that could happen?
Because if Christianity could like them, then guess who else could? Maybe God would like them to? In fact, if Christianity could show love to them, then maybe God would to?
What open doors that would give us.
Some Christians believe that evangelism is getting harder and harder – I think that’s only because the Christianity they represent is further and further removed from the people it is trying to reach.
The way I see it, evangelism is about letting people see that Christianity likes them; and that more importantly, the God of Christianity likes them.
If Christianity Were A Person… April 20, 2007
Posted by Erik in Articles.add a comment
I just recently got my copy of Blue Like Jazz back from someone who had borrowed it. This is one of the books that I consider catalytic in my spiritual walk, and if you haven’t read it, you should.
Anyway, there is a passage in the book where the author’s friend Peggie expresses that she felt that if Christianity were a person, it would not like her very much. This was an odd statement for me the first time I read it, and I had to really think about this personification that Peggie was making.
If Christianity – and I mean the mainstream perception of Christianity – were a person, what would he/she look like? To be honest, the image that I came up with was not pleasant. This is more or less what he would be like.
Chris T. Anity is a very opinionated person. In fact, he does not even listen to what other people have to say before shouting them down or ignoring them. He is very focused on taking care of himself and only forms real relationships with people who agree with him
He is too busy with pen pals in foreign lands to invest in the well-being of the hungry and poor in his own city. He worries more about appearances than about needs. In fact, his entire life revolves around being right and correct and making sure other people know it.
He votes Republican, but largely is ignorant of the world situation at large. He does not read anything except stuff printed by other like-minded people, and in general is out of step with his times.
Whenever he faces a struggle, he pretends like it is not a big deal. He does not cry and believes there is no place for weakness in his moral conduct. He thinks everyone needs to perform to a certain standard and anyone who doesn’t is obviously just not good enough.
Anytime someone answers him, he seems to be able to give chapter and verse for his opinion. The scope of his vision seems to be narrow – too narrow to embrace anything other than his own thoughts. He talks his own language – has his own vocabulary for things and often cannot explain himself to people who do not share his vocabulary.
Oh yeah, he condemns anything that might be fun.
That’s the way evangelical Christianity looks to the world. You may not like it, but its true. This is how the world at large views us.
Now imagine if we could live our faith in such a way that people might begin to think that maybe Christianity might like them. Imagine if that could happen?
Because if Christianity could like them, then guess who else could? Maybe God would like them to? In fact, if Christianity could show love to them, then maybe God would to?
What open doors that would give us.
Some Christians believe that evangelism is getting harder and harder – I think that’s only because the Christianity they represent is further and further removed from the people it is trying to reach.
The way I see it, evangelism is about letting people see that Christianity likes them; and that more importantly, the God of Christianity likes them.
