Donald Miller's Benediction

I was proud of Donald Miller's benediction after Monday's DNC Convention. He is influential, thoughtful, and represents a new evangelical Christian. Social justice will take a lot of us out of the GOP this year. The Republican party will have to answer for its missteps and the Democrats will have to live up to their rhetoric. The new Christian majority has a broader platform and is actively leading in setting things right.

Notes: spirituality of the cell phone

What does a Porsche salesman turned Mennonite pastor have to say about media and culture?

These are my notes from a relevant and important message from Shane Hipps at Mars Hill in Detroit.

Shane authored the book The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture: How Media Shapes Faith, the Gospel, and Church

buy the book at Amazon.com

shane hipps

mars hill church

2008/03/29

spirituality of the cell phone

http://marshill.org/teaching/index.php

the medium is the message.

it is how they are used that counts.

the content of any medium is the juicy piece of meat carried by the burgular to distract the watchdog of the mind

regardless of the content, the medium changes us

everything around us is media

electronic age: disorienting blindness in which it is increasingly difficult to discern reflection from reality

we are growing increasingly incapable of sustained face to face communication

hidden biases

the immense power of presence

how can you just be there in an email ? (ex. kathy)

location (being there) is anything but trivial

'the word became flesh' emmanuel

you are the message of the gospel

we are the body of christ

we are his media

This entry is part of Water Cooler Wednesday at randyelrod.typepad.com

Tempting Fate

A friend of mine has had a really rough year. The doctors amputated her right leg a few years ago. She has been doing a pretty good job working her way back in the saddle. The past year, though, she has had disappointment after disappointment. Each time she has said God has a plan.

The past week I have been following the play-offs closely because I had a pair of front-row conference tickets on the line. Unlikely as it was, I had picked the final four, two, and Memphis to win. There was no assurance of winning it all. None the less, all the playoffs I held out hope those tickets were meant for me.

We live day to day with little control over our lives. Things happen we do not necessarily understand. We hold out hope they will end up our way. When they do we rejoice. When they don't we are disappointed.

Fate is a concept from the mythology of the Romans which attributed certain deities control over the lives of humans. Destiny is a similar concept that one's life-path is predetermined and unavoidable. Providence is the belief in the unseen hand of the Almighty directing the lives of people. Somehow, these answers don't cut it.

Sometimes I wonder if God really does have everything under control, or if this world just goes on its weird way and he sustains us. This viewpoint puts our emotional roller coaster in perspective. In my highest highs, God is glad with me; in the lowest lows, he hurts too. When I rest in him and face everything with the assurance he will sustain me the peaks and valleys aren't so dramatic.

Sweeter as the Days Go By

A guy is born. He gets his first tooth, walks, goes to kindergarten, loses his first tooth, first girlfriend, first heartbreak, sports, prom, homecoming, graduation, car, college, marriage, children, career, house. The list goes on. We have many firsts in our lives. It's all part of growth.

For the first thirty years of life we're anticipating the next step. After forty people tend to look back. It seems like most of our life is spent in the future or the past. For some reason we neglect now.

In the Baptist churches I grew up attending we often had a testimony time. I don't know where the tradition started, but wherever the church, it was usually the same formula. We start with a hymn or two -- always singing the first, second and last verse -- then two or three people would stand up to say how good God had been to them; it sounded something like this:

"Jesus saved me when I was (fill in the age). I asked Him into my heart. When I lost my (fill in the blank) I leaned on Him. Through all of my pain He's been there. God is so good!"

It was followed by a few hearty Amens and a similar testimony.

In all of those testimony meetings, rarely do I remember hearing someone talking about God -- or Jesus, or the Spirit, for that matter -- like they would a close friend they had just run into that afternoon. Really, we tell people they can have "a personal relationship with Jesus" then freeze up when put on the spot to talk about our own "personal relationship" with him.

Throughout Scripture the relationship between the Lord and us is as a groom and his bride. Now, I know some couples who aren't close to each other as they ought to be, but really healthy couples have intimate moments over the years and special moments amost every day. They are, well, intimate. Too many of us -- myself included -- don't have an intimate relationship with the Lord.

For most Christians, we got hitched to the Lord some time in the past and go to church and do stuff here and there because we're Christians. It's not really much of a personal relationship when I think about it. If I spent my Christian life working around God and for God but never really with Him would that be a "personal relationship?"

I hear people talk about their Christian walk getting sweeter as the days go by. As I think about some sour-looking and mean-sounding people who call themselves Christians I wonder whether they have that daily walk with the Lord. I wonder what it would say to people on the outside looking in if people who call themselves Christians really had a "personal relationship" with the Lord that was growing sweeter each day.

The Faith of Barak Obama

Last year (or so) I read a book that opened my eyes to the way church and politics should relate called God's Politics: Why the right gets it wrong and the left just doesn't get it. The author, Jim Wallis, has a "progressive" organization called Sojourner at http://www.sojo.net. They recently hosted a conference that featured Obama in which he shared the following speech. It's worth the half-hour listen.

A Personal Faith

Think a minute about how you describe your relationship with God. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Did you use words like friend, lover, or father? Was your description more about Him or you? Did you go back to a script you memorized about something that happened to you five, 10, or 15 years ago?

I learned growing up that we are here to tell others about Jesus and convince them that they had to "put their faith in him" or they would spend eternity in hell. In fact, I learned two questions I could ask someone that would open the door to me sharing the gospel. I memorized a five-step model with a tract that was a convincing argument and even the right words someone could pray (as I led them) to reserve their place in heaven.

Every Sunday, and weekdays on Christian TV and radio I hear people repeating similar arguments and prayers, convincing hundreds - even thousands - of people to "give their hearts to Jesus".

It reminds me of the story of Cyrano de Bergerac, who was not attractive, but articulate, who helped his more attractive (but less eloquent) friend win the heart of Roxanne (the title of the movie starring Steve Martin of the same story). This begs the questions: is God a naive woman who needs us to feed our friends lines to convince Him to accept them? or, are our friends really ready to start a real relationship with the Almighty if they need us to tell them what to say to him?

Don Miller develops this idea in his book Searching for God Knows What. For too long, I've tried to rationalize whether someone who prays the right thing when he's twelve can still be saved at 23, when he's turned from all that he believed then. Is he still a believer? Does he have a relationship with the Lord? Is Jesus Lord of his life?

It's a lot less complicated to consider the relational parallels Jesus himself used to describe his followers. He considered us "sheep who need a shepherd", "the sick who need a physician", his "bride", his "friends", and "sons of God". Relationships aren't fabricated; they grow naturally. They come from a heart that gets to know someone else and falls in love with and learns to trust another as that relationship develops.

Instead of persuading others to say a prayer, making a bargain with God I hope to live a life that convinces them He is the lover, shepherd, father, friend, they've been looking for -- that they will be able to express on their own the desire of their heart to turn to him, however that comes out.

Are You Sure about That?

Recently I'm learning a little more about my own theological interpretations. Raised in the Bible belt of the U.S., some things were taught as certainties. The Scripture was open to extremely strict interpretation and those who didn't agree with our interpretation had gone off into a divergent faith. From the method of baptism to the way churches did fundraisers, the answers were in the Bible, plain as day, for everyone to see.

Fast-forward to my post-high school years. An impressionable (but grounded) young adult, I entered college. Faced with secular history that starts somewhere before the Genesis account and tracing human history with Judeo-Christian history thrown in the middle I realized the real, valid challenges to my faith. Looking through the eyes of others, I was able to acknowledge the seeming discrepancies and realize absurdities I had embraced when I was younger.

Thanks to my secular education and the challenges of listening to different views, I have learned to look at the Scriptures as more than a strict instruction manual. Don't get me wrong, the Bible is to me God's word and the foundation of my faith, but it's now more than it was.

Take Genesis as a sart (afterall, that is where the story begins). Some are adamant to argue that everything in Genesis happened just as it was written, even arguing that if this is not the case, we could dismiss the whole Bible. A secular viewpoint -- which it's taken me a long time to understand -- looks at the account as allegory: a way for a nomad named Moses* to get his mind around how this world and his people came to be. Before you dismiss me as a heretic, please consider this: Almighty God could have inspired Moses to communicate this history to his people to illustrate important truths and build a way to relate to mankind.

With a less-literal viewpoint, I can see creation and the fall as a beatuiful allegory of how God Almighty values humanity and the tragedy of every person's self-will that carries us away from His perfect will, tarnishing everything, and the need for a redeemer. God becomes our benevolent provider in a way that anyone can acknowledge. All of this communicates the same creation story beautifully, opening the door to the gospel, without ostracizing someone who doesn't interpret the scripture literally.

This begs the question: when you feel lead to defend your faith, or perhaps the way you've been taught to view that faith, are you sure about that? Is your viewpoint the only valid way to look at it? Does your translation get in the way of you communicating the essence of the message, leading to arguements about viewpoint and semantics, not about the gospel message? Can you learn something of another's interpretation that enriches your own faith?

As John admonishes, "Test the spirits"(1 John 4). Perhaps by listening and pondering others' viewpoints of Scripture and faith you can strengthen your own and better communicate your faith with others.

*Some would argue that these stories are accumulations of years of oral history compiled post-Moses. This acknowledged, the mystery is the same.

Reflections on Narnia

Recently we watched Chronicles of Narnia; The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe at my church. Every time I watch this powerful movie I am moved to tears. It may sound sappy, but no other story (apart from the literal retelling in movies like The Passion of the Christ) captures the power of what Christ did for humankind like this one.

The story is timeless. My friend Phil commented, "You could watch the movie ten times and find something new every time." Several story lines are woven throughout the movie: a family torn by war, discovery and fulfillment of one's destiny, the triumph of good over evil. Each time I see it, the redemption story strikes me most.

All four Pevensie children have strong personalities and character traits; Peter is the oldest and a headstrong, but reluctant leader; Susan is a pessimistic, overly-cautious, older sister; Lucy is the youngest, with an adventurous, imaginative streak; and Edmund is the self-willed younger brother tired of being in the shadow of his older brother.

Of the four children, I identify with Edmund. In his struggle to assert his own will, Ed betrays his family, allies, and the kingdom -- deceived by the White Witch, who appeals to his appetite for "sweeties" and influence. The hero Aslan steps in and reconciles Edmund with his family and the citizens of Narnia, admonishing "What has happened in the past is not to be spoken of." Making a pact with the Witch, Aslan even takes Edmund's place on the Stone Table.

Along with Susan and Lucy, we follow Aslan through the night as he goes to the Stone Table to appease the Deep Magic. The White Witch and her army celebrate as they humilliate and ultimately sacrifice Aslan. As they go to war with Peter and his army, the dark army leave Aslan dead on the altar.

Although the rest of the movie speaks to the epic victory of good over evil, I am broken by the intimacy of the great king of Narnia taking the place of Ed, sacrificing himself, knowing his destiny -- to appease the great magic, overturning death by dying in place of one who is guilty. This is the redemption story of mankind -- our Savior taking His place in the Great Story, and making fallen humanity right with its Creator and bringing life and hope to us.

Want to read more? Consider The series by C.S. Lewis The Chronicles of Narnia and the books Black, Red, and White by Ted Dekker.