May Thy Kingdom Come

Consider This

2009-12-09T19:42:00.002-06:00

Here's what my thoughts have been centering on today:

1.) Andy Pettitte signed a contract with the New York Yankees today. As a starting pitcher, he will play for about 5-6 innings approximately every 5 days. For this, he will be paid $11.75 million for one year. (This is nearly 3,000 times what I have made in the past year.)

2.) According to the United States budget for 2009, $541 billion was to be spent on "Defense" this year. This accounts for 54% of the budget, more than any other discretionary parts of the budget combined. Only 6.2% and 5.3% of the budget was directed towards Education and Health respectively. (These statistics and lots more can be found here.)

3.) Hundreds of billions of dollars in bailouts have been handed out to corporations and millionaires.

4.) I can't find a job and am barely able to put gas in my car or buy food. Yet even I am astronomically better off than countless people on this planet.

5.) Approximately one in eight people on this planet do not have access to clean water. It is estimated that it would cost $9 billion to provide clean water for every human being on Earth. Americans spent $10.66 billion on Black Friday this past November.

Our world is flooded with Social Darwinism and the vast majority of the people are drowning while a comparatively small number of people/countries float on by on their yachts without a care, not even willing to throw out a life preserver, as if those drowning don't deserve it. No, "The drowning must pull themselves up by their bootstraps and build their own life preservers" they say. "It doesn't matter that all the yachts together have plenty of life preservers to save all the drowning. Those are OUR life preservers." And so the yacht-riders float on, blissfully drinking their margaritas, while the drowning sink further and further, every second losing more of what precious breath remains in their lungs.

May God have mercy on us all.

Christianity - Not Just a Religion or a Relationship

2009-11-03T21:40:00.006-06:00

I've grown up in the Church my entire life and I was always told that Christianity isn't a religion, it's a relationship. I've come in contact with that summary even more frequently as facebook has become popular. Many a Christian's "religious views" section says, "Christianity - it's not a RELIGION it's a RELATIONSHIP." (For some reason, unknown to me, "religion" and "relationship" always has to be in all caps.) Growing up I was perfectly content with this description of Christianity. It communicates that Christianity is not simply another religion but is actually about how a person can have a "personal relationship with Jesus." I even thought of this description as a good little comeback against anyone who would try to imply that Christianity is simply another religion like all the others. However, as I have matured and as I have come to understand more about who Jesus was/is and what the gospel is and its purpose, I have become increasingly uncomfortable with this staple summary of the Christian faith that has become so popular.

Is Christianity just another religion? No. Do Christians have the opportunity to be in relationship with God? Yes. I uphold and affirm both of those statements. Can the Christian faith be accurately summarized simply as individuals having their own personal relationship with Jesus? Absolutely not. The gospel is about astronomically more than having a personal relationship with Jesus. Unfortunately however, it has been my observation that, due to the nature of the Church at large in this country, this "relationship not a religion" summary has been an accurate portrayal of what Christianity is all about for us today.

The Christian faith has largely become incredibly individualistic. The gospel message has been boiled down to this essentially: "Jesus died on the cross for me so my sins are forgiven and I can spend eternity in Heaven with him instead of go to Hell." It's all about me and my personal, eternal salvation. Look at the songs we sing in our church gatherings. How many times and in how many songs do we sing, "I," "me," "my," "mine," etc.? The Lord's Supper, originally a full meal that the body ate together has become a personal quiet time when each person sits in silence meditating on his/her own individual life in relation to God. It is often communicated that if a person is struggling with sin that he/she must simply "try harder" in order to become more Christ-like; it becomes all about the individual's own effort. (Which turns Christianity into just another religion since it then becomes about works performed by us humans to make ourselves more holy, good, and righteous.) So in a way I suppose the summary of Christianity as "a relationship not a religion" is accurate in that it correctly sums up the essence of what the Christian faith looks like today, but is that truly what the gospel is all about?

The gospel is about redemption and putting things back how they belong. Does that include my personal eternal standing? Certainly. But is it limited to just that? No way. The gospel is about fixing relationships but it is not limited to just my relationship with God. It should restore my relationship with God to what it was intended to be but it should also restore my relationships with other people to what they should be, as well as restore my relationship with creation to what it should be. If I view the gospel as simply being a means to get me into heaven and give me a personal relationship with Jesus then I have an incredibly limited understanding of the gospel.

The point of Christianity and the purpose of the gospel is not simply that I can have a personal relationship with Jesus. The purpose of the gospel is to bring people into God's Kingdom so that they can then go out and spread the good news of that Kingdom to the rest of the world. My life should be a constant demonstration of the gospel and of the Kingdom of God. I should be going out everywhere I go as a missionary for the Kingdom, seeking redemption, restoration, and justice in this world. The gospel is not just about what God wants to do/is doing for me, it's about what God wants to do/is doing for the entire world. Christianity cannot be simply summarized as "a relationship not a religion." The gospel message cannot be simply summed up as "Jesus died so that my sins can be forgiven and I don't have to go to Hell." The gospel is so much bigger than that. The gospel has a missional purpse. The purpose of the Gospel, the purpose of Christianity, is not to give an individual a personal relationship with Jesus. Yes, that does happen, but it is not the be-all and end-all of the gospel. The purpose of the gospel is "the ministry of reconciliation" (2 Cor 5:18); to reconcile people to God who will be a part of the Church and then go out on mission to spread the good news of this gospel of reconciliation (for all of creation) to the whole world. Christianity is about way more than simply me and my personal, individual relationship with Jesus.

I Won't Give Up

2009-10-18T15:41:00.004-05:00

I've noticed an increasingly cynical attitude towards the church amongst Christians around my age. I completely understand the cynicism; I've had a rather cynical attitude myself, so I will include myself in this description. For those of a similar mindset to myself, it's easy to become discouraged. Many young adults who have grown up in the church have spent their lives in the church having the message conveyed to them that being a good Christian is boiled down to what they don't do; if you want to be a good Christian you don't drink alcohol, don't smoke, don't watch R-rated movies (unless it's The Passion of the Christ), avoid listening to secular music, and you definitely don't date. Young adults like myself who have grown up in the church were most likely taught for years all the things that Christians do not do and very little about what Christians do (except for go to church on Sundays and Wednesdays, pray often, read our Bibles everyday, and vote Republican to fight the liberal homosexuals and abortionists). The goal of Christianity, as it has been presented to us, is to stop sinning and to survive in this fallen world long enough to have our disembodied souls float up into the sky to spend eternity sitting around on clouds plucking harps.

As we've grown up and matured we began asking if perhaps there isn't more to Christianity than what has been communicated to us. We started reading the descriptions of the early church in the New Testament and studying the teachings of Jesus in the Gospels and what we've realized is that, as a general rule, the American Church does not seem to match up well with what we've read and studied. So we began asking questions in church, we taught Sunday School lessons, and we wrote blogs expressing everything we had been learning. And what we found was that, instead of being agents of drastic change bringing the Church back to what it "should" be, we were met with quite a bit of opposition. It became clear that, despite a distasteful attitude towards Catholicism for their dependence on tradition, many churches of our movement had their own addiction to traditions. There's been significant resistance to changes we've proposed and a basic attitude of "This is the way we do things and it's not gonna change" or "This is what Christians are supposed to do (or not do), no question about it." We've been treated as young idealists who will learn how things really work when we grow up and our brains develop fully and sometimes have even been called heretics.

This is where the cynicism and pessimism begins to gain a full head of steam. We've gotten frustrated, more than frustrated, with the state of the Church in our country. However this is also where I feel I must separate myself from some of my brothers and sisters of my generation. An increasingly large portion of this group of young-adult Christians that I have been describing is beginning to, seemingly, give up on the Church. They have seen a disparity between the American Church and what is described in the New Testament and have become so discouraged that many have stopped going to church altogether. It seems as if they read the Bible and see what the Church was, and still can be, and get extremely discouraged when they can't find that Church in the local congregation(s). Because they can't find what they want to see in a church, they stop participating in the local church. What most bothers me about this is that this attitude is essentially the same attitude expressed by the many people in the established churches that caused them to be frustrated in the first place. Those who have stopped participating in local congregations have done so, many times, because they became fed up with attitudes that are resistant to change and with people who are unwilling to do things differently. So they have left, because they want the church to do things their way. They've stopped attending churches that won't do things differently because they themselves don't want to do things differently.

Amongst a lot of Christians my age and of a similar mindset to myself I've recognized a rather narrow definition of what a "true" Christian is and what the "true" Church is. I think what they have forgotten is that the American congregations that seem so dramatically far off from the Church that is described throughout the New Testament is still the Church, Christ's bride, whom He loves and gave Himself up for. There is plenty that I feel needs to change about the Church in this country and there are plenty of aspects about the Church in this country that angers me. I've gone through times in which I have felt discouraged. I've gone months without attending a church out of my discouragement. But what good would it do the Church if I and those like me were to all stop going to churches, to effectively give up on the Church?

I won't give up on the Church because the Church needs us, but even more importantly, we need the Church. I won't give up on the Church because she needs me and others to challenge her. I won't give up on the Church because I need her to challenge me and balance me out. Most importantly, I won't give up on the Church because she is just that, the Church, the bride of Christ whom God has chosen as His primary method of bringing the Gospel, in all its aspects, to this fallen world. Who am I to give up on what God has chosen?

Growing Up

2009-07-27T00:12:00.002-05:00

I think I finally answered that age-old question that plagues virtually everyone for a significant portion (if not all) of their life: "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Earlier this week I had a good talk with my dad about that question. Here's the thought process he helped me go through...

As I considered what it was that I enjoy doing, that I am passionate about, and that I am good at, the thing that came immediately to my head was teaching. More specifically, teaching the Bible. While I am typically skeptical of the accuracy of "Spiritual Gifts Inventories," when I have taken them recently, teaching is always something that I score highly in. On top of that I've had many people tell me it's something I'm good at. I usually take that with a grain of salt since Christians have a tendency to tell someone they do a good job at something, even if they are terrible at it, but I think most people have been sincere.

I have a passion for teaching the Bible to Christians. I've never been much of an evangelist. I've never been the person going out and finding a stranger and telling them about Jesus. I'm more concerned with and passionate about helping people who are already Christians become better Christians. I think that one of the greatest tragedies of my experience in the church is that for 18 years of my life I never heard a whole lot about Jesus. Sure I knew Jesus died and rose again so that my sins can be forgiven and I can have eternal life, but that was about the extent of it. I was never taught much about who Jesus really was/is, what he did, what he taught, how his teachings should drastically change my life, etc. I considered myself a follower of Christ but for so many years of my life I was never taught what it actually means to follow, and live like, Christ. I consider that an incredible tragedy and am certain that many many other people can relate with me on this. It is my desire, therefore, to teach Christians about Jesus and his teachings and to challenge my fellow Christians to be more like Christ.

So once I figured out what I was really passionate about, I had to figure out how I could actually do it. The first obvious option is to work in a church. While I'm not entirely opposed to working in a church, I'm not so sure it would be the best situation for me. Ironically, going to JBC where I was prepared to work in a church almost turned me off to the idea completely. There is a whole lot of "junk" you gotta deal with, "politics" if you will, that my personality would not allow me to put up with. While I'm sure those kind of things are present anywhere, I simply don't think I could put up with it as a full-time minister for the rest of my life.

This is when I considered the possibility of being a professor in a Bible college, and I think that's a pretty good idea. This, obviously, will require me to go back to school, which I find humorous since just a few months ago I was fairly certain I would never go back to school. Now I'm looking at starting Masters work next Fall and probably working towards a Doctorate after that. I would want to teach New Testament courses, more specifically courses on the gospels. I've started the process of looking at various seminaries and trying to figure out which one will be best for me and what program will best prepare me for what I want to do. It's a frustrating process. I kind of wish that God would come down from on high and tell me what seminary I should go to and on what program. It would make everything so much easier.

So. That's what I've been thinking through lately. And who knows what will happen. I'm open to any opportunities that may come my way. I may never finish more schooling and I may never be a Bible college professor. But for now I think that's the direction I'm gonna head in. Whether I get there or God pulls me off in another direction remains to be seen. I'd certainly appreciate some prayers as I try and figure out what school to pick and so forth. Also, any help/advice you may be able to give me in this whole process would also be appreciated.

Surprised By Hope

2009-07-08T21:58:00.004-05:00

I've been reading Surprised By Hope by N.T. Wright. I'm currently about 20 pages from finishing it. It's been an excellent read; challenging, hopeful, inspiring, informative. It's one of those books that makes you re-think things that you have for years assumed were true - and I'm a firm believer in asking questions and re-thinking. I suggest you read this book. Here's a good quote:

"The whole point of what Jesus was up to was that he was doing, close up, in the present, what he was promising long-term, in the future. And what he was promising for that future, and doing in that present, was not saving souls for a disembodied eternity but rescuing people from the corruption and decay of the way the world presently is so they could enjoy, already in the present, that renewal of creation which is God's ultimate purpose - and so they could thus become colleagues and partners in that larger project."

- N.T. Wright

"My Jesus, my savior..."

2009-07-03T15:09:00.000-05:00

I think a lot about the Church. The Lord saw fit to give me a brain that questions and criticizes just about everything. I've come to consider this as both a positive and a negative characteristic. On the negative side, it has at times led me to being judgmental in situations when it is sinful to be judgmental. On the positive side, it has helped me to critique my own beliefs and particularly my ecclesiology. As of late I've been doing a lot thinking about the nature of the Western Church.

As I listen to the language that is used by Christians, it has become clear that Christianity, particularly the branch of Christianity that I have experienced here in America, has become incredibly individualistic. One area this is most clearly seen is in the songs we sing. So much of our modern worship music emphasizes an individualistic faith. All the songs are about how God loves me, Jesus died for me, I love God, asking God to strengthen me, expressing thanks for God giving his grace to me. Think of that song Shout To The Lord, which starts out, "My Jesus, My Savior." At the next worship service you attend, as you sing the songs, count how many times you sing "I," "me," "my," "mine" etc. It is quite eye-opening. Our worship songs are almost exclusively about the individual's relationship with God.

Think about the reasons that people join or leave a congregation. For the most part a person will join a congregation because of how he/she feels welcomed, or because that congregation "feeds them spiritually," because the worship style fits their individual preferences. Whether a person admits it or not, most the time we will join a church because of what we, as individuals, will get out of being a part of that congregation. (friends, good worship style, good youth programs for the kids, etc.) Likewise, most people leave congregations when their needs cease to be met in the way they hope. It's all about how a given congregation makes me feel.

Or, for instance, think about how the gospel message is typically described: "We sinned and our souls are destined to spend eternity burning in Hell, but Jesus died so that our sins can be forgiven and our souls can spend eternity in Heaven; all we have to do is believe it." Think about that. I sinned. Jesus died for ME. If I believe, then it will get MY soul into Heaven. This makes Christianity out to be all about the individual and his/her eternal status. Not to mention the fact that this whole understanding of eternity and the afterlife is all very Platonic and not very biblical. (GASP! - For more on that, read Surprised By Hope by N.T. Wright.) The goal of being a Christian is not for me to survive this evil world until death so that my disembodied soul (a Platonic concept) can float up into the sky and sit around on clouds playing a harp for all eternity. The point of Christianity is not simply that God loves me and poured his grace on me so that my sins can be forgiven and I can have a relationship with him. As true as that is, it simply isn't the point.

Jesus did not come into this world, die and then raise again simply so that I, or you, as individuals can get into heaven. Jesus came to proclaim (and through his resurrection to begin the institution of) God's Kingdom. He came to proclaim and demonstrate a Kingdom that is drastically opposed to any kingdoms of this world. He came to redeem and make things right. He came to call people to join him in proclaiming and spreading this Kingdom. The point of being a Christian is not to get my soul into heaven. The point of being a Christian is to live out and spread this Kingdom that Jesus preached, and is the King of. The point of being a Christian is to join God in the work that He is doing on this Earth. The point of Christianity is not what Jesus did for me, it's what Jesus did, and is doing, for all of creation.

Yes, there is a personal aspect to the gospel. But it's not the main point; there is so much more than that. I pray that the church can rediscover it's purpose as an agent of the Kingdom and stop perpetuating a inwardly-focused, individualistic faith. May we rediscover our purpose as living out the Kingdom "on earth as it is in Heaven."

I missed it...

2009-07-02T20:21:00.000-05:00

I haven't kept a blog for quite awhile and I've realized recently how much I've missed having a place to write out my thoughts/dreams/aspirations/theological musings. I hope to be able to get back into the groove of writing. So, whether other people read or not, here I go...