I'm moving!

After a disagreement with Google (host of this site), I've been looking for a new home.  I've found it at
http://fireboy48.wordpress.com/.  See you there!
P.S. I'm leaving this one up for a while at least, hoping it will point folks in the right direction.

I Didn't Say That..., did I?

This morning, while taking my daughter Olivia to school, we were listening to the radio as we always do.  Fortunately, unlike her big sister, my youngest daughter is a rocker like me and we always listen to the local rock and roll station, WBBB 96 Rock.  Today, the morning show guys were talking about Brett Michaels, former Poison front man and reality show attention-whore.  I know I shouldn't speak ill of the injured, but I'm sure you know what I meant by that last comment.  If you don't, find some video of VH-1's "Rock of Love" which is a reality show where Brett tries to find the love of his life.  Yes,it's just as dreadful as it sounds.  If that's not enough, he was also on NBC's "Celebrity Apprentice".  I can't think of any reason other than an unhealthy addiction to being the center of attention that could explain such behavior.  But, that's not what we're talking about today.  No, what today's blog is about is a statement I made that embarassed me as soon as I said it.

As I said, we were listening to the radio on the way to school and they played "Every Rose Has It's Thorn" in honor of Brett, who had a massive brain hemorrhage last Thursday.  Now, neither of us care for 80's hair band music and this song is the ultimate 80's power ballad.  Olivia and were trading quips about how bad the song is when I told her "You know, Brett wrote this song when he found out his stripper girlfriend was cheating on him".  She responded with a sardonic "That's nice" and I said (get ready, here it comes) "You'd think that, dating a stripper, cheating would be expected".  As soon as I said it I knew it was wrong.  Wrong because I judged an entire group of people based on a prejudice most of us  hold.  You might think that a person that takes their clothes off for a living wouldn't stop there.  That's true for some, but not all.  The worst part of it is, I've known a couple of women who did this and they would never think of being unfaithful.  They were young women with debts and obligations who didn't see a better way off meeting them.  One was a mother trying to provide for her children and the other was a recent college graduate with a crushing debt from her education.  Now I'm not saying that the way they were handling there lives was the best way.  I'm just saying that there's more to people than meets the eye.

This isn't the first time I've put my foot in my mouth.  It's not even the first time I've done it in front of my daughter.  I also know I'm not alone in this.  How many of us have seen someone panhandling on the side of the road and automatically assumed the worst?  I know I have.  They're a drug addict, an alcoholic or worse if that's possible.  Most of us are skeptical of media reports of homeless families trying to get by and don't really believe that's the case of the person we see on the street.  After twenty years as a firefighter, I'm intimately familiar with the homeless population in Raleigh and, in general, that sentiment is true.  There are some homeless families, but the majority are single men and many of them are fighting some demon or demons.  Does that really make a difference?  Or, are they the very people we should be reaching out to?  When confronted by the Pharisees in Mark for associating with tax collectors and sinners, Jesus said (paraphrased here) folks that aren't sick don't need a doctor and that "sinners" are who he came to save.

"Sinner", there's a loaded word for you.  I looked up "sin" on Dictionary.com, Merriam Webster and Wikipedia.  Between the two dictionaries, there were 31 different definitions and Wiki had pretty extensive page on the subject.  Almost all of them focused on the legalistic side of the equation.  Since Christianity is about relationships, I'm more interested in the relational side.  The best defintion that I've heard from that perspective is that sin is anything that seperates us from God (thanks, Pastor Jenny).  Anything that seperates us from God.  At first blush, that doesn't sound like so much. But, think about it. "Anything" takes in a lot of territory. Territory that includes how we practice our faith or see ourselves as Christians. Look back at the story from Mark in the preceding paragraph. Who were the real sinners in there? The people sharing a meal with Jesus and listening to what he had to say? Or the Pharisees, who were so judgmental of them? How often are we like those people so hungry for the love of Jesus they'd do anything for it and how often are we like the Pharisees who were so concerned with doing the right thing? This morning I was a Pharisee and I don't care for that side of myself. I'm giving up "doing the right thing" and I'm going to work on the love angle. I don't really deserve it, but maybe He'll give it to me anyway.

Christ Invites to His Table all Who Love Him

Earlier this month, Andrew Thompson published a column on the UM Reporter site titled "GEN-X RISING: Recommit to Communion as means of healing grace"  I've included a link to it so you can read the article in it's entirety, because I'm going to pull out what I think are salient points and discuss them.  So, here goes:

1) "We should recognize where we’ve grown lax in how we approach the means of grace. And for the sake of our faithfulness to God and God’s calling on us, we ought to be willing to repent and recommit where necessary."

I'm assuming that Andrew is asserting that the church as a whole has become lax in how we view the means of grace because, unless he's a mind reader, there's no way for him to know how I or anyone else see this.  And, I have to disagree with him.  While I don't have access to the pulse of the whole Methodist Church, what I do have access to (my church, district and conference) doesn't lead me to that conclusion.  I think, as a whole, the church appreciates the gravity of all means of grace.  And, while I do believe there are places we might need to recommit ourselves, this isn't one of them.  The call to "repent" of this supposed laxity smacks of a Calvinist bent on Andrew's part and I'm not going there.

2)I'm not pulling a quote for the next point, I'm going to paraphrase because it's kind of long and there's a longer one at the end I want to address.  Basically, he talks about the importance of Holy Communion, how it was Jesus' last meeting with all the apostles and what he told them.  He also talks about Wesley's view of communion, how it is the chief means of grace that brings us closer to God and how it's observance is a Christian duty.  In this, we're in complete agreement.  It doesn't last, though.

3) "At too many of our churches, the Lord’s Supper is either neglected or treated as an onerous add-on to regular worship. Instead of seeing it as a source of healing grace, our congregations see it as an inconvenient extra 15 minutes that keeps them from the meal they really want to celebrate: the Sunday buffet at a local restaurant.

There is also a distressingly casual approach to the sacrament that is widespread in Methodism as well. The “open table” ethic in the UMC has come to mean that anyone present is invited to come forward and receive—regardless of whether they’ve been baptized or even understand Holy Communion’s significance."

In the first paragraph of this point, I can't really say "yea or nay".  What I can say is that I haven't found this to be true in my experience.  I've never taken communion in a Methodist service and felt that the congregation felt inconvienced or hindered.  And, I've taken it in anything from a small country church to an 8000 seat arena during a youth rally.  What disturbs me is the statement about the open table ethic, the intimation that the means of grace may not be open to all.  Andrew's idea becomes more clear in the next point.

4) "Such abuses call for a form of repentance. First, we should recognize how important this gift really is. As a chief means of grace, it is of the utmost importance that we approach it with reverence and an appropriate understanding. Pastors can help in this regard, by regular preaching and teaching on the sacrament as well as insisting on at least monthly observance in their churches.

Reforming the so-called “open table” will require more effort. The weakness of reasons given for its continued practice don’t seem to dampen the desire for some Methodists to define themselves by what they don’t stand for. But make no mistake: Wesley’s use of the phrase “converting ordinance” to describe the Eucharist did not refer to its use as an evangelization tool for the unbaptized. It was rather meant to refer to the sacrament’s ability to quicken the faith of Christians who were caught in the malaise of sin.
Christ does want all to meet him at his Supper. But that Supper takes place in the church, and the manner of inclusion into it goes by a specific name: Baptism. Recognizing the profound meaning of coming to commune with Christ through the baptismal call would help us understand both sacraments more fully."

I've already said how I feel about the "repentance" idea.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not against repentance.  I just don't think it's applicable in this instance.  But, to me, the entire gist of Andrew's idea of moving to a "closed" method says that grace is something that has to earned.  Which is completely contrary to the concept of grace, which is "unmerited divine assistance given humans for their regeneration or sanctification" according to Merriam-Webster.  The key word in that is "unmerited".  The thought that you must first be baptized doesn't seem to fit with that.  I cannot, in good faith, agree with anything that denies grace to anyone in need of it.  My view is that it's not our business what someone else's motives, mindset or anything else are when it comes to grace (or the means of grace). All we can do is present opportunities for it. What others do with these opportunities is between themselves and God. 

Bringing the Kingdom to Earth

While perusing a new blog I've started following, Hacking Christianity, I came across the following statement.  "When a former pastor of mine was asked why the church turned a predominantly missions trip into an evangelism trip, he said these words: When we make the planet better, it is temporary.  When we save souls to Christ, it is eternal".  The context of the blog I took this out of was, at that point, about spiritualism.  But, I want to use it to talk about Heaven and Hell.  I suppose I should say a couple of things up front.  I don't believe in the classical view of Heaven and Hell, where Heaven is sitting on a cloud with halo and harp or Hell is a lake of fire filled with horned, pointy-tailed little demons carrying pitchforks that torment you.  For me, Heaven is presence of God and Hell is the absence of God.  And, those states can exist now or in the future.  As Rob Bell said in his book, Velvet Elvis, "Because with every action, comment, conversation, we have the choice to invite Heaven or Hell to Earth."  More than a few people would disagree with this. 

The problem I have with the statement "When we make the planet better, it is temporary. When we save souls to Christ, it is eternal" is that it's more concerned with the afterlife than the current life we're living right now.  And, giving any less than 100% to the life we're living right now is a big old spit-in-the-face to Jesus.  Because, as Erwin McManus said in The Barbarian Way, "Jesus came to liberate us so that we could die up front and then live."  Growing up, I can remember older people talking about how much better things were going to be once they were in Heaven.  They were willing to settle for less because of some far-off promise of mansions, crowns and streets of gold.  And, I never really understood that.  I have a rockin' case of ADD, coupled with a severe dose of instant gratification and the idea of waiting for anything  breaks me out in a cold sweat.  So, you can see why I like the idea of Heaven coming to Earth.

Another aspect of this mindset is the idea that spiritual things always trump earthly things.  That is to say "saving souls" is more important that making sure people have housing, health care, schools, etc.  I don't think the two can be seperated, though.  There's a little thing called "Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs" that says our needs can categorized and that each level of need must be met before the next level can be achieved.  Because, you can't talk about God with any success to a person that's starving, or doesn't know where they're going to sleep that night, or that they're children are safe. Like it or not, things like God and religion are up the scale in that respect.  So, in providing for these needs by building houses and schools, providing food and basic healthcare or working on the infrastructure, we're laying the groundwork for later evangelical missions.  Albert Schweitzer understood this.  Schweitzer, in addition to being a physician and musician, was a philosopher and theologian.  In 1905, at the age of 30, he felt the call and went back to college and earned a medical degree.  Now, before this, he already held a PhD in Theology and could have served any German Lutheran evangelical mission easily.  But, that wasn't the call he felt.  He earned his M.D. and went to Africa and spent many years building hospitals and dispensing medical care.  I doubt you'll find many who would marginalize his work because he didn't spend all his time preaching.

Christianity in general, and evangelism in particular must walk a thin line between the spiritual and the secular.  If we don't keep in mind the secular part of the equation, we run the risk of being seen as irrelevant.  If we focus too much on the secular side, the message is corrupted and not worth presenting.  While the strictly spiritual viewpoint sounds good, it's really untenable and not what Jesus wanted at all. 

A Post-Christian World

If you've read this blog very much, you know I surf around looking for and reading other blogs.  Sometimes, I'm looking for ideas for this one; other times, I'm just reading.  As I was reading The Wesley Report, I noticed the author referencing a site called Hacking Christianity.  In it, he said "I read and enjoy his blog daily, even though he and I often disagree".  As I don't agree with Shane (author of the Wesley Report) very often, I immediately clicked on the provided link.  At first, I worried that it would be just another Christian blog.  That changed when I  started looking at the "About" page of the website.  First, the author is Jeremy Smith, a United Methodist pastor.  That's not a must-have, but it is nice to read something by someone coming the same place as I am.  Second, he said "We live in a Post-Christian World"  And explained that statement with "What this means is that Christianity is no longer the dominant narrative, nor does it shape what the world thinks like in previous centuries. To remain relevant, Christianity must find ways to place itself in the rhythms of the world, or, better, to beckon the world to the rhythms of the Christian way".  I've read a lot of stuff saying that the church needs to adjust to a post-modern world, but I haven't seen many explanations about what that means.  Here, in one paragraph, this guy laid it out in a way I could grasp.  The question is how do we do that?

Before we discuss the how, I'd like to get into that statement a little.  In it, he says that that Christians must find ways to into the rhythms of the world or, better yet, bring the world into our rhythms.  A lot of people are going to read that and say why should we conform to the ways of the world?  Doesn't the Bible specifically say we shouldn't do that? (Romans 12:2)  Yes, but do we not find uses for things of this world to spread the gospel everyday?  I think if we find ways to integrate ourselves and our beliefs into the larger rhythms of the world, the world will find its way to us and our rhythms.  Another way of looking at this is that if we're not out in world spreading the message, how is anyone going to get it?

How do we find our way into the rhythms of the world and beckon them to ours?  We can avail ourselves of all the new technology that's available and get our message out and in people's faces quicker and more efficiently than ever, these days.  But, is the current message going to be relevant to our intended audience?  The initial reaction is to say "Of course it does!!!"  And, even if didn't many of us probably wouldn't willing to look at a change.  "Change?" you shout, "What change?  We've been doing this way for 2000 years.  If it was good enough for my ancestors, it's good enough for me".  Before you say you'd never react that way, think about it.  What if the person talking about changing things is challenging some of your long held beliefs?  I'm not saying that everything should be on the table, I'm saying we need to figure out what's going to be on there and not let knee jerk reactions rule that process.  If we do it right, if we can find that synchronicity with the rest of the world, then those people who need to hear us won't just write us off and they'll be willing to give our way a shot.  Maybe.

Liberal v Conservative

I'm seeing a distressing trend in the Church (the Church universal, not just the Methodists) that mirrors the current political landscape.  That is, we seem to be dividing into competing, if not warring, camps.  This is different from the liberal and conservative views of the past.  To some degree, both of those ideologies had at least learned to agree to disagree.  The new movements I'm picking up on appear to have the same nasty hallmarks that fill current American politics.  Of course, I realized this movement started back in the 80's with the Moral Majority and the rise of the Religious Right.  But, until the last election, things weren't as rough as they seem to be now.  Case in point, Glenn Beck has encouraged people to leave churches that talk about social and economic justice.  I'm not really surprised that a Republican pundit would counsel such action, but I am a bit surprised that there are Christians who would take such a call seriously.  Remember,“Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”

On my Facebook page, I post a quote as my status every day.  Some days, they're secular, other days religious.  One day last week, I posted a quote from Shane Claiborne: "If there is anything I have learned from liberals and conservatives, it's that you can have great answers and still be mean... and that just as important as being right is being nice."  If you're unfamiliar with Shane, he's the author of "The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical" and founder of The Potter Street Community, a New Monastic community in Philadelphia.  An interesting fellow, all way around.  The day it was posted, it  seemed to resonate with me for no reason I could put my finger on.  Over the past few days, as I made my rounds of the blogs I check out looking for fodder for this one, I was reading The Wesley Report, a blog by Shane Raynor.  More often than not, I don't agree with what Shane has to say, as he's a bit more conservative than I am.  But, I will say, he rarely fails to make me think.  The blog entry that snagged me this time was titled "I'm a Social Justice Christian".  It's about a video of the same title in which different people espouse their support for the concept of social justice.  Shane isn't a fan of the term "social justice" because, for many (himself included), it conjures up images of government assistance and people abusing the system.  He prefers the term "social holiness" instead.  This isn't the first time Shane's written about social justice.  In one post, he mentions Beck's call for Christians to abandon churches that preach social justice.  Statements like this don't help the conservative cause at all.  I'm not sure it's at all right and it's certainly not "nice".

All too often these days, it seems that people's politics are coloring their religion instead of the other way around.  I suppose it's inevitable, that it's just human nature for one aspect of your beliefs to bleed over into others.  I'd like to think that our Christian beliefs would temper our politics and, hopefully, soften our attitude about other people.  I'd really like to think we've progressed beyond the Crusader mentality and view everyone as "persons of sacred worth".  But, I guess we're not there yet.

Why Does it Matter?

I stumbled across a new blog today, Stuff Christians Like.  It's kind of funny, and not in that "youth leader trying to be down with the kids" kind of way, either.  The author, Jon Acuff, has a post about making fun of "Facing the Giants".  A quote from that post, "Christian movies are often like the reverse of country songs. The guy gets his wife back, his dog back and his truck back.”  Nothing gets me going like busting on some smarmy crap that gets foisted on us just because we happen to believe in God.  But, evidently, that thought makes me a Christian hipster.  And, according to Jon, that's a bad thing.  I, however, disagree.  We all need to be skewered now and then to keep our heads a normal size.  See, I think my snarky, smart-alecky attitude is actually a good thing.  I do try not to get too nasty about it though.

But, hipsterism isn't what made me write this post.  Many Christians seem to think the whole "set apart" idea means we only deal with other Christians.  On Jon's blog, he has a couple of posts about which American Idol contestants are Christians.  What the...?  Why does that matter?  Does the fact that a contestant is a believer make them more worthy of my support?  Does it make them a better performer.  I would say I wish it did, but that's my inner hipster coming out.  I kind of hope this is all meant in fun.  But, even if it is, there are folks out there who try to do business with only other Christians, associate only with other Christians, etc.  The problem with that is (I knew you were asking) if we don't move out into the world and rub shoulders with those who don't share our belief, how will they know there's another way?  Not to mention the arrogance factor.  Oh yes, whether it's intentional or not, this whole "Christian isolationism" thing comes off as arrogant.  Like we're to good to get down in the everyday mud and muck like everyone else work it out.  And, believe me, that's not a good thing.

So, how do you keep from isolating yourself, yet not get caught up in all the crap the world throws around?  Unfortunately, like much in Christianity, I don't think this is something that lends itself to easy answers and formulas.  You know that checklist or instruction book we'd all love?  The one that lays out everything step by step so we don't have to think about it or work it out for ourselves?  Yeah, that doesn't really exist.  That's why we have things like the Bible, the collected wisdom of the church fathers and leaders and even friends and family to help us figure it out.  Whether we use it or not is up to us.