Everybody wants to got to heaven, but nobody wants to die
Text: 2 Corinthians 12:2-10
Author’s Note: No audio or video for this one, as I was a guest preacher.
It’s an honor and a joy to fill the pulpit of 2nd Congregational Church again. Thank you for inviting us to be a part of your 150th anniversary celebrations. It does my heart good to see so many familiar faces, signs of stability and strength. But even more, I’m excited by the many faces I don’t know, signs of growth and vitality in a church that is no longer our home but is never far from our hearts.
Almost a decade ago, I graduated from Minnesota Bible College. I had a major in Biblical Studies and Theology, another major in Pastoral Leadership, and a minor in Biblical and Classical languages. So, I did the obvious thing and got a job as a carpenter.
I wasn’t just any carpenter, mind you. I was the world’s worst carpenter. I showed up on that first day with a measuring tape that didn’t measure right, the wrong kind of hammer, no pencil, no speed square, and a hand-me-down tool belt that was so old that we couldn’t decide if it was made out of leather or mastodon hide.
My boss paired me up with an experienced carpenter who started showing me the tricks of the trade. I learned to mark distances with an arrowhead instead of a line, to cut on the outside of the line so that the board isn’t short the width of a saw blade, and most importantly I learned to measure twice, cut once.
At the end of two weeks, I was really getting the hang of things, when I noticed something. A lot of my friends were wearing carpenter cut jeans. You know the kind, with the extra pockets on the side and the little loop of denim. I go into work the next day and I start joking around with my trainer. “Hey, you see all those stupid kids running around with carpenter pants? What’s with that? Do they expect that tiny little loop to actually hold a hammer? Ha ha ha, stupid kids.” And my trainer smiled and kind of chuckled, and said, “Yeah that sure is funny.”
It wasn’t until about three months later, when I quit carpentry to serve under Dick Adair, (who incidentally, was very impressed that I was a carpenter. I conveniently forgot to mention how awful I was.) Anyway, it wasn’t until three months later that I realized that my trainer wasn’t laughing with me. He was laughing at me. The joke wasn’t those kids out there who got hooked on a fashion trend. The joke was me standing there with my framer’s hammer, my speed square, and my brand new measuring tape hanging off my leather work belt, thinking I was a carpenter.
I was talking to a man who, if you gave him supplies and a slab of concrete could build an entire house, floor to rafters. And when he was done it would stand square, plumb, and level. You know how many people can do that? I Googled it. 0.3% of the American populace, that’s three out of a thousand.
He was an expert and I was sophomore. In Greek, it means wise fool, as in someone who knows just enough to be arrogant, and not enough to be useful. Look back over your own experience, and you tell me if it’s true. The ones who know the most are the ones who realize how much they don’t know. Humility is the hallmark of greatness.
Now don’t misunderstand that word. People hear humility and they think humiliation. They hear humble and they think doormat. That’s not it. Jesus was humble, but he was no doormat. No one stole anything from him. He gave it away. No one forced him into a corner. He chose his path. He knew who he was and what he was here to do, and it really didn’t matter what anyone else thought. That’s humility.
When you understand humility, then the twin problems of self-hatred and arrogance become clear. They’re just two sides of the same coin, failing to recognize yourself for who you are. This explains why someone who constantly puts themselves down is just as annoying as someone who constantly brags. It also explains how we can be arrogant and hate ourselves at the same time. We don’t know ourselves.
We don’t know who we are and so we are constantly being swayed. Someone says good job, and I feel like the king of the world. Someone gets critical and I feel like a fool. And it’s not just external. My subconscious feeds me memories. My body feels strong or week. My emotions are running high or low and I’m flapping back and forth like a flag in the wind, the object of every passing breeze.
This is where the Bible becomes so practical. This isn’t a modern-day problem. This is a human problem. We don’t know who we are. We were made in the image of God, but we’ve lost the likeness. The ancients used to say that we’re like a painting that has been smudged and faded over time so you can’t recognize the face anymore. You just see a figure on the canvas, with no definition.
But then Christ comes along and wipes the filth away and the likeness underneath begins to shine through, and we feel joy. We lose the burden of our shame and feel the lightness of new life. It’s as if we are caught up into the third heaven, and God is speaking words so true that we dare not repeat them aloud.
We call it a mountaintop experience. But you know what comes next right? You have to come back down into the real world, and it’s so easy to get cocky. As if this mountaintop experience were all about you, as if the whole world would be a better place if they would just get with the program like you did.
It’s just as easy to get depressed when you have to go back to the daily grind and you can’t feel God’s hand anymore. That closeness and sweetness is just a memory and you begin to wonder if it was ever real at all. Or you slip back into a habit you thought was in the past, and you feel like your hope is gone, like you’ll never be free. Either way, the root is the same. You’ve forgotten who you are.
So does God take you back up to the mountaintop? Does he pat you on the head and say, “There, there, it’ll be ok.” Nope. The old bluesman Albert King had it right, “Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die. Everybody wants to laugh, but nobody wants to cry. Everybody wants to hear the truth, but still they all wanna tell a lie. Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.” God doesn’t send comfort. He sends a thorn.
Paul says, “To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
Here’s the strange part. No one knows what Paul’s thorn really was. Did he have a stitch in his side, like what you get from running too much? Was his eyesight failing? Did he walk with a limp? No one knows, and at least one theologian believes that it might not be physical at all. Maybe the thorn in Paul’s flesh was another person. Maybe we’re not meant to know, so that we can put our own problems into the story. What wonderful theologian would come possibly come up with such an interesting and helpful idea? Her name starts with C and it rhymes with Arol Taylor.
When Paul uses the word flesh, he means that part of us that fights against God’s renewing work in our lives. The flesh doesn’t want new life, because that means giving up the old. The flesh doesn’t want freedom because freedom means responsibility and responsibility is hard. The flesh much prefers slavery to selfishness and addiction because then you can do whatever you want to do and it’s still not your fault!
Once upon a time, a young Cherokee asked an elder, “What must I do to become a wise? And the elder replied, “There are two wolves fighting within you. One fights for evil, the other for good. Every day one of them wins.” The child asked, “Which one wins?” And the elder responded, “Whichever one you feed.”
The only problem with that story is what happens on the first day that the good dog wins? Suppose you’re stuck in an old habit you hate, and through a combination of good luck and hard work, you manage to go an entire day without doing it, or maybe even a week. What happens next? You start to forget that the only reason you beat this thing was good luck and hard work, which is really just another way of saying God working around and within you.
So God hands you one tiny little victory. One day. One week. And what happens? Suddenly, you’re Alexander the Great. Ready to take on the world. Suddenly you’re giving people advice and looking down on people who aren’t quite as together as you. And in that instant, in that very moment of our success, we fail. We might fail low and fall back into old habits, or we might fail high and become religious. Doesn’t matter. We’re not growing closer to God, we’re slowly killing ourselves, and we’re making everyone else around us miserable. We’re right back where we started.
Now do you understand why that thorn is so important? That thorn is your best friend, because it reminds you of who you are. You are a child of the king, chosen, forgiven, and loved by God. You have a hope and a future. God created you, God redeemed you, and God is perfecting you, every day in every way. There is enough pride in that to lift the head of the lowest peasant, and enough shame in it to bow the head of the highest king.
So do not boast in yourself. Boast only in your weakness, and let your actions speak for themselves. Then your friends and coworkers will come to know you and trust you for who you are, not who your words convince them to expect. When they indulge in arrogance or self-hatred, your simple self-awareness will shine all the more brightly by comparison, and people will seek you out to find out more. When they do, your thorn, that thing you begged God with tears three times to remove, your thorn will give you words to speak, words they will tremble to repeat, words that lift them up to heaven.
Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven… by Rev. R.J. Brink is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Is the church a failure? (Matthew 16:18)
“If by means of its ministrations, the community round about the church is steadily becoming more Christian;
if kindness, sympathy, purity, justice, good-will, are increasing in their power over the lives of men;
if business methods are becoming less rapacious;
if employers and employed are more and more inclined to be friends rather than foes;
if politicians are growing conscientious and unselfish;
if the enemies of society are in retreat before the forces of decency and order;
if amusements are becoming purer and more rational;
if polite society is getting to be simpler in its tastes and less ostentatious in its manners and less extravagant in its expenditures;
if poverty and crime are diminishing;
if parents are becoming more wise and firm in the administration of their sacred trust, and children more loyal and affectionate to their parents,
–if such fruits as these are visible on every side, then there is reason to believe that the church knows its business and is prosecuting it with efficiency.
If none of these effects are seen in the life of the community, the evidence is clear that the church is neglecting its business, and that failure must be written across its record.
From “The Church and Modern Life”
by Washington Gladden, 1836-1918
What say you? Is Gladden’s measure a useful one? If so, how is the church measuring up? If not, how would you measure and rate the church’s effectiveness?
St. Peter: Closet Communist?
Date: April 19, 2009
Texts: Acts 4:32-35, I John 1:1-2:2
Video Here
And now the moment you’ve all been waiting for. Pastor Rob stands in the pulpit of first church and calls Peter a secret communist. Right? Of course not. That’s just silly. Peter wasn’t a secret communist because it wasn’t a secret at all. He kept it right out there in the open. It says right there in the text. “No one considered their property their own” and “They laid it all at the disciples feet.” Peter was a red commie.
You teenagers out there don’t realize what a big deal this is. When you hear “Russia” all you think of is gangsters, Vladimir Putin, Chechnya, but that’s about it. Kids, that’s nothing. I remember driving out to get ice cream and seeing a sign in one of my neighbors’ windows that said, “Kill a Commie for Mommy.” I remember reading Popular Mechanics, and it didn’t have flying cars or supercomputers, it had instructions on how to build your own fallout shelter. We didn’t call it Russia; it was the Red Menace, and they weren’t interested in tiny Chechnya. They were going to take over the world… or blow it to radioactive cinders. Either way, they were bad, scary bad. So you see, it’s really important if Peter was a communist, because it undermines Christianity. If Peter was a communist, maybe I shouldn’t be a Christian.
Of course you and I both know that Peter wasn’t a communist. Communism hadn’t even been invented yet. Calling Peter a communist is about as anachronistic as calling Caesar a Republican. Sure, they both favor a strong military and conservative domestic policy, but we’re ignoring 2000 years of history here. You can’t just take an idea from today, drop it on some ancient person, and call it close enough. Meaning is about context. In this case the context is Lenin and Marx. If you showed them this text, they never would have claimed it as their own, because it’s grounded on faith and love instead of force and fear.
The text reveals no proletariat uprising. There are no rich men hanging from trees. The dialectic says these common workers should be rising in revolt, reclaiming the fruit of their labor. But the text shows just the opposite. The working classes are still being oppressed. Only now, they’re volunteering for it. They are willingly selling their goods and sharing the proceeds out of some misguided religious sense of brotherhood.
This is the opiate of the masses at work. They should be angry, and instead they’re listening to Peter and James talk about love, and forgiveness, and heaven. To a communist, Peter is at best a deluded hypocrite, and at worst he’s a con artist colluding with the powerful to keep the people complacent. “Must be nice to only work one day a week. Even then, all you have to do is talk, and people line up to throw money at your feet.” Marx would’ve hated Peter.
So he’s not a communist, and he’s obviously not a capitalist, so what is he? Here’s a radical suggestion. What if he’s a Christian? What if following Jesus actually meant following his example instead of just mentally agreeing that he is the Son of God? What if we were known for our faithfulness? What if our ministers were known for their wisdom? What if joining a church meant that you would never starve, and your children would never be orphans? How do we get there from here?
I’m not sure, but I’m certain it doesn’t involve inserting our politics into a 2000 year old text. We have so conflated politics and religion in this country that it is now practically impossible to have an honest conversation, because two honest human beings will eventually have a difference of opinion. Only now, it’s not a difference of opinion. It’s a moral deficiency. You say you’re not convinced about global warming. I say you’re raping the earth and killing your own grandchildren. You say you like this new president, and I say you’re socialist and you’re killing your own grandchildren. Then we go to church and we wind up having arguments over whether or not St. Peter was commie.
You have your opinions. I have mine. That lady over there has some to. But we were not brought here today because of our common fiscal policy. We’re here today because we need some hope. We need some peace. We need some joy. Because the world is messed up. And we’re messed up. And we don’t know what to do about it. We like what this Jesus guy had to say, and we want to know more. I want to know more. So I went to school, and learned Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew. We’ll, I tried to learn Hebrew. I learned history, and philosophy, and theology. And you know it all comes down to?
God is not angry at you… Can we just stop for a second and hear that?
God is not angry at you.
So stop trying so hard. You cannot earn God’s love. God already loves you without limit, without condition. So stop trying so hard. Remember that children’s story I like to tell at baptisms? Here’s this little baby getting baptized with her family standing all around her, and the question I have to ask is, what in the world did that baby do to earn so much affection? Fill a diaper?
God’s love outshines those parents the way the sun outshines the moon, and for exactly the same reason. A parent’s love is a pale reflection of God’s love. Why? Because parents are human, and sooner or later we start setting conditions. Sooner or later, we start with the rules.
Remember that time I asked the kids not to think about pink elephants? That’s where rules get you. Rules tell you what not to do, make you want to do it more, and then makes you feel guilty about it afterward. Forget the rules, and focus on the relationship. What does God really want from us? For us to obey all the rules? Of course not. If all he wanted were obedience, we could have made a bunch of wind up toys. You wind them up. They go where you point them. Perfect obedience. That’s not what God is after.
He wants the same thing any parent wants. He wants his kids to grow up and not be psycho. He wants to spend time with us. He wants a relationship. He doesn’t care about rules. The rules only exist to protect the relationship. We have rules about theft because we need to trust our neighbors. We have rules about football because we want play the game. We have rules about cars because we don’t want to kill each other. That’s why Jesus said you take all the rules, add them up, and you wind up with love God, and love your neighbor as yourself.
There are no rules. There is only (1) relationship… and (2) stupid things that get in the way of relationship. Seven deadly sins: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride. You think the church just pulled them out of a hat? They are sins specifically and only because they break relationships.
Suppose you offended your best friend. And I don’t mean something small, I mean something stupid and selfish. You got a picture in your head? Ok, you know what you did. What do you do now? It depends on two things. Do you love your friend, and does your friend love you? If you minimize it and explain it away, if you’re too ashamed to even ask forgiveness, then you don’t really love your friend. True love can’t stay away. If you’re afraid to apologize, if they forgive you and you keep apologizing, then you don’t really believe they love you. Because real love is unconditional. Real love gets back to the business of living. It doesn’t keep score, and it doesn’t care about rules. It’s cares about relationship.
Your best friend doesn’t want your apology. Your best friend wants to hang out. If an apology clears the air after you did something stupid and selfish, then great. But the apology is not the point. The relationship is the point. Your best friend doesn’t want you to feel guilty. If guilt motivates you to stop being a jerk, then great. But feeling guilty is not the point. The relationship is the point.
We came here today looking for a little hope, a little joy, a little peace. Here’s my hope. In the cross we see a God who has every right to be angry, but who chooses to love instead. Here’s my joy, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Here’s my peace. That I don’t have to earn God’s love, it was already given. And I can’t scare him away. He’s already seen it. All I can do is the only thing he ever wanted me to do.
Love.
St. Peter: Closet Communist? by Rev. RJ Brink is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at revsmilez.com.
Remember Your Baptism? Seriously?
Sermon for Easter Vigil
April 11, 2009
Texts: Exodus 14:10-15:1, Ezekiel 37:1-14
Remember your baptism? Might as well remember you first birthday. Sure it happened, but what rational adult would think it still matters? For most of us, it’s not even possible. We were baptized as infants. We had no choice in the matter, and we certainly carry no memory of it.
Perhaps our baptism is nothing more than luck. We are Christians because we were born into Christian families, because we were spoon-fed religious mythology, inculcated, indoctrinated, brainwashed before our minds had a chance to fully develop, before we learned to think for ourselves.
We’re adults now, able to make moral decisions without the threat of hellfire to keep us in line. We’re adults now. We don’t need to be coddled with the love of an invisible father figure. We can accept our mortality without the false-hope crutch of an afterlife. We’re adults now. We recognize the church for what it is: a social club for the betterment of society, a useful training ground for future productive citizens, a safety net should something go wrong, and a network of friends necessary for our health and happiness. Remember your baptism? Might as well remember your citizenship, it may inspire you to equal good.
But a few of us do remember our baptism, because we chose it. We were teens or maybe even adults when we made our choice. Someone in this room remembers what it was like to be pressed under the water, to feel it close over your head, and then be pulled back to the surface. We can remember our baptism, because we chose it.
We know the truth, and it has set us free. And now it’s our job to make sure everyone else knows it too, whether they like it or not. We have to hold it in front of their faces until they make a choice. Are you going to believe what I believe and be baptized the way I was baptized, or are you going to burn in hell? Which will it be? Eternal conscious torment, or join the church? Isn’t it interesting that for most people it’s a tough choice? What kind of wretched club are we running here? We have to threaten people with eternal damnation just to get them to join? Is this seriously what Jesus imagined?
Easter vigil is my favorite service of the entire year, because we don’t have to be happy. We finally get to talk about how some of us feel all the time. It’s Saturday night and we stand with the disciples. We feel how they felt, like God is dead and his followers are a joke. We had all these high hopes for the future and the part we could play in it. Now, that hope lies cold and dead in a tomb, behind a rock. And what part did we play? We betrayed and abandoned him. This one day we get to talk about the darkness around us, the darkness within. Sure, we talk about brokenness in church, but always in light of the resurrection. Not tonight. The dawn is coming, but it’s not Sunday yet. So let’s take stock, shall we?
Look around and you will see that we live in a carefully protected island of peace and prosperity. Our city hasn’t known war since Chief Blackhawk walked the earth. It hasn’t known poverty since the great depression, or disease since the influenza outbreaks of 1918. And famine? When has this city even glimpsed famine?
But all you have to do is turn on the TV to know that war, poverty, famine, and disease are still here. All you have to do is read history to understand that they have always been. All you have to do is study a little ecology to foresee that they will come again, if not to us, then to our children. We maintain an unsustainable lifestyle, and we do it at the expense of others, including those who will inherit this place after us. God dropped us in a garden, and we treat it like a mine.
So I have to ask, are we finally ready to give up the myth that we’ve got it all together? Are we finally ready to ask for help? I asked the kids at our church to write out New Year’s resolutions. You know what one girl wrote? “I need to slow down.” She’s in third grade! She’s already stressed out. American kids rank highest in the world for obesity, anorexia, and bulimia. Are we finally ready to admit that our “Gotta do more. Gotta be more” society is hurting us?”
We are not supermen remaking the world in our image. We are created beings playing at godhood, and we’re screwing it up. Don’t you think it’s time to let God be God for a change?
Honestly, I’d love it if he would. I’d love it if he’d crack open the sky and put things right…
Actually I wouldn’t. I’d run away screaming. Then I’d wonder if I’d gone insane. And then I’d get very, very scared. Because I know what lives in my heart, and the idea of a God who sees it too is terrifying.
If only there were some way to know he understood. If only there were some way to know he loved us anyway. The good news of this dark night is that he does know. He knows it all. He walked among us, healed us, and taught us to love God and each other. So… we killed him. Actually, we betrayed him, abandoned him, tried him in a kangaroo court, found him guilty of being who he actually was, mocked him, and tortured him. Then we killed him. And here’s the kicker.
He died.
He could have overthrown the powerful or raised up the weak, but race and class still divide us. He could have made Pax Romana look like an eye-blink, but war and terrorism remain. He could have eliminated poverty, disease, and famine, but he left them for us to fight. He could have called down the judgment of God and solved the human problem once and for all. But he didn’t.
He died.
He said to the powerless, “See, I am on your side.” And to the powerful, “Look, I am no threat.” Given the choice between protecting his own or sacrificing himself, he chose to die. And in doing so left us an example that precious few have cared, or dared, to follow. Why? Because most of us are stuck right here in Saturday night. We’re trapped in the dark with the disciples. We feel afraid, alone, ashamed, and one of us is about to give up hope and hang himself.
We’re stuck with Moses, trapped on a beach with only two choices. Terrifying death at the hands pharaoh’s army, or terrifying death by drowning in the sea. We had the option of slow death by slavery, but God has taken that option from us. Now we’re stuck with swords in our faces, our backs to the water, and nothing but shifting sand under our feet.
We’re stuck with Ezekiel, standing in the ashes of a battle. He foresaw the massacre that saw coming but no one would listen. Now his nation is gone. His people are slaves. We stand with Ezekiel in a valley littered with bones. They are his people, left to rot, picked clean by vermin, bleached white by the sun. Or maybe we’re not with Ezekiel. Maybe we’re the bones, unburied corpses of people who failed to take warning.
We’re stuck in problems of our own devising, stuck in a broken system that we cannot escape. Every night we fall asleep knowing we are both the oppressors and the oppressed. Even when there is enough to eat, even when there is enough left over to save for our future and our children, even when there is no reason left to fight and to hate, we create reasons. It’s Saturday night, and it feels like God is dead, his church a joke. But the dawn is coming, and even now it breaks.
Remember your baptism does not mean remember your first birthday, your citizenship, or your get out of hell free card. It means remember you are dead. You died with Christ, not because you chose to but because he chose you. You died with Christ. As they held you under the water, or poured it over your head, you were sealed with him in the tomb.
Remember your baptism means that the story doesn’t end on Saturday. We can stand with Moses and watch God lead us through wind and water, through fire and darkness, and out the other side. We can stand with Ezekiel and watch God put flesh on bones long dead, and breathe new life into the body.
Remember your baptism means even now darkness is breaking, new light is dawning, and new life is possible. Even now Christ is rising. He holds out his hand to lead you out of the cold, dark tomb into light and life. And isn’t it interesting that this too is a difficult choice?
Will you remember you baptism and step out in faith? Will you trust him to lead you, even though it’s too bright to see clearly and you do not know the way? Or will you stay in your tomb and keep trying to convince yourself that it’s not so dark, it’s not too cold, and you’re not really dead?
Is My Kid Morally On Track?
When I take the boys to the doctor, my favorite part of the experience is the chart. You know which one I mean. They measure and weigh and bingo, you get a little dot on a chart that says, “Your child’s height ranks in the 95th percentile compared with other kids his age.” Whoo hoo! My kid is awesome!
Now I know that the real point of these tests is to catch medical problems early, not to give parents yet another reason to brag on or stress over their kid, but it’s still fun. Why should doctors get all the cool progress charts? I collected the work of psychological and moral development experts like Piaget and Kohlberg, and synthesized it into something easy to remember.
Warning: If you are looking for scientific rigor, you will be sadly disappointed. This is about collecting wisdom and packaging it for easy recall.
Level 1: Pre-Conventional (Infant-Toddler)
- Icon: The Sun – because everything revolves around me. The sun can be warm or harsh.
- Mental Milestones: Self-awareness, object permanence
- Moral Milestones: Trust – Is the world a safe place?
- Catchphrase: “Mine!” “I didn’t do it.”
- Motivated by: Intuitive self-interest, curiosity
- Avoids: pain, frustration
Level 2: Conventional (Child)
- Icon: Police Officer – because they’re here to enforce the rules. Officers can be helpful or annoying.
- Mental Milestones: Autonomy, Imagination/Logic
- Moral Milestones: Empathy – If that were me, how would I feel?
- Catchphrase: “You’re gonna get in trouble!” “It’s not fair!” “I’m a good boy/girl”
- Motivated by: rules, authority, fairness
- Avoids: punishment, guilt
Level 3: Abstract (Teen)
- Icon: Wolf – because it’s all about the pack. Wolfpacks can be a safe haven, or they can be stifling.
- Mental Milestone: abstract thinking
- Moral Milestone: identity/fidelity
- What I’m learning: Who am I? What kind of person will I be?
- Catchphrase: “Whatever” “What would a ________ do?”
- Motivated by: family and friends, social contract
- Avoids: shame, isolation
Level 4: Synthetic (College-Adult)
- Symbol: Compass – Neither rigid nor changeable, the synthetic individual applies internalized principles to unique situations.
- Mental Milestone: Ideology, Intimacy
- Moral Milestone: Integrity – owning your beliefs for yourself
- Catchphrase: “You may be right” “Here I stand”
- Motivated by: Internalized principles, Self-actualization
- Avoids: Dissonance
Level 5?
- Transcendence: seeing the reality behind the symbol
- Universalizing: see thing the Truth behind a truth
My First Economist Joke
Two economists go out hunting and spot some tracks. “Hmm. Bear tracks.” “No way! Clearly bull tracks” Then they get hit by the train.
“Helping” God
Got a great comment from Mario Hugo, and thought it deserved a post. Thanks for the comment, Mario.
hi
i love the sermon, but more than that i love the lord. i am also nuts about him question is how do i convince my other fiends about him. i live in South Africa and we have diffrent cultures here. we have started a worship group in our church and maybe you could give us advise on how to talk to our peers to love him as much as i love himyour brother in Christ
God Bless
Francis of Assisi (or St. Francis, depending on your church background) was an amazing teacher, and preacher. But most of all, he was a reckless lover of God. He said, “Preach constantly. Use words when necessary.”
It is not your job to convince. Your job is to love God and love your neighbor. The Holy Spirit does the convincing. Paul says to be prepared to give a reason for your faith. Your love for God and your neighbor should shine in such stark contrast to the selfishness of the world around you that people will come and ask you questions. When they do, speak as honestly and truthfully as you know how, and leave the rest to God.
The biggest barrier to the spread of the good news is Christians trying to “help” God. If it were possible to force people into the kingdom, God would have done it already.
Theme song: “Stand Up Comedy” by U2
10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know
Allfacebook.com just posted an excellent article about tweaking your Facebook profile privacy settings.
Their tips are clear, helpful, and easy to apply. More importantly, they can save you a lot of embarrassment. Their best suggestion IMHO is using Friends Lists. The Friends List is a fairly new Facebook feature that gives you fine-grained privacy controls. I have a friend list for each of my circles of friends, and it saves me a ton of time scanning updates. Most people I know don’t use Friend Lists because it seems a little daunting at first glance, but it’s actually very intuitve and easy to use. Play with it for five minutes and you’ll have it figured, no problem.
Da Vinci Code: fact or fiction?
Another question from a bright former youth group member: “What’s the church say about the Da Vinci Code? What’s your opinion?”
I actually got a chance to see the cathedral where they taped parts of the Da Vinci Code during my study trip to England. The church had a fairly impressive exhibit about it, and they explained it like this: The Davinci Code is a gripping fiction story, sprinkled with just enough history to make it seem convincing. There really was a movement called gnosticism, and they really were rejected by the church as heretics (false believers), and some of them really did think Mary Magdalene was Jesus’ girlfriend/wife. There also really was a group of knights called the Templars and they really were put down by the pope. However, there is no historical connection between those two groups. Some people claim there is a connection, but no one with any credibility in academic circles. They’re conspiracy seekers who value a good story more than good evidence.
Me: If Davinci Code is true, then all of Christianity is a lie. If you read the rest of his stuff, especially his earlier stuff, it becomes clear that this guy has a serious grudge with Christianity and he’s trying to take it down. He says that the gnostics believed Jesus was just a man, and that the church came and turned him into a God. But when you actually go read gnostic stuff (which you absolutely can do on the net, despite the way he pretends like it’s a super huge secret suppressed by the church) you’ll discover that the gnostic’s problem with Jesus was that he was too human. They believed that the earth and all created things were dirty and evil, and that the realm of pure ideas and spirit was perfection. Dan Brown puts words in their mouth that are the exact opposite of what they actually believed. They believed Jesus was some kind of demigod that only seemed human. That’s specifically why the church rejected them, because the church has said from very early on that Jesus is fully human and fully divine. If he wasn’t fully human, then he still doesn’t know what it’s like to be us and all his claims of being on our side are just lies. The way they said it was “Whatever is not taken up is not redeemed” meaning anything about us that Jesus didn’t take on himself would therefore not be fixed by him. If he took all of our humanity on himself, then all of our humanity is understood and restored through him.
My take on Job
One of my old youth group kids… (You know you’ve been in youth ministry for a while when your youth group kids have kids that are almost old enough to be in your youth group.) Anyway, one of my old youth group kids asked me, “What’s the deal with Job? Why does God allow such horrible things to happen to him?” I love it when they think! Makes me feel like I’m actually accomplishing something! Here’s my take. Do with it what you will.
The church’s answers are many and varied. Some people say, “It’s a test. God has the right to test his people. Stop whining.” Other people say, “It’s the devil! God doesn’t do evil, the devil does!” Some people say, “God allows evil so that we can better know the good by contrast.” So that’s the church answer. It really depends on who you ask because the church doesn’t have one “approved” answer.
Rob’s answer? Job is a metaphor. Job stands for us. We’re walking along minding our own business and wham, life kicks the crap out of us, and we go to God and say, “What’s the deal? I thought you were supposed to be watching out for me?” And our “friends” all gather round and give us really lousy advice that just makes us feel worse. And from our perspective none of it makes sense at all.
But then the story zooms back, way way back, and we see God and the Devil talking. The Devil’s question is “How do you know if he really means it? He only loves you because he gets something out of it.”
This is obviously stupid, because if God really is God, then he knows what’s in our hearts and has no need to prove anything to anyone, but it’s not supposed to be historical truth, it’s supposed to be a metaphor, or a campfire story with a moral, whatever, anyway. The point is, “How do we know our love is real? We know if our life sucks and we still love.”
Why does God let all the crappy stuff happen? Because there are only way two ways to stop evil in the world. You either fix people so they can’t treat each other like garbage (at which point they stop being people, and start being robots) or you teach people to choose love. First you teach them not to take ten eyes for an eye, then you teach them not to take one eye for an eye, then you teach them to give up their own eye rather than letting someone else go blind.
The story of Job is a small step in that process that says, there is bigger stuff going on here than you can understand. Your job is not to understand, your job is to love, even when, especially when, it doesn’t make sense. God is not a child burning ants for fun. God is a gambler taking long odds on the chance that our love might be real.
