Category: Christianity (Page 4 of 23)

Does Nationalism Inform Your Christianity?

August 21, 2017 / / 0 Comments

Nationalism

Without question, our country is in a tense place right now. And while I would love to speak to our nation as a whole, one, I don’t have that size of a platform, and two, I think trying to do that would cause what I have to say to get lost in all the noise. Realistically, I feel like I am more qualified to talk to Christians about what the dangers of nationalism as an influence on how we act as Christians. I’ve written about a similar topic before, you can read it HERE, but with all the stuff that recently happened in Charlottesville, I think it bears repeating.

So, let’s talk about nationalism and how we might be letting it affect how we follow Jesus. First, a couple caveats. Right from the start, we need to make a distinction between patriotism and nationalism. You can love your country; I do. I love being an American and spent two decades serving and defending it. So be a nationalist. This is not about that. Second, this is not strictly about Charlottesville. Instead, it is about how we respond to this type of situation. So even though it is not specifically about it, I think Charlottesville is a good barometer for measuring if we are letting something other than Christ influence how we follow Him.

With that said, I have seen a number of articles, from Christians and Christian media outlets, that muddy the issue even more. Most of it revolves around how the media is lying to us and making Charlottesville worse than it seems. While that may be true, it does not undo the truth of what occurred there and how some Christians have responded to it. Another point these Christian writers/media are pushing is how violent both sides are, specifically BLM and ANTIFA being the other side of the “racist coin” as White Supremacist and Neo-Nazi. Maybe that is also true, but it still misses the bigger picture of how a Christian should respond. It is a big enough deal that I think it deserves its own section, so I will address that later in the post.

Here are four ways you can know if your Christianity is informed by nationalism, rather than Jesus.

If you think Charlottesville was just an expression of free speech.

I am all for free speech. And, as abhorrent as hate speech is, it is permissible. Like I mentioned, I spent 20 years defending people’s right to say whatever hateful and vile thing they want. But, if your response to hate speech is, “It’s freedom of speech, so get over it” and you disregard the hurt it inflicts your fellow human, something besides Christ is influencing you.

My biggest difficulty with the free speech excuse for hate speech is that it ignores the very real oppression that it intends to inflict. Whether you agree with the speaker being able to say it is not the point. What is more important is how you respond to the people who feel those words and hate cut into them. Unfortunately we can easily let the “free speech” thing override our call for compassion for the oppressed. And, many of those words are aimed at are your brothers and sisters in Christ. That alone should break your heart. Our response ought to be condemnation of the speech and compassion toward the target of it. It is not about necessarily trying to silence the speaker, but rather standing with the person who was the target. That is Jesus influence.

We can easily let the “free speech” thing override our call for compassion for the oppressed.
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If your expression of hate for the ideology extends to the people.

There is really no way to get around Jesus saying, “But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:44-45) If your response is I hate BLM or White Supremacists, then likely you are missing the point of what Jesus said. You can hate the ideology all day long, and many times you should because it is incompatible with following Jesus. But, when you cross the line to hating the people in it, you leave Jesus’ camp. God is a people-ist. For God loved the world, right?

God is a people-ist.
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If you feel a need to point out how violent the other side is also.

This issue here is not about who is more violent. If violence or hateful speech exists on both sides, then you condemn it. But, if your response to hate or violence on one side is to point out the hate or violence on the other, you are missing the point. Our attention should focus on the hundreds of armed (with real guns) white supremacists and neo-Nazis who showed up in Charlottesville. They did not show up to peaceable assemble (see previous “armed” comment), but instead were ready to do violence. And, their language and rhetoric was intended to insight violence and fear, rather than bring attention to a broken system.

The issue at hand was not violence that occurred in Baltimore. The issue at hand has to do with what was and did happen in Charlottesville. To argue violence with others violence is to ignore and condone the present violence. In that we “bypass justice and love for God.” (Luke 11:22).

If you are mostly concerned with your rights or liberties.

This one is hard because we are taught to fight for our rights, especially the one to party. But, at the end of the day, if your rights and liberties are your main focus, maybe you are missing the point of Christianity a little. Literally every part of following Christ has to do with you being about other people. Even in Romans 12:3 the Apostle Paul is telling Christians that they ought not consider themselves more highly than others. And, every one of the Apostles, not to mention countless other Christians throughout history, have died to ensure others could have freedom in Christ. So, if your biggest concern is, “What about my rights?” then you missed the whole, “take up your cross and losing your life” thing Jesus mentions in Matthew 16:24-26.

Literally every part of following Christ has to do with you being about other people.
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We should be continually evaluating whether it is our love of country or love of Jesus that informs our Christianity.

photo: Flickr/Paul Wiethorn

Francis Chan, Facebook and Being a Shepherd

August 7, 2017 / / 0 Comments

Shepherd

I know I am a little late on this, but I want to talk about Francis Chan speaking to employees at Facebook Headquarter. If you’re not familiar with whom Chan is, he was previously the Lead Pastor of Cornerstone Church in Simi Valley, CA and has authored numerous books (Crazy Love, Forgotten God, and Erasing Hell). When I initially heard about his talk, I really did not think much, except, “Awesome. Good for him.”

Then on July 25th, I shared an unrelated video of him that Verge Network put out. In it he talks about doing church and asks, “What if we opened the bible, read it, and tried to do what it says?” Later, a friend commented, asking if Chan was the guy that abandoned his church. The direction of the question intrigued me, so we started talking about it. My friend admitted he unfamiliar with what happened surrounding Chan leaving his church in early 2010. He said most of what he knew came from a podcast that talked about it after Chan spoke at FB.

The 7 Minute Critique

The podcast he referenced is called CrossPolitic. To be clear, I do not listen to their show and only know what I read on their website. But, I did listen to the part of the episode that they talked about Chan speaking at FB. The conversation involved the three hosts and their guest, Ben Shapiro, and took up 7 minutes of the one-hour episode. It was pretty clear none of them were fans of him speaking at FB. At the time I listened to their podcast, I had not yet listened to Chan’s talk. It seemed that the hosts' biggest issue revolved around, as they saw it, Chan "abandoning" his church in Simi Valley.  And in doing so, he was somehow violating his call to shepherd the flock God gave him. That, in their view, is sin and requires him to repent and seek the forgiveness of the congregation.

A few minutes later, one of the hosts invited some reason back into the conversation. He acknowledged it was possible that Chan had taken the steps and time necessary to leave in a “healthy” way. Then they became angry that he “aired” the Church’s “dirty laundry” to Facebook, or as they called them, the “wolf”. They moved their issue with his talk away from him failing at being a shepherd and into the realm of… I don’t actually know. Being too open about church issues with non-church people, I think.

The Facebook Talk

Before I started writing this post I figured I should probably listen to Chan’s FB talk. So I did. It was classic Francis Chan. By that I mean, he preached the Gospel and told them that they needed Jesus. And what of his bashing of The Church and airing the dirty laundry? The speech was 48 minutes long. In those 48 minutes, he spoke about it for 2 minutes and 20 seconds. During those minutes, he was actually answering a question about how he got to the point of doing “We Are Church.” It was comical that the podcast even spent 7 minutes talking about his talk. All that, and that’s not even what I want to talk about.

Church Leaders as Shepherd

I want to talk about the stuff they said having to do with him not shepherding his church well. The reason is that most of us misunderstand what it means to call someone, Pastor (or shepherd). We want the pastor that teaches on Sunday mornings to be the guy at our bedside when we’re sick. We want to think of him or her as a shepherd who lovingly tends to the needs of his flock. At the same time, we really just want that person to stay on the platform, teach what the bible says and never really getting into our lives. Then we can pick and choose what we take from the sermon.

I get frustrated that the church has (and the pastor) has allowed that to be how we define shepherd and then gets mad when he doesn’t something like leave because he really isn’t shepherding. So I want to talk about that. I think the best way to do that is just post my reply to my friend’s comments. When he posted the link to the podcast, he said that this was what he mostly knew about Chan leaving and he thought they made some good points about shepherding.

My Response

They do make some good arguments about being a shepherd. But, they kind of misapply it. Like with Paul. They talk about how he never left the churches he was a part of. But, that couldn't be farther from the truth. There are churches he planted, stayed with for three years and then never was able to go back to. He did write them, but that isn't the same as being there to shepherd them. The best part is that these guys tried to put Paul into a shepherd role and he was clearly an Apostle/Teacher. In Chan’s case, maybe he was given to the Church as the gift of shepherd.

Unfortunately, most pastors today, especially in mega-churches, don't get to be shepherds, even if they are gifted as one. Because institutional church focuses on the weekly gathering, pastors are shoved into Teacher/Preacher roles. Some who have a genuine heart to add small groups to their church model (and not from a place of, "that's just the model") are more along the lines of Apostle. But shepherd? Based on what a shepherd should be doing, most pastors are not. If Chan is gifted as a shepherd, he's likely getting to live out that gifting better, in his current setting, than he was able to with a 5,000 person congregation.

Obviously I wasn't there when Chan left, but while it was happening I tried to follow it as closely as possible. From what I understood, there were years of conversations with elders and leaders and sermons pleading with the congregation, all to little or no avail. My hope is that he wasn't the only pastor on staff that was capable of leading that church. A congregation that size has to have more than one shepherd. Whether they realized it or not, is another thing altogether. At the end of the day, if he was trying to be obedient to God's call (whether it was to leave or simply work in his gifting), we can't know that.

As for him airing the church's "dirty laundry" to the "wolf". Maybe he did. Maybe he shouldn't have told the employees of FB. I haven't heard the speech so I don't know. But, I understood it to be about leadership and that is the context that Chan lead in. One of the things that frustrates me is the way we, in the church, aren't permitted to talk about where we miss the mark and that somehow there are topics and people (celebrity pastors) who are off limits. Lest we forget that the whole first section of Revelation is Jesus publically proclaiming the shortcomings and failures of the Church, His bride. I'd rather have that conversation and fix it, in front of the world, than hear Jesus say it.

In fact, I think it can work in the favor of the church if we, the body, are honest about where we fail and how we're trying to live that out in following Christ better. It's more honest and gets rid of the "perfect Christian" persona that pushes people away from Christ, lest they be the same hypocrites. And I'm not saying that we can't be "perfect", but that we can be more honest about our progression toward perfection involving a really messy process. I don't think he was airing dirty laundry to the wolf, more than he was just sharing where they failed to live in their calling as the bride.

Anyway, I feel like maybe the guys on the podcast tried to boil down a process that took years into a 7-minute conversation and that's difficult to do.

Divine Frankenstein, Chapter 1, Darkness

July 3, 2017 / / 0 Comments

Darkness

A New Thing

A few years ago I had an idea. I was reading a critique on Mary Shelley’s book, Frankenstein, and the writer mentioned Dr. Victor Frankenstein’s very obvious god-complex. I remember thinking at the time that what Victor was trying to do was far more similar to what God does than the writer was suggesting. Specifically, just as Victor was using dead and broken parts to create his being, God uses our broken and dead parts to rebuild us. The difference being, while Victor only reanimates death, God creates something new out of it and gives it real life.

As I thought through that idea and tried to figure out how to structure it as a blog post, I started to realize that it was a longer story. One of my favorite books is The Great Divorce, by CS Lewis. What I like most about it the way it’s written as a conversation between two main characters. As I thought through the idea of God as a divine version of Frankenstein, I began to see a story that was centered around a conversation between my own two main characters, one a more mature Christian and the other, a new Christian just waking up to the work of Christ in him. Almost immediately this “conversation” became one that I wish someone would have had with me when I was a new Christian.

So I started writing a book and called it Divine Frankenstein. I am currently working on another book, that will be out before this one, but I felt like I needed to share this first chapter. I have only ever shared it with a few other people (5 exactly), but here it is… Divine Frankenstein, Chapter 1.

DARKNESS

It starts in darkness; creation always does. The second creation can only ever start with darkness. For it’s only in the darkness that the genuine need for hope is realized. Before that, hope is simply an impression that, when the synthetic light we manufactured in the first creation begins to dim, causes us to momentarily ponder what might happen if the light is extinguished. That dimming causes us to search out something to grasp. We look to anything that might help us maintain our bearings, should the darkness come. As children, we seem wiser with regard to understanding darkness. We approach it with a healthy fear or at the very least caution.

Eventually though, somewhere between the nightlights of our childhood and the reading lamp of adulthood, we lose our fear of the dark. We forget that scary things lurk and skulk there. We dismiss that it is the preferred method of cover for the ominous creatures that seek to undue and destroy us. Somehow it simply becomes an absence and we ignore it; sometimes we might even welcome it.

Collapse of the First Creation

But the truth of it is, darkness entering into creation was the most dreadful of things. Darkness in creation reveals void. It exposes the created to emptiness, ultimately ending with the death of all that was intended to be good in the first creation. It stifles the life that creation brings, choking and pressing out every bit of it, until all that remains is a distorted reflection of what once was. Creation was not meant to function in darkness. It was light that was introduced into creation first. Creation was intended to flourish in the glory of The Light.

All created eventually collapses into darkness. Truth be told, darkness has already consumed the first creation. If this were not true, there would be no need for hope. And seeking something like peace, specifically in this world, would be a frivolous pursuit. Likewise there would be no need for the second creation. But we seek hope and we do desire the comfort of the light. The second creation is necessary.

The Second Creation

The desire of The Creator is for His created to release its tight-fisted grip on the first creation and welcome the dying that darkness brings, ultimately surrendering to the work of His second creation. It is only in this second creation that hope can be truly experienced and peace, which until now has only ever been spoken of around treaty tables as a fanciful and utopian idea, becomes a reality. It is in the second creation that we realize the wholeness and peace, we have so long hoped to experience, first occurs in us. Then, and only then, is it able to work its way outward into all of creation.

Peace is grown in the light of the second creation. Light is always brightest as it extinguishes darkness. The only way for second creation to come about, is for the first to end in darkness; there is no other way. And that end of the first creation results in void and emptiness. On the surface this seems a dreadful thing. But without void and emptiness, filling and fullness cannot occur. If we are filled with the trappings of the first creation, what room is there for the second creation? The work of the second creation requires the first to end. And the first ends in darkness. Only after this end can hope take hold and peace become tangible. So it is that your second creation starts in the midst of darkness.

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